Should I start my own podcast to get clients, or guest on other shows?

I've hosted the Local Media HQ podcast for a while. When someone suggested I start a new show to land clients for a different business, I said no, for now.

Why not start a show?

"I would have recorded them and put them online. Very few people would watch them. I'd be nice to the guest, and they'd be nice to me. Then I'd never follow up with them. I'd never cross-sell them."

That's the trap. A new show puts the work on you, the early audience is tiny, and the real value (follow-up and repurposed content) only happens if someone actually does it.

What did you do instead?

Guest on existing shows. The setup:

1. Agents find relevant shows.
2. Agents draft the pitch. I approve it.
3. Agents prep a brief before the interview.
4. I show up.

That costs me about an hour per booked show. Someone else already built the audience.

When does starting a show make sense?

When you have capacity, and when follow-up is reliable. The reason it's still a good idea eventually is content. Every conversation becomes clips, posts and newsletter material.

What about a local podcast for a newsletter?

Different story. The hard part of any local podcast is getting an audience, and a local newsletter already has one. I think of a daily local audio feed as the audio version of Meta ads: it reaches hyper-engaged people because they live there.

A guest on my show who produces daily local audio news said local podcasts can fetch 50 to 75 CPM, versus 30 to 35 industry-wide. His number, not mine.

How long should episodes be?

For a local business show, short. Quick and fun. Twenty or thirty minutes is too much. I run a Podcast Spotlight section in my newsletter with the YouTube thumbnail so readers click through. More on that in the podcast section of a newsletter.