how to find podcast guests worth the hour: look for people your listeners would want to hear, who have done something lately worth talking about, and who have an audience of their own that will hear the episode when they share it. start with the people you already know, then the guests of shows like yours, then a search. this guide covers all of those, how to write an invite a stranger answers, and how underway's find guests does the search and the first draft for you.
the short version: a good guest is a fit, a story and an audience, in that order. find ten, invite them in a few honest lines from your own email, and expect most not to answer. the ones who do make the episode, and they bring their listeners with them.
how to find podcast guests: where to look
every guide on this search lists the same places, and they are the right places. what they rarely say is what each is good for.
- your own network. people you have worked with, customers, other founders you talk to. they say yes most often, and they are the easiest first episodes to record. the risk is a show that only ever has your friends on it.
- the guests of shows like yours. someone who has been on a podcast in your niche already talks well on a microphone and already fits your listeners. look at the last twenty episodes of three shows you admire.
- guest-matching sites. podmatch and matchmaker.fm list people who want to be interviewed, and podchaser lets you search who has appeared where. useful for volume; be aware that many listed guests are pitching a book or a service.
- people writing about your topic. the author of a post you bookmarked has already thought hard about it, and often has followers who read them.
- communities. a slack group, a forum or a discord for your industry collects people with something to say in one place.
- past guests. ask each guest who you should talk to next. an introduction from someone they know is the warmest invite there is.
what makes a podcast guest worth inviting
a famous name is not the test. a guest is worth an hour when three things are true.
- they fit your listeners. someone a listener would describe as doing the same thing they do, a bit further on, is worth more than someone impressive in another field.
- they have a story right now. they launched, fixed, grew, or got something wrong and said so. a guest with a recent turn talks about it with an energy that a career summary never has.
- they have an audience of their own. when you host someone, the episode belongs to both of you, and they share it. the people who find you through them are exactly the kind of people your show is for.
the third point matters most when your show is new. episode three going out to nobody is the most common reason a series stops. one guest who shares the episode can put it in front of more people than a month of posting alone. it is not a guarantee, but it is the one thing early on that does not depend on an algorithm.
the host's side of a remote guest interview. an ai illustration, not a customer.
how to find podcast guests with underway
underway's guest interview is the episode where you host another founder on camera: they join by a link from their browser, and the episode is the two of you side by side. under its setup is find people to reach, which does the search and the first draft for you, with nothing to connect.
- say who you want to reach: who they are (founders, operators, creators, coaches and consultants, investors), their niche, what they do or sell, where they are, and how big an audience they should have.
- press find people. it finds people like that on linkedin and keeps the ones who fit, with the audience you asked for on their own profile.
- it reads their recent posts for a story worth an episode, and passes over people whose posts are all reposts, hiring ads or advice for strangers.
- for each one it looks up a checked work email and writes the invite.
for each person you get their name, what they do and where, how many people follow them, one sentence on what of theirs it read and why they would suit your show, what you would ask them about, their work email where one can be found and checked, and the invite, ready to edit. anyone it did not suggest is kept under passed over, each with why, and keep anyway puts them back if you know better.
how to write a podcast guest invite
a first message to a stranger works when it reads like a person wrote it to them, and only to them. underway's drafts follow the rules below, and they are worth following whether you use it or not.
- open with what of theirs you read. one specific line proves you are not sending the same email to a hundred people.
- say what the show is in a sentence, and what you would talk about.
- say what it costs them: about forty-five minutes, from their browser, nothing to download.
- say what they get: the episode, to share.
- ask one question: would you be up for it?
- no link. an invite with a booking link in it reads like a mailing. the link for the interview is made when they say yes.
underway never sends your invites from its own address. with your gmail or outlook connected, send the invite sends it from your own inbox when you press it; otherwise open it in my email opens your own mail app with the words filled in, and copy the invite copies them for anywhere else, a linkedin message included. the replies come to you, because the email came from you. nobody in the uk or the eu gets an email looked up; for them the card says to write on linkedin instead, and the invite is there to copy.
following up and booking
most people will not answer the first message, and that is normal, not a verdict on your show. one short follow-up a week later is fair; a third is not. mark each guest they replied, then booked, as it happens. set up the interview puts their first name straight into the setup, and skip takes someone off the list.
when they say yes, set the interview up: their first name, and how long it may run, 45 minutes, an hour or 90 minutes. make the invite link and send it however you like. it works for thirty days and closes two hours after the interview is finished. on their side it asks for their name, their camera and their microphone, and asks them to agree to be recorded and published before they can join.
recording a guest who is somewhere else
both sides record themselves. your machine records you at full quality, theirs records them, and neither recording goes through the call, so a bad connection makes the call worse and the episode no worse. each recording goes up in parts as it runs, so a closed tab loses seconds, not the hour. headphones on both sides keep a laptop's speakers out of its microphone.
the cut lays the two of you side by side, takes out the pauses where you both went quiet, cleans and levels each voice on its own, and captions both. nothing is reordered and nothing is struck. it works in chrome, edge or firefox on a computer, on both sides; finding people to invite works on the phone too.
a host ready to record. an ai illustration, not a customer.
what it costs, and what it never touches
every plan comes with contacts each month: founder 10, series 25, studio 50, studio plus 100. a contact is one person who fits what you asked for and has a checked email, found and written to for you; a search that finds nobody uses none. when the month's run out, 50 more are $15 and 200 are $49, and those never run out. it runs only when you press find people; nothing runs in the background.
the guest search is about who to invite, not about your diary. nothing it finds reaches your day's context, the questions you are asked in your own episodes, or the cut of any episode.
for the weeks no guest is free, a podcast with an ai host: podcast with an ai host.
where is the best place to find podcast guests?
your own network first, then people who have been guests on shows like yours, then a search. guest-matching sites such as podmatch give volume; a past guest's introduction gives the warmest yes.
how do i find podcast guests when my show is new?
invite people at the same stage as you, with a story right now and an audience of their own. they are more likely to say yes than a famous name, and they share the episode they are in.
do i need to connect anything to find guests?
no. the search is built into underway and uses the contacts your plan comes with each month. a contact is one person with a checked email; a search that finds nobody uses none.
does underway email people for me?
only from your own inbox, and only when you press send. underway writes each invite; with your gmail or outlook connected, send the invite sends it from your address, so the replies come to you.
who counts as having an audience?
over 2,000 followers on their own linkedin profile. anyone below that is kept under passed over, with keep anyway if you would like them on.
should i pay podcast guests?
it is not usual for an interview show. what a guest gets is the hour of attention and an episode to share with their own audience.
once they say yes: how to record a remote video interview.
when nobody is watching yet: build in public with no audience.
Originally published at https://underway.life/how-to-find-podcast-guests
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