How to be a great podcast guest. That's our conversation today on this edition of the inside BS show. Hey, now it's Dave Lorenzo.

I am the godfather of growth. And today I'm sharing a conversation with you about how to be a great podcast guest. This is my 700th show.

That's right. If you scroll through the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts, you will find 699 other shows. I've been doing this since 2001 here in this format, and I've interviewed hundreds of people.

Nikki G joined me a couple of years ago and she and I do an interview show together every Wednesday. And we have a great dynamic and we love to speak to wonderful people who have compelling stories to share. But one of the things we found is that most people don't prepare adequately for coming on a podcast.

Now, the reasons for this are varied. Many people who we interview are great people, experts in their field, and they have deep situational expertise and they give us the inside business secrets. They share the inside BS with us and we love that, but they're not used to having a conversation with a broad audience.

They're not used to speaking to two people who are asking them questions designed to get behind the scenes and figure out how things work. We decided that it would make the most sense for us to sit down with you and have a conversation so that you are ready to be the best guest possible when you come on our show or when you go on any other podcast show, in addition to that, the tips that I'm going to share with you today will help you be a great guest. If you decide to do a radio interview, the tips I'm going to share with you today will be fantastic for you.

If you decide to go on a video show or go on television or do YouTube videos. The reason behind this is because when we do interviews with our guests, we want them to be great guests, both from an audio perspective and from a video perspective. We try to capture all of our interviews in audio format and in video format.

So the tips I'm going to share with you right now are great for audio podcasts, for video podcasts, for you doing videos on your own, and for you making appearances on radio and television. Tip number one, do your homework. You have to know what you're getting into if you've agreed to appear on a podcast.

So the first thing you should do is listen to as many episodes of that podcast or that show as possible in advance. Listen to solo shows, listen to interview shows, listen to group shows, listen to live shows. The reason I gave you that breakdown that way is because here on the Inside BS Show, we have all four of those.

I do a solo show many days a week, sometimes five, sometimes six days a week. I'm doing a solo show on my own, which is a conversation that I have directly with the audience. So you have to understand my style when I'm having that conversation.

You also need to listen to the interview shows that Nikki G and I do every Wednesday. Understand the dynamic between myself and my co-host. Understand that Nikki G is very focused.

She will do incredible amounts of preparation and lots of homework on our guests ahead of time. And she prepares for each show like a trial lawyer prepares to go to court. I am playful and happy-go-lucky, and I will do some Googling.

I will read some information on our guests, and I will think about the things I can ask our guests at first to make them comfortable, and then how I can go really deep and get behind the scenes into what the guest is looking to share with the audience, but the reason why they want to share it. And I'm always going to scrape below the surface to find the value, but I do it in a very playful, relaxed way. So the contrast between our two styles, Nicola's focused litigator questioning, which is very friendly, but still designed to get to the heart of the matter.

And my playful banter, my relaxed nature, my telling stories in order to make the guests feel comfortable, these two aspects of our styles complement each other. And you have to be prepared as a guest to roll with the punches and to be playful with me and answer the questions directly when you're speaking with Nicola. And our audience will benefit from this.

We're trying to give the dynamic to the audience that the three of us are sitting at a table, having coffee, having a casual conversation. We want to know what makes your business exceptional. And we want you to share the insider secrets with the audience.

So listen to the show, watch the videos, and read what we've written in the past. One of the things that I can give you as an insider tip to being successful on the Inside BS show or on any podcast is find things that the host has written and read what they've written because the way you write is the way you think. If you want to know how I think when you're going to come on my show, read at least one of the books that I've written.

Go find the 60 Second Sale on Amazon, order it, and read at least a few chapters. That book was written exactly the way I think. If you want to know how Nikki G thinks, read some of the blog posts she's written, read some of the articles she's published.

Get inside her head so that you know how she thinks and you know how I think. This goes for any show you're going to appear on. The way people write is the way they think.

So the insight that you can gain from reading what they've written is powerful and it's valuable. Number two, understand your audience. You need to know who the audience is when you're going on a show.

