32. How to Grow Your Podcast Through Targeted Podcast Pitching with Kevin Chemidlin

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Back. In episode twelve of The Grow My Podcast Show, I spoke about a four step strategy to getting traffic to your podcast to increase those downloads. That strategy is summarized into what I call the traffic pyramid. And there are, you guessed it, four tiers to the traffic pyramid. Now, one of those four tiers is what I call leveraging other people's audiences.

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It is always the strategy that time and time again has worked wonders for me, for growth, especially for my businesses. But you may be wondering, how exactly can this strategy be used to grow my own podcast audience? Because perhaps, like me, you've tried it. Perhaps you've hopped onto a guesting platform and lined up dozens and dozens of podcast guesting spots. Perhaps you've even gone so far as to hire a PR agency to blanket blast out how great of a guest you are.

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Maybe you have a VA who is just getting in touch with every podcast on itunes, and yet you're not seeing the results. You're not actually seeing growth in your podcast audience. So if any of these sounds familiar, then guess what? We have got you covered. I have a good friend of mine and someone I respect so, so much as someone who has learnt it all, has done it all, and teaches others how to grow their own podcast.

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Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin from Growtheshow. In this episode, Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin is going to take us through exactly how we can grow our podcast listens and audiences, leveraging other people's audiences, or as he calls it, targeted podcast pitching. My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and Cofounder of Capshow, the world's first AIpowered podcast copywriter. And this is the Grow my podcast show. And it's special because I have a good friend of mine, Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin from Growth, the show.

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He's joined me to talk to you about how you can grow your podcast through targeted podcast pitching or TPP for short. Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin may now be an authority on podcast growth, but he didn't start that way. In fact, he started in a very different industry. Late 2017, I was a software developer at a big health insurance company. Wasn't super passionate about software or health insurance.

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I was okay at writing code. You know, I went to computer, I went to college for computer science. But I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I had all these side hustles in my early career while I was a software developer by day. One by one, they failed.

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And it was winter of 2017 that I was in between side hustles and was on my way to work one morning and I was listening to an episode of How I Built this with Guy Rods and they did an episode about Warby Parker, which is a glasses company. I didn't know this, but Warbie Parker was actually founded in Philadelphia because it was founded while the founders were attending the University of Pennsylvania. So there I am on the subway with my coffee buzzing from caffeine, listening to this podcast episode and hearing this story of this incredible company that was founded literally right on the street, that I was under in the subway.

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And I'm so passionate about Philadelphia that it just lit me up to hear the success story. And in that moment I was like, I need to hear more of this. I need to hear more stories of Philadelphia success in this way via a podcast. So I did a little searching around. I didn't find any shows that were doing it, any podcasts, I didn't find any podcasts that were doing it.

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And so I was like, maybe I can do one. And so it was then that I decided to start a podcast like many of us do who have ninety five s. And that's how Philly who was born, it was a narrative show, just like How I Built this, that told the story of Philadelphia doers, thinkers and performers. And so I launched the show in May 2018. It got a little bit of early success and downloads and buzz, and I was like, awesome.

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Finally a side hustle that's working on out. And I quit. Didn't have any revenue from the show, any plan on how to grow and monetize the show. I was just so excited to be an entrepreneur on my own that I just pulled the trigger at the slightest inkling that something would actually work. And so in July of 2018, I left the job full time.

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And then the following six months were miserable. But it's okay because that's how I learned the lessons that I now teach other people today. Fast forward six months. Now, mind you, I had planned to be an entrepreneur, like I wanted to be a full time entrepreneur. So I had built up savings over the course of my four years in software, and so I had about six months of savings.

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And fast forward six months, and my show hasn't really grown much. Like it hadn't some initial buzz, a little initial word of mouth, but then it stopped growing, and in fact the numbers actually started shrinking a little bit. Meanwhile, I had the faintest clue how to actually make money, how to monetize my podcast, or how to run a business at all. Right? I was a full time W two employee.

