919: PitchDB: Master Podcast Guesting By Connecting Directly With Podcasters, Event Organizers, Local Associations and The Press with Ron Story, Jr.

Robert Plank 0:00 Welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Ron Storey, Jr, who has been a full time entrepreneur for over 20 years. And he went from being a struggling insurance salesman to being a self made entrepreneur. And his software company is called Pitch dB, which is the world's largest podcast search engine. With nearly 3 million hosts, it saves you hours of digging for podcast content, contact details, and just a few clicks. So we're going to be talking today about cold email about business life cycles about major mistakes humans making with your lead generation, and why buying a business is the ultimate growth hack mindset and so much more. We'll pack it all in. We'll make it work. Ron, glad to be talking to you.

Unknown Speaker 0:41 Yeah, man, that's a lot to talk about. But yeah, we'll get it in in 20 minutes.

Robert Plank 0:44 Yeah. Or if we there's, there's some left out, that's a teaser. And that's something that someone needs to go in and check you out and check out your websites. We'll leave them wanting more. And we'll have a lot of fun doing it. So we're just a couple of guys in blue shirts. So can you tell us about what you're all about? And what's your passion these days?

Speaker 2 1:03 Yeah, well, I mean, I'm the sales guy, when I, I used to be a financial advisor for 12 years. And then in 2012, I got into the software business. And when you're around a guy, a lot of guys that do startups and they've raised money, and they have this software stuff, everybody's talking about their code, and I'm like, Look, I can't code but I heard you can't sell. So I became known as the sales guy amongst all of these software companies. So a lot of the private equity firms or venture capital firms here in St. Louis, they relied on me to help their software companies build out their sales programs, their lead generation.

Robert Plank 1:37 And, and that's I mean, that's the more exciting part of software, right? There's the coding and the fixing bugs and the making things run faster, which is important. But then what's more exciting is, what you do with it, and the lives and the businesses that you change and the interface, and not just the features, but the benefits and the use cases. And so speaking of that, I know that now you're all about using software to get leads and approach other podcasts. And this is an area where for the past 18 months, I've I can't believe that I didn't pursue cold email as much as I am. Now I have multiple employees now who were working on spreadsheets talking to people following up. And before that, I kind of just left so much of my business up to look, I would make an offer an opt in page, I might post on message boards, I might go to conferences, I might reach out to, like affiliates now in men, but I felt like though it was such a roller coaster, right, it was so much of counting on people to find me, instead of doing something more predictable, which is kind of doing that outreach. And you think Well, ideally, you should be doing all the above, right? So it's good to have your presence and to have the content and have the websites and all that. But also if we can kind of do this outbound marketing and aggressively talk to the prospects in the podcast, etc, that we need to talk to, then why not? Why not do both? Right? Why not have the best of both worlds?

Speaker 2 3:09 Yeah, well, I mean, I kind of look at sales very similar to dating, right? I mean, my girlfriend and the mother of my kid, she, I never put up a website to meet her. Right, I went over and I talked to her. And that's how most of our human interactions are with the people that mean the most to us. We went up and we talked to them, right? And we built friendships. That way, we didn't build a webpage and tell them to opt in if they wanted to be our friend. So my thoughts were, well, if I can build relationships in my main life that way, the second most important thing to me outside of my family is my business. So I should probably approach my business relationships, the way that I approach the relationships that mean the most to me, which is going directly to them being straight up with them about what my intentions are not doing some ulterior motive, I'm going to ask him for this, but secretly, I want this now just being straight up saying, Hey, here's the value I think I can bring to this relationship. Is that something that you find valuable? If so, does it make sense for us to be friends, and that's what I that's how I just approach life, especially, you know, the people that are close to me, but you know, I've let that bleed over into business. And it's worked out pretty well. I like

