351: How to (Correctly) Pitch Podcasts with Dustin Riechmann

351: How to (Correctly) Pitch Podcasts with Dustin Riechmann

Melvin Varghese:

Hey there, it's Melvin. Today's podcast is supported by the American Psychological Association. If you are a psychology professional, which I think is most of us that are listening to this podcast, maybe you're considering your next career move. Well, the American Psychological Association's PsyCareers service actually has a listing of over 400 available positions in psychology. You can check it out over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. And you can create a free account, upload your resume, set up job alerts, and submit all your applications. Again, that's over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. So we'll jump right into today's session. Hello, hello. Welcome to today's session of Selling the Couch. I hope that you are doing well and having a fantastic day. So today's podcast session is a little bit meta, kind of meta, which is basically a conversation on how to guest on podcasts. Now, you might be listening and you might be like, you might be a podcaster and you love podcasting. You might want to launch a podcast in the future. Or you might be like, Mel, I have zero desire to launch a podcast, but I would like to guest on some podcasts, be a guest interview on podcasts. Podcasts are so interesting. When I first started selling the couch, I didn't anticipate this happening, right? A lot of starting selling the couch was a little bit naive, but you know, as I have been doing this for so many years now. I mean, when this episode is released, we're going to be in year nine of selling the couch. And One of the most common responses or emails or messages that I get from our colleagues is there's a connection that they feel to me from listening to the podcast, right, all of these years. And it's such a humbling thought. But I think podcast guesting also offers this really interesting opportunity to get that connection, but also to get in front of audiences that may be related or are related to products and services that you offer. My guest today is Dustin Reitman. Dustin is a friend that I connected with on LinkedIn. Shout out to Dan Cumberland for connecting us. You'll hear this in the podcast conversation, but Dustin is an engineer turned internet marketing slash copywriting whiz slash now his entire niche is basically helping entrepreneurs pitch to get on bigger and bigger podcasts. And this guesting on podcast or being a guest on podcast is such an accelerant to your business. One, it establishes social proof, but two, you just never know the partnerships and the opportunities that arise out of things like this. so today we're covering dustin's backstory of how he got into this uh what he learned from going on over 30 podcasts as a guest how he crafts the pitches on his podcast i think you're gonna really enjoy this because we're actually diving into the actual like This is how I structure it. This is what I do first, and this is what I do second, and this is why I do it, just to get a more comprehensive understanding. So we'll dive right into today's podcast session. Here's my conversation with Dustin Reichman. Hey Dustin, welcome to Selling the Couch.

Dustin Reichmann: Hey Melvin, it's fantastic to be here with you.

Melvin Varghese: It's a pretty amazing, right? LinkedIn out of all places. And I don't even remember the context of how we like connected, but I think it was through Dan probably, right?

Dustin Reichmann: Probably. Yeah. I think through our mutual friend, Dan. Yeah. Cause I only got active on LinkedIn maybe, I guess it's been about six months ago now, but I met some amazing people, yourself included. And yeah, it becomes a small world when you're on there and you get active.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, absolutely. I'm just like just behind you. I think I'm like five months ish into LinkedIn. And it has been an interesting place to connect with some, I mean, just people doing amazing stuff. And I mean, you are one of those people. I mean, first of all, like even before we jump into the conversation, brother, like you are like genuinely one of the most like kind and thoughtful people I've ever met. And just the way that you talk about like podcast guesting, it's not just like tactics, right? more, I don't know, there's an element, there's a human element to it, which I think is just so fantastic. And so I'm really looking forward to our conversation and really grateful and humble that we can have it.

Dustin Reichmann: I appreciate the kind words. Definitely remain humble and do what I can to deliver for your audience here and give them tactics, strategy, and yeah, hopefully a little bit deeper connection to how this whole thing works.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you and I have both seen this, right? There are folks online that teach stuff that they actually have not done successfully, right? That's like a common thing, but you've actually done this successfully. So I was wondering if you could take us back to Fire Creek Snacks and your sort of your foray into podcasting and how even you were thinking about this.

neering. So around the end of: 2017

Melvin Varghese: Yeah. I mean, I'd love this podcasting space and that is quite a story. I wanted to ask you, what was the thought behind guesting on podcast versus starting your own at that point?

