Finding the Best Podcast Guests with Carl Cox

Josh (00:00:02) - We got five minutes on the clock. What is your name? What is your podcast show?

Carl (00:00:07) - Real Cox Measure Success podcast measure six.

Josh (00:00:10) - I've got a cool hoodie from you. I listen to your podcast. I was on your podcast, you've been on my podcast. We've been friends for a while and I just think you're brilliant at what you do. One of the things you guys are doing fantastic is finding good guests. So if there's podcasters out there who want to know how to find good guests, what are your thoughts?

Carl (00:00:32) - Well, it's really interesting. When we first started the podcast, we were all about, you know, I don't I don't mind saying this, Josh, we were trained we were trained by a professional podcast agency. You're like, hey, this is a great way to get business. And so we went in kind of with that concept of, hey, we're going to go and get business and do this. Well, the problem was. I was talking with my guests the wrong way.

Carl (00:00:55) - I did not have a giving heart when I came into it. Okay, I came in from what is it for me? And what happened was about three months in, I'm like, something's wrong here. I gotta remember this podcast is about giving, not about getting back in return. And so we changed our whole mindset to give, give, give, give, give. You know, even with the, you know, the swag, you got the sweater. You know we we changed to it's a it's not for us. It's for them. What happened was something must have happened with the podcast guest because they felt it. They felt it was about them. You know Josh, how many people have you received a sweatshirt for? You know, a shirt from a podcast? I mean.

Josh (00:01:35) - You.

Carl (00:01:36) - Yeah, exactly. Okay. We we do things different. We do things special. We treat our guests special. We care about the time that they invest with our show. So that's number one.

Carl (00:01:46) - Number two, we started doing something really simple. We asked our best guess who is a great CEO? Author, crazy high achiever that fits our show that you would recommend to be on it as well. Some of our best guests have come from just simply asking that simple question. Not asking for business, right? Not asking for something uncomfortable, just somebody that they think would be amazing to be on the show. Yeah. So that's been huge. And and what's interesting is as we've climbed and we've continued to gain popularity. We now have a three month backlog of of guests, of people who want to be on the show. And not only that, Josh, we have agencies now. We probably have five different six different agencies that are consistently to put people on the show. We now have had to do the opposite thing. We are now filtering six significantly. Yeah, we have to make the tough choice now that not everybody can be in the show. We don't. We only do it once a week.

Carl (00:02:48) - And so we're we're doing this tough decision of who we should bring in, who should bring up. But what a difference from. There was a time where I was struggling to get somebody on the podcast, to get a record or get released to now having a three month plus backlog to get have people on the show.

Josh (00:03:03) - That's so good, man. I'm convicted over here because we do investment podcast, deal making podcasts, you know, like I'm a very I love people love people very relation. But I've I've been guilty of being transactional in podcasting. And uh, man, I got a lot to learn from you. I appreciate you sharing that. So you went along this you did this switch, and now you have to say no to agencies like I'm getting pitched every day. My a lot of my emails. I'm just deleting. I can't even respond to the amount of people that are trying to get on it, and that's hard to say no. What are some advice you have for filtering out the people who aren't a good fit for your podcast?

Carl (00:03:43) - So Joshua, in this really interesting part where we're we're finally are trying to properly monetize our podcast, not monetizing from our guests directly, but from a sponsorship perspective.

Carl (00:03:53) - Okay, going going down that because we have tens of thousands of downloads, so 100,000 downloads now. And so we have the capacity to be able to sell. So as a result of that, um, we're doing the tough decision. We're actually asking people to pre before we even talk to them. We do a couple of things. Number one, we get all their data. How many Instagram followers do they have. How many Facebook followers. So because we want to be able to tell our sponsorships, not only do we have this following, but our guests have this following times x times ten x times 100 x, right. So we have that from a big picture perspective. So that's that's huge to um we drive them. We have a prep meeting with all of them as well. We want to make sure that just because they come on and they've been recommended, they're actually a good human being. We do those two steps. And then the third thing is I don't let myself make the decision.

Carl (00:04:40) - I have two other people that help me make the decision because I'm a pretty nice guy. The combination of that crushes it.

Josh (00:04:46) - Yeah, man. What good input here. Uh, we could have so many follow up conversations about that, but we have 10s left. What's your name? What's your podcast show? So people listening in could go check you out.

Carl (00:04:59) - RJ Cox The Measures podcast. Look forward to seeing you there.

Josh (00:05:02) - The Measure Success podcast, you all check it out. We did that all in under five minutes or less. Love you. See you on the next one.