Robert Plank 4:16 that metaphor a lot that your business is like dating where if you're just sitting on the couch at home, expecting someone to find you it won't happen. And then there's also kind of that aspect of you don't necessarily know where it will go, especially as you say, if you go in without an ulterior motive, if you just say like, oh, here's me. And then here's this other person I'm talking to you just see where it evolves. And you think back to when you when you were a kid and succeed, I had a crush on someone and you were so nervous to talk to them. And the longer you waited, the more nervous you were. And then you started having all these these fantasies in your head about Well, I think this person is like this and like that, and then when you met them, it never met hatched the, like, the idealized vision you had in your head. And when you got older you realize, oh, man, I should have just been real and taken some action and lived in reality, instead of this dream world of like the Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. And you see that so much in people's businesses, right? They're there, they agonize over what you'd be in my podcast bio, they've been working on a book for 10 years, they'll make a course or a podcast someday, maybe in the next few months. It's all of this, like wishing for the future instead of doing something doable and actionable in the present. And so you have this, this podcast resource of finding podcasts finding contact details. So if someone says, I'm tired of living in fantasy land, sitting on the sidelines, I want to use what Ron has for me, I want to take action today. What's something that someone could you today or this week to make a difference in their business?

Speaker 2 5:58 Yeah, the first thing they can do, they can go sign up for a free account in our software, right. But once even if they don't want to do that, they can just find the podcast hopping to Apple and type in your subject. matter that you're an expert in, right, that you think you can help an audience with. And then find those podcasts, go to their websites and find contact, and they have their email address there. Just send them an email. Hey, man, I listened to your episode with Ron story. I thought he had some great ideas. I would love to be a guest on the podcast. He talked about this. But have you ever thought about this perspective? You just added some value added another option of a different perspective, you saved the podcast was probably three hours of having a search for another guest down the road. That's the one thing that they don't talk about when you're hosting a podcast is the two to three hours of research you have to do to find guests. That's the biggest anchor around podcasters, Nick, is the time that they invest in finding guests to make sure that their guest doesn't come on the show and embarrass them. So if you really have in the words of Eminem, if you are what you say you are a superstar, then have no fear. The mic is here. And the crowd is ready. Right? I think that was no Lupe Fiasco. That's the rapper that said that, right? So if that's the, if you really have the goods, why not tell people, I've never seen a gas station with a landing page. Right? Because people need gas. So if you have something that people really need, other people will know it. Or if they don't know it, work on your messaging so that you can communicate the true value of what you have. So that when you say it in one sentence, people get it. Right. So I know that podcasting is probably the most underused and most efficient way to get in front of 1000s of people without having to leave your house. In the past, in order to reach your audience right here that we're talking to, before podcasting, I had to go speak at a conference that you are hosting, right? Now I can just come to my office, flip up the computer, hop on and I'm in front of a couple 1000 people, and then it's going to be posted on YouTube. So it's going to be in front of millions of people. And if I run ads to it, now it's in front of millions of people all around the world. So podcasting is that opportunity. If you have the goods, if you don't have the goods, go get the goods, go get the skills, so that you know you can actually help people. But yeah, that's the the main thing is if you can really help people, the audience's and the host will recognize that

Robert Plank 8:27 you're so right, Ron. And they say that if you are not putting yourself out there, then you're doing people a disservice. Right? There are people out there there are stuck, that that needs a tank of gas, so to speak, and you're not giving it to them, you're not giving them your real estate or your stock market or your book writing expertise. Because you're you're too afraid at the moment to appear on these other shows. And you're so right about the the the efficiency and the time factor. Because I mean, you hop on for 20 minutes, right? I don't even know where you came from. I think I saw like some some podcasts booking agency sent you my way. But you know, I see my calendar fill up, I hop onto a meeting. And then even when we started the Zoom call, I was just like, hey, do you want to chat first? And you and I were like, no, let's go. We'll meet each other while we're recording. It'll be 20 or 30 minutes in and out and you think about I mean, what else can you I mean, 30 minutes of playing around with your paid ads. How many ads Could you really set up? Not many are 30 minutes tweaking that landing page versus 30 minutes. You show up here. We record this, it will live forever. Like you said, there's podcast content, there's YouTube content, my team is going to cut this up and post on social media regularly forever. It's a really great use of Matt time. And then he also mentioned that a podcast hosts love it. I mean, you and I both know anyone who's listening can use your or my name to approach some other podcasts and say you know I was listening to Ron stories episode And then he also mentioned something cool with that, just because you talked about such and such topic doesn't mean that suddenly that's your domain. Someone can say, I know that Ron talked about podcast guesting and cold emails, but I have my own spin on it, or we can talk about that. But also something in addition, so it's not like it's completely off limits, just because someone else talked about it. There's always your special flavor to it.

