Ep 155 – Jessica Rhodes, Interview Connections – How to Land Agency Clients Through Podcast Guesting (Without the Spam)
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Featuring: Jessica Rhodes, Interview Connections
In episode 155, I sit down with Jessica Rhodes, founder of Interview Connections and the entrepreneur who launched the world's first podcast booking agency back in 2013—long before podcast guesting was on anyone's radar.
Jessica shares how a door-to-door canvassing job and a virtual assistant gig for her dad turned into a company that's booked more than 50,000 interviews for over a thousand coaches and business owners. We get into her recent return to the CEO seat, why she eliminated the sales role entirely, and the uncomfortable truth that not everything in your agency needs to be scalable.
For agency owners, this one is a practical look at guesting as a growth channel: how to pitch without sounding like AI spam, why being a guest beats launching your own show (at first), and how to turn a single interview into referrals, repurposed content, and the occasional short-cycle six-figure client.
Key Bytes
• The best pitches aren't scalable—AI blasts fill spots but burn bridges with the hosts worth knowing.
• Podcast guesting moves buyers past price-comparison paralysis by letting them hear your story and personality.
• Nobody else has your story, your values, or your personality—that's what makes you a category of one.
• Be a guest for a few months before launching your own show; they're two different strategies with different payoffs.
• The shortest sales cycle comes from listeners who show up already ready to hand over their money.
• Not everything has to be scalable—know your goal and your timeline before you optimize for growth.
• Get outside your own industry, and you'll be the only marketing agency on that HVAC or manufacturing podcast.
• People hire agencies they're referred to, and podcast hosts make powerful referral partners.
Chapters
00:00 Meet Jessica Rhodes and the first podcast booking agency
00:54 Right place, right time: from stay-at-home mom to founder
05:11 Stepping back into the CEO seat after eight years
07:34 Why she eliminated the sales role (and why not everything scales)
09:40 What makes a great podcast guest in the age of AI pitching
11:56 Turning guesting into education, authority, and new business
15:27 Own show vs. guesting: which to start with and why
19:32 Keeping a podcast fresh 12 years in
23:22 A final guesting strategy for agency owners
25:06 Rapid fire: ChatGPT, thriller novels, and "follow the money"
Jessica Rhodes founded Interview Connections, the world’s first and leading podcast booking agency in 2013, back when no other agencies like it existed. Since its founding, Interview Connections has booked over 50,000 podcast interviews for over 1000 coaches! Jessica is passionate about helping coaches who feel like the best-kept secret grow their business online through genuine, human-to-human connection. The podcast interviews Jessica and her team have booked have helped their clients generate millions of dollars in sales, sell thousands of books, and transform countless lives.
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Steve Guberman (00:01.294)
Welcome to Agency Bites. I'm your host, Steve Guberman from Agency Outside, where I help agency owners build the business of their dreams. This week on Agency Bites, I'm joined by Jessica Rhodes, founder of Interview Connections. Jessica launched the world's first podcast booking agency back in 2013, long before most people were even thinking about podcast guesting as a marketing channel. Since then, her team has booked more than 50,000 podcast interviews for over a thousand coaches.
and other business owners, helping them grow their businesses through authentic human to human conversations. Jess, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me.
Jessica Rhodes (00:34.316)
Yeah, thanks Steve. I'm happy to be here.
Steve Guberman (00:36.558)
So way before people were thinking about it, you were kind of this visionary entrepreneur mastermind. You had this amazing visionary or your right place, right time. Take us back like years ago. What prompted you to launch this before anybody was doing it?
Jessica Rhodes (00:54.702)
I'm gonna be humble about it. It was a right place, right time, Steve. I did not consider myself any type of genius visionary in hindsight, of course. I'm like, wow, good, good, right place, right time, took the right action. I started a business because I wanted to be a stay at home mom. That's really what it came down to. I was a new mom, didn't, I was running a door-to-door field canvas for a nonprofit. So going door-to-door was not really the type of job that I wanted to have anymore as a mom.
Steve Guberman (00:57.466)
Okay.