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I don't know how to generate revenue, run a business, do sales. So fast forward six months and I was in dire straits. My savings had completely dried up. And by the way, you think it's stressful to work a nine to five while working on a side hustle? It's more stressful to work on a side hustle.

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While your savings number is dwindling each and every month, it's actually worse. The number goes down to zero. The show had been around for like eight months, something like that, and I face a decision. My boss, when I left the job, said, hey, it was 2018, and I said I was leaving a six figure job to be a podcaster, which it's different today, in 2022, to say that in 2018. And so my boss was like, all right, cool.

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Well, let me know when you want your job back. I literally had the phone out. I was going to give him a call, but then I was like, look, if I go back to the nine to five, I just I'm going to stay there forever. Like, it took so much for me to make this leap once. I'm not sure if I would make it again, having burned this time the first time around.

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So I said, all right, I'm a resourceful guy. I can find a way to not get a full time job for a couple more weeks, months. And so that's what I did. I said, I'm going to actually stop publishing the show. Because at that point, I was spending all of my time making the content and virtually no time growing the audience or monetizing or figuring out how to monetize.

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It was all editing and recording and content. Content, because that's what they say, right? Content. Make your content great and it'll blow up. It'll just be consistent.

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I was consistent for almost a year. It didn't work. I put the show on hold and for the course, about four to six weeks, just like full time studied. I took a weekend and walked around the city of Philadelphia. I must have walked by 20 miles and listened to or at least sampled every single podcast in the top 100 just to hear what the patterns were, hear how they were monetized, hear what they were doing, read several books on podcasting, on marketing, took some courses, just really went into a full time student mode.

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And what I learned pretty quickly is that what the vast majority of podcasters do to try and grow and monetize their show. And what I was doing to try and grow and monetize my show doesn't work. If you think about it, it makes sense because we have all these podcasters who really don't have any audience and aren't monetized, all emulating each other and helping each other, right? Because the podcasting industry is so friendly and so helpful. But that can bite you when the people that are trying to help you don't know what they're talking about.

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So no offense to anyone, but you know, everyone's, all these people who have no audience and have no monetization are all giving advice to each other, and then they're all doing things that don't work. So that's where I was. I had this eureka moment. I was like, holy crap. There's a different way to do this.

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You actually have to put energy into growing your audience and learn how to do that. And you have to put energy into monetizing and learn how to do that. And so I brought Philly who back, and then it started to work. And so fast forward another year and Philly Who had surpassed 100,000 downloads. Remember, it's a local show, right?

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Just in the city of Philadelphia. 100,000 downloads and $100,000 in revenue through a combination of sponsorship deals, merch sales, live events, a patreon, several different things. And so 2019 was great. I was working basically part time on the podcast. I was going to coachella and then like any enterprising entrepreneur, I was like, I've got extra time, what can I do?

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I'm just starting in a business. So it was through that that I started helping other podcasters. And I discovered that, what do you know, the vast majority of independent podcasters are going through the same thing, the same space that I went through, where they're putting all this work, all this energy into the show, all this passion, but it's really not hitting. They're stuck at about 100 to 300 downloads an episode. That number isn't moving.

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They're spending tons of time on it. They have no idea how they're going to make any money on this in the future, although they really want to. And I was like, wow, I figured that out. I can help with that. So I started still going to keep going.

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Cool. So I started just kind of helping friends. I had built out a little bit of a network of friends who are podcasters. And so I started helping people and showing them, hey, here's how you get more listeners. This is what you do.

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Here's how you get sponsors, here's how you monetize. And then eventually I spoke to enough people who really were struggling this and needed help. And I was like, okay, I think there might be a business here. And so that's how Growth Show was born. In June 20, I launched Growth, the show, which at the time was just a coaching program.

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There was no Growth, the show podcast. And then about a few months later in October 2020, I launched the growth of the show podcast and made the show to be a lot like how I built this and Philly Who style where it's very narrative. I bring on guests to teach something. The show's evolved a little bit to be a little bit more solo with me because that's kind of where podcasting is going, which I'm happy to talk about if you want, but that's kind of the genesis of all this. And so since then, the growth of the show podcast, our audience is somewhere between 20 and 25,000 podcasters.