Speaker 2 10:26 Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of times people underestimate everybody wants to start a podcast, but they have no marketing mechanism to promote it. Right. So it's easier just to find people who already have the audience and then borrow their audience. Right? I had to make no investment in getting your audience to listen to your podcast, right? But I save you some time by being an interesting guest and providing some value to that audience. Hopefully someday they'll say, Yo, you should have Rhonda come back to talk about how you know how he sends cold emails to people. I mean, I've booked I'll tell you some funny people, George Lucas, everybody likes this story. George Lucas, his wife, Melanie Hobson, we cold email. We sent her a cold email and got her to mentor one of my one of my best friends. Right? Like people like what? That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've called him a lot of people. And the thing about it, all they can do is say no, or Yes. If they say no, I'm in the same place. If they say yes, I'm better off. When Liliana sent you the email. That's my assistant, when she sent you the email about me being on the show. You could have said yes or no. Gratefully, you said yes. And here I am. Right. But if I never took that shot, we would never be having this conversation. And I think that that's the takeaway from this episode is if you don't put yourself in a position to be rejected, you'll never put yourself in a position to be accepted. And I'm just not willing to deal with you. No, no, is the last answer. Hey, look, no for me means not now. It's a good traction, it's no apostasy. It just means that now, because I guarantee you as I get better the people that have told me know about being on their show, as I become better at being on podcast, and my brand builds, I'll be able to go back and say, Hey, I reached out to you a year ago, here at five episodes that I've been on. Is this a good time now? And they may be like, wait a minute, you've been on a five episodes? Why did we have you on before, right? But I just have to keep putting in the work. And that's where everybody starts off with their first podcast. So if you're listening, and you've wanted to be on a podcast, just get on any podcast, no matter how many listeners they have, if it's 12 people, let it be 12 people, but help all 12 of them, right? You know, take your ego out of it, you're not going to get on Joe Rogan, you're not going to be on, you know, the biggest podcast out there. At the beginning, just get out there and start helping people. And then you'd be surprised how many of those folks will notice you.

Robert Plank 12:55 I love it, that's very reassuring that need to put yourself out there need to send those cold emails that no means not now, and that what's most important is to just build the airplane on the way down, so to speak. And just up here on some shows you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. And so just get yourself out there and get your message out there knowing that you will be rough and raw at first, you won't be perfect, but get on whatever show will take you and deliver your message. And I imagine that in your experience from your travels and from what you've seen that that really accelerates your messaging, doesn't it because like you said, if you want it in back in the, in the they say good old days, but it's kind of bad old days, when you wanted to speak you had to figure out some conference to go to you had to convince the event organizer and maybe if the event was too big, they then they wouldn't want you because someone else would be would take that slot. But then maybe they want you if the event was super small, and they were desperate for speaker. So now you're putting in $2,000 for a flight and a hotel and three or four days of your time just do a peer to an event that was too too small or didn't have good prospects. Because if they had a huge amount, they wouldn't invited some big name speakers. So you speak and and that's kind of a roll of the dice, then you have to go back home. But now you're just there and you're back. This is a much better time to be alive. And it's like people don't realize how good it is right compared to how inefficient it was back then. So someone says, Okay, I want to appear on podcast, but I'm blocked and they say you know, I don't know who to contact. What do I say in this cold email? Do I need a bio? So what sorts of things hold people back from taking action on this sort of method that you love?

