197: The Simple 5-Step System to Get Booked on Aligned Podcasts

You’ve nailed your message. Your content works.
 But you’re ready for more eyeballs on it. 👀

In this solo episode, I’m breaking down how to stop spinning in the visibility loop and start using podcast guesting as your shortcut to getting in front of the right audience.

We cover:
 ✨ The real fears that keep you from guesting (and how to move through them)
 🎯 How to clarify your niche topics so hosts want to book you
 🎙 My simple 5-step system to find the right podcasts and get booked with ease

Your dream clients are already listening to someone else’s podcast. It’s time they hear you.

Podcasting for Authority: signature group program
🎟️ Learn more here: https://stan.store/CandaceDudley/p/signature-group-program

🎙️Hosts + Guests -> Join the Matchmaking Community [HERE]

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:19

Okay, welcome back for another solo episode. I'm Candace, your host, and we're going to talk a little bit about mindset, some of my favorite topics in regards to guessing on podcasts, still, we're keeping that obviously the same. But what types of fears, mindset things can really be holding us back when we're thinking about getting on the mic and thinking about getting on a show and putting ourselves out there. So if you're someone that is feeling like, I'm happy with my message, you feel really good about your business and your offer, you know that whoever signs up with you, it's going to be very impactful. You are already experiencing that when you have clients, they get great results. And so your content and your message are fantastic, but it's just very limited to the amount of eyeballs that are getting on your page right now. And you keep feeling like, I wish more people could see this. And I felt this exact same way. That's why in 2025, January hit. I was home on winter break with my kids, and I'm thinking to myself, I just wish more people would see this. I'm in a spot in my business where I'm so confident, I'm so sure that when people sign up with me, this is going to change the game for them, change their business, change their life. And I can't wait to get more people in this. But it felt like, do I start a TikTok? Do I do I start dancing on my reels more? Do what do I need to do? Do I start another social media channel? And a light bulb moment went on was like, you love podcasting and you already podcast. Go get on podcasts. Like be your best client. So I did. And I've been on a podcast tour ever since. And we've surpassed 50, maybe we're up past 60 shows by now. It's also led to guessing on memberships, guessing on virtual summits. You name it. I've done it this year and it's been awesome. And you can do it too. So a few doubts that I know you might have is I don't want to feel salesy or awkward and pitching. And that's definitely valid, especially if you've been given advice in the past that you feel like the gurus or whoever tell you to do it. And so you think you have to do it that way, but you just know in your body that this doesn't feel right for you. I get that, I feel that. And so that fear of rejection, fear of feeling pushy, coming off lazy, coming off like, you know, those hay girl messages that we used to get. I don't know. Unfortunately, sometimes still get, and if that works for you, great, it doesn't feel good for me either to do it like that. And so that's a fear that we're gonna work through that that we can minimize for sure. We're gonna talk about how to reverse that, how to make that work for us. Another really common one is what if I don't have the skills or the personality for the podcast interviews? Like when I first started my podcast, one thing that I thought of before I finally launched was I'm boring. Who's gonna want to listen to me? Like my life is boring. This is the same every day. You know, that type of thought in your head of nobody's gonna care. Literally, there are people for all of us. And your awkwardness is what your people are going to love. I consider myself an awkward introvert. I have answered the question when someone says, How are you? I've said my coffee order instead. Like you, you know, those things that keep our minds spinning. I've done it. I get it. You're you're gonna be just fine. And we're gonna talk about things that we can do to prepare to minimize that. Also, will this take too much time and energy? Your plate is full, you're a solopreneur, you're a mom preneur, you wear all the hats. And so pitching, prepping, finding the shows, doing the interviews, that can feel like this object is like, where would that fit? That's so much. Not with my streamlined system, not when we go about things in a very efficient, systematic way, and when we make sure we're doing quality and not just quantity. And then my last fear is oh, am I a credible source? Am I successful enough to get booked? Because we think so often, I just need more clients to be able to be credible. I need to hit this mark in my business to be able to actually speak on this. And I haven't done these things yet, or I need another degree, I need another certificate. And the fact of the matter is, you do not. You don't. And you talk to people all the time in your life. You're gonna be fine, you're gonna be able to speak, you are successful enough. And even if you haven't signed clients, because that's one that people talk about, like, well, what if I feel great about my