Dustin Reichmann: Yeah, I think it still kind of remains one of my core beliefs, I guess, around this whole marketing space. I am starting my own podcast soon, so it's not to disparage that. But it's a lot of work, as you can attest. And so I think for me, it was like, hey, I can go out and look at these people that have already accumulated an audience. They already have trust. They already have people that tune in and download every week. Why don't I just go put myself in front of this audience that's already there versus going out and trying to create a whole new audience and and start from scratch. And I didn't know the first thing about production. We certainly didn't have a budget for it at the time. And so yeah, for me, it was very appealing because it was free. It was something I could do and control the result in the sense that I could determine how many people I wanted to reach out to. I could do the research and I could figure all that out without having to depend on a third party. I felt like I would have to go get a third party involved if I was going to launch my own podcast. So I think there's definitely pros and cons that we can get into with guesting versus hosting. But yeah, the reason I got in, it was just ease of access and it was free. And that was really appealing.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, I mean, I think like how you approach it, it's such a smart strategy, right? Because goodness, like it is amazing we have gone through this pandemic, like all the things that, you know, we've had to deal with. But yeah, in that moment, right? Like what's the thing with the least friction? Go to people that have established audiences already, right? I mean, I think the approach was fantastic. So you approach Nick Loper, go on these podcasts and you approach, I think, 11 or 12 more and they're I mean, there's something about what you're doing, right? That's standing out. And I wanted to spend some time diving into that. And because I know that a lot of folks listening, they may not want to start a podcast, but I think a lot of folks are seeing the value of podcasts, right? Because there's a connection that you form, right? To podcast hosts and even as you listen to guests, right? So what do you think it was about that approach? And we can take this any way we can dive deep and, you know,

Dustin Reichmann: Yeah, I was kind of doing it on accident. Although in hindsight, now I see the difference. I can articulate it a lot more. And I think it comes from my background. I was in engineering. It was a very different kind of engineering. It was traffic engineering. And a lot of what I was writing, I was more like a lawyer. I was writing persuasive reports and things about safety and traffic and things like that. I think it was just natural for me to write persuasively. And I also had a background in copywriting because of the digital marketing training and things that I had done over the years. But also, I'm very relational. And I think that that came through in the way that I approached these… I'm going to use the word pitch, but pitch isn't negative. Pitch can be a very positive thing when you approach it the right way. And so I think, just to outline, and I think the big things that were a differentiator for me and what I was told from the host is I led with what I now call relational anchors, which are basically, Hey, I'm not a weirdo from the internet. This isn't a pitch, like a cold, heavy handed, I'm trying to sell you something or get on your calendar pitch like we all get every day. So it was leading with familiarity, something I knew about them, something I admired about them and the show, some flattery. And this is still how I craft these. So, that's what we lead with is some relational anchors and human-to-human contact or connection. Then I went right into what's in it for the person reading this email. In this case, the host's best interest is their audience, right? So, it's like, how can I very clearly serve your audience? And what I've learned to do with that is just spell it out in bullet points. So, three to five bullet points about exactly what I can teach or the stories I can share, the experience I can provide your audience. And when a host gets that, rather than feeling like, oh, great, this person wants something from me, it's more like, oh, this person is trying to serve me and my audience and they've already written the show outline. So, this is really convenient too. And then the third and final piece of this is just a really clear ask. in a very friendly way. So, my go-to with this call to action at the end of these pitches is, are you interested? So, I've led with value and said, hey, I really admire you. This is what I know about your show and what I've gotten out of it. This is what I can do for your audience. Are you interested? Which makes it much easier for them to say yes, because they may say, yes, here's the link, let's go schedule or yes, let's do a pre-interview call or yes, tell me more. But it's kind of hard for them to say no, because all I've done is good stuff. And if they made it to the bottom of the email, unless I messed up and they just don't like do interviews or their show's dormant or something, pretty much we get about an 80% success rate when we approach emails this way. So it's more work than the spray and pray approach that many agencies and others do. But I find that it not only gets you on the podcast, it starts the relationship on the right foot because they respect you by the way that you've been very intentional in the outreach. So, I think it's like you dove right into the details there, but that is what makes the difference in a winning pitch versus what most people do.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah. I'm really grateful you actually did dive into it. And, you know, as you were talking, I thought about like pitches I've gotten for the STC podcast. And it's like, so many of these are like the exact opposite, right? Like, I mean, I recently, and you know, now that we're on LinkedIn, right. LinkedIn has also turned into the new podcast pitch place. Right. But I recently got one and it came across as so entitled. Like I was doing this person a favor. by having them on the podcast. So that's like one thing that I've kind of noticed. The other thing I've noticed is it's what you said. It's like this mass outreach that you can tell. It was like they literally swapped out maybe a word if, you know, they got like, really?