Speaker 2 14:43 Well, so I think part of it is not knowing where to find the information, which is why we created pitch dB. To put all that information in one simple place where you can just search for a topic or you can search for someone who is in your industry. So here's what I like to do. I like to do searches for People that are in my industry. So there's a guy named Brian olds who works with speakers. And he runs an organization called the Black Speakers network. Now he every podcast he goes on it has speakers and coaches on it. Well, guess what? He's been on more podcasts than me. So I just search his name, right. And when I find all the podcasts he's going on, he's already found the ones that have my audience, because we have the same audience. So now I just reach out to those same host and say, Hey, I saw you have Brian on that talked about this. For speakers. I help coaches and speakers to get on podcast, which is a different stage than the conference stages that he helps people to get on. Is this the conversation that's worth having with your audience? Right. So the first thing is, just find someone that's already blazed the path that you've already been on, that makes it easier, they've already identified the audience. The host has already admitted by having them on that. He values that type of information, right? The second thing is just send a very simple email. Here's your email. Hey, Robert, I listened to your podcast, I thought it was great. Are you still looking for interesting guests for future episodes? That's it. Don't send anything else. It should sound just like that. Right? And then you just put your name at the bottom. Now, if they're interesting, if they're looking for guest cool, they'll they'll say, Yeah, we're looking for interesting guests. Who did you have in mind? And then that's when you pinch yourself, right? It's just like dating. When I when I met my girlfriend, I didn't go over to her and say, Hey, let me tell you about what I did for the last five years. And I've worked here and I did this. And in three years, I think we're gonna have kids, and we're gonna be living all around the world. She would have thought I was a weirdo. But that's how most people's first pitches sound. Right? So what I went over and said was, Hey, how are you doing? And when she responded, oh, I'm doing okay. Right. Now, she gave me permission to talk to her. So you're really pitching for engagement? If they're not interested in having interesting guest, then why even waste your time with your pitch? It's no different than if a woman's already married. If she turns around, and she says, Hey, I'm doing okay. As he points out the wedding ring, she is interested in dating you bro. Just move on. Don't even waste your time shorter your your big background and your your Tesla and all this stuff that that that you may think is impressive to her just move on. She's already taken. So that's the approach with pitching. Find out if the person is even open to hearing what you have to say. Are you interested in having interesting guests for future episode? Who's gonna say no to that? Right? And if they say, No, we're not interested. We already were already booked up. Cool. But usually they'll say, Yeah, who did you have in mind? Hey, I know a guy. I give them my pitch. And then they can make a decision. Right? So that's the approach, find the people that you already admire. You're already listening to them. Anyway, every everybody's listened to a podcast with their competition on it to kind of see what they're talking about. So you're already listening, reach out to those same podcast and say, Hey, are you looking for interesting guests? for a future episode? Those you follow those two steps, you're guaranteed to be booked.

Robert Plank 18:13 You make it very doable, very practical. And you're so right, that it's the it's like the commitment and consistency, right that you can keep it simple. And And this way, it's not spamming, because I know that that's a big concern with the cold email, people say, well, am I just spamming someone? Well, the answer to that is yes. If you keep sending like the same exact message to everyone else, and it's this big old thing no one wants to hear, but you're trying to help out the show, right? That the host of that podcast needs guests needs content. And you're saying, Well, are you looking for interesting guests, and then have getting that conversation going so that way, it sort of both people are involved. And that's the problem with if you were on that date, where if you were just the one talking, the other person wasn't talking, there's only one person involved. So this way, both people are working together, and you're helping them out. And then and it's very doable for you to repeat the process or to outsource it, have an assistant do it such as what you did with Lilyana, where you just say, let me basically podcast stalk this person, right? Let me just say, here's someone who's in my space who's similar to me. And then I can just instead of doing like keyword research and show research, you just say, Well, what shows did they appear on? And then and I mean, you can even do this, you know, with like a handful of guests, even if you wanted to get crazy, but yeah, and this way, you even have an end because you say like, Oh, I know this person or I have this connection with this person. And so it's the way that you talk about it describe this, it seems like a lot of fun. And so if someone wants to jump into this whole process, what's the next step? What is pitch DB all about and how can I help save them time and doing this?

