How to get guests on your podcast when they think they are not good enough

Sunny Ray · Aug 18, 2026 · 7 min read

To get guests on your podcast, decide who you want to meet, build a verified list of those people, and invite them in a short, personal message that makes the episode feel easy and about them. Then send enough invitations that a normal yes rate fills your calendar, follow up politely, and make the experience so good that guests send you more guests. For a B2B show, the best guests are not celebrities. They are the buyers, investors and partners you want relationships with.

The surprise most new hosts run into is not that guests are too busy. It is that many of them do not think they are good enough to be on a show. Fix that, and your yes rate changes.

Start with who you want to meet, not who is famous

Most advice on getting podcast guests is written for people chasing big names. That is a hard game and, for a B2B founder, mostly the wrong one. A famous guest brings an audience. A buyer brings a relationship.

So start your guest list the way you would start a sales list. Which companies do you sell to? Which titles inside them? Which investors write cheques at your stage? Which partners serve the same customers you do? Those people are your guest list. A show built this way does business development every time you record.

Why guests say no (it is not time)

On August 11 I had a debrief with a consultant who had already been on our show. He had been inviting guests to his own podcast through LinkedIn and email, mostly on his own, and it had been slow. When we dug into why, the recurring friction was not calendars. It was that prospects worried they would not be "good enough" for the podcast.

That makes sense when you think about it. Most operators have never been interviewed. They picture a studio, a famous host, a polished guest with perfect answers. They are not sure they have a story worth telling. So they politely decline, or more often, they do not reply at all.

If your invitation does not address that fear, no amount of follow-up will.

How to remove the "not good enough" fear

Tell them exactly why you picked them

One specific line about their work. Not "I love your content", but "I saw you moved your whole sales team to inbound last year, and I want to hear how". It tells them you know who they are and that their experience is the point of the episode.

Make the format sound easy

Say how long it takes and what it involves. "30 minutes, remote, we handle everything." People are less nervous about something they can picture.

Say it is a conversation, not a test

On our side, guests have a short pre-interview first. It is a relaxed call where we talk through their story and the questions I plan to ask. One founder we work with frames his pre-interviews as casual, no-recording calls specifically to reduce guest nerves. By the time the recording starts, nothing is a surprise.

Tell them what they get

They keep the full recording and clips. They get an episode page they can share. That turns the episode from a favor into something useful for their own business.

Show them people like them

If your past guests are operators and founders, say so. Seeing peers on the show tells a nervous guest that they belong there.

Building the guest list

Treat the list like a sales list, because it is one.

• Pull contacts from a data source filtered by your ideal guest: industry, title, company size.
• Verify every email before you send. Bounces hurt your sending domains.
• Remove anyone you would not want on the show. An episode with the wrong guest is worse than no episode.
• Split the list by type: buyers, investors, partners. Each needs a slightly different reason why.

Invite at volume

The other half of getting guests is simple arithmetic. If a fraction of invitations turn into recordings, you need to send enough invitations to fill the calendar.

On August 10 I loaded a 664-contact list into Instantly as a show-invite campaign and launched it live during a call. Not a special event, just a normal week. That is the volume it takes to run a show every week without scrambling for guests.

A few rules keep volume from becoming spam:

• Send from separate, warmed sending domains, never your main one.
• Keep each mailbox sending low numbers a day.
• Keep every invite short and about the guest.
• No links in the first touch. The booking link comes after they say yes.

Follow-ups that are not pushy

Most yeses come after a follow-up. The trick is that every follow-up still has to give something.

• Second touch: a fresh reason they fit, or a related episode they might like.
• Third touch: a polite exit. "No worries if the timing is not right, happy to keep a spot for later in the year."

What to skip: "Just bumping this up", "Did you see my last email?", and anything that makes the guest feel guilty. You are inviting them to something nice. Act like it.

What happens after they say yes

The yes is the start of the relationship, not the end of the job.

1. Answer the same day with a booking link for the pre-interview.
2. Prep properly. I build a doc on every guest before the pre-interview and share my screen to show the questions I prepared. Guests notice, and it calms them down more than anything I could say.
3. Book the recording slot during the pre-interview, before the call ends.
4. Run a great episode. Make them look good.
5. Send them the recording, clips and episode page.
6. Book a short debrief. That is where the business conversation happens, if there is one.

A guest who had a good experience tells other people. On a B2B show, that referral is often your next guest and sometimes your next customer.

How far in advance should you invite a guest?

Two to four weeks of runway is comfortable. Busy people book a few weeks out, and you want time for the pre-interview. Inviting continuously, every week, keeps the calendar full without last-minute scrambles.

Mistakes that cost you guests

A few habits quietly kill yes rates.

Leading with your audience size. B2B guests come for the conversation and the recording, not your download numbers. If the numbers are small, they hurt you. If they are big, they make the email about you.

Sending a media kit in the first email. It turns an invitation into a pitch. Save it for the people who ask.

Inviting the wrong person at the right company. A junior title says yes easily and the episode does nothing for your business. Invite the person whose time you want.

Long gaps between yes and recording. Excitement fades. Book the pre-interview right away and the recording during it.

The long game

By early August I had done about 500 interviews on The Sunny Ray Show, and Charles had done around 3,000 on his own shows. Neither of us got there by landing a few big names. We got there by inviting the right people, every week, and treating each guest like the most important person in the room for 30 minutes.

That is how you get podcast guests. Pick the right people, make it easy for them to say yes, and do it consistently.

If you want the invitations written in your voice and sent for you, start your show.

Frequently asked questions