Dustin Reichmann: Yeah, I get those. I have a couple of brands. It'll be like, I really love the work you do at. And it'll be like Firecreek Snacks, but Firecreek Snacks is like in a different font. And it's clearly just like auto templated in there. Yeah, it's horrible.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, so I mean, I think the one thing I'm sort of taking away is No, it's like when we make these pitches, it's very easy to forget to be human and to connect heart to heart, right? And then also once we've connected heart to heart, showing that you've actually listened to the podcast, right? And this is what I have done. So, and then asking, right? Like it's, it comes from a place of, it's just a different, I don't know, I call it more like graceful humility, right? It's a different framework.

Dustin Reichmann: I talk about podcast guesting a lot. That's become my main focus with my coaching and things that I do. The larger umbrella that I see that fitting under is what I call partnership marketing. It's just this idea that marketing doesn't need to be and shouldn't be a give and take thing. It should be a win-win-win relationship. Podcast guesting is a great example of this. Partnership marketing, by definition, the way I define it is you put yourself in front of your target market using someone else's audience, but you don't

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Dustin Reichmann: do that in a way that takes from anyone. It's you giving first. And because you give first, you win as the brand who's getting exposure to that audience. But the host also wins because you're giving fresh content, you're filling a gap in their content, in their typical content. And most importantly, their audience wins because you're actually coming and delivering a lot of value. You've got great stories, you've got some emotions you can evoke. And when the audience wins, that makes the host look good, it gets their download numbers up, and then they're happy to share their audience with you because you're being really cool about it. So if you can like think, how can I lead with a win and create a win-win-win relationship that no one in that scenario goes down, we all go up, right? And I think as much as you can do that, we're talking about podcast guesting, but Think of subscription box placements. That was a big thing for Firecreek as well. Joint web classes, or even old school lunch and learns in person. If those are done well, the people showing up are happy because they learned something new and they got lunch. The people hosting look good to their clients, so they're happy. And then the person presenting gets exposure to their target market, so they're happy. I'm just trying to encourage the audience, you can think a little bigger about how can you apply this in your life, but specifically your business. But I love podcast guesting as a vehicle to do it because it is kind of universal, especially if you have an online business. There's always podcasts that you can go beyond and be featured and create these relationships through.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that when mindset, because I think, you know, this is something, you know, for me, like, I don't have the, like, extensive copywriting business background that you have, right? Like, a lot of this has been never took a business or marketing class ever, you know, and a lot of this has been like figuring it out. And But I think one of the things that I've really had to make peace with and really work on is this mindset, right? Like that if I take something from you, if I give you something, that means that I'm taking something away from you. And I don't think it has to be that way at all.

Dustin Reichmann: Yeah. And that's something that I'd say in the last couple of years, I've really kind of unlocked that for myself and I've learned how to unlock that for others, you know, in masterminds and things, but I grew up very poor, you know, I was, and then I felt like the most abundant I could get was thinking dollars for hours, you know, as an engineer and like, This is the best, biggest impact and most money or whatever I could ever make. And then as I've gotten years into entrepreneurship, I've realized there's actually, it's actually abundance, right? It's actually, no, like no one has to lose for me to win and we can, we can actually grow a bigger pie together and all be better. at the end of the day. And so, yeah, that's super important. And it's easy to talk about, but it's hard to do. And I feel like you develop it over time by practicing it, believing it, and then seeing the reality of it and how you interact with your clients or colleagues or wherever. But as you start to see examples of it, then your self-belief grows like, yeah, there really is enough for everybody. And I actually can win while helping other people win bigger versus feeling like someone's got to lose for me to win.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, and then also I think surrounding yourself with people who operate from that mindset too, right? Because yeah, because I think the other side is kind of the typical. I wanted to come back to something you had said earlier. So you said, you know, you lead with relational anchors, and then what's in it for the host is sort of that second part. So what is your approach on Do you listen to these podcasts? How do you create custom things? Or is it more like, hey, I've got like three to five topics I can think of and I might listen to an episode and kind of use that as the, how do you think about it?