So the first thing you can do is if there is a pre-show interview or if a booker has booked you to appear on our show. So for example, right now as we're recording this episode 700, we use our assistant a lot of the time to reach out to prospective guests and to book the prospective guests. I would encourage you to write down any of your questions and send it to our assistant who's reached out to you to book you on the show.

Any specific questions you have about the audience should be directed there. Now what we may decide to do is we may jump on a call, a 15 minute call and have a pre-show conversation with you to answer all your questions about the audience. And this is the type of guests that we really love.

A guest who's interested in who's listening to the show and who's watching the show and wants to provide valuable information and insight to our guests. The Inside BS show specifically has five times as many listeners to the audio program as we do to the video show. So if we're getting 300 or 400 views on video, we're probably getting 1,500 or 2,000 downloads of the show in the first couple of days.

There are some of our shows on video that have gone viral and gotten tens of thousands of views. There are some of our shows that have gone viral from a listener perspective and gotten hundreds of thousands of listens or downloads. The audio audience for our show is bigger than the video audience.

So what does this mean for you as a guest? It means you have to paint a picture with your words when you're answering our questions. It means you have to tell stories and you have to share case studies to illustrate the point you're making. We have an unlimited amount of time on our show.

If you are an interview guest, we've probably allowed for an hour or more. Oftentimes we allow for 90 minutes and we'll edit the show if we're not doing it as a live show. We will edit the show down so you can take your time and really tell a great story, tell a compelling story that paints a picture.

When you're coming on the show, we want you to share stories, case studies, and content that's relevant for entrepreneurs and CEOs of businesses. That's who our audience is. We have a show that's dedicated to giving insider secrets, the inside business secrets to entrepreneurs and to CEOs.

These are hardcore business people who are building businesses and they want to take their businesses from good to great. 5 million, 10 million, 100 million dollars in annual revenue. And they're looking for an edge.

They're looking for a competitive advantage. And they've tuned into the show where you're a guest hoping that you can give them that edge, hoping that you can give them that competitive advantage. So give them your insider business secrets.

Give them the good stuff. They want to hear it from you. Give us the stuff that people don't know.

Take us behind the scenes. Tell us things you don't tell anyone else. Have an opinion.

If we ask for your take on something, we want to know what your opinion is. So share your opinion. Don't mince words.

Don't hedge. Give us your opinion. We will never make the interview contentious, but we will push you to give us the things that are going behind the scenes.

We want you to share the secrets with us. So be prepared to give us the insider scoop. Number three, set yourself up for success.

All of our interviews are done, both video and audio. Sometimes we don't share the video with the audience because the background wasn't right or the guest didn't dress the part and we just don't feel that the video is a good representation of them or there's something that happened during the recording that has not given us the opportunity to share the video. We almost always share the audio as long as the insider secrets are revealed, as long as you've given us the inside scoop.

But if the video doesn't come out well, we're not going to post the video. So here are some tips to make things work from both a video and audio perspective. First and foremost, check your background.

We don't do virtual backgrounds on our show when we record video. So if you're with us and you're a remote guest, make sure you like the background. Make sure you're happy with the background.

If there's a window in your background, make sure there's no light reflecting off the window. Make sure there's no light coming through the window. We don't want you to have a halo around your head and to look like an angel.

We want the audience to be able to clearly see you. If there's a window behind you, make sure there's not going to be a person mowing the grass behind you and outside the window or you're not overlooking the pool and there's not going to be people with their shirts off walking behind you. Believe it or not, we've had this happen.

Make sure your background is appropriate for a business audience. Make sure it's not distracting and make sure it's as neutral as possible. Make sure you are dressed for the part.

If your style is to wear casual clothes to the office and you would take the biggest business meeting of your life in casual clothes, then you can come on the show in casual clothes. If your style is to take important business meetings with a jacket on, make sure you have a jacket on. Treat this show like an important business meeting and dress accordingly.

Do not wear stripes. Do not wear polka dotted shirts, wear solid colors, wear neutral colors. If you wear stripes on video, your video is going to do what we call strobe.