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We've got more than 315 folks in the accelerator program and now full time, what I do is help people grow and monetize their shows. And so I'm happy to tell you how we do that, but that's kind of how we got here. Now, when I first came across Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin and what he taught, I knew he was onto something because the strategy he had for growing a podcast audience through social media was very much aligned to my own experience and strategy in using social media. And by the way, it is quite different to the strategies and tactics that others may be sharing with you. So his flagship framework was something he called TDE, which worked well for him and his clients, in fact, still does.

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But as his own podcast grew and his clients podcast grew, he knew that there was another strategy waiting to be tapped into. How did he stumble upon this new strategy? Essentially, for the first year of growth of show, all I talked about was TDE, which is my framework for how to grow a podcast audience via social media. It stands for targeted daily engagement. It's very effective, it works very, very well.

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And yes, it's very much the foundation. It's where I help podcasters who are really just starting out to get the initial traction with their show, to get those 1st, 300, 500 listeners, et cetera. Like I said, the first year I go to the show, that's pretty much all that I talked about, because what I found is that that was the best thing from the vast majority of podcasters I was talking to to do to get that show validation and get those early first listeners. But the thing is, targeted daily engagement, getting listeners via social media is unless you're making content to go viral. TDE is a linear strategy where it works once you get it to work, but you get out what you put in.

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So in order to get more, you got to put in more time. And obviously we want exponential growth, we want exponential strategies. So what happened to me with growth the show was, it was about a year into grow the show and I started going on other podcasts about podcasting to talk about TDE, which has worked well for me, worked well for my clients, for my audience. And I went on one in particular show. Classic Legend School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

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And I went on that show Talk, we talked about, I talked about TDE on the show. He came on Bro the show to talk about Monetization. And that week that Dave published the episode of School of Podcasting with me, my audience grew, my podcast downloads grew 25% in one day. And it stuck. It didn't go anywhere.

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It hasn't looked back since. So I knew the power of going on other podcasts. I knew that was I had helped bigger shows. And for shows that are already established, we go straight to that, we don't do TDE. It was in that moment that I really felt the power of guessing on other shows for myself.

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And I was like, oh my gosh, I spent an hour getting interviewed on a podcast, which is the blast, so much fun. And it literally grew my audience 25%. I spent 1 hour of time and it grew my audience 25%. Now, I was already in the thousands of downloads at that point. So there's no way that spending an hour on TDE would have gotten me another 1000 listeners.

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So I was like, okay, I think I need to focus on that more. And I went back into student mode and was like, okay, how can I just like with TDE? Because TDE was popping off. People get it. It's a framework that they can understand and implement.

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I didn't invent engaging on social media, but what I did invent was a way to talk about it and a way to teach it that people got. So it's stuck at work. And I was like, okay, how can I create a framework that can do the same thing for a strategy that is more fun to do and way more effective, efficient and exponential for podcast listeners to grow? And so that's how TPP was born. This is so cool.

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Like you, I cannot wait to get into it. But first, what does TPP even stand for and mean? So TPP stands for targeted podcast pitching. Now, it's no secret that getting featured on other podcasts is a great way to grow your podcast. I assert that it is the most effective, efficient, and exponential way to grow your show.

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But the challenge is figuring out what shows to be on, what other podcasts do I pitch myself to? And so that was the challenge that I faced when I had that moment where my show grew 25% overnight. And I was like, okay, how can I do this in a systemized fashion that I can just do essentially on autopilot and can do regularly every single month? It could just be a part of my routine. In order to make that happen, you have to systemize it.

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So it's something that happens at a defined there's defined steps. It happens at a defined time each month or each day or week or whatever. And ideally for me, it's something that I could teach somebody else to do on a regular basis, or at least part of it. So TVP stands for targeted podcast pitching. Once I dove into what everyone was doing to get featured on other shows, which like I said, people get that being featured on other shows works really well.

