How to get on podcasts as a solopreneur

Getting on podcasts as a solopreneur takes the same three things any guest needs: a specific angle, a list of shows whose recent episodes actually match it, and a pitch that leads with the listener's problem instead of your bio. What is different for a one-person business is time. There is no marketing hire to run outreach while you deliver the work, so the honest first question is whether you have 3 to 6 hours a week to spend on it, not just whether you know how.

Why solopreneur outreach is different from a company doing it

A company pitching podcasts on a founder's behalf can split the work: someone researches shows, someone drafts pitches, someone tracks replies. A solopreneur is that someone, on top of doing the client work the pitch is supposed to sell.

That changes the calculation more than it changes the tactics. The angle-building, research and follow-up steps below are not different for a one-person business. What differs is that every hour spent on them is an hour not spent serving clients or selling directly, and there is no one else to absorb it.

Full-time self-employment in the US reached 16.77 million people in 2025, up from 16.74 million in 2024 and the highest annual level on record for the series (Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, 2026). More solopreneurs means more solopreneurs pitching the same business podcasts, which raises the bar on how specific your angle needs to be to stand out in a host's inbox.

A separate survey of more than 1,000 solopreneurs by Simply Business found 61% were surprised how difficult it turned out to be handling every business function themselves (Simply Business, "Power of One" 2025 Solopreneur Report). Podcast outreach is exactly the kind of function that gets dropped first when time is tight, which is worth naming before committing to a DIY plan you will not actually run for more than two weeks.

What angle should a solopreneur pitch instead of "my business"

Hosts do not book guests to talk about a company. They book guests to have one specific conversation their audience will find useful. "I run a bookkeeping business for freelancers" is a job description, not an episode. "Why freelancers under-report quarterly tax by an average amount, and the one habit that fixes it" is an angle a host can build a segment around.

Pick the narrowest version of your expertise that still has a real audience. A solopreneur's advantage here is genuine: you likely made every decision in the business yourself, so you can speak to trade-offs a spokesperson at a larger company would have to check with someone else before answering. Use that. Name the specific mistake, decision or process you can explain from direct experience, not the general category your business sits in.

Write this down in one sentence before you write a single pitch email. If you cannot state the episode idea in one sentence, a host will not be able to either, and the pitch gets skipped.

Where should a solopreneur find shows worth pitching

Start with shows that have already covered adjacent topics to yours, since that is evidence the audience cares and the host is willing to book outside guests. The podcast directory groups shows by category, including an entrepreneurship category that is a reasonable starting filter for solo-business angles before you narrow further by recent episode topics.

A directory only gets you a candidate list. Confirm two things about each show before pitching: the show is still active (check the last two to three episode dates), and it actually interviews outside guests rather than running as a solo-host format. Both take under a minute per show once you know what to look for, and skipping this step is the single most common reason solopreneurs waste a week's outreach hours on dead shows.

Resist the instinct to build a list of fifty shows in one sitting. A shorter list of ten to fifteen genuinely well-matched shows, researched properly, will outperform a long list pitched with generic copy every time.

How should the pitch itself be written

Lead with the angle and why this specific audience would care about it, not with your title or company history. A host deciding whether to book you is deciding whether the proposed conversation fits their show, not whether you are impressive in general.

Keep the proof section short and relevant. One or two lines establishing why you can speak to this specific angle is enough. A long list of credentials that do not connect directly to the pitched topic adds reading time without adding confidence.

State a proportionate next step. Ask if the angle fits, rather than asking for a call before the host has decided the idea is worth pursuing. If you are writing this yourself, the pitch generator turns a stated angle and proof into a structured draft, which is faster than starting from a blank email each time and keeps the structure consistent across every show on your list.

What is a realistic weekly time budget for doing this alone

Plan for 3 to 6 hours a week if you want the process to actually work: roughly an hour of show research, two to three hours writing and personalizing pitches, and an hour on follow-ups and scheduling once replies start coming in. That is not a one-week sprint number. Reply rates on cold podcast pitches are low even when the pitch is good, so this needs to run for two to three months before judging whether it is working.

Fewer hours than that is where most solopreneur outreach quietly fails. Under an hour a week is not enough time to research a show properly, so pitches get generic, replies drop further, and the guest concludes podcasts "don't work" when the real cause was an under-resourced process, not a bad channel.

If you genuinely do not have 3 to 6 hours a week free, be honest about that before starting rather than after two abandoned weeks. A partially run outreach process wastes the hours it did get without producing the placements that would have justified them.

Should a solopreneur do this alone or pay for it

It depends on two things: your hourly value in the business and whether the weekly hours above are realistic most weeks, not just this week.

If client delivery already fills the available hours, the honest math usually favors paying for it. Convokast runs podcast booking at a flat $499 a month, month to month, with a minimum of one guaranteed interview booked per month; you approve every target show before it is pitched. That does not include production, clip editing or paid promotion, only the booking process itself. For a solopreneur, the relevant comparison is not the fee against a marketing budget line, it is the fee against 3 to 6 hours a week of your own time for a full quarter.

If the time does exist and you would rather build the skill in-house, DIY is a reasonable choice, and the one-sheet builder is a fast way to get the angle and proof organized into something you can reuse across every pitch rather than rewriting your credentials each time.

The next step

If you have the weekly hours and want to run this yourself, start with one sentence describing your angle, then use the pitch generator to turn it into a draft you can send today. If the hours are not realistically there most weeks, talk to Convokast about booking and put the time back into the business instead.