Your Interviews Are Why Your Podcast Isn’t Growing

You probably get lots of people pitching you to be a guest on your podcast. And if you're still saying yes to all of them, it's quietly hurting your podcast's growth. My name is Kev Michael. I'm the founder of Grow the Show. And every single week, I talk to dozens of podcasters and business owners who are proud that their show is booked for months on end. And yet their downloads and views are totally flat. Now, if that's you, it's not your fault because you have been told that podcasting is a game of consistency and of systems and of reps. And that if you just stay consistent and keep publishing episodes, eventually your show will take off. I've worked on more than 500 podcasts directly and more than 173,000 podcasters have entered the Grow the Show content ecosystem. And I can tell you for certain that is not how it works. In this episode of Grow the Show, we're going to touch on a few things. Number one, why guests do not equal growth. Number two, how guest pitches create a false sense of success. And number three, what to fix in your show's structure so that every episode actually moves the needle so that your show can grow and can be fully monetized. For the last six years, my company has held several thousand conversations with podcasters who are looking to grow and monetize. And particularly recently, like the past year or two, one of the most common things that I hear on these calls is the podcaster who is talking to me because their show is not growing and they are frustrated. They say, getting guests is not a problem. I know my show is good because I have guests booked out six months ahead. And every time I cringe a little bit because I have to tell them that actually is a problem. You see, I don't blame you for feeling successful because you have guests booked on your podcast for months out because I used to feel the same thing. But here's the problem with that. If your show is not growing and you've already got six months of interviews recorded or booked, that means that you've locked yourself into six more months of not growing. And again, that's not your fault. You have been told that podcasting is a game of consistency. Just keep going, build your systems, batch your time, and it'll take off. But that is not how growth works. And if you have systemized your podcast before it is growing, you have systemized not growth. And so I hate to burst your bubble here, but you need to hear this. Having lots of guest pitches and guests on your show is not a sign that your show is good at all. It's a sign that your show exists. And the reason behind that is the cat is out of the bag. If you go on social media right now, you see lots of people who are saying that the way to grow your business is to be a guest on other podcasts. And that was true a couple of years ago. But because the cat is out of the bag, virtually every business owner is walking around thinking, I really need to get myself on podcasts so I can get business. So number one, there are so many more people who want to be a guest on podcasts than there are podcasts to interview those people. What's also true is that the more people who want to be interviewed on a podcast, the more likely the random pitches you get are average people. They're not interesting. They are not going to give you good content. They are just pitching themselves so that they can get business. And the third thing to understand is that what really ruined all of this is the advent of AI because now there are AI tools that simply scrape podcast feeds, find your email address, and then they have the AI look at your podcast and write some sort of pitch that looks like it's coming from a human who wants to be on your podcast and enjoys your show, but it isn't. It is a human who paid $99 for an AI to send a thousand podcast pitches and you got one of them. So your show is not being discovered by these people who are pitching you all the time. You are being targeted. Now eventually, what all of these business owners who are paying these tools are going to realize is the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of podcasts, including all of those who claim to be a top 1% podcast have little to no audience. Because remember, the top 10% of podcasts are the ones that are still publishing because those count all four to five million podcasts that have ever been created. So if you're a business owner and you are pitching yourself to be a guest on a top 1% podcast, take a look around. Does it look like that person has any audience? Probably not. Now, my job here is not to discourage you. And if you are one of those people who claims to be a top 1% podcast and you don't have much of an audience yet, keep doing that. Truthfully, because it is true that your show is in the top 1% of all shows that have ever existed. And other people don't know what I just shared with you that you might not have even known, which is most top 1% podcasts have no listenership. But again, the problem here is that all these people are pitching all these podcasts. And both people eventually are going to be sad. Because the podcaster thinks that because they have six months of guests lined up that their show is going to grow. And all six months of those guests think that that podcaster has a massive audience is going to bring them tons of leads and sales. Neither thing are true. And so both of you are wasting your time. So when I am brought into a business owners podcast with the goal of growing that show so that they can get more leads and sales. And they say to me, I have recorded guests six months out. The first