It's going to give off a funny looking look. And that's the number one reason why we don't use video. Your shirt or the clothing that you're wearing has a busy pattern on it and it makes the video look crazy.

If there's time and you're wearing something that doesn't work for the video, Nikki G or I will say, hey, listen, what you're wearing doesn't work for video. Take five minutes and go change. You'll be happier with the outcome if you do.

A lot of times we record these shows back to back and we don't have time for you to change. So solid colors, things that you would wear to a big business meeting, that's going to make you look your best. When it comes to audio, this is the most important thing.

Make sure you're using a good microphone. This is the day and age when everyone does video meetings. So whether you're doing Microsoft Teams meetings or Zoom meetings or you're appearing on Skype, everyone is familiar with how to be on video.

We use a simple to use but sophisticated software and the audio picks up everything on the software. So you have to have an external mic. You can't rely on your computer microphone.

If you do rely on your computer microphone, I can promise you you're not going to be happy with the audio. So make sure you have a really good external microphone and make sure that external microphone is no more than six inches away from your mouth. I record with the microphone pointed directly at my mouth and I have it about four inches away from my mouth at all times so that it gives my voice the deep rich sound that really comes through when people listen to the show wearing headphones.

And that's one of the most important things you can remember. Ninety nine percent of our listeners are going to be wearing headphones if they listen to the show. They're going to listen to the show on Apple podcasts, on Spotify, on iHeartRadio, on Pandora or even through Audible or through Amazon podcasts.

And they're going to listen to the show wearing headphones. So you want to sound your absolute best. Even if people are watching the show on video, most of the time they're going to have headphones on.

So your sound is so important that we encourage you to have an external microphone and test the microphone by recording yourself in advance and listening to it back through headphones so you know what you sound like. When we do live videos and if you're coming to our show for a live video appearance, we ask you to use the all in one headset microphone combination. We're going to ask you to do this because that's how we can create the best experience for the people who are listening.

If you don't have headphones on when you're recording this, whether it's remotely or whether it's in person, if you're not wearing headphones, you're not going to be able to hear appropriately. There will be an echo. It will not be a good recording.

So we're going to insist that you wear headphones if you're in person with us. And we're going to insist that you use the all in one headphone mic if you're in person because that's the way we're going to get the best audio experience. If you're appearing on our show remotely, we want you to wear headphones so that there's no echo when you're recording through your computer.

We can do some things technically to do echo cancellation, but that's never going to create the best sound environment. The best sound environment is created when you have an external microphone and you're wearing headphones so that the audio is crystal clear and you can hear us crystal clear as well. If you're appearing on the Inside BS show remotely, you must use a Google Chrome browser.

This is not because Google Chrome is sponsoring us. It's because that's the browser that best supports the software we use to record our guests on the show. If you don't have a Google Chrome browser, we encourage you to download it in advance because if you're not on Google Chrome, you're not going to be able to appear on the show.

So make sure you're using Google Chrome. Make sure it works. Make sure you know how to use it.

Test it in advance. The final point I'll make about a remote appearance on our show is you have to be in a quiet place. You can't do the show from an airport lounge.

You can't do the show from the viewing area at your daughter's dance school. You can't do the show from your car. You have to be in a comfortable chair in an office type environment or in your home with no pets around you, with no noises or distractions.

And you have to be in a place for the duration of the show that's going to allow you to be the only thing we hear. In the background. Number four.

Deliver value to our audience, but don't promote your product or service. Nicola and I, Nikki G and I, will ask you a lot of questions about what you do. We'll ask you a lot of questions about your business.

And several times during the course of the show, we'll give you the opportunity to share your website. We'll give you the opportunity to share your phone number and we'll put your email address and whatever you want to offer to our audience. We'll put all that in the show notes.

If you continue to say you've got to subscribe to get that information or if you continue to say, oh, no, no, you have to be a client of mine in order for me to share that content with you. We're going to stop. We're going to end the show and we're going to thank you for your time and we will never use it.