Steve Guberman (01:05.648)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (01:19.535)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Rhodes (01:21.544)
And when I asked my parents for advice, my dad had been an online entrepreneur since the early 2000s. So he's a business coach and had a newsletter marketing company for a long time. And he said, start a virtual assistant business. I'm like, I don't know what that is. He goes, I'll be your first client. I'll show you what to do. So I started my business and started basically working for my dad's business as a virtual assistant. And one of the things that he asked me to do for him was to book him on
podcasts. And since I had for six years gone door to door, I'm like, okay, well, I know how to ask people for something. And, you know, so I just applied my door to door skill set to reaching out to podcast hosts and pitching my dad as a great guest for their show. And as I was doing that, hosts were like, Whoa, no one's ever pitched a guest to me before. What is this? And that's kind of what started going, huh, okay, if I want to
Steve Guberman (01:50.2)
interesting.
Steve Guberman (01:56.699)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (02:16.174)
I'm an entrepreneur and grow a business and not just be billing as an hourly VA. Maybe I could make a business around this. And my dad helped me come up with the idea and like create the packages and the pricing and all of that. So that's how everything got started back in 2013.
Steve Guberman (02:22.33)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (02:33.99)
Thanks dad. Now does he hit you up for like a commission check every year at Thanksgiving or like.
Jessica Rhodes (02:37.646)
Yeah, he's so he's retired now and I'll still hit him up for some free coaching. He did make me pay for business coaching in the early days. He was big on like, you still got to earn it, you have to invest. He taught me the value of that. But of course now it's just like, dad, you got to talk about something.
Steve Guberman (02:45.828)
Hell yeah.
Steve Guberman (02:58.214)
Love it. Absolutely. love that mindset. You've got to have skin in the game. I'm not no free lunch. So it sounds like a guy after my own heart. So, so you took it from VA to just podcast, guesting and strategy, working with coaches, entrepreneurs, agency owners, who else was, was the ideal.
Jessica Rhodes (03:03.182)
For sure.
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (03:16.504)
Yeah, so how I, my first clients at the time were podcast hosts, which is kind of different now, the demand and the market kind of shifted a little bit. But when I first started the business, everyone was starting podcasts and they needed guests because people weren't booking interviews as a guest, they weren't reaching out. So my clients who paid me were podcast hosts. And then I went out and found people to be on their show. Over time,
Steve Guberman (03:31.174)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (03:43.247)
podcast guesting became really popular, know, kind of the scales tipped in the other direction. Podcast hosts were like, I've got so many people that want to be on my show. I don't have to pay a booker to do that, but people needed help finding places to be interviewed. just like most business owners in the early days, I worked with anyone that wanted to pay me and I figured it out. So it was all types of different people. And then over time,
Steve Guberman (04:01.701)
Mm-hmm. Yep. That's how we do it.
Jessica Rhodes (04:09.258)
really honed in on coaches because they could just see that they got the best results. And we've got, obviously we just like you find your niche and that's who you're market to. You end up working with other people. But coaches have been kind of that type of client that just does really well with this strategy.
Steve Guberman (04:27.257)
Yeah, I guess coaches are coachable, right?
Jessica Rhodes (04:29.902)
They are, yeah, they're coachable. And a lot of them just have a few high ticket clients or they have a group program. So they could be on a show with 200 people listening and see a great return on investment. Whereas other business models need like much larger audiences. It's a different type of marketing that they might need. But coaches can do really well with a pretty small targeted audience with long form content.
Steve Guberman (04:31.268)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (04:53.765)
All right, so we're going to use this for my training then you're going to get a free coaches training session on how do I leverage this podcast? So talk about the nature of your business as the founder. You're now stepping back into CEO. What's that process been like for you taking the reins back?
