“So it really is the topic. It's sadly, far less about the person and the accomplishments, the experiences, the biography of who is getting pitched, and more about how relevant that topic is to the host audience and how aligned it is with the type of content that they create and produce.” – Angie Trueblood

In this episode, we're thrilled to welcome Angie Trueblood of the Podwize Group to discuss the art of pitching yourself to podcasts. With her entrepreneurial spirit, innovative thinking, and super-connector powers, Angie deeply supports business owners who use podcasts as a core tenet of their business growth. Her passion for normalizing the voices of women in leadership positions shines through in her work. Whether you're a nonprofit pro, consultant, or coach, this episode will give you the inside scoop on the long-tail impact of being a podcast guest and how you can maximize the opportunity.

• How to strategically determine why being featured on a podcast is important for your business

• The power of podcast guesting for authority building and lead generation

• The dos and don'ts of pitching yourself to a podcast, including how to personalize your pitch and the best way to reach out

• Real-life examples of good and bad pitches and how to make yours stand out

• Nurturing relationships with the podcast host and their audience

Connect with Angie Trueblood:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angietrueblood

Website: https://thepodwizegroup.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepodwizegroup/?hl=en

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/go-pitch-yourself/id1480391075

Find Us Online:  https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com/

Connect with Cindy:

Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com/

The Good Partnership https://www.thegoodpartnership.com/

Connect with Jess: 

Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me/

Transcript:

00:00:00 Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions Podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.

00:00:03 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house-nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.

00:00:11 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six-figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived to see what sticks.

00:00:20 Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale sell their own businesses past the six-figure mark by pulling back the curtain.

00:00:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.

00:00:52 Jess: No more gatekeeping. No more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.

00:01:11 Cindy: We'll listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business. We're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.

00:01:28 Jess: You ready? Let's go.

00:01:31 Jess: Okay, let's just dive right in before we do anything else. Angie, tell me what you think makes up a great podcast pitch.

00:01:40 Angie: I love this. So it really is the topic. It's sadly, far less about the person and the accomplishments, the experiences, the biography of who is getting pitched, and more about how relevant that topic is to the host audience and how aligned it is with the type of content that they create and produce.

00:02:03 Jess: Okay, I love that. And so for those listening, we have a very special guest. We have Angie Trueblood of the Podwize Group, and she's here to talk to us today all about pitching yourself to podcasts. And so, without further ado, could you give us a little background on how you even came to be this person in this very specific, very niche, but very important industry?

00:02:28 Angie: Yeah. So, admittedly, it is a long and winding road, and I will spare you the gory details. But after I left corporate, I came home when my kids were two and four and started a business around meal planning, which at this point in my life is quite hilarious. And I started listening to podcasts myself and heard about online courses and passive income and just ways that you could make money from home. So that business, I eventually created a course associated with it called What The Fork Is for Dinner. And to start growing my audience, I pitched myself to podcasts that would be talking to audiences of moms who were looking how to figure out dinner. And I pitched myself to the local news.

00:02:28 Angie: And so I really got some opportunities that I saw were able to grow my audience, which then would translate into purchasing the course. And as I was doing this visibility outreach on behalf of myself, I had a good number of colleagues in the business field ask, "Well, how did you get that interview? How did you get the news to come to your house and record a segment?" And my answer was always, "Well, I just pitched myself. I came up with a topic that I knew would align with what they were tending to talk to their audience about, and I asked." And fast forward, I quickly recognized the things that I love in pitching and asking for things is not always something that a typical business owner feels comfortable with and that it was a skill set that I could use to help other business owners grow their business.

00:04:09 Angie: So back in 2017, I pivoted away from meal planning and really stepped into taking on freelance clients, initially pitching them for anything under the sun. I mean, if they wanted to be in an online publication, I would give it a shot. If they were across the country and wanted to be in local news, I'd give it a shot. And I quickly saw the power of podcast guesting because for me, it was more of a relationship builder. Yes, you got in front of audiences, you got that visibility from new people, but then you also were creating a collaboration with the host and an expansion of your network.

