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In today’s Q&A, we are helping Jonathan figure out how to get guests for his podcast even though he’s just starting out with his podcast and online business.
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal from solopreneurhour.com
- Podcast with Michael O’Neal
- Pat Flynn
- Amy Porterfield
- John Lee Dumas
- Natalie Sisson
- Michael’s Show with John Corcoran
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an Expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal of the Solopreneur Hour podcast and solopreneurhour.com
Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down, by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys? Happy Thursday to you, welcome back to the Expert Q&A with S&J where we bring on internet marketing experts. We do not have all the answers to some of the questions that you send in; we would never want to tell you wrong, so we decided to start bringing people on who know a little bit more about certain subjects than we do to help you get the exact direction you need in your online business. And we are happy to bring back on the show today, Michael O’Neal from the Solopreneur Hour podcast and solohour.com. Michael, welcome back to the Q&A with S&J.
MICHAEL: I am so happy to be here, thank you guys [Crosstalk]
SHANE: That’s all right man, we’re gonna talk dude [Crosstalk] got to keep it tight.
JOCELYN: Today’s question is from Jonathan Mann, and Jonathan says, “How do I get guests for my podcasts? I want to interview thought-leaders and business people who are successful, but I have no idea how to get them on my show. How do I convince others to take time out of their day to talk to a total stranger, especially when I’m just starting out? ”
SHANE: When I read this question, I got this on email, the first person I thought about was Michael O’Neal. I was like, “This is the question we need to ask Michael” because that’s what you do. You interview people from all different walks and you got so many great interviews on your podcast, so how do you do it Michael? Especially when you first started out, how did you go out and get those guests and get people to take time out of their day?
MICHAEL: By the way, I apologize in advance, no one has ever accused me of brevity. I know these are quick shows.
SHANE: That’s all right, no problem.
MICHAEL: So this is kind of a two-parter and this is one of my favorite hacks that I think is a hidden gem in the podcasting world of how to do this. First of all, just like in all business, this all comes down to relationships. So, there has to be a degree of separation between the person you want and sometimes the person you can get. So you have to first do a little research on relationships and find out who knows who and what’s going on. You can do that often on Twitter and find out who is following who and that kind of thing; but initially how I did it was I was very conscious about building a relationship with pat Flynn because I saw him as the center of this universe that I wanted to be in. And to do that, I was very specific and measured on how – and I’m not saying I stalked me but –
SHANE: We all do; no, I’m just kidding.
MICHAEL: I liked what he had to do, I was listening to him, I was paying attention to his shows, I launched an online social media training product, I wrote to him with a very specific question and it wasn’t like “How do I start a podcast?” which I just got the other day, which was amazing to me, but it was a very specific question to my online business. And he didn’t respond, and so I followed up with him in a few weeks and said, “Hey blah-blah-blah” and he didn’t respond to that either. And I didn’t get mad, I followed up one more time and I said, “Hey, I totally understand, I just had this one really quick question blah-blah-blah.” And he said, “Oh man, I’m so sorry, I saw your message before” and he wrote me this long, explanation email on that exact thing that I wanted to know. And I said, “Thank you so much.” So I followed that email up and mind you, I only had – I think I had less than 1000 dollars in my bank account, I probably had a few hundred, and I sent him a 20-dollar iTunes gift card for that answer. On his income reports, he had shown that he was making 30000-40000 dollars a month, he didn’t need the gift card but that wasn’t the point.
SHANE: Right.
MICHAEL: The point was that I wanted to in some way, be memorable. So:
1) Build a relationship with someone who has some influence in the industry.
2) Compliment them on what they do via email and see if there’s a specific question, a very specific question you can ask.
“Hey I really loved what you said in chapter four of your book; would you mind clarifying this one little point for me because I’m working on something right now.” And then you ask that question. Hopefully, they’ll respond, don’t get mad if they don’t respond right away, sometimes it takes a while. When they answer, you thank them in a way that is memorable. Go to proflowers.com and send them a bouquet, go to iTunes, send them a gift card or whatever. So Pat writes back and says, “Dude, you didn’t have to do that.” So fast-forward NMX in New York happens a couple of months later, I say “Pat, I’m going to be there, is there any way that we can meet up and I can have a cup of coffee with you?” So we met up for a smoothie in New York, and had a great little chat and that really began our friendship. He then introduced me to Amy Porterfield who introduced me to a number of other people, who then introduced me to John Lee Dumas, who introduced me to Nick Unsworth and Natalie [Unclear 0:05:10] and Chris Ducker and all these – I mean, pretty much my whole universe stemmed from that one relationship with Pat. So when you first get started, that’s the technique.
SHANE: Yeah.
MICHAEL: Now, to get good guests, here’s when good guests happen. As you guys know, being podcasters, really the only way, I mean, I don’t know how many cold emails you’ve sent that have been responded to, but I can tell you as a host, I barely ever respond to those emails. When someone says, “Hey, you should have me on your show” I’m like, “Yeah okay, clearly, I shouldn’t have you on the show” because you wouldn’t have to try that hard if I wanted to have you on my show; you know what I mean?