Jessica Rhodes (05:11.14)
my God, it's been really, really intense. So I had a business partner for eight years. She was actually my first full-time employee and we were a great, you know, people call this the dynamic duo. Like we just balance each other out perfectly. And then over time, and so she stepped into the CEO seat because she brought this fresh vision. And then I just really put my head down and focused on sales and marketing because that's what the founder does best is they sell the thing they created. And
Uh, just over the last, you know, at the end of 2025, she had already had another business that she had her hands in and that is really her passion. So she went off and did that. And, and then I stepped back into the CEO seat and it's been really intense because I had somebody else leading the business that I started for a long time. And now to step back into it, there's just been this.
rush of ideas and just creative juices flowing and just remembering what I love about the service because I think what a lot of agency owners can relate to is that we start our agency doing the thing that we're selling, Like booking the interviews, designing the websites, running the ads, and then you grow and you hire a team and then you become a business owner and you're managing a business. You're like, wait, I started this because I liked the thing. So I've been
Steve Guberman (06:08.678)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jessica Rhodes (06:31.724)
working more closely with my team and reaching out to host myself and doing some pitching and doing some messaging with clients and just getting my hands into all aspects of the business versus just being in one lane. And it's been really invigorating and energizing.
Steve Guberman (06:49.808)
Hmm. That's cool to hear because, I think shifting back in to your point, you get to revisit the thing that you fell in love with, which was why you launched the business in the first place. And as you grow, you're now managing people and process and not able to typically do the thing that you love doing. And there's an intentionality around, I want to make sure I stay in my craft no matter how big we get. And that's rare to be able to do. And I know a few like agency founders that, you know,
Jessica Rhodes (07:02.093)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (07:19.11)
10, 15, 50 people are able to still be like, I want to do pitching or I still want to do some logo sketches or whatever, jump into the code. And it's really hard to maintain that. So kudos to you to be able for being able to do that.
Jessica Rhodes (07:34.595)
Yeah, I think it's finding the balance too, because sure, it's not scalable. I did a post the other day and shared with my audience how I eliminated the sales position in my company, because there was this misalignment with having somebody do sales calls incentivized by a commission, but at the same time, me saying, don't sign up this person who's not a good fit for us, because our retention is going to go way down if we sign on clients that aren't going to see a result. But the salesperson's like, yeah, but you're paying me for how many. And I'm like, that's not.
going to work for us. And someone said in my LinkedIn post, they're like, well, that's not scalable to do all the sales calls yourself. like, it's not always about scalable. think we are like, oh, not everything has to be scalable, you know?
Steve Guberman (08:17.142)
And yeah, so if your goal is I want to scale and I want to take this thing, you know, to the infinity and beyond, cool, build that system, put the system in place, define what sales looks like. But if you're like, I intentionally, I want to stay small and I want to whatever I don't want to break a million bucks. That's not my goal. That might be yours. Like, yeah, I fully support that.
Jessica Rhodes (08:37.25)
Yeah, and you have to know what is your goal and in what timeline. Like, startup founders, if they're starting a SaaS company to have an exit to venture capital, yeah, it's all got to be scalable. They can't be an integral part. But as a small business owner, as an agency founder, if you're not looking to sell your business in the next couple of years, focus on what the business needs today and not what it might need five, 10 years down the road.
Steve Guberman (09:02.948)
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about the people. So I get pitched podcast guests nine times an hour. is a flurry of spam chaos nonsense. I'm sure that's not what you guys do, but as podcasting has become just everybody and their mother has a podcast. the pitching has just gotten through the roof as a service. What can you tell agency owners, entrepreneurs?
the key to like being a good guest, telling good stories, opening up, what's the right pitch? What are the things they need to have kind of in line with their online presence?
Jessica Rhodes (09:40.291)
Yeah, I mean, the first thing, this is a perfect bridge from our conversation about being scalable. People want to, lot of podcast guests, they want to just jump to the point of like scalability. So they're jumping on this trend, which I've seen in my little industry of podcast booking of like, I could just use AI because AI will, like there's AI pitching services and they'll just be able to pitch. But that's why you're getting nine pitches an hour is because people are using AI to get a templated pitch out to,
hundreds of hosts at one time. does it work to an extent? It's a numbers game. There's gonna be a percentage of those hosts that are like, sure, come on my show. So they're like, it works. I'm getting bookings. But at the same time, you're burning bridges and wasting the time of hosts that actually want to curate a really good show that aren't just trying to fill spots. So this is one of those things that isn't necessarily scalable. You have to either take the time
to research the host, to really select the right show for you, see what types of episodes they do, what topics they seem to enjoy, and pitch a topic that you can talk about that is clearly connected and in alignment, or hire somebody that will do that for you in the same way. So that's number one, how you should be a good guess is approach it from the standpoint of like, this is a way for you to build relationships, and you don't build relationships through AI.