00:04:4Angie: So we've been going at it, we've grown, we've got a small team, but I love the work that we do. And typically we support women, but we've got a couple of men that we support as well. And I just love being able to play a part in lifting up and amplifying the voices of women in leadership positions in their space.

00:05:06 Cindy: I love that. And obviously as podcast hosts, we love this topic of conversation because we get not so good pitches and some amazing pitches. Before we dive into some of the technical how to, why as a business owner do I want to be featured on podcasts? And full disclosure, confession here, I have had success being on podcasts in the nonprofit sector because I know that audience and pitch it well. But part of me and part of my ego is like, "Well, I want to be on the big podcast in the business space." So how do we determine strategically, why is this important to us and where do we want to be?

00:05:53 Angie: It's a great question and it's one that I wish more people who were pitching themselves and kind of doing it on their own thought about on the front end before they start writing a pitch, getting lost in Apple podcasts and sending a pitch out. There are a variety of ways that guesting can help your business. One is authority building, which, yes, if you got on a giant podcast that people were well aware of the name and how hard it might be to be a guest on there, that would be an example of an authority building type of activity. Also, if there's associations in your space that are really well respected, a lot of associations are launching shows, albeit the listeners are typically fairly small compared to more seasoned podcasters. But that still helps build authority and grow your network with key people in your industry.

00:06:47 Angie: The way that we look at it is more from lead generation because we position our clients to get in front of audiences of their ideal clients, so that there is a chance that the listener will be able to figure out ideally within 30 minutes. If this is someone that they know, like and trust and want to follow them back to their space, they may not buy from them right at that moment. If you have a podcast to guide them back to, that's always a bonus because you can nurture them even more. But really guesting is about getting in front of new audiences. So if you just compare guesting to hosting the guesting is more of your attract strategy. So you are drawing new people to you and then the podcast that you host is the one that is nurturing those people over time.

00:07:36 Angie: just had a discovery call today from someone who heard me on a podcast. I think I guessed it on it in 2019 or 2020. Then she popped over to my show to go Pitch Yourself Podcast and has been listening ever since. And we just, in 2023, got on a discovery call and now she's going to be a client. So it's not that it's always a short sales cycle, but you are getting new people into your... I don't like the idea of a funnel, but it kind of is what it is. They get in your sphere.

00:08:08 Jess: Okay, so helpful, so great. Let's break it down. Good pitch, bad pitch. If you could weave it into a story, give us an example of someone that's maybe pitched you or you've been on the receiving end. Let's dissect what makes a really strong or really weak going in the trash bin type of pitch.

00:08:29 Angie: So going in the trash bin we can do like the yin and the yang of it are definitely the ones that don't personalize the pitch. You all get them, too. They don't even really use your name. They definitely don't use the name of the podcast. So, I mean, that's the bare minimum. And I know your listeners listening are thinking, "Well, that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Who would ever send an email that general?" It happens.

00:08:55 Cindy: All the time, all the time.

00:09:00 Angie: So first just address the email to the host and spell their name right, use their correct name. And then in that first paragraph, that is really what we call the connection paragraph. And it's almost to where you prove to the host, "Hey, I see what you're doing. I recognize who you're serving and I recognize how you're serving them." We almost restate it and then we go into, "I noticed you haven't talked about XYZ on your show and I had an idea for an episode. I wanted to get your thoughts on if this would be a good fit."

00:09:34 Jess: Okay, great. I kind of have to rapid fire, like yes, no type of questions. I always do.

00:09:41 Angie:Let's do it.

00:09:42 Jess: Okay, so like email versus a DM when it comes to a pitch.

00:09:48 Angie:I like email.

00:09:50 Jess: Interesting. Okay. Cindy, what about you? Because you've been at this a while.

00:09:53 Cindy: Usually email, but I just think my DM game is not strong. I feel like, Jess, you'd have more luck with that because you play in that space way more naturally than I do. So I would say it's also understanding your host. Right? Like where are they active? But email it's there. I can come back to it. I find DMs get lost for me.

00:10:17 Jess: Okay. Like...