SHANE: Exactly.
MICHAEL: But sometimes it happens and the PR people do it and I respond. So what I do is, I’ll do my interview, I’ll have my show with them, I’ll use John Corcoran as an example because he’s been so phenomenal with this. We have this great show, I hit “Stop” on the recorder and I said, “John, that was amazing; you were great a guest.” And he says, “Oh man, that was great, you had questions I had never been asked before blah-blah-blah” and I say right then and there, two things that really make a huge difference; number one I say, “John would you be willing, when this thing comes out, would you be willing to share this with your audience?” So I actually verbally ask them that instead of just assuming they will via email –
SHANE: That’s a great tip.
MICHAEL: – I verbally ask them. And so when I follow up via email, I say “Hey, the show is coming out, I really appreciate that you said that you’d share this with your audience, and here’s the links.” So you’ve already sort of committed to that and the second thing I do is say, “Now you know what the show feels like, who do you know that you think would be a great fit? I love to talk to actors and comedians and online business people and authors things like that. Who do you know?” And I do that right then and there and they go, “Oh let me think about that for a second.” And then John fires back ten emails connecting me with all kinds of killer people.
SHANE: Love it.
MICHAEL: And that’s how I have been able to do it. Or, if you are at an event, it never hurts to put someone on the spot a little bit; like if you have to show a little bit – I did that with Adam Carolla; I was at a car-racing event with him and I said, “I know you’re blah-blah-blah and I got this podcast and I know you have a podcast blah-blah-blah” and he goes, “How long is it?” I said, “You know, it’s an hour.” He goes, “How about 20-25 minutes?” I’m like “Sounds great.” We ended up doing 40 but now that’s on the resume. And so those are kind of the main ways that I use to expand my guest audience.
SHANE: And it’s also too – like this is funny, I love what you said earlier about sometimes you got to just take what you can get at first too. The first person who was ever on my podcast, my coaching podcast for football coaches, was a buddy of mine who lives down the street who coaches youth football. But people loved it, they just loved listening to it and it was so funny because within ten episodes, I had already moved into some division-one football coaches like Hal Mumme, who is considered one of the most legendary coaches in college football, and all sorts of awesome people but it just like it spirals out of control. And your story totally reminded me a lot about how we get guests because it’s almost like how we met. We met somebody who was this, and they met somebody who is this, and then we’re in California, we were having lunch and Kate Erickson was there and then boom, I look over and I’m sitting next to Michael O’Neal.
MICHAEL: Right.
SHANE: And we were at the Cheesecake Factory and we were like, “Hey man, what’s going on?” And that’s how we met.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
SHANE: So once you start the ball rolling, if you just keep working it like you said, you’re going to kind of move around and get into this network and it’s going to spider-web out.
MICHAEL: Yeah, and if I need guests, I’ll reach out to past guests and just say, “Hey man, do you know anybody cool?” Sorry –
JOCELYN: Oh that’s fine, I was just going to say, don’t underestimate the power of personal connections. I mean, it’s so much more beneficial than anything else like emails or phone calls or anything else. Those face-to-face interactions are just so important.
SHANE: And once you enter those circles, you are going to have access to those – you may not be in someone’s circle, but once you talk to them and you have a way to get into that circle, they can help you access it for more needs you have down the road. I think those are great tips man, what a great outline. If anyone is listening to this, go back and write everything Michael just said and you will learn – it doesn’t matter what niche you are in. If you are talking about football coaches, or you are talking about actors, comedians, marketers, we have talked to about a lot of different spaces here in just these last 14 minutes and it all works. You just have to do it within your realm.
MICHAEL: By the way Shane, if you know a couple of good NFL players, I could speak to –
SHANE: I’ll help you out there buddy, I know a few. I’ll help you out man.
MICHAEL: Hines Ward, I am trying to get to Hines.
SHANE: I have already talked to Hines Ward; I’ll talk to you about that after the show.
MICHAEL: I have filled my studio – my studio is called “Studio-86” I’m a huge Steelers fan; my race number on my – I have two race cars; one is 86 and the other one is 186 ‘cause I couldn’t get 86. I got Hines Ward cards all over the place here, I got to have a –
SHANE: We’ll see if we can do something about that.
MICHAEL: Let’s see what we can do. I’m too far – I got too many degrees of separation.
JOCELYN: All right Michael, tell us where people can find you, where are you out on the web, or anywhere else you want people to reach out.
MICHAEL: iTunes is where the show is, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it’s called ‘The Solopreneur Hour’ and you can go to solohour.com and @solohour on Twitter.
SHANE: Awesome, great interview of Michael O’Neal; listen to what he says guys and this is not just about podcasting. If you want to reach out to do guest posts, if you want to reach out to just get into other networks, do exactly what we talked about today and you will be successful at that. Until next time, get out there, take action and flip your life. We’ll see you next week.
JOCELYN: Bye!
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