Steve Guberman (11:01.19)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Rhodes (11:04.322)
That's not how it's done. And bring value, prepare for your interview, listen to their show ahead of time, see what you can do to bring value to them as well. My strategy this year is pod swapping. You know, my team booked me on your show and I said, Steve, I want to have you on my show too, because it's only a one way conversation if you have me on your show, but I don't get to know you as well. And I'm looking forward to that. you gotta, it's gotta go two ways.
Steve Guberman (11:28.644)
Yeah, same.
Yeah, I love that. How do people, how do guests, so.
I'm using somebody or I'm doing it myself to find shows I want to be on doing outreach. I've got a media kid. I've got topics in mind. The topics are specific to the audience that the host is pitching to. In our case, it's agency founders. How do guests use that for getting new business? Like what's the point of doing it and how do they leverage that?
Jessica Rhodes (12:00.672)
Yeah, so it's an opportunity to educate. So speaking to agency owners, whatever strategy that you are executing for your clients, whether you're an ads agency, website development agency, your clients are trying to learn how to achieve an outcome, which is probably new business. Whatever agency you're running, the goal for your clients is they want more business. And they need to be educated on how to do that. And they need to trust the person that they're hiring.
Agencies are a dime a dozen. There's a lot of us out there. And when people shop around on websites, it becomes a price comparison. Who's got the nicest website and people get overwhelmed. get decision fatigue, but when they hear the founder on a podcast and they hear the story and they hear the personality, they hear them interacting with a host. hear the host edifying them and talking about why they're great. puts you into a category of one. You know, I'm in a very small.
niche of podcast booking. There's not as many podcast booking agencies as there are website development agencies. But even so, there's a lot of choices out there, but nobody has my story. Nobody has my personality, my set of values, and that is what differentiates your agency and also what makes you an authority. So that's just kind of the why.
but providing that education that compels the audience to feel connected to you emotionally, sharing your story so people can see that it's not just what you know, every agency owner's got some expertise. but it's your story that sets you apart and then giving a really effective call to action that guides the listener to the next step. one of our clients who's an agency owner closed a six figure contract from podcast guesting and he drives people to a learning center on his website where they've got a ton of webinars and trainings.
And so if somebody hears you on a podcast and gets a lot of value and they want more, show them where they can get even more value, where they can opt in, get on your email list, book a call with you.
Steve Guberman (13:57.159)
All right, so get them into the funnel with the knowledge base that the founder has. And that's the whole point of being a guest is I got to position myself as an expert. And so let me go on as many shows as I can to share as much information as I can with as many ears as we'll listen. One or two might hear it and be like, oh, I want to learn more about Susan Smith. Susan says, yeah, check out my website. We've got all these webinars on fill in the blank.
Jessica Rhodes (14:01.581)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Rhodes (14:22.124)
Yeah. And also use it as a networking strategy. lot of our clients who are agency owners have a pretty predictable percentage of podcasts hosts who will end up saying, know what, actually need a new website. need somebody to run my ads. I've just interviewed you on my podcasters trust there. And it's, I share that because that is a way to get clients from podcast casting, but you have to be careful because in no way should you go into podcast interviews being like,
Steve Guberman (14:40.016)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Rhodes (14:50.156)
Like I'm not sitting here going like, do I get Steve to be my client? That's like not even, but it's just strategic, right? When you get on podcasts consistently where the host is somebody that could be a client or maybe they have people in their audience that can be a client. It's just, it's an, it's all not a numbers game. That's not the right phrase for what we're talking about here, but it's like, you have to be visible to people who are your ideal client. And when you do a good job of sharing value, sharing stories, building relationships,
Steve Guberman (14:54.234)
Man, I didn't even see this one come and you sandbagged me!