thing that I say is, are you open to the idea that you won't use some of those interviews? And if they are open to that idea, we're ready to move forward. If they're not, if they're like, no, I want to publish all of them. I'm like, okay, talk to me in six months when all of those interviews have been published. Because we're not going to be able to grow your show until we make some functional and fundamental changes. Now, the good news is you probably can use some or even most of those interviews that have been booked out. And so the next question I get is, well, which ones can I use? And the answer is this, in order for your podcast to grow, your podcast must make a promise. Your podcast must be for one singular psychographic. It is for this person who is in this situation in life and feels this way. That is their point A. And they would rather get two point B where they're able to have something B something or do something. Your podcast should make a promise to take everyone who's in point A to point B. The girl that show podcasts helps business owners and creators who are struggling with podcast growth to finally get their show growing so they can grow their audience and grow their business. Point blank. Full stop. And so for me, every single guest pitch that I get, which is a lot, has to go through that filter. How is me featuring this person on my podcast specifically going to help my audience who's all in point A? Get two point B. How is it going to help my audience of podcasters to grow and monetize? If I can't answer that question, I can't have them on the show. Because if I have this person on the show, it's going to break the promise of the show. And if your show doesn't make a promise, nobody's going to tune in. And if your show breaks its promise, nobody's going to tune in. Ideally, you are almost never accepting cold pitches. Like it's got to be an absolute home run of a guest where you're like, I can't believe this person reached out to me. Instead, you should be finding the guests. If you have launched a podcast, you have taken on the role of providing for your audience. You have said, hey, everyone, listen to my podcast every week if you want X. As soon as you launched that podcast, it became your job every week to provide them with something to get them closer to X. So it is your mandate if you're going to interview other people to go and find the right people who can help them get to point B. And if you have a guest that comes to you, even if it's a freaking celebrity, and they want to be on your podcast, if you can't answer the question, how is this person specifically going to help my audience get from point A to point B? You can't have them on the show. It does not matter how famous they are. It does not matter how much you think it's going to add credibility to your show to have that guest. The truth is, nobody is going to hear that episode with that person. No matter how famous they are. And to put that to the test, I want you to think about your dream guest. The person where you're like, man, if I just have that person on the show, every single blow up, and I'll have made it. Okay. Do you have that person in your head? Now, what podcasts were they a guest on over the past year? Maybe you can name one, two, or three, but I'm willing to bet. Those are shows that you already listened to, right? But the truth is, they have probably been on dozens. So them being on other podcasts did nothing for you, their fan, to discover those other podcasts. Flip it around and the same thing is true. If you have a celebrity on your show, the people who know who that celebrity is are not going to just magically discover your show because you featured the celebrity. Okay. So what do we do about this fact? Well, number one, I would recommend you stop accepting cold guest pitches unless it is really one that knocks your socks off because the vast vast majority of those cold pitches are business owners again, who paid a PR agency or paid some AI tool to make that happen. And what I want you to do is audit your next 10 scheduled guests or the next 10 interviews that you already recorded and ask yourself this. What is your podcast's promise? What is the point A that your show is for? And what is the point B that it promises it'll take people towards for those 10 scheduled guests or recorded interviews? How specifically does that conversation help your listener get from point A to point B? If you can't answer that question, you can't publish the interview. And by the way, if you've recorded interviews and you're like, actually, I can't publish this, you can just not publish it. They probably won't even notice or if you want, you can reach out and just say, Hey, I've made adjustments to the show. Sorry, but this isn't being published. It's fine. And then after you do this exercise, yes, you are going to have to trade in the comfort that comes with. I'm not going to have to do another podcast interview for six months to which I would say, don't you want to do interviews? If you don't want to do interviews, why do you have a podcast? Don't do interview. Do solo episodes. But from now on, you must only feature guests that align with your refined mission. So once again, if you have scheduled guests way out in advance and you can answer the question of how does this serve the podcast promise? Awesome. Rock and roll. Keep it going. But if not, you now know what to do. You have to adjust the structure of your show or else it's not going to start growing. So that's going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. I am your podcast growth coach and I'll see you in the next one.