00:10:18 Angie: It does depend. So I will say we have done a DM pitch if we have a relationship with someone, right? So if the main form of back and forth communication I have with a host is in the DMs, that's where we're going to pitch them. But we pitch cold often. So we are sending out to people that we have never met and for sure, I would never want the first DM to be, "Hey, it's so great to meet you. By the way, I have a client that I think will be a great fit for your show." If you're pitching yourself and you can warm them up over time if you want. But I think sometimes people use that as an excuse to not do the really hard send and the hard pitch. I think we have mindset issues around pitching ourselves and it feels easier just to communicate in the DMs for a long while before we actually put that pitching foot forward.

00:11:13 Cindy: May I add, because I feel like this is a Jess play or taken from the Jess playbook. Sometimes I'll get people reach out and they'll just start with that relationship and they'll say, "I just heard this podcast episode, it was really great." And they'll initiate that and I don't mind in the DMs or email or like LinkedIn friend request or something like that. And as Jess will tell you, that strategy works really well for establishing relationships with people you don't know. So I don't mind that one.

00:11:43 Jess: I'll just say for anyone listening, the way that I've done it and had a lot of success is I listen to podcasts. It's a real thing. It's not a strategy of me like listening to with the intent of pitching, but some… and I do it a lot of times when I'm walking my dog, who is also when I get a lot of inspiration. So a lot of times what I will literally do is I will be listening to a podcast, I will get a spark of inspiration and then I will go where I follow that person to your point, Angie. That usually means a DM over on LinkedIn or on Instagram. I'm not really in Facebook, and so I'll just say like, "Hey, I was listening to your podcast episode..." with so and so. I really took A, B and C away and it sparked this idea about me coming on to talk to your audience about AB or C and it's always so specific. And then I just kind of end up, "Would that be interesting to you?" And if they kind of say yes, then I move it to email because that's more professional. I feel like that's where things get done. But I will just say, as of this moment on the day of recording , February 2 at 10:20, I have 4009 unread emails and I probably have like two unread DMs. I know that probably hurts.

00:13:09 Cindy: That gives me anxiety.

Angie:We have to end this conversation right now.

00:13:10 Jess: But I'm just saying I tend to my direct messages and my text messages way faster than email. So if someone's pitching me and you're just relying on email, I might take a really long time to get back to you. In fact, I just got back to someone who emailed me in November yesterday and I was like, 'Sorry about that." So it is, I think, about knowing your audience, but I also realized that no one's probably going to get things scheduled in the DMs, but that's where I tend to initiate. Okay, I have more rapid fire questions if I can just continue. Okay, long form or short form email? Are we making these pitches punchy or is there like this whole story background, connective tissue thing happening?

00:13:55 Angie: Oh, these are so hard to be rapid fire, does my answer have to be rapid fire? Okay, so yes, and we make the email as short as we possibly can while also including anything the host might think about in their head that they have a question about because they are not going to email me back and clarify. Right? So remember, we're doing a lot of cold pitching. We do have a lot of relationships and those are much easier to kind of land those more quickly. But you mentioned this long story. There's definitely no long story about our client when we're pitching. If it's me pitching myself, my biography is of almost zero importance until the host gets hooked on the topic. So we typically just include almost like a one liner in the body of the email about the client, their accomplishments, why they are qualified to speak on this, and then we include their bio at the very end. So if the host wants that, that's cool, but we also link out to their website, we link to their one sheet, we link to an audio snippet so that they have what they need.

00:15:04 Angie: The thing that takes up the most space in the pitch email is really the introduction to the topic, sharing why we imagine it would be relevant to their audience and giving some bullet points. That could be talking points. So that the host starts to envision what this could be in a conversation. Not just like a pitch fest or like an infomercial on my podcast.

00:15:26 Cindy: Before you go for the next question, go back and rewind exactly what Angie said and make notes and follow it word for word. I can tell you those are the pitches that I respond to exactly as you laid out. This is gold.

00:15:47 Jess: Okay. And then my last question kind of for this is talk to us about subject lines.