Jessica Rhodes (15:20.074)
you're going to be top of mind when that person either knows somebody who needs what you have or needs what you have.
Steve Guberman (15:27.204)
Yeah. So for agencies that are working on their like marketing strategy that they'll probably not execute because their marketing strategy comes from like one like pizza on a Friday. Let's all get together and have some ideas that we're never going to execute. But when the ones that do put it together do want to execute it, is it better for them to launch their own show or build a guesting strategy or both or like which one? What's the what's the right mix there for them?
Jessica Rhodes (15:53.923)
I always recommend, I will say 99 % of the time, I recommend being a guest first. Now I love podcasting. I have my own podcast and there's a ton of value there. I think it's really good to be a guest for at least a few months before you start your own show. And also know that they are two different strategies. I love my podcast because I have consistent content created on different topics. I'm building relationships with my guests, which is expanding my network.
there's so much value in having your own podcast. Being a guest is different. It's me to get visibility and introduce myself to new audiences every time I'm on a show. But usually when I'm being interviewed, I'm talking kind of about the same topics just in front of new audiences. Whereas I have my podcast, I have one audience, but I'm bringing them different topics every single week. So they're both super effective, but they're different.
And being a guest first is at least a way for you to see, you like podcasting? Because some people are guests and they're like, I don't want to my own show. I just want to be a guest.
Steve Guberman (16:55.822)
Yeah, which is funny because when I first launched this, had a friend who had a podcast and he was like, why don't you come on and let's talk about what you're doing now. I was so intimidated and I really didn't know what to expect. And I really didn't like it. And I liked having the conversation with him, but I didn't really like where the content was going to go afterwards. And it just seemed kind of like nebulous. but then when it was like the idea of, I've got to do my own marketing. I don't want to do my own marketing. I'll launch a podcast and I will.
Use this as my content funnel and it's been a great tool for so many, so many different reasons. I definitely didn't expect it to turn into revenue and it has, the revenue that it has turned into has been the shortest sales cycle. Like, I watched episode, whatever on YouTube. I want to hire you to take my money. Like a few times, which is mind boggling. and, but giving for me, I want to give platform to other people. And if.
Jessica Rhodes (17:43.053)
Yes.
Jessica Rhodes (17:51.235)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (17:52.067)
This is episode one fifty five. Never thought it would hit one hundred and fifty five. But I've been able to like give platform to voices that might otherwise not have that. And that's super valuable to me. So, sure, it turns into money. Also great. But first and foremost, like I want it to be a valuable tool to people in our industry. And I want to elevate voices in our industry that are typically not elevated. Like. I'll go on a slight tangent here.
Jessica Rhodes (18:03.555)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (18:13.72)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (18:20.294)
Our industry is like 90 percent white dudes and I want to like punch that stat in the face. I absolutely hate it as an older white dude. I hate it. And so if I can give women owned agencies, women owned, you female owned service centers or BIPOC or like anybody else who's not typically part of the greater, I want them to have whatever audience they can have. So I turned down a lot of. Like just old white dudes who want to talk about their agencies.
Jessica Rhodes (18:27.118)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (18:37.518)
Hmm.
Jessica Rhodes (18:44.162)
love that.
Steve Guberman (18:50.724)
And I'm, I'm okay with that. Like whatever. Yeah. I, I'm very, very much okay with that, but anyway, wrong tangent.
Jessica Rhodes (18:52.856)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (18:58.318)
love that. No, I totally agree with everything you're saying. And, you know, you have to be interested. And if you want to have a podcast and you want it to actually bring you business and pay off, you've got to want to do it long term. Like you're 155 episodes in, I've been doing my podcast since 2014. Like, it takes time for it to pay off, but you have to consistently be curious and interested in interviewing people or creating new content. Because I've had the same thing where people are like,
They come to a sales call, they're like, my God, no, I know you. listen to all your podcasts. Like I'm here, take my money, you know? And it's so exciting when that happens.
Steve Guberman (19:32.72)
So 12 years in, how do you keep it fresh and switch it up and re, do you bring outsiders in to look at you on how you're doing it?
