How do I get the first guest for my Podcast?

PodMatch is a great service (free) for finding guests. https://podmatch.com.

I've hosted a podcast for 10 years and interviewed 1000 people including some well known ones like the presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a porn star and many others. But to this day, my main criteria is not how well known someone is, but how interesting I find them. And are least known guests are the most popular. What I would say is find anyone who will talk to you that meets some criteria. As an up and coming blogger in 2009, I focused on other up and coming bloggers. All of them introduced me to another one., So ask each person for a referral and you'll soon have a pipeline.

I would want to know if you're creating a quality podcast before I'd invest time in joining. Is it going to be a barely edited bad recording of an awkward conversation between me and a stranger? We've all heard bad podcasts before, and I think when anyone hears "launch my own podcast" that's what jumps to mind - someone with no idea what they're doing with no interviewing, editing, or speaking skills. So, either you're in that boat and you need to publish some stuff to get some practice and beef up those skills, or you need to publish something to prove to people they'll be part of a good end product.

An approach I have taken is to start small. Key in on one individual, to focused research (30-60 minutes) and try for just that one person. Make them feel special for only focusing on them, and snowball your guests once you have the first one. It may take a lot of time, but trust the process!

You'd be surprised how many people would love to be interviewed if you pitch it correctly. It's an opportunity for them to promote their own projects. Also, creating some type of sample episode so that they can judge the quality would be good. Interview an entrepreneurial friend first to get it out there. A podcast medium is especially attractive because a person gets to speak freely and control their own narrative.

I launched a podcast two weeks ago: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1426819 and I had the same question before I started. In my case, I am talking to guests about a very difficult subject (failing / shutting down a business) and the way I got them on the show was by sending a bunch of cold emails and sharing a compelling reason for why I am doing the podcast in the first place. In your case, I believe you can get people to appear by cold emailing and reaching out. Maybe target relatively new founders who are excited to talk about their businesses and get their name out there. Offer them a platform to educate others from their experience and potentially reach new customers. Somewhere like https://www.indiehackers.com/ would be a good place to talk to founders if you're already part of that community. I'd be happy to share the email template I used to reach out to guests since it's had a decent conversion rate so far. Just reach out on twitter or something.

Be interested in the person. Learn their story. Write them and tell them WHY you want to interview, something more than "I like your story" NEXT tell them how this will HELP you and what your expectations are 1. Time 2. Delivery date. MAKE IT EASY

I would aim to get people that are just starting out

Seems to me just about any early-stage startup founder should be interested in this. I am!

I suggest you start doing it on your own for a while until you get some sort of traction for it. After that, you can start thinking of getting invitees. Good luck, I wish you all the best with your podcast!

My concern is not how to get your first guest, but how you progress from that to a second, third and so on. If you are struggling to get just one person to interview how do you see this becoming a long term show? I think you should do some research and networking on the subject of podcasting and what the subject of the podcast is before rushing into it so that you have plenty of material and interviews before you start so not to run dry of ideas and content a week or two later.

Assuming you have 1-2 friends or colleagues you can call to join you on the podcast, start there. Generate some content first so you can reference it when approaching "strangers" about joining your show. When inviting guests to our show, we always share a 3-5 min clip with the guest so they could get an idea of the flow and flavor we bring to the show, to ultimately see if they would like to join.

You should go to https://anchor.fm/ There are tons of podcasters on there that would love to collaborate. You also get paid w/advertisements.

out of curiosity -- would you be willing to have a non-expert guest who sounds good on audio and asks you questions about your topic? Like, someone to talk with but you provide the content

How big your community is? Who are those people? Does it fit their company buyer persona? Try finding founders that do have some things in common with you and speak about those things when approaching :)

Well the reason they didn't want to get featured is they didn't see a compelling reason to do so. I've seen that many successful podcasters first created content on their own / built an initial audience and then used that audience to persuade people to get featured. Basically saying something like: "Hey X, we have Y listeners interested in Z, would you like to talk?" It would be helpful if you can post the email you've sent here so we can give you more concrete feedback.

It's all about name dropping. We were able to get some of the top names in our industry to be featured on our podcast (CMO of Peloton, CCO of Goodby Silverstein, etc.) because we had a few names to drop. This is because we started a blog prior to the podcast, and had managed to get interviews with a few industry leaders on our blog in a written format. Once we had those articles live, we were able to reach out to podcast guests and mention all the other recognized names that had been featured by our company before. I believe this helped immensely in getting interest, because people only have a few seconds to consider your request and the best way for them to make a snap judgement is to compare themselves to other people you have featured and see if it feels like a good fit. You can see our list of guests here: https://creativesoffscript.simpl...

What's your vision for the podcast and who you are looking to help? There are a lot of people starting podcasts nowadays, and with a clear purpose, more people would be willing to offer their time and support your mission.

I'm not a podcaster but an entrepreneur of a seed stage startup. It's likely that being on a newly launched show with no following is not compelling enough for the people you're reaching out to. However, you can reframe it as 'research'. The type of people who might say no to your 'be on my new podcast' request, often love to make time to share their expertise and learnings. Maybe try something like: "I'd really love your expert advice given your amazing experience in X,Y,X. I want to start a podcast that would help the community, but I'm not exactly sure what form it should take. Would love your feedback on what's the best way to structure it, your opinion on what's missing from existing podcasts in the space, anything that would help me build a genuinely useful resource for the community". Even if you've fully specified your podcast already, chances are you'll get insights that you wouldn't have come upon yourself. Who knows, one of these people giving advice might even become your first guest :)

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