Our show is about giving our viewers and giving our listeners the insider secrets. It's also about making you look good. You don't look good to our audience or to any audience if you're constantly shilling for your product or service.

If you want to go pitch your product or service, that's great. Do it in an event that you set up for yourself. Do it in a speech that you're giving.

Do it in a sales call. On our show, we're going to spend the first 90 percent of the show helping you establish a relationship with our audience. We're going to spend the upfront time in our show helping you bond and create rapport with the audience.

We're going to help you boost your credibility with our audience, and we're going to help you make a genuine connection. And then we will ask you where people can find you. We will ask you how people can work with you.

We will ask you about your book. We will ask you about your products. We will ask you about the thing you came on the show to promote.

But let us help you establish credibility first. Don't sell. Don't promote your stuff until we've already established that you're a credible expert in the area.

Allow us to guide you through selling your process, selling your products, selling your services. Don't pitch, don't promote until we help you build your credibility. Number five, and this is important if you want an ongoing relationship with us after you appear on the show, if you want us to refer work to you, if you want us to invite you back on the show again, if you're interested in going on other shows in the future and you want to use Nikki G and me as a reference, number five is the most important thing you can do, and that's promote your appearance on the show.

We want to see you promoting the Inside BS show and your appearance on the Inside BS show all over social media. We want to see you taking clips of the show and promoting it on LinkedIn. We want to see it promoted on Instagram.

We want to see it promoted on Facebook. We want you to promote it on your website, in a blog post. We want you to send a link to the show out to everyone on your email list.

The more reaction we get to your appearance on the show, the more likely we're going to be to refer work to you, the more likely we're going to be to invite you back. We may even want you to become a recurring guest and comment on your area of expertise when things in your area of expertise are in the news, but it all comes from how you promote the show. If you want to be a guest on other podcasts, we talk to other podcasters all the time.

We even talk to people who are radio hosts and we work with some people who pitch people for television and who are television producers. We will be thrilled to recommend you as a guest if you've done everything right, including and especially promoting the show. I cannot stress this enough.

We look for guests who have large followings on social media through email and have a platform. We want them on the show because that's how we grow the listener base of the show. Even if you only have a thousand people following you on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, we want you to promote the show that you were on to those thousand people.

And here's a really big pro tip for you. Promoting the show the day before it comes out, the day after it comes out, and the rest of that week is what we expect. If you continue to promote the show for weeks after, we're going to have you back.

One of the ways we recruit our guests is sometimes I will be on LinkedIn and I will see one of the guests that I've had on the show two years ago promoting that show from two years prior. And I'll say to Nikki G, oh, John Smith just sent out another post on LinkedIn about the time he was on the show back in 2021. We should have him back on.

It's been a few years and he does a lot to promote his appearances. He would be great for us. He would be great for the show.

I cannot stress this enough. If you promote our show, especially the episode you were on and you promote it, not only when you make your appearance, but for weeks, months and years later, we're going to have you back on over and over again because you're helping us help the show grow and we want to help you and help your business grow. That's how this works.

The more you promote the show, the more we're going to want you back because the show is going to grow as a result of what you're doing. If we reach just 10 new people in your audience, you've done us a great service and we love you and we thank you for doing that. So we're going to want you to come back.

We are doing this show to number one, help our audience get the insider business secrets that you have to offer. Number two, to establish a relationship with you. So we're going to go crazy.

We're going to bend over backwards, promoting your appearance on this show. And we ask that you do the same thing. I highly encourage you to go back and listen to this show again and take notes on the things that we talked about today so that you are a fantastic guest and you can come back to the show if you'd like before every one of your podcast appearances, because everything that I covered here with you today is valuable for you regardless of the show that you go on, regardless of where you're appearing, the video tips, the audio tips, the structure of the conversations, every host, video, audio, podcast, radio, TV are going to be grateful that you prepared in advance, just as I'm grateful that you took the time to spend it with me now discovering how you can be great podcast guest, how to be a great podcast guest.

That was today's 700th show here on the inside BS show. I'm so glad we had this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me.

I will see you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. for show 701.