Why Build an Audience When You Can Borrow One?
How I Built a Pipeline by Being a Guest on 100+ Podcasts
When I pivoted to focus on Engage AI, I faced a cold start. My entire career was built on enterprise and government clients. For my new B2B SMB audience? Crickets. I had:
Zero credibility
Zero audience
Zero footprint
I was searching for a repeatable growth channel for my new target audiences, where I had already mastered some techniques and skills. My experience told me audio was the right channel. I’d run The Analytics Show for years, so I understood its power to build trust and connection. But I also knew the relentless, time-consuming grind of building a new show from scratch. I didn’t have the time or the patience for that.
So I chose a different path. Instead of launching another podcast, I decided to leverage the intimacy of audio by being a guest on shows that already had my target audience. Why build a new stage when I could just show up on someone else’s?
I didn’t build. I borrowed.
I identified podcasters who already served my new target audience—sales leaders and B2B founders.
Why This Playbook Wins
This strategy works because it’s a cheat code for the hardest part of business: building trust at scale. While your competitors are spending months trying to get 1,000 blog subscribers, you’re mainlining your message directly into the ears of 10,000 perfect customers. Here are the reasons why.
1. You Get Instant, Targeted Access
Building an audience from zero is a slow, brutal grind. This move bypasses it. You don’t need to find your audience. They are already gathered in curated, high-trust communities, listening to hosts they admire. You just need to show up. It’s the ultimate shortcut from stranger to trusted voice, all in one 45-minute conversation.
2. The Credibility Transfer is Automatic
This is the magic. When a trusted host brings you on, their hard-earned credibility becomes your credibility. It’s not you shouting about your product from a digital street corner. It’s an expert vouching for your insights, live, to their entire following. This is third-party validation at its finest. You can’t buy this level of trust. You can only borrow it.
3. It’s a Content Multiplication Engine
One 45-minute episode is not one piece of content. It’s a marketing factory. That single conversation becomes 10 short-form videos for socials, 5 powerful quote cards, 3 audio-grams for LinkedIn, and a new blog post for your site. You create one pillar asset that fuels your entire content calendar for weeks.
4. It’s a Repeatable System
This isn’t a one-time lightning strike. It’s a process and you can run this play every single week. The more you do, the better you get at telling your story, and the bigger the shows become. It’s a scalable, predictable engine for growth.
This Playbook Is the New Ecosystem Strategy
My playbook is a focused application of the most powerful growth strategy in today’s market: the ecosystem.
As growth leader
explained in a recent Lenny’s Newsletter by , traditional GTM channels are failing. Inbound is flooded, outbound is ignored, and virality is harder than ever. The new competitive landscape, supercharged by AI, demands a new approach. The answer is to go through intermediaries who already have your audience’s trust.This “ecosystem” strategy—leveraging partners, creators, and communities—is exactly what’s powering the growth of unicorns like Supabase, Clay, and Gamma. A podcaster is an ecosystem partner. They are a creator and an influencer who has already built the trust you need.
As Emily’s article notes:
“Why start at zero when you can start at 10,000?”
— Tom Orbach, director of growth marketing at Wiz
That’s precisely what this playbook is designed to do. It’s not just about podcasts; it’s about starting at 10,000.
How to Run This Playbook
This isn’t about luck. It’s the exact framework I used to grow Engage AI, and it’s the framework you can copy to replicate my results.
Most people fail this because their approach is lazy, generic, and selfish. Yours won’t be.
1. Get Laser-Specific on Your Target
Before you even open a spreadsheet, get painfully clear on who you’re selling to. Who are your paying customers? Don’t just pick any generic or random podcast. Your first filter must be: “Does my ideal customer listen to this show?” If the answer isn’t a 100% “yes,” move on. This isn’t about general brand awareness. This is about being in the exact rooms where your future customers are already gathered.
2. Offer Value, Not a Pitch Your outreach email is your first test. Don’t fail it. Vague pitches get deleted. “I talk about business” is useless. My pitch? “I can teach your audience of enterprise sales managers how to secure a meeting with AI on LinkedIn.” That is a show topic.