Jessica Rhodes (19:41.753)
with the podcast specifically. You mean, yeah. So I've changed the name a couple of times. I've changed the format. It's it's the spice of life. That's what keeps it going. It hasn't been the same format the whole time. So I would say the majority of the episodes are interviews. They're guest expert interviews. I did have a hiatus. There was about a year or two where I didn't put out new episodes and then I started putting out. So there was a little bit of a break there.
Steve Guberman (19:43.547)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (20:08.064)
And then when I had my business partner, we co-hosted a number of episodes where she and I just had a topic and we just taught. I've done some solo episodes. So I think how we keep it going is changing it up. When I get bored, I change it up. I'm not afraid to take a break. If I'm just stuck, I don't know what to talk about. I'm like, I'm my own boss. I don't have to put on an episode if I don't have something good to put out. So it's like giving yourself that freedom to know that this is the one type of marketing that is a little bit more of an art form than...
Steve Guberman (20:19.238)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (20:35.66)
you know, like running an ad set, which is all numbers and all of that. But it's like, this is a way for us to, you know, build relationships and have conversation and create content that people enjoy listening to. And that shouldn't be forced.
Steve Guberman (20:48.89)
Yeah, I like that. Switching it up, you're the boss. You get to kind of call the shots. And I've toyed with the idea of doing some solo. I've got like 3000 itemized topics that I pull from my one-on-one coaching. Like I'll be on a call and they're digging in this one issue and I'll open up a Google Doc and just dump it in there and kind of brain vomit for a minute. Michael, that would be a really cool, whatever, 12 minute episode that I can just riff and give some info out. I have some friends, clients who also have podcasts and they'll get together and do like
our podcasting strategy session and plan out the next six months or a year or whatever. And I've never really done that. I've not like put too much thought into it other than I keep an ongoing list of the kind of people I want to have on and names in particular. I believe in manifesting that and like being able to like get some names on like people that I'm just blown away. I would spend time with me on a podcast. So yeah, that alone is pretty, pretty exciting for me.
Jessica Rhodes (21:40.93)
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know how you kind of like batch your episodes. I know some podcast hosts are like super booked up. So they'll record today and it'll go live in three months. I'm, I don't batch that far in advance because like for me, once I make a episode and I like it, I want it to get out there in in a, you know, in sooner, uh, in a sooner amount of time so people can hear it. So I don't do personally the whole like year long planning. mean, I'm sure there's nothing to be said for that. They're probably doing very well, but I like to
Steve Guberman (21:59.419)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (22:11.864)
I like my marketing and my content to be very responsive to the energy of now. I don't know what your thoughts on that, but that's, I feel like I'm a little bit different than some other podcasters who do like long-term planning.
Steve Guberman (22:18.032)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (22:26.328)
When I switched to weekly, I needed to have a bank in like a bank of episodes, like in the can, as they say, because the pressure of it was really high. So like this episode, we're recording it a month in advance from when it's scheduled to come out. And that's if I don't push my next episode, it's probably gonna get pushed a week. So we're five weeks out from this is coming out. So not too bad, but I've got it. I've got seven, seven recorded, six recorded ahead of this one. So, yeah, I'm fine with that. I.
Jessica Rhodes (22:34.092)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (22:40.504)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (22:48.142)
That's reasonable.
Jessica Rhodes (22:53.261)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (22:56.9)
I don't like the pressure of, shoot, I don't want to like force a guest so I have something put out next week. So I want to have a buffer. My podcast producer likes when I have a buffer that way he doesn't have a ton of pressure and he lives in a part of the world where I don't want to give him too much pressure because he's got enough stuff going on enough other stresses. So yeah, for multiple reasons, I'd like to have it pushed out. Any, any.
Jessica Rhodes (23:16.814)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (23:20.556)
Yeah, I think that's reasonable.
Steve Guberman (23:22.574)
Like final thoughts on like, what's the key for a guesting strategy for thinking to agency owners. you know, I think about it from, we own this vertical or we own this service, we own this, we just do WordPress. Like should they, should they be looking to get in front of people in their verticals or does it really just not matter? You know, as long as they're getting content that they can repurpose.