00:15:53 Angie: We do not use clickbaity subject lines. I am not a fan of them. We are typically pitching professionals, but also professionals with personality, right? Like we all on here have a little bit of spunk or spark to us. But I've gotten pitches that have these weird subject lines like our next meeting to where you're clicking on it and you're like what are they actually talking about? And then you see it's something totally unrelated to the subject line. So we make it clear in the subject line that it is a guest suggestion for the podcast. So we do sometimes in little brackets, pod guest and then we'll put the topic that we're pitching so that if that sounds appealing to the host, then they will open it and ideally read it and respond. But I don't like a ton of clickbaity subject lines. I've gotten them myself and to me they just seem I mean, I'm playful, but it's just not what I want in my inbox.

00:16:50 Cindy: Yeah, I mean, we all often talk about clarity over clever and I think that's true. Or like sometimes it's not even either of those things. It's more like I get media release type style stuff and I'm like, "I'm not traditional media. I don't care." I don't even think traditional media cares like that. So. Yeah, I love that. Tell us about one of the things I find when I have guests who haven't been on podcast before, they are really nervous. They're like, "How do I prepare? How do I come across as sounding like the expert that I hope I am?" And there's a lot of nerves. So how do you coach people when they're preparing? Let's say we're successful with that pitch. Now we have to actually be on the podcast. What tips do you have to make sure that we sound good ?

00:17:50 Angie: So preemptively, I do not recommend pitching a giant show first in the off chance they are going to say yes. I did this to a client years ago and the first show that we pitched her to was a friend of mine and she trusted our judgment and her show gets millions of downloads. She's like, "Girl, I'm a little bit nervous going on this podcast." And so first, pitch smaller shows, first. Pitch your friends if they have a show that's somewhat relevant. Get all the feels out before you get on kind of a big show.

00:18:21 Angie: The key to being a great guest, and you could define that, I think, in a million different ways, but from the host perspective, come with stories, right? So come not just giving one word answers, not just teaching moments. If it's more of a how to conversation, you want to illuminate and really get more descriptive so that the conversation comes alive to both the host and to the listener. That's my biggest tip. And then, if there's a way to put not an official framework or these are my three steps to pitch yourself, but really think about your expertise in a way that you can logically and succinctly explain it, right? So try to put a little bit of structure around it, even if it's just internally , so that when you have a question, you kind of know where the answers are going.

00:19:14 Angie: And I would say, the other piece of it is, if you're really nervous, be very cognizant of not word vomiting. Like we do episode audits of our clients, and sometimes I will time the amount of time it took a guest to answer when there was no sort of feedback from the host and you don't want it to really be more than two minutes, for sure. It just gets a little… it's no longer conversational at that point.

00:19:43 Jess: That's great. That's really good. I would also just add in their specificity for me now that I'm sitting on this side. When we ask questions, the guests, I think, that have the best episodes are ones that do bring those stories and examples, but they're also detailed and specific. So it's not just like I went to the store, I went to Trader Joe's. It just really, as you're an audio listener, helps paint this picture for the listener that just really makes all the difference in an episode.

00:20:16 Jess: Hi, Angie. We are back with another round of rapid fire questions. Are you up for playing?

00:20:21 Angie: I am ready, my friend.

00:20:23 Jess: Okay, cool. First question. You mentioned just a few minutes ago that you originally started a meal planning company. What is your go to quick dinner?

00:20:36 Angie: Also, because I now officially hate meal planning. For us, it's some type of we got an air fryer before Christmas, and so it's typically like a chicken in the air fryer, some sort of roasted vegetable, and then a side that we know the children will eat.

00:20:51 Jess: I love it. As someone that pitches a lot but also receives a lot of pitches, how much follow up is enough?

00:20:58 Angie: We send one pitch and we send a follow up email two weeks after the initial pitch and then four weeks after the follow up. So it's basically a six week cycle and that's plenty if no one is getting back to you or saying anything to you after that. We track emails so we can see which ones have been opened. We take a hint and move on.

00:21:20 Jess: Love it. I love the honesty. And then I'm curious, what podcasts are currently in your ears?