Speaker 2 19:56 Yep, so pitch DB allows you to search over 3 million podcast Just over 140,000 local associations if you want to give a speech, right to do a presentation, and over 38,000 media outlets, if you want to be on the news or television or radio or something like that, right, and basically allows you to search for the for the person who's the host, or the event planner, and send them a basic email, like I spoke to you about you connect your email account, you send them the basic pitch, and then you just wait for them to respond. We don't allow you to do any automating. So each email is individually written, you can use a template and customize the template, but it isn't like set it and forget it. And we just send 2000 emails to people. We don't do that. We don't think that that's, that's very ethical, right? So I'm a firm believer that if you do it right, you'll be fine. All right now on average, one out of every five pitches that are sent using our software, books or podcasts book, right. So we know that if you just do it consistently, we did a contest called the High Five challenge, which was basically say hi to five people, for five days, right? So it's like high five, five people for five days. So basically, they sent 25 pitches, using our software, the worst person got three bookings, the best person got 12, right. But this person had already been on a bunch of podcasts, they already had everything going, the person who got three had never done any podcasting or anything like that. They just started their business. Right? So here's let me overcome the number one biggest elephant in the room that we always get, oh, well, I don't want to go into little bitty bug guests. They don't have a bunch of people viewing. That's not your responsibility, your responsibility is to get out there and help people. So if there were five people in the room that needed your, your service, you wouldn't help those five people because it wasn't 500. Right? You would help five people in a room if they all were targeted, and needed your service at some point. So why are we being so judgmental of podcasters of a certain size? So I'm going to give you a solution to that. When the podcaster posted the video on YouTube, take responsibility and run YouTube ads to your own content. Right. So whenever I'm on a podcast, I take 100 bucks, and I just run YouTube ads to it. Right? Because I want my podcast in front of my target audience just in case, if the podcaster didn't have my exact audience, I can still use that episode. And getting in front of my people. Right? On YouTube, because we one penny per view. So for 100 bucks, I can put 10,000 views on any podcast that I'm ever on. So the view excuse is gone. And if I'm not willing to invest in myself, why should I expect you, Robert to be willing to invest in growing the episode that I was on, I should be willing to do that myself. So I do it as a thank you to the podcast host like, Hey, man, I know you're gonna promote this to your people. But just in case, I'm going to still put 100 bucks behind it, and get another five to 10,000 views on it. Because I'm selfish. I want to win. I want people to see me. So that's why I'm out here doing it, man. So I think it's a win win for both sides. But the biggest excuse that we get for people to take action as well, I don't want to go to little podcasts or you're just you're just goofy because if you were in a room with five people, you would talk to those five people. If you're in a room with 100 people, you would talk to those 100 people, not to mention 1000 5000 10,000. So what's the difference in what we're doing right now, the if there's only five people listening to this, all five of you call me, I'll help you, I will individually write your pitches for pitch dB, I'll give you a free account. If it's only five of you. That's how targeted you could be. If it's 100 of you go to our website, sign up, we'll give you a free account. If it's 1000 of you go there sign up, we'll give you a free account and some free pitches. I can tell him my pitch to the audience. That's the beauty of podcasting. So I think we just have to get out of our own way and be willing to win.