Jessica Rhodes (23:30.668)
Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (23:46.389)
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge part of it too. Repurposing content is a way that you can get a return on investment from podcast casting, even if you're not getting clients from the audience of that show. But don't be afraid to get outside of your own industry. If you have a marketing agency, you don't just have to be on marketing podcasts. You can go in front of really niche business industry podcasts, like manufacturing podcasts and like...
HVAC podcast, like what are all of these different types of businesses that you can sell your services to and you'll be the one marketing agency on that podcast versus a marketing podcast that maybe every episode is some different marketing agency owner. So don't be afraid to switch up the type of show that you're getting on and switch up your messaging to a big piece of the puzzle with getting clients from podcast guessing is really nailing your messaging, nailing your story bank so that you have stories that resonate with the audience and just keep building relationships because
People hire agencies that they're referred to. So build up your network of referral partners, which can definitely be those podcast hosts.
Steve Guberman (24:42.689)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Guberman (24:47.194)
Yeah, love that. All right. My I like to believe that I'm the only one that does rapid fire questions. So I'm to switch over to some rapid fire questions. You can tell me if I'm wrong off the air about that one. But the first is what is a tool? And I use the word tool loosely. It can be something digital, an app, a gadget or whatever that you look back and you're like, how the heck did I live without this thing?
Jessica Rhodes (25:11.052)
I hate that I want to say chat chibi tea, but I would be lying if I.
Steve Guberman (25:13.606)
And in the past I've said you can't use AI as the answer, but I didn't say that this time. So yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (25:20.088)
I have so many issues with chat GPT just like AI as a whole, but like honestly I use it a lot and I'm like, wow, this saves me a lot of time. So I gotta be honest.
Steve Guberman (25:25.221)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (25:31.248)
Yeah, I love it. Okay. What's something that you're binging these days? You can't get enough of a show, a book, a podcast, an audio something.
Jessica Rhodes (25:39.608)
thriller novels. I can't get enough of a good thriller novel. read a ton of Frieda McFadden books. She wrote The Housemaid. just I love a thriller novel on my Kindle.
Steve Guberman (25:50.906)
Love that. I literally just started reading in September. I've in my entire life, I've only read like spiritual books or books for work, business related things. The whole bookshelf, this is like all like spiritual and business behind me. And some of my fiance was like, have you ever read this book? And I was like, no, I'm not reading books. And I just fell in love with, I've read like seven of this guy's 15 books. My goal for 2026 to read all of them. And then I found a few other offers authors rather, and I read every single day now.
Jessica Rhodes (25:52.012)
Yeah.
Steve Guberman (26:19.974)
And I've never been a reader like high school. didn't read any of the books they said college. I read any of the books they said. So I can relate. Yeah.
Jessica Rhodes (26:24.526)
Literally, no, I'm the same way. I just started reading in 2025 consistently like fiction books because I was trying to get my daughter to read because she is 10 years old and has ADHD and has no interest in reading. And I'm like, I have to lead by example. And I just started reading. So I'm like, she has to see mom, dad, her brother reading. And it's working now. She just started reading a book that she really likes. So yeah.
Steve Guberman (26:35.27)
Hmm. Yep.
Steve Guberman (26:43.223)
Cool. I love that. She's got it. That's got to be such a self-esteem boost for her to be able to finish a book Yeah, all right final rapid-fire question for you is a very personal for you best piece of business advice dad ever gave you
Jessica Rhodes (26:58.328)
Follow the money.
Steve Guberman (27:01.286)
Tell me more. What does that mean for you?
Jessica Rhodes (27:02.52)
So, okay, so that means for me, a lot of business owners, they start a business around doing something that they like, but he's like, what is in demand? What do people want to pay for? Follow the money. He would always say, if people are asking you for something and you could refer out, or you could create a new revenue stream and figure out how to offer that, follow the money.
Steve Guberman (27:21.638)
I love that. Jessica Rhodes, founder of Interview Connections. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. Grateful for your experience and wisdom. Share your website link in the show notes and grateful for your time today.
Jessica Rhodes (27:35.096)
Thanks, Steve.