00:21:27 Angie: An alarming amount of true crime podcasts. And I am currently obsessed with a show called Criminality and please, don't judge me. It is a combination of reality TV, like Debriefs, and they talk about reality TV stars that have had run-ins with the authorities or the law. And it's really just the two hosts. They have the most incredible personalities and the way they play off of each other is awesome. I love it.

00:21:55 Jess: Okay. I love this so much. Thank you for playing.

00:21:58 Angie: You're welcome.

00:22:03 Jess: Okay, so I want to talk so you've gotten the pitch, you're on the show. That part for me is, I would say the easier part, but there's like this long tail impact that podcasts can have. You were just talking about someone who reached out to you for like three or four years ago and this is the part shocking, that I'm not great at, is like packaging an offer for an episode that either leads to a freebie and a downward funnel or this whole system of events that happens afterwards. So can you talk to us about that process and what you've seen work? Rachel Bearbower, our friend from Small Shop Strategies is so good at this. I'm green with envy for her thoughtfulness and preparedness around this. I don't ever do this and like, "Come to my Instagram page." And if I remember to do that. So can you talk to us just a little bit about how to squeeze the most juice out of being a podcast guest?

00:23:08 Angie: The first part of it comes during the interview. So if you've noticed throughout our conversation in the short amount of time, I've mentioned the name of my podcast, Go Pitch Yourself, we've talked about clients that we pitch. So at the end, it will be no surprise to your listeners that we work with clients and we pitch them and that I have a podcast. That's also great in case something goes to hell in a handbasket at the end of the episode and you don't get that dedicated time to drive the listeners over to that one thing you were holding out for until the end. So I would say first of all, it goes really back to the storytelling and actually I recorded a solo episode just a couple of weeks ago turning podcast listeners into action takers, which would be a great one. I'll send you guys the link, but it talks about weaving through the episode and at the end there's all different schools of thought.

00:24:04 Angie: I think there's a popular one out in the podcast guesting space. It's like, "Give the listeners one thing to do, one call to action." Cool. But they're also humans and I value humans having their own idea of what their next best step is. So I'm not going to pigeonhole them into what I think they should only be interested in doing. That said, if you give them five things to do, they are likely going to get confused and not do any of them. So email list growth with the freebie and the opt in, it's definitely shifted over the last five years. I mean, you used to be able to go on a podcast and grow your email list by 30, 40, 100, depending on the size of the show. That's not happening anymore.

00:24:48 Angie: Podcast listeners are... they know that there's an opt-in and they're a little bit more savvy as to who they give their email address to. So we don't really take on clients that if you're looking to grow your email list, you would be better off going and just running ads candidly. But that's not to say that you don't want to offer a freebie like I'm going to share with your listeners. It's a copy of some of our pitches that have gotten accepted so they can see it, but it's relevant to what we're talking about.

00:25:16 Angie: At the end of interviews, I recommend giving three max calls to action. One being like a no brainer. If you have a podcast, this is your no brainer. Send them over to your free resource. They're listening to a show now. They can easily pop over, subscribe to yours and listen and opt-in. But if you're a service provider, if the way that you work with people is one on one consult and then they book you into a service, tell them to go to your website and you can book a discovery call right there. We've packaged it differently recently. Now I have one landing page that I send all podcast listeners to and it's got my LinkedIn, my podcast, my freebie, and a call to action on our services so they can choose. I don't know if that's clear, but I don't like to just go to this one place and sign up for this one thing and if you don't want to do that, we're not going to be together.

00:26:08 Cindy: I actually really love that. It's almost like a Linktree kind of situation where here's all the things that you need, or even creating your own little ‘shownoty’ summary of like, here's all the ways you can connect. I think that's really smart. I think I might have to do that. I want to talk about how else... There's two questions and they're kind of connected, which is how else can we leverage guesting on a podcast with our own audience and how can we nurture that relationship with the podcaster to guest again or even be on other podcasts? So those are two very different, maybe somewhat related questions. Let's start with how do we leverage that with our own audience to build our authority or nurture the relationships that we have?