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So I was like, so why isn't anybody doing it regularly, right? Why is nobody making this just a part of their life to be featured in other shows? Well, what I discovered is that number one, they're really bad at pitching themselves to be on other shows. Number two, they're just, they take an approach that is pitching themselves to just any podcast that they can find or none, right? So it's either sending 100 pitches to any shows whose email they can get, or never sending any pitches because they're afraid to.

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And then number three, kind of related to two, is that just pitching the wrong shows, pitching shows that have nothing to do, that don't have your target listenership in their audience, right? So those shows don't contain your future listeners. And so I said, okay, I want to find a way that I can systematically and reliably pitch myself as a guest or as a collaborator to podcasts that are around my show size or above and that have a really high chance of having my future listeners already as listeners. And that's what TPP is and that's what it aims to achieve. When Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin went through the three steps to TPP with me, I was like, is it really as simple as that?

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And so I tried it. I tried it myself. And let me tell you, it works. I'm already booked on a couple of podcasts that I know my ideal audience is listening to, and I don't know why I even doubt it, because Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin has this incredible knack for simplifying complex strategies down to make it so easy for us to follow. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a quick ad break.

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And when we come back, Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin is going to lay out his threestep strategy for implementing TPP targeted podcast pitching so that you can quickly grow your show's. Audience, have you been trying to grow your show? And no, perhaps because you've been told that one of the best ways to do that is to guest on other people's podcasts, and maybe you've tried that, but it hasn't really yielded any results for you. If so, then you are in for a treat because I have Deirdre Tshien from Growth, the show here with me, who is going to take us through the exact three steps to do it the right way using a strategy called a targeted podcast pitching. Let's get into the first step.

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So step one, how do you identify the right shows to be on? And this is kind of the crux of it, right? This is the part that makes people go, oh, wow. So I discovered this when a mentor of mine selfpublished a book and he, as a part of his book tour, got featured on a ton of incredible shows. Like, I saw his name on shows.

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I was like, how did you get on to this show? I think he was on Deirdre Tshien's podcast. He was on a bunch of shows. This is so cool. At the same time, another mentor of mine was also he's not a podcaster, but he owns a business accelerator and he was getting featured on John Lee Dumas and all these other shows.

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So it kind of happened at the same time that I got featured on another show. And I reached out and I said to both of them separately, I said, how did you do this? And both of them separately said, I just identified one person, one influencer who I aspire to be like. And I just looked to see what podcasts they had been on, and I figured if they and their team had vetted a show and deemed it worth going on, it's probably worth me going on too. So for my one mentor, it was Deirdre Tshien.

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He literally just Googled Deirdre Tshien podcast, took all the shows that Deirdre Tshien had appeared on and pitched himself to them. I was like, what an interesting way to filter and to identify shows that are worth going on, take advantage of the efforts of other people who are ahead of you and have more budget to figure out what shows are worth going on. It's kind of like how McDonald's spends tens, hundreds of millions of dollars every year to figure out where to put the next McDonald's store. Burger King sends zero. They just put one right next to McDonald's.

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That's what we want to do, right? So I said, okay, how can I do that? But on an ongoing basis, how can I identify one person who has been on a bunch of podcasts already and I can just sort of target the shows that they've already been on? Well, I was like, I have a podcast and I've had a bunch of guests on my podcast. Odds are they have been on podcasts other than mine, right?

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They've probably been on other shows. They've probably been on bigger shows. So what if I did that? I researched all the shows that they have been on for every guest that I've ever had and I'll never forget it. It was a January morning here in Miami where I live now.

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I love Philly, but I'm just spending some time elsewhere to learn. It was January morning and I sat there for 4 hours and did this research. And I came up with a list of like 150 podcasts that I had never heard of that the guests that I have had on Growth, the show had already appeared on. And I was like, my gosh. Ranging in different size, shapes and sizes, different topics, tons of marketing shows, content shows, podcasting shows, entrepreneurship shows.

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And I was like, my goodness, this is amazing. And then the last piece that goes into this is, what do you know? I have a mutual connection to all of those shows because they have featured a guest and I have featured that guest. So we have a mutual friend. And I was like, I could reach out to all 150 of these podcasts and be like, hey, you had Dijon grow the show.