It’s not about you. It’s never “Can I be on your show?” or “I’d love to promote my new book.” It is always: “I’ve listened to your show. I see your audience struggles with X. I have 3 tactical ways they can solve it.” Hosts are not looking for guests; they are looking for solutions to their audience’s specific problems. Be the solution. Give value before you ask for a platform.
3. Give in Return
This is not a one-way transaction. Don’t be the guest who vanishes the second the recording stops. Be a partner. When the episode drops, promote it to your email list. Share it on your socials. Send the host a personal thank-you. This builds a real relationship. This is how you get invited back and, more importantly, get referrals to even bigger shows.
4. Follow Up. Relentlessly.
Hosts are drowning in emails. Your single, polite email got buried. It’s not a “no.” It’s a “not now.” Be persistent, not a pest. A simple, “Just bubbling this up” is professional. My best opportunities came from the third or fourth email. Don’t give up.
5. Start Small, Get Sharp
Everyone wants to be on the biggest show. That’s ego. The goal is impact. A show with 500 hyper-targeted listeners who need your solution is infinitely better than one with 50,000 generalists. Use these shows to practice your story. Tighten your message. Learn the lingo. The internet is a magic ladder. Do great work on the small stages, and the bigger stages will find you.
Here’s What Happened
This strategy worked. And it didn’t just work a little. It became a compounding engine for growth.
1. The Pipeline Became Direct and Personal
This was the first signal. People didn’t just sign up. They signed up and sent messages, “I heard you on Host’s Name’s podcast about Engage AI, and I resonated with your approach about building relationships.” They weren’t cold leads; they were warm introductions. The podcast appearance had already done the heavy lifting of building trust for me.
2. SEO on Autopilot
I despise link building, not because it doesn’t work, but because it’s costly and I didn’t know who to trust to execute it. This strategy meant I didn’t have to. It’s SEO for people who would rather talk than type. Every show I appeared on created a high-quality, permanent backlink on a trusted domain. My site’s authority climbed. I started ranking for new keywords, all without writing a single guest post. I was just having conversations.
3. My Messaging Got Razor Sharp
Nothing pressure-tests your message like having to explain Engage AI’s value prop 30 times to 30 different smart hosts. Every episode was a live-fire experiment. I learned which words clicked, which analogies landed, and which lingo the podcast hosts—who are experts in the sales world—actually used. I got a real-world education in how to talk to my new market, for free.
4. The Flywheel Flipped from Outbound to Inbound
This is when it gets fun. The hard work of cold outreach created momentum. Soon, hosts who heard me on other shows started reaching out to me. The script flipped. I went from pitching to being pitched. The flywheel was spinning on its own, and my calendar started filling with inbound requests.
5. Bigger Stages Followed
Those podcast episodes became my public-speaking resume. Conference organizers didn’t have to guess if I could deliver value; they had a dozen episodes as proof. The small audio “stages” became a direct ladder to massive virtual summits and, eventually, paid in-person speaking gigs.
Your Turn: The 5-Step Playbook
Stop building from zero. Start borrowing.
First, get painfully specific about who pays your bills. Who is your exact customer? If you can’t name them, you can’t find them.
Open a spreadsheet and find 25 podcasts that specific person is actually listening to right now. Where does their attention already live?
Craft your value pitch, not a promo. What one high-value problem can you solve for their audience in 30 minutes? Make your pitch an irresistible solution, not a request.
Execute the outreach. Time-block it. Hire a VA. Do whatever it takes, but do the work. And follow up.
Get on the mic, deliver overwhelming value, and repeat the process. This is how you build the flywheel.
When I started with Engage AI, I was at zero. No audience, no credibility. A year later, I have a pipeline, a brand, and a voice in an industry I just entered. I didn’t get there by building from scratch. I got there by finding the stages that already existed. The stages are out there. Your audience is already listening.
Go talk to them.
Photo by dlxmedia.hu on Unsplash