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The Guests Who Are Quietly Ruining Independent Podcasts · Your Mic

• 0:00
  Get a load of this guy.
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  He writes on LinkedIn about how he stopped giving away his best stuff on podcasts.
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  He calls it a no-fly zone.
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  He says he doesn't see interviews anymore.
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  He sees shows, presentations, and then he says he doesn't want to give a TED talk for
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  12 people.
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  A TED talk for 12 people.
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  My name is Freddie Cruz.
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  Welcome to your mic.
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  A podcast about podcast growth and mindset and today, I'm going to say the quiet part
• 0:39
  out loud.
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  TED talk for 12 people.
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  There's something about that line.
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  Something about how it's not business strategy.
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  It's not positioning.
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  It's not even bad advice.
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  Tressed up is good advice.
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  It's resentment.
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  It's the tell.
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  The reveal, if you will, is the moment a guy who says he learned a lesson stops being
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  the student and starts being the guy who resents the room he's in.
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  And I get it.
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  I do.
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  I've been on stages.
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  I've been in rooms where the audience was smaller than I thought it would be or I've
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  been in rooms where I thought maybe just maybe I get a deal, you know, a client.
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  I literally drove across town to a bookstore signing and had nobody show up.
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  An empty bookstore with empty seats with my kid watching it happen.
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  Three people showed up.
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  That was humbling.
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  It was brutal.
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  But you know what I didn't do.
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  I didn't go home and write a LinkedIn post about how I was too good for the room.
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  How I was too good for the three people who actually took time and bought my book and took
• 2:05
  a picture and asked me to sign their book.
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  Because here's the thing about that room, that room of 12.
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  That guy wrote about nine of them might be exactly who he was looking for.
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  And if it's a room of 12 that you're speaking with, nine of them, maybe eight, maybe seven,
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  maybe six, maybe all 12 of them are exactly the kind of people you are looking for.
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  And the rest, maybe they'll tell nine, maybe they'll tell 12 more people.
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  That's how this works and that's always how this works.
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  I don't think winners count the room.
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  Winners filled the room.
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  It's kind of rich from somebody who did a book signing and nobody showed up until three
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  people finally did, right?
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  Well, you fill the room by being so generous, so unguarded, so unaffrained to give the
• 3:05
  goods that nobody in that room ever forgets they were there.
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  And that's what I mean by you filling the room.
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  When I was on a podcast tour for they canceled the DJ and allowed me to ruin your Christmas,
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  I knew the assignment before I ever sat down with any of the podcast hosts.
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  I wasn't just selling books.
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  I mean, sure, I wanted to sell books.
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  I want to sell books, but it wasn't a monetization event.
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  It wasn't my chance to protect the framework or protect my work or protect my reputation.
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  It was a conversation with somebody else's audience, people who showed up curious and
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  good faith ready to listen to a guy who wrote fiction about radio and revenge in chaos.
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  I knew that the host knew that and the implicit contract was already signed, so I held nothing
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  back.
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  When I say nothing, I mean, nothing.
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  I talked about the books, I talked about the characters, I talked about the behind the
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  scene stuff that nobody asks about.
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  I gave them the process, I gave them the mess, I gave them real answers to real questions
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  from hosts who actually did their homework.
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  And you know what happened?
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  A few people bought books because generosity is magnetic because when you show up, open
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  handed instead of guarded, people feel it and they respond accordingly.
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  Alex Hormosi, who you definitely heard me talk about more than once on this podcast,
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  he said it about as plainly as anybody ever has.
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  If you're starting out, give away your stuff for free.
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  The framework doesn't stop people from hiring you.
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  The framework makes people want to.
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  So back to the guy on LinkedIn, no fly zones, cool story.
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  I get it.
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  You got to do what you got to do.
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  If there are things you don't want to discuss, like personal stuff, legal stuff, whatever,
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  you communicate that before the combo starts like a grown up.
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  You send the host a quick note, hey, this is hands off, hey, we don't talk about that.
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  We don't talk about this.
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  You handle that.
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  If you do a pre-chat, you handle it in the pre-chat.
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  Done.
• 5:37
  Nobody's going to ask you to bleed on the floor, but that's really not what this is about.
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  This is a guest deciding that the host's audience is not big enough to deserve his best.
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  And that's a different thing entirely.
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  And let's not pretend it isn't.