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I had Dijon grow the show. Wasn't she a great guest? By the way, have you done an episode about how to grow a podcast yet? No. We should collab, right?

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That's exactly what it shakes down to. All in all, you take if you're a podcast that has guests, you take your whole list of guests. I recommend start with just your top five, the top five guests performing episodes that you've had and then research what other podcasts they have appeared on. You can do some filtering. It's not all going to be perfect fit for you, but odds are by doing that, you're going to discover some amazing podcasts that you've never heard of that are a perfect fit for you to be a guest and make that list.

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And you can then reach out and say, hey, we have this mutual connection. We should collaborate. Started doing it. It worked. I immediately shared it with my clients and my audience, right?

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I grow the show, made an episode about it, made a module in my course about it. And what was especially cool is that once it started to permeate the audience and permeate my client base, the results that we saw just from doing TPP alone. And really, like I said, we can talk about the pitch and being a great guest for sure, but just the filtering process and the systemised way to identify the perfect fit shows that you already have a mutual connection to absolutely change the game. We're seeing shows grow by 300% or more month over month. The smaller shows, bigger shows that already have thousand downloads of episodes per episode are growing at like 25, sometimes 30% every single month.

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As soon as Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin talked me through his first step, I actually actually felt a burden lift from my shoulders because hands up, who else has ever felt like they had no idea where to start with finding the right choice to pitch, right? There are so many shows out there and we get told all the time, yeah, look at all these shows you can be and just start pitching. And that in itself feels like it could kind of be a fulltime job, right? But this approach to finding the right shows, this makes so much sense. But you may still be thinking, well, this is great.

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I know who I should pitch to, but how do I pitch them? Step two. Yes, the pitch. So this is another thing where when you get the distinction, it really clicks. So step one, the distinction is, oh, wow, I can just use my network, essentially to find shows that beyond step two is as a podcaster, if you feature guests on your show, odds are you've gotten some really bad pitches before, right?

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Like, just terrible pitches. It's just like, hey, I found your podcast on Apple podcast. I almost I would love to come on your show and share my story with your audience. Where I started a company, lost everything, was homeless, got cancer, and then came out and now I'm a billionaire. It's like okay.

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All right. The mistake that most folks make is that their pitches sound like that. And the key distinction to make is that as a podcaster or anyone, when you pitch another podcast, when you pitch yourself to be a guest on another podcast, you don't actually pitch yourself. You pitch the thing that you would talk about. So a lot of folks who are in the business of trying to appear on other podcasts have also appeared at conferences before, right?

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And when you submit yourself to speak at a conference, you don't tell them about yourself and your story. Or at least a good submission doesn't say that. What does the conference ask you? And if you've never done it before, you usually have to fill out a form. They ask you your name, they might ask you a little bit about your background.

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But usually the first thing they ask you is what is the talk that you would give? What is the topic that you would share? And there's a spot that says, what are three things that our conference goers are going to learn from you talking? They're not like, what is your story? Right?

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That's not what they want. A podcast is the same thing. So if you instead of pitching yourself and what you can talk about and your story, you pitch the topic and you pitch the value that you can bring to that podcaster's audience. It goes from you asking that podcaster to do you a favor and feature you to their audience to instead you doing that podcaster a favor and saying, hey, you know how every week you have to come up with some sort of content that's valuable to your audience? Well, here you go.

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I've got something that you can just use. Here's why it's going to be valuable, here's why your audience is going to love it. And if you're interested in that, let me know. And the podcast that you pitched goes from being like, this person just wants my hard built audience. They want to talk to about themselves in front of my audience to be like, wow, this person just did the work for me and now I don't have to worry about one weeks of content because they came and it's just like content in a box.

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So if you take your pitch and instead of you do mentioned a little bit about your accomplishments, sure. But instead of focusing the pitch about you, you instead make the pitch about the podcasters audience and the value that you can bring to them. We've seen 60, 70, sometimes 80% yes rates, 80% acceptance rates compared to when you just pitch yourself to all kinds of shows and you get like a 2% response rate and many of those are no's. So it's just that little distinction of don't pitch yourself, pitch the value. Pitch the content you can bring to the show and you're way more likely to get a yes.