00:27:01 Angie: Well, it definitely can be authority building if you're just starting to guest on shows. It is an honor to be invited on someone else's show and the general public perceives that as being a pretty big deal, especially if they're not a podcaster themselves. So sharing that with your audience through social, through your email list. I know for me, on every episode of Go Pitch Yourself, I do a podcast love segment and that's where I share the places that I have guested. I share one every episode and it really pushes them over like go listen to this episode.

00:27:36 Angie: The key thing to help give back to the podcast host is you don't really want to be sharing. If I talk only about how to pitch a podcast, my listeners do not want to listen to me talk about that 20 different ways on 20 different shows. So you have to be able to draw out of it. What's different about this interview? What did they ask me? That's different. So you can definitely use it for authority building and then we use it also you can use it for content. So if you're looking for LinkedIn content, you can pull audio from the episodes, you can make your own audiogram. If you're pretty tight with a host, they might even give you the audio file and you can repurpose it into something else.

00:28:14 Angie: Before I ever had a show, I used my guest interviews as newsletter content. I would kind of share almost what we talked about and then you can create, I mean, there's a million different things that you can do to repurpose the content, which is what I like. And then in your nurture sequence for sure, if you have people that are opting-in, drop some of those episodes in there.

00:28:36 Cindy: No, that's perfect. So then the other question was, so how do we leverage that one appearance to either continue to nurture that relationship then beyond again or get us onto other podcasts? How do we create a bit of a generator? I don't know the right word, but how do we leverage this for more?

00:29:02 Angie: Yeah, I mean there is momentum that starts to build once you guest on shows, people start to hear you and so then you will start to get invited because it's sort of like you're telling the world, "Hey, I'm open to being a podcast guest." So that part of it happens naturally. But with the host, it's more of this human connection and this is why it's important to pick shows that are actually aligned with you, your energy and your values. Because when you do connect with those hosts, you can take that collaboration and at the end of the episode, once you all have stopped recording, you automatically start thinking of ways that you can sync each other's strategies and share one another with audiences.

00:29:43 Angie: So, if there's a way for you to share that podcast host with your audience and their expertise with your audience, definitely initiate that conversation and you can pitch them again, right? A year later, if there's something new, if there's a new book that you have coming out or they've shifted their content, if you just kind of keep the fire burning on that relationship, that will come up. If you are one of those people who always sort of has your strategic blinders on for business development.

00:30:14 Jess: I want to switch directions just to add because you are a business that does all of this work for people. And I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about either that process versus doing it yourself. What kind of the secure rate of pitching yourself versus going through an agency like yours is. I honestly haven't spent like a gajillion hours doing this, but the time I have spent is time that a lot of us, a single, individual business owners who don't have large teams, this is hours of work crafting custom pitches, doing the research, all that, right? So on one hand, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's someone that will do this for me. That sounds like a dream." And then I'm hearing you talk about relationships and especially for the nonprofit sector, which is so niche, people will perhaps be like, "Wait , who's Angie and why is she talking about Jess?" So I'm just curious about the two ways and if you have any advice for maybe the right person for an agency versus a time in your business where doing it yourself as a baby a better fit.

00:31:30 Angie: I mean, the real determining factor is what do you have more of in your business? Is your time more discretionary or is your income a bit more discretionary to where you have the ability to outsource it. We have a variety of ways, so you can totally outsource it to our team, but our team can also create your strategy, create your pitch topics, give you a pitch list, and then you go off with some training from us and do it yourself.

00:31:57 Angie: So for me, and I think it's because of the way that we approach pitching, it's not better or worse with our agency versus doing it on your own. If you follow what we suggest, which is personalizing the pitch and being strategic with who you're pitching. We get that question all the time. Is it better to come from me or my VA? Or do I see more important if it's coming from an agency? And to the humans that I want to connect with, it does not matter because, again, it's all about the topic and how well it fits into their conversation. And I would say even in niche spaces like the nonprofit world, those podcast hosts are probably still looking for people outside of their space and outside of their silo to get new voices in and to get new perspectives in.