Dustin Reichmann: Yes. So I talked about the three pieces and we'll just call it an email. This could be LinkedIn direct messages, in which case it'd probably be like three separate messages. But the whole idea, yes. Number one, relational anchors. Number two, what's in it for the audience, those bullet points. And then number three is the call to action. Actually, the second and third piece of that rarely change. You might customize the bullet points a little bit depending on the podcast. But typically, if you're in the same target market, what you teach and the stories you want to pull from or the credibility highlights that you want to put in those bullet points Those are pretty static, which is good because those take the most effort. It's like coming up with, you know, juicy enough bullets that get someone's attention. You've got some like numbers in there. You've got some like how to, and you've got some great stories, but you can kind of reuse those over and over because you're approaching different audiences with them. So are different hosts with different audiences. The part that you have to customize every time is that first part which is the relational anchor. So, that's how will Melvin immediately know that I know who Melvin is, I know what the show is about and I've gotten some value from the show or something to be able to like compliment you on. And that could be as simple as looking at your LinkedIn, seeing that we're from the same state. Maybe we went to the same college or maybe we went to the college that my wife went to or something. Something though that's like, okay, like you just literally, it sounds funny, but the number one job of the first line of the email is Dustin is not a random weirdo from the internet. Like Dustin has invested some, and it doesn't have to be deep, but he has some connection. We've made some connection to each other, or he's made a connection to me. So, I usually do something along those lines. And then, yeah, for the next part, in my world, I typically would like to, at least as I'm getting started with this, listen to some episodes. Ideally, what you could say is, hey, in episode 123, when you interviewed Ryan, I pulled this out of it, I applied it, and this is what happened. Especially now, if I'm going with a bigger show, I'm going to go through that level of effort. If you're doing this as a scalable marketing channel, you start to run into bandwidth problems. If you're trying to be on a podcast a week, that's a lot of podcasts to listen to, get that intimately familiar with. And so a shortcut that still doesn't make this, that doesn't like make it bad, but a shortcut to this, like what we actually do with entrepreneurs as they get up and scale with this marketing channel is to have a virtual assistant help with this. But the virtual assistant is trained well enough that they become your eyes and ears. And so they can go listen to a show, If there's good enough show notes, they might be able to peruse the show notes and figure out, this would be a great episode to reference because it ties to part of Dustin's story. So they can start to see relational anchors on your behalf, and that's when this becomes more scalable. But in the early days for myself, and probably for the first 30 shows I was on, I did it all myself, and it worked great. But there becomes a point where I just don't have the bandwidth to do it. So That was a long answer, but someone's listening and they're starting this out. Yeah. Go listen to a couple episodes, pick out some legitimate thing that really impacted you and reference that in the email. If you're doing this at scale, have a virtual assistant who really understands you and could find those facts, figures, outcomes, and know that you would relate to them and that what you teach kind of maybe ties back to that or expands on that or contradicts that. Like those are the types of things to make this like a logical connection from the relational anchor through your, uh, your bullet points. That's awesome. It's an art and science, which is why it's kind of hard to put it. People know it when they see it, and I'll have a resource later where people can see how I actually write these pitches.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, no, I love the art and science of it. The relational anchors, do you generally focus it on like, it sounds like you've actually focused more on like personal stuff, right? Like versus like, you know, congratulations on the success of your business or whatever, right? It's more like, Hey, you know, I saw we're both from here, you know, or I saw your recent picture on Instagram where you went blank, you know, I actually took a trip there too.

Dustin Reichmann: And yeah, you can, I can see you smiling as you said that. Those are way better because anyone could say, Hey, Melvin, I really enjoy XYZ podcast. If you got nothing better, you can use that, but you're not going to be as successful as if you can find something a little more interesting of a connection. I'm trying to think of some other examples. So one would be… I've used this before, where the podcast is co-hosted by a husband and wife team. Now, I don't have to listen to an episode to see that. Their pictures are on the art and they have the same last name or whatever. So I could open with, I love that you guys co-host this podcast together. My first business online was with my wife, and it's something we really cherish. So I know it's personal, but it ties back to me and there's a relational anchor there. But it could be as simple as you find a podcast you want to be on, you go look for the host on LinkedIn and then you browse their content and you say, Hey, your recent post on XYZ was really compelling to me because ABC, you know, like you can tie something there where it's, again, it's just like, okay, he's actually like spent some time knowing who I am and what I'm about, but it doesn't have to be super deep, but yeah, hopefully that gives you a few kind of examples.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, I love those examples. I mean, it's, again, I just going back to like something you said earlier, it's like the, we forget the human element when we get into these pitch situations, right? And we often forget, I think, especially, I mean, it's just something I struggle with, it's bigger, odd, bigger influencers, right? Bigger people with bigger audiences, like, you almost like you humanize them, right? Because they're almost like these, like, people that I can't even touch, but you forget that they are just regular people that, you know,

story form. So it was like in: 2015

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, I like that. Dustin, I'm so grateful for you. I can't believe our time flew by.