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Add that to the fact that you already have a mutual connection to that person because that's how you identify them. It's really hard to get a no. That is a phenomenal result. 80% acceptance rates? Yes, please.

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Who else would like an 80% acceptance rate? Okay, so to get that, we know what we need to do now. Step one is to identify one person who you aspire to be like and see what shows they've been on. Even easier if that person. Is someone who has already been on your show, too.

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And step two is to pitch the thing you're actually going to talk about again, even easier to get your foot in the door by raising your mutual podcast guest with them. And so what is step three to getting this right? Step three is actually being a good guest on the show. So I've kind of dropped some hints because I practice what I preach, right? I eat my own dog food.

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I love that I'm going to steal it. So there's a couple of tactical ingredients that go into being a great podcast guest. Number one is the very, very first question that you answer nine times out of ten or more. The first question that you get as a podcast guest is what? What did you ask me the first question here?

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Tell us a little bit about you. Bingo. Nine times out of ten, the first question that you get is going to be, so what's your background? Tell me about your story. How did you get here every single time?

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And so if you can come to the interview prepared to answer that question and just knock it out of the park, then you will have one over the audience. If that answer makes it into the final cut, which in most cases it does, it's the first thing that your new audience, the people that are listening to you for the first time and really like, OK do, I really want to hear this person? If you knock the first response out of the park, you'll win them over and it's way more likely that they're going to want to listen to your podcast. You'll also win the host over when you crush that first answer, because they're like, oh, nice, we got a good guess, let's rock, right? So it puts the host in a different energy, which then just makes the whole conversation better.

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And the way that you do that and everybody in our accelerator program goes through this exercise to learn how to do this. And I recommended that everybody do it, regardless of whether you ever worked with me, is to craft your own origin story. And to do that, all you have to do is Google the hero's journey. It's something that a lot of people have heard of. It's a framework for storytelling that was codified decades ago.

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The Star Wars uses it. Right? And in short, you basically, when you tell your story, you tell it through the framework of the hero's journey, where you first talk about where you were, what about your life sucked or what the conflict was that you want to focus on. You talk about how you overcame that conflict and then you talk about what happened after that. That is a gross, terrible, boring oversimplification.

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Like I said, Google the hero's journey to learn a bit more about it. But like I said, it's crucial and there's a reason why the first thing I said is really master that answer. Because if you're going to do this, if you're going to do TPP, you're going to be featured on at least five to ten podcasts every single month. That's what we recommend. And so you're going to get asked five to ten times every single month, what's your background?

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How did you get here? And so if you really knock that response out of the park, it's going to serve you very, very, very well. The second thing is, before you head into the interview, know what you want the next step. One more time before you go into that interview, know ahead of time what you want those listeners to do, what you want the next step to be for them to take, to enter your audience and become your podcast listeners. In many cases, I recommend you tell them about specific episodes of your podcast that they can go listen to and how it relates to what you just talked about on the show that you were a guest on.

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And so have that in mind because what do you get asked at the beginning of every episode? Give us your background. What do you get asked at the end of every interview? So where can people find you if you answer, oh, you can find me online. I'm on social media, go to www.mesang.com.

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Nobody's going to do that because it's not a specific action for them to take and you haven't told them why it will benefit them to take it. And so they're really, really unlikely to just check you out on Twitter if you instead specifically say, hey, I really think your listeners would get value from two episodes of the Growth of the Show podcast. The first one is episode number nine, where I dive into TDE. And the second one is number 37, where I dive into targeted podcast pitching or something like that, right? I don't know.

[00:31:19]
I can't remember if 37 is the right one. And so I'm breaking my own rule here by not having that prepared. I looked at it earlier, I can't remember the number, but do it better than I just did it. But as a listener, you just heard me say really specific things, and you're like, oh, wow, I really want to hear about that TDE thing he was thinking about. I'm going to go check out episode nine of the Growth of the Show podcast, right?