00:32:50 Angie: So I don't think it matters. And it's just a matter of do you have someone on your team that can support you or can you do it? And if not, then let's look at how you can get support. And there's people who like, we have our jump start consulting package. We have someone, she runs an ops agency and she didn't want to totally outsource it because she had a team that could do some of it. But she's doing some of the tweaking in the pitches, so she'll review them before they go out to make sure that they are personalized enough and that the topic is customized enough. But then her admin sends it, does the follow up, does the scheduling, so they don't need someone to step in and do all of that if she has the bandwidth to do a little bit of the strategy. So it's really figuring out what you need. It's less about how is this going to show up in their inbox, how are they going to perceive it?

00:33:43 Cindy: I love that. It's always the balance of how much time versus how much money and where are you going to get the most bang for your buck. Before we wrap, oh, I think Jess has a question.

00:33:57 Jess: Yes, I know, Cindy, we're going to ask you what we ask everyone on this podcast. But I guess I'm sitting here listening to us. There's a lot of great information, and then I'm thinking of the person listening that's like, "Okay, I can do one thing." Or if there's one takeaway from pitching a podcast, what's your hot take? What is one thing that people should do?

00:34:19 Angie: Yeah. Figure out the shows. Not a specific show. Figure out the type of show that you should be guesting on. So we sort of have a fill in the blank for the strategy. I want to guest on podcasts that talk to blank about blank. And the about blank is not what you as the guest would be talking about. You want to find the shows that are talking to your ideal clients. You can plug in that blank with whomever typically hires you, the people you really want to get in front of. And then the about is finding out complimentary topics to what you do.

00:34:56 Angie: So I want to talk... for me, last year we had a really big focus of me guesting on shows that we're talking to podcasters. So I want to talk on shows that talk to podcasters about growing their podcast. I'm not specifically talking about growing their podcast, but guesting on other shows helps you grow your podcast. So if your listener can walk away with that feeling, that mad lib, if you will, filled in, then they have almost nailed the strategy of who they should be talking to.

00:35:24 Cindy: That is super helpful. All right. The one question that we love to ask, because this podcast is called Confessions, is what's one confession you have around your business, one thing that you're working on, or if we pulled back the curtain, you'd be like, "I would better don't do as I do as I say." What's your confession?

00:35:50 Angie: We actually had a membership for the last year and a couple of months, and I shut it down in January because right, a profitable part of our business just cut that arm off because I really felt like I was running two different businesses. I was running a membership and education side of the business and then the client side. And I knew I needed to focus on one or the other, which also going into a recession. I mean, I feel like I thought about that, but I will say the beginning of the year for me was a little angsty because we did not see in December, we did not have the clients lined up in January that we would normally have lined up. It's definitely turned around.

00:36:33 Angie: But in my panic, I created an offer and pushed strategy sessions more, which are great, and people are responding to them. I think it is just having that more stability and that deep faith and patience, which I struggle with in all areas of my life, that the business that we are building is not sustainable, but it's just foundationally like it's grounded so that I'm not pulling offers out of different places.

00:37:10 Jess: So good. Angie, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast today. I'm excited to hear it. Where can people follow up with you, get in touch with you, hire you? What's the best way?

00:37:26 Angie: The pressure. So definitely, the podcast, go listen, you can get a better sense of who I am and kind of how we work with people over there. And then if you are interested in my team and myself supporting you, you can go over to the podwizegroup.com/hithere. Podwize is with a Z. So pop over there and you can see all the different places to connect, but it details some of our packages and you can book a call on there with me and we can hop on and see what you need help with and if we might be able to help you.

00:37:54 Cindy: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:37:56 Angie: Thank you. This was great. Thanks, guys.

00:38:00 Cindy: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions Podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.

00:38:12 Jess: Number one, post the screenshot of this episode to your Instagram stories or LinkedIn profile and tag Cindy enough so we can repost you.

00:38:20 Cindy: Number two, share this podcast with a fellow nonprofit culture consultant.

00:38:24 Jess: And number three, leave a positive review on Apple podcasts so we can continue to grow and reach new listeners.Jess: And number three, leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts so that we can continue to grow and reach new listeners.

00:38:30 Cindy: And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.

00:38:37 Jess: And to our fellow non-profit coaching and consulting friends, remember we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.

00:38:45 Cindy: See you next time.