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  Real quick, if this episode is hitting, go ahead and subscribe to your mic wherever you're
• 6:02
  listening right now.
• 6:03
  Share it with somebody who's either hosting a show or thinking about being a guest on
• 6:07
  one.
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  Either way, this one is definitely for them.
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  Freddie at SpeakPodcasting.com that is Freddie with the Y at SpeakPodcasting.com S-P-E-K-E
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  podcasting.com.
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  Now here's the one that gets me the most.
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  You don't walk into somebody's house and grade it out loud.
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  It doesn't matter if it's got imported Roman tile on the floors or carpet from a 2003
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  home depot clearance sale.
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  The host opened the door.
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  They prepped.
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  They researched.
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  They figured out the questions.
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  They set up the recording.
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  Hit record and said, let's go for you, for their audience.
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  And in most cases for free, I do know hosts who charge their guests.
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  But that's another subject.
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  And that deserves respect, commands respect, commands it.
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  Not a backhand to comment about audience-sized dressed up as business wisdom.
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  God, LinkedIn bros can be so insufferable.
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  Now I've been on the other side of the mic more times than I can count, 25 plus years
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  in radio, over a thousand interviews, I've done them.
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  I know what it costs a host to prepare.
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  I know what it costs to reach out to a guest.
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  Get them booked.
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  Do the pre-call.
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  Do the research.
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  Do the edit.
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  Write the show notes.
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  Promote the episode and pray the guest actually shares it.
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  I know what it costs, okay?
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  So when a guest sits down and starts mentally calculating whether the audience is big enough
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  for his A game, I take it personally.
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  On behalf of every host who ever gave a platform to somebody who hadn't earned it yet.
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  On behalf of every small show that grew into a big one because a guest showed up was
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  something real.
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  Because here's the quiet part.
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  Remember, I said we're going to say the quiet part out loud.
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  You never know who's listening.
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  I want to go back to when I was on the radio and we were all asked to start a podcast and
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  I had a podcast called Book This.
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  Now the first interview for that podcast was with a guy named Tyler Jones.
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  I had learned of his book, Criterium, on a podcast called This Is Horror.
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  This was years ago.
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  I think it was 2020 or maybe even 2021.
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  Anyways, I read the book, absolutely loved it.
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  Oh, man.
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  It was like a cursed bicycle, really, really cool concept.
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  And I reached out to the guy back then I was Twitter and asked him if he wanted to be
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  on my podcast about books.
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  And he said, yes, and I was like, wow, there's no way it's really that easy.
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  And it was, and here's the story.
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  This guy, Tyler, he was taught by Chuck Pollanick and if you know me, well, you know my favorite
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  author in the whole I world is Chuck Pollanick, the guy wrote five club and the invention
• 9:12
  of sound and choke.
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  And I was like, whoa, this is great.
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  So I did the interview with him, super nice guy.
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  In fact, I had him on, I think once or twice more after I left radio.
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  And so back to that first interview with Tyler, I had shared the link with him.
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  And then he, we were trading messages on Twitter.
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  And he said that Chuck had listened to it and he liked the interview.
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  I did not know that it was Tyler's first podcast interview.
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  And I was blown away because I, even for a brief 20 to 30 minute long time span was
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  inside the mind of my favorite author.
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  So you never know who's listening, that audience of 12 might have one person in it who runs
• 10:11
  a company who leads a team who writes a check that changes your year.
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  And let's face it, if somebody writes a check that changes your year, that changes your
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  life.
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  The host who's at 200 downloads today might just be at 200,000 in three years and they're
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  going to remember every single guest who showed up, like it mattered.
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  And every single one who didn't.
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  Oh, yeah.
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  So if you've got a podcast appearance coming up, whether you've got three listeners or 300,000,
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  I'm begging you to show up.
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  Give the goods, be the guest, the host tells stories about later.
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  Be the reason somebody in the audience reaches out.
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  Give the TED Talk for 12 people because those 12 people, they chose to be there.
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  They picked your voice over everything else going on in their lives.
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  They picked your voice with their time and that is sacred because you don't get time
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  back.
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  Do you?
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  Anybody who can't see that, well, maybe the podcast circuit is not where they need to
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  be.
• 11:26
  If you found this episode useful in any way, shape or form, please consider sharing with
• 11:30
  the podcast, colleague, and your life.
• 11:34
  Really, really appreciate you listening.