[00:31:38]
Something specific. And then last thing is to tell stories. The more you can answer questions that you're asked with stories, the better, right? So what stories have I told already on this podcast? You asked me about step one of targeted podcast pitching.

[00:31:55]
How did I start answering that question? By telling you the story of how I discovered this, of how I was on Dave Jackson's podcast, went through this thing, grew my audience 25% in one night, and then said, wow, I want to figure this out. If I instead answer that question by jumping right into the tactics of how to research shows, it's just less compelling and the listener, so you, the listener, are less likely to remember the impact of step one. You're going to remember it now because you're going to remember the story of me being on Dave's show and growing my show 25%. So you're going to remember step one better because I answered with a story.

[00:32:31]
And also you probably just because you're a human being and our brains are wired for stories, you probably just liked my response better when I told the story than if I would have just been like so the first thing you do is you research. You know what I mean? So those are the three things. Have your origin story prepared, know where you want to send people when they ask you what can people do next? And as much as you can throughout the interview, answer questions with stories.

[00:32:56]
The funny thing about what Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin just outlined in his third step is that I started getting really nervous because I don't know if you won't know this, but the very next day from when I interviewed him for this episode on my podcast, he was actually interviewing me for his podcast. And in my head, as he was talking, I was like, oh no, I need to be a good guest. I need to knock this out of the park. I felt the pressure. So side note, all I got you here.

[00:33:24]
Definitely go and check out my interview on the growth of the show podcast and let me know how I did being a good guest. Hopefully I was a good guest for his podcast. So there you have it. Those are the three steps to targeted podcasts pitching, a foolproof way to find and get onto podcasts that will grow your audience quickly. Step one, identify one person who you aspire to be like and see what shows they've been on.

[00:33:46]
This is your pitching list. Step two is then to pitch to them and you want to pitch the thing that you're actually going to talk about, what is the value you're going to bring to their audience. And step three is to be a good guest. Know your origin story, answer questions with stories to create that connection and memorability really and know exactly which podcast episodes you can refer to to entice people to go and listen to your podcast. I am 100% implementing all of this to grow this particular show.

[00:34:18]
Now, I don't know if you picked it up, but Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin dropped a little nugget before he mentioned that on his podcast, which used to be very guest heavy, he has been transitioning more and more to doing solo episodes. Now, I know a lot of us have guest shows, and so I had to know why. What was behind that transition and how has that transition actually been performing for his podcast. So if you want to know the answer to those questions, you can find that bonus clip in the Show Notes. So go ahead and grab that in the Show Notes.

[00:34:53]
And if you want to learn more from Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin, here's what you can do. So the number one thing that you can do if you're a podcaster who wants to learn more strategies on how to grow and monetize is, check out the growth the of Show podcast in the app that you're using right now to listen to this show and to grow. The show currently publishes weekly in 2023. We're actually going to go to three times a week, and every single episode shares one discrete framework or strategy that you can use to make a better show, grow your audience, and or make more money from your show. We try to keep the episodes as short as possible.

[00:35:26]
Some of them are guest episodes. Some of them are just me sharing what I've learned. And if I could recommend two specific episodes, the first one would be episode number nine, where I share targeted daily engagement. So we talked about that earlier. It's our framework for how to grow an audience via social media.

[00:35:42]
If you're a podcaster that's under 300 downloads per episode, I recommend starting with TDE. If you are above that, though, I would jump right into TPP. And so if you want to hear the episode where I introduced TPP to my audience and to the world, if you want to hear the episode where I actually introduced this framework to my audience and the world, I go into way more detail than we were able to go into today on how you can successfully do targeted podcast. Pitching. That's episode number 60 of The Growth of the Show podcast.

[00:36:12]
I love it when I can see or hear what people are teaching about in action. That's what makes what Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin shares so, so powerful. So those links will be in the Show Notes, as well as the bonus clip on why Kevin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin Chemidlin has gone from guest episodes to solo episodes and how that has actually been performing for him. Thanks for joining us, and as always, stay awesome.