Dustin Reichmann: We talked a lot about the pitching part of podcasting.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but I think that is like a big part of it. You know, I think we could probably do a whole other episode on the pros and cons of podcasting versus, you know, guest podcasting. But I would say let's wrap it up here just because I think this is so good. And it gives this framework is, I don't know, it's just it has my mind already. Like, oh, yeah, this is like, I could totally, you know, think through this. You're doing some pretty amazing stuff in the world. Please let us know what you're up to and how we can learn more about you.

Dustin Reichmann: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I work with entrepreneurs every day, helping them use podcast guesting and other partnership marketing strategies to grow their business. The easiest place I would say for people to get started, especially given the theme today, I have something called the Podcast Pitch Playbook. It's free. It's actually podcastpitchplaybook.com. And when they go and access that, it's over the shoulder training of me in about five minutes. going through these three pieces of a really effective pitch email, talking about how to do each one really specifically, things like subject lines, how to find the right email address. So it's very tactical advice for how you can actually get on a show using a really rich pitch. And then I include three actual email pitches that I've sent to pretty large podcasts to get on them. So they're literally Google Docs, people can copy and paste and modify accordingly. So you can make this kind of paint by numbers, but still very customized and warm to the host that they're approaching. podcastpitchplaybook.com for that. Otherwise, Simple Success Coaching is my main site. And as you mentioned, I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's Dustin Reikman. And spell it however you want. You'll end up finding me because everyone misspells it. And all roads lead back to me because I think I'm the only Dustin Reikman in the world.

Melvin Varghese: Pretty awesome. All roads lead back to Dustin, right? Dustin, I appreciate you. I appreciate our friendship and yeah, just appreciate this time together to, you know, learn about the side of this. I mean, this is something that admittedly, like I, I don't know much about, I see the potential of it and I'm just so grateful for your willingness to share.

Dustin Reichmann: Yeah. Well, I'm honored to be here and happy to share. So thanks for inviting me, Melvin, and hope to do it again sometime soon. Sure.

Melvin Varghese: Have a great rest of your day. Hey there, I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast session, especially if you've been thinking about guesting on a podcast. I hope that today's session has just been really helpful for you. Dustin mentioned a number of resources, and you can find all of those on Dustin's website, which is over at simplesuccesscoaching.com, including the podcast guesting profits playbook. that he mentioned. As I was reflecting on this episode, one thing I realized is I want to strategically go on more podcasts. It's something that I have not done. Part of it's just been like season of life, right? I have to… like ruthlessly prioritize stuff just with having a young daughter. And part of it's just been, you know, it's it doesn't come naturally to me to try to pitch myself. And, you know, just to allude to this, when I hear the word pitch, I'm like, I don't know I get like all sorts of like uh about it but and also the other side of it is you know I get a lot of you know I will call them invites to be a guest on the STC podcast and a lot of them are just it kind of turned me off to guest podcasting but I think that's actually the wrong approach because I think there is a very human way to do this and a very relational way to do this and yeah so it definitely has me motivated so my encouragement to you is to do a quick google search of podcasts that are related to the niche that you would that you serve and aim to get on five to ten podcasts this year i think it can definitely accelerate your business i think it will also lead to some like non like 10 like tangible non-tangible whatever it is things like you know you just become more confident as a speaker you get more comfortable in your skin Like for example, I just made an error about 10 seconds ago. I totally forgot a word. The old Mel would have panicked and I would have tried to edit that out and stuff. But now I realize, you know what, I'm human and I'm learning and that's okay as well. So I hope that you enjoyed today's session again and Dustin's website is over again at SimpleSuccessCoaching.com. SimpleSuccessCoaching.com. Have a great rest of your day. Bye.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Selling the Couch podcast. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit www.sellingthecouch.com.

Melvin Varghese: Hey there, it's Melvin. I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast session. Just wanted to take a moment again to thank the team over at the American Psychological Association for supporting today's podcast session. If you're a psychology professional that is looking for your next job in psychology, definitely check out PsyCareers, the American Psychological Association services. Career Center PsychCareers now has over 400 job postings posted specifically for psychology professionals. You can connect with leading employers and explore roles that match your skills and your professional and personal goals. You can check all of that out over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA, sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. Create a free account and get started.