The two most common questions I get asked within my inner circle are:
- How do you find these people?
- How do you get them to say yes?
To be honest, the first question is probably the more interesting and insightful of the two. It can be quite a process, and I’ve approached it from a few different angles.
It always starts with: “What do I find interesting right now?”
Then I come up with a big, messy list of topics, the list is always changing (something I was obsessed with two months ago might not excite me anymore). Once I’ve got the list, I try to find 2–3 experts on each topic who might be willing to talk, and can do it in English.
That part takes time as Swiss experts can be hard to find. There’s less self-promotion here compared to Anglo cultures, so it’s not always obvious who the go-to people are.
First: LinkedIn. It’s basically made for HR to stalk people based on skills and experience, so it works pretty well for finding researchers, founders, and specialists. I’d say about 50% of my guests come through LinkedIn. But if I only relied on that, I’d miss a big chunk of people—either because they don’t use it or don’t update their profile. After all, I’m making a judgment based on a single page.
Second: University websites. I scour Swiss university faculty pages to find professors who teach or publish on a topic I’m interested in. It’s slow, but email addresses are usually public.
Third: Authors. I look for people who’ve written books or papers on the subject. It’s easy to find their work via Google, but not always easy to track down contact details.
Fourth: Leverage the work of journalists. I find interesting articles on topics that I’m interested in. Often in longer articles, journalists will quote experts on the topic which is usually a solid lead—they’ve already vetted the expert for me. Bingo.
Now, how do I get them to say yes?
Honestly? I just ask nicely.
Have you ever had someone approach you, say they admire your work, and ask if they could spend an hour asking questions about your area of expertise so they (and a bunch of strangers) could learn from you? Neither have I. But I suspect it’d be the highlight of my week if someone did.
So if I have a topic in mind and come across someone who seems to know their stuff, I spend some time reading their work. If they’re a university professor or journalist, that part’s easy as it’s all online. I make a judgment call on whether they’d be the right person to talk to. Sometimes, I go looking for someone on one topic and end up stumbling across an expert on something completely different that sounds just as good. A lot of great guests have come from those kinds of detours.
At the start, I avoided reaching out to people who were “big”, the ones on ‘most influential’ lists or with big followings because I assumed they’d have no interest in speaking to someone running a small podcast. I now think that this mindset is kind of dumb. Sure, if I messaged Roger Federer tomorrow, he probably wouldn’t cancel a charity match with Nadal to talk to me. But I’ve come to realise that not asking and getting a “no” are the same outcome. So I ask anyway. And sometimes, the answer surprises me.
A book that really shifted this mindset for me was The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer If you find it uncomfortable to ask people for things, I can’t recommend it enough. Her TED talk on the topic is also worth a watch.
Of course, plenty of people do say no—because they don’t have the time, they’re not confident speaking publicly in English or just don’t want to. But that’s okay. I’ll usually follow up by asking if they know someone else who might be a good fit, and that often yields positive results.
So overall, the time-consuming part is finding the right person and figuring out the best way to contact them. But once we start talking, the conversion rate is actually pretty high.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