offer? I wish more people would see it. But I haven't had a lot of clients where I can speak to that. You got yourself to where you are, you can share your story. That's a lot of the times what I end up sharing anyway, because it's easier to talk about yourself sometimes than to, you know, maybe need permission to share about a client or something like that. So you can always share about your story. You're the person in charge of that. So I often share about my successes in my journey in podcast guesting when I am on shows. Yes, it's really fun when you have a client success story to share too, but you're also your best client and you're allowed to share that as well. So, bottom line, you've worked super hard to get where you are. You've built this brand and you know you're meant for more. You just need to be on the right stages, you need to be in the right audiences, and podcast guesting is going to put you in those aligned rooms of people that are likely already searching for what you have to do and what you have to offer. You maybe feel like you're stuck in this visibility loop that feels draining, disjoint, like you're you're in the social media grind. You're like, I know I'm supposed to keep posting, I just keep posting, I keep throwing spaghetti at the wall. No, we want to be in rooms where we know it's working, we know the right eyes are seeing us. So here's my whole process. This is how it's going to happen for you. This is the system. Take it and run with it. Go download my free man uh podcast guesting masterclass. It's gonna walk you through this even on a deeper level. You'll have slides and things if you're a visual person. Check it out. Or hire me and I'm gonna put you on a podcast tour because that is gonna change the game in your business. But your first step is very simple and it's and it's just relies on you. So there's no one else you can get this done. Clarify your niche speaking topics. I have a whole podcast episode about this. You can go dive deeper, but you are basically gonna dig out three speaking topics that show your expertise off and that you could talk about. You want them to line up with what types of offers you have. Do you have a free resource? Do you have a paid offer? Hopefully, those all are very cohesive and they go and flow into each other because then there's easily speaking topics in there. And what are those? Because that's how you get on the show, and that's how podcast hosts will ask you questions that are in your line of genius, and that's how you will confidently be able to answer these questions. You will stand out as that must have guest and the credible authority in this niche. Step two after clarifying your niche speaking topics, and I say have three of them. Step two is hand picking the aligned podcast. So this is the search for the podcast. That was last week's podcast episode, exactly how I go about searching for them. But basically, I would find 10 to 15 shows that are very aligned for my clients, and I would have searched for them. I had all their stuff in our in our tracker that you can go grab for free to get you really set up so that you have a place to put things and a place to store things so it doesn't become like, well, I hope wish and a prayer that I remember that I wanted to reach out to this podcast because I really aligned with their mission and their value, or I really hope I remember this person's name because I'm gonna DM them eventually. No, we're not, we're not. If you have mom brain like me, it it's a hope and a wish and a prayer. And and I will remember the next day. I thought to myself, there's no way I'll forget this. There is no way. And I still have a thing on my mind that I've been trying to remember for about a week because it was gonna be a podcast episode. It was a whole story, and I it was genius. I was on a walk and I'm like, I don't need to write this down. Like, I'm for sure gonna remember this. There's no way I would forget this. It's so good. I'm going on a week. I can't remember it. So you're gonna fill the tracker out. You're gonna put those things there. It's part of the streamlined system. Step three, now you've been finding these shows, right? And you have your niche speaking topics done. You're gonna actually send some pitches. You're gonna send your pitch out. So this is where I help my clients really make a nice pitch. And I don't want you to overthink this. All you're gonna do in the pitch is two things. There's a whole episode on pitching. Go check that out if you want to deep dive further. But I'm trying to give you a quick overview here so you can wrap your head around how this is going to work for you in small fractions of time. So the pitch is gonna have two things. The first thing is you need to have listened to the show so that you can somehow share how you are aligned and let that host know that you've listened to their show. As a host, I give a shit about that. I want to know that you've listened to my show and I want to know how you match. What do we drive? What do you love about it? What's the same? What's the unique thing that's the same about you? But that's gonna be quick and brief. The second part of your pitch is super easy because you already did your niche speaking topics. List those three. Just say, I know I could bring so much value to your audience because as a host, we care about value, the value you're gonna bring to our show. Because every single episode, we