Robert Plank 24:05 I agree. I love your energy around. This is very inspiring. And I think that Twitter and Facebook has made us all very jaded about the numbers like things like Twitter and Facebook. If you get five views on Twitter, you're like, Excuse me, you're like, is that a bot? Did someone review it? I mean, I think I saw something where Facebook used to say their average video was played for two seconds. And lately, they downgraded it to one second. And so people have gotten very cynical about Well, only five people on Facebook or Twitter is different than five listeners of your podcast, or I saw someone a few years ago, they took a posted a picture of what 100 people in a room look like and I'm like, well, that's a lot of people. But for some reason, when we think of trends of internet terms, we think 100 is small but when you're thinking about podcast listeners, people who aren't just scrolling past in the newsfeed who actually clicked on are listening right now. 100 is a huge number and you and I both know that you're just looking for one, right? You're just looking for that to lead to that one sale or that one client or that one person's life that you change. And so, I mean, you could have, you know, 3 million Instagram followers, and they're all bots, and who cares. So it's really easy to drive yourself crazy with those numbers. But I can tell that you're a salesperson. And you're all about the quotas and the goals and the KPIs with that cool, high five challenge, say hi to five people for five days. And then using your service in your system, knowing that 20% of the podcasts you contact, you'll get booked on as long as you don't let all these these silly obstacles, get in your way the self defeat the self sabotage. Instead, it's time to take action and do it now. And even though we didn't have time to talk about lead generation or buying a business, that's good, because you want to leave them wanting more, right? Why don't we don't want to fit everything we know into one poster or one podcast. So we will have to have you back to cover more topics. But for now, the focus is on cold email and on getting on podcast. So if someone says pitch TV sounds amazing, and Ron in general, and his offer sounds amazing. I want to go there. Now I want to sign up like he was telling me to what's the web address and where did they go?

Speaker 2 26:16 Right. So if you go to pitch db.com/plank P L, a n k, we'll have a separate page so that we could track how many people came from this podcast, right? And you can sign up and get a free account with pitch dB. Also will make a special offer to you where it's not on the website, you won't find it will give you the opportunity to sign up and get a one time payment lifetime account. So you can pay one time and have pitch DB for the rest of your life. And be able to pitch as many podcasts as you would like, based on a one time payment that you make. So I don't think there's a better deal out there. Normally pitch TV is $97 a month. For less than that you'll be able to get a one time payment account to use pitch TV just because you're a listener of this podcast.

Robert Plank 27:02 Fantastic. That's very generous of Iran. And that's a cool sort of growth offer that that's amazing. So pitch db.com/p l a n k. And as we wrap up and wind down our conversation here on you and I both know that it's fun to end with a bang instead of a whimper right? And with something profound. So does any powerful advice come to you that you wish maybe you'd gotten 10 or 20 years ago? Does anything really stick with you as far as something that you wish you'd heard? Or that you wish to impart on our audience to really spring them in the action? Any thing come to mind?

Speaker 2 27:38 Yeah, I wish every year I wish I would have started earlier. Right. So the things that I did in 2022, I wish I would have been doing them in 2020. And the things that I'm doing now and 2023. I know, I probably wished I would have been doing it two years ago. So there's never a better day to start the now you'll look back on it. And you'll say Holy crap. Most of the guys that are I started a podcast in 2014. And I interviewed John Lee Dumas and all of these big guys, right? And if I would have just kept doing that podcast, I see what they've grown to. I probably would have had a really large audience, right. But I went the software route. So I do have some regrets of not sticking with podcasting for that long. Right. So my biggest thing for everybody just get started. It's gonna start off slow, but it gets better compound interest gets better on the back end. So yeah, just get started today because you'll regret it if you don't

Robert Plank 28:34 just get started, but it's difficult to do it alone. So Ron is your buddy Ron as your partner and your guide. So get started, but get started at pitch db.com/plank and we will see you there and thank you, Ron for showing up and blowing our minds in amazing us with some helpful lessons and stories and advice. I appreciate it very much.

Unknown Speaker 28:53 Yeah, thanks for having me.