want to be valuable to our audience. So you list them, say, I know I could bring so much value with these three topics. Does anyone sound like a fit? Boom, done. Send it in a DM, not an email. We are getting so many bad pitches as hosts and emails right now. We're just chucking into the spam folder. It's just a big ick. Send the DM. They can easily go look at your social media, then they can get a vibe check on you real fast and they can write you back. Step four, that's when I would deliver the whole contact list of all the podcast information. No need to hunt this down, guesswork. It would be all filled out in your tracker for you. I'd deliver it to you. You'd start sending those pitch DMs to those people that I would have linked right in that tracker for you. And then step five for my clients is that we have a one-on-one strategy call because this is where we can prep and you can feel so confident. This is where the host isn't going to cut you off, like they did to me when I first started dabbling in podcast guessing a year ago. No strategy, no plan in mind. I was just super excited for the opportunity and just started sharing my whole life story, zero to 60. And um, that episode never aired. I wish it did because it'd be a great teaching moment for me to share. Like, look at this bad example. I ate up seven, eight minutes of the show by just sharing about my story, never got to my expertise. So that's where we're I'm gonna help you as a podcast host, really hone in on the pieces you're gonna want to share when you're actually on the show so that you can tweak some of what you say that's going to really let people know in a very easeful, smooth, non-salesy way that you do this with your client. So I'll give you an example. A lot of people ask me, like, where do you start in your in your podcast guessing? And I could say you start with niche speaking topics. I could tweak that and add in that I always have my clients start with step one in my five-step process, and that is to clarify their niche speaking topics. And I do that with them. We pull out those three speaking topics. That's a lot different than just jumping and saying you start with your niche speaking topics. It's very small tweak, but now I've just let you naturally know that I do have a process. It's not just a guess and throw spaghetti on the wall. I have a five-step system that I walk all my clients through. The first step is niche speaking topics. That's where we start, and that's where I start, that's where my clients start, that's where you start. And so that lets them know that one, I do work with people and that they can work with me, and also that it's a process that I follow. It's thought out. It's not every client is random and we're gonna just take our best guess on a wish and hope and a prayer. So you can tweak what you say, and that's what I can help you strategize in that call, and we can practice your intro on those types of things because I definitely don't want a host to cut you off and not your air your episode, right? So to wrap this up, there's just no endless research when you do it this way, and especially with that one-on-one component, we're not having generic advice. I hate that all of us are different, we all need a different tweak on things. So while it is streamlined and it's value-led and focused, I still want to meet with you and work through things like that of what you're gonna say and whatnot that we mentioned, so that it is very specific to you and your story and what and what you do. So just keep in mind as you're thinking about if you could do this or not, podcast hosts are always looking for new guests who can add value to their show and to their community. Why can't that be you? Seriously, why can't it be you? You've gotten yourself this far, you've gotten clients to certain points. And even if you don't have the client set, you've gotten yourself this far. You can speak to that. You don't need another certificate, you don't need another degree. You can get on and share because there's someone waiting to hear your take and how you do that and how you've done things, right? Another thing to keep in mind is your next dream client is out there. There's people looking for your service, there's people looking for exactly what you do, but they're in someone else's audience. And that's exactly what we're gonna do when we podcast guests is we're gonna pluck you and set you down, plant you right in that audience. And that's the beauty of finding aligned shows to be on. Your success is inevitable. This will work for you. I haven't had a client that was like, oh, bummer, I've never gotten to get on a show. That's not gonna happen. And know that you will be successful if you keep at this and you follow this system. So this is your shortcut to high visibility, quality visibility without guessing. We shouldn't have to rely on that algorithm. You're not gonna have to guess anymore. You're gonna know that your visibility strategy is working.

unknown 13:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Let's get to work. Get those niche speaking topics done. Tag me on social media when you have them so I can share them for you and the people in my network can see them. All right. Head to the show notes. There's a lot of links down there, a lot of free things, a lot of things you can do to sign up with me, and a lot of things that are gonna be very helpful. So just go there. Okay, goodbye.