How Founders Use Rephonic to Get Featured on Podcasts

If you're a founder looking to get on podcasts as a guest, you're in the right place. This article is all about how founders use Rephonic to book podcast interviews.

Podcast interviews aren't about shamelessly promoting your own business. They're actually where people buy into you. So, it's more about strategic brand building than making sales.

We built Rephonic to be the best podcast database for founders, including established founders, startup founders and aspiring entrepreneurs, to use when they want to book winning podcast guest spots.

Key Takeaways

1. Famous founders guest strategically, prioritizing audience fit over size.
2. Use Rephonic to find relevant, active, guest-friendly shows.
3. Episodes search reveals where similar founders are being interviewed now.

Examples of famous Founders on podcasts

Alex and Leila Hormozi

Alex and Leila built Acquisition.com into a $100M+ portfolio by helping successful business owners scale past $10 million in revenue. They’re also strategic angel investors, backing bootstrapped businesses through their company. As well as hosting his own business podcast, The Game, Alex is well known for sharing no-nonsense actionable advice through books, social media, and long form interviews.

We've written about Alex's podcast guesting strategy before (you can find that article here). Since 2017, Alex and Leila have guested separately or as a couple on well over 100 podcasts. Although some of their interviews are on podcasts with audiences in the 500-2K range, they reserve most of their time for well established shows such as The School of Greatness (380k+ listeners per episode), Impact Theory (47k+) and Diary of a CEO (155k+)

Melanie Perkins

The co-founder and CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins, has grown this online graphics business from a small Perth-based startup in 2013 to a $26 billion global creative force by focusing on accessibility, simplicity and storytelling. She uses podcast interviews to humanize her brand and share her entrepreneurial journey of success stories, rejections and lessons learned.

Melanie's podcast interviews range back as far as 2014, and she continues to guest on a wide range of podcast sizes, from small shows like Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings in 2024 through to her 2025 interview with Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (82.9k) and How I Built This with Guy Raz (445.7k) back in 2021.

Josh Elledge

Josh Elledge is a US Navy Veteran turned serial entrepreneur. He's the founder of a 7-figure online business, the host of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast, and most recently, founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence, a B2B consulting agency helping business leaders create effective networks.

Six months into 2025 and he's already shared his story on 10 podcasts this year. His message is all around building genuine, strategic relationships, so Josh focuses his guest appearances on smaller niche B2B podcasts. That's an effective strategy because audience size is only one consideration when choosing a business podcast to pitch as a guest. I'd argue that a podcast's audience demographics are far more important than their size.

To run successful podcast guesting campaigns, each of these founders needed to:

• Find suitable podcasts
• Get contact info to pitch
• Write compelling outreach emails
• Get tips on how to be a great podcast guest

Of course, you don't have to be a famous founder or host your own podcast to be a guest. Any type of founder can score podcast interviews. These are some common founder niches, along with how many podcasts are listed in Rephonic's search results when you search for this keyword and apply the guests and active filters.

Examples of podcasts looking for Founder guests

*The number of active podcasts that accept guests.

Just because you’re a SaaS founder doesn’t mean you should automatically pitch SaaS podcasts. Your guesting strategy should reflect your goals.

If you want to build influence among peers and investors, then SaaS podcasts make sense.
But if your aim is brand visibility or customer acquisition, look for shows that reflect your audience’s world, not just your own.

Let’s dive into how Rephonic can help you find and pitch the right podcasts—minus the guesswork.

How Founders use Rephonic to find podcasts to guest on

Rephonic's podcast database helps founders find podcasts to guest on thanks to:

• Search and filters
• Keyword alerts
• Podcast data

Although Rephonic lists 3 million+ podcasts, approximately 130K both accept guests and are currently active.

With that many options, it’s tough to know which ones are actually worth your time. So first, identify your goals for appearing on podcast interviews. For example, if your goal is to:

• Increase sales—search for niche podcasts. (Read this article to see why laser-focused shows can have higher sales potential and how you can tailor your interview to suit their audience.)
• Boost awareness of your personal brand—search for podcasts with audiences who appreciate honest conversations and would learn from your stories of business and personal growth.
• Establish yourself as a thought leader—research podcasts where other entrepreneurs and industry leaders have appeared as guests and consider if you have valuable insights to add to the conversation. Consider industry-adjacent podcasts that might also fit your audience profile, too.

Search tool and filters

• Log in to Rephonic
• Click Podcasts by Topic
• Search for your keyword
• Apply filters, e.g. active, listener numbers, demographics

I'll imagine I'm a podcast strategist like Josh Elledge, looking for interviews where I can talk about how founders use networking and relationships to build thriving online businesses—without sacrificing work-life balance.

Here, B2B founders are my core audience, so I'll type that keyword into the Podcasts by Topic search bar and add some filters to narrow down the demographics. I want to concentrate on active podcasts that accept guests and have an entrepreneurial audience interested in personal and business growth.

Because I'm focusing on small niche podcasts, I reduced the listeners filter to 0-30K. In seconds, that narrowed my options from 130k podcasts covering a wide range of topics and audiences, to 3k possibilities with audiences much more relevant to my business.

Want a smart way to get started? Check where founders like you are being interviewed.

For example, you're likely to find new business owners and smaller startup founders appearing on niche shows run by online business owners in your industry. You can use Rephonic's Episodes search tool to find them.

Continuing my theme, I researched founders similar to Josh Elledge (in fact, they've all been guests on his Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast.)

Here's the easiest way to search for competitor podcast appearances:

• Log in to Rephonic
• Select Episodes
• Type the founder's name in inverted commas into the search bar
• Choose newest in the Sort filter
• Use the Guests filter to avoid solo episodes that only mention the person’s name in passing. (This is more common when you're researching a famous founder.)
• Analyze your results to discover patterns and themes in the interviews or shows.

Read How to Write a Podcast Outreach Email With AI (And What to Avoid) to find ideas for pitching your value as a podcast guest.

Keyword alerts

• Login to Rephonic
• Go to My Account and select Alerts

• Tap Create an Alert
• Choose between daily or weekly emails
• Type your keyword in the alert bar
• Tap Create Alert button.

Use keyword alerts so you don't miss out on finding podcasts that didn't quite meet your criteria and therefore didn't show up in your search. When you set an alert, Rephonic will email you daily or weekly to let you know about podcast interviews that have mentioned your keyword.

In this example, my core audience is B2B founders, so I could start by setting an alert using the term “B2B founders.” It’s a logical keyword to help uncover more shows that speak directly to my ideal listeners.

Or, I might set up an alert for “scaling a business" to find podcasts that tackle the kinds of challenges B2B founders care about most.

And because I focus on helping founders grow through networking without burning out I might use “relationship marketing” to find audiences interested in that kind of approach.

Podcast data

You get five pages of data on every podcast in Rephonic's database, including:

• Listeners per episode
• Audience demographics (e.g. location, age, interests, professions)
• Spotify followers
• Previous guests
• Recent topics
• Social followers
• Chart rankings
• Listener feedback
• Contact info

Thanks to this data, you can quickly work out if a show is worth pitching or not.

How Founders get podcast contact info to pitch hosts

Rephonic is the fastest way for founders to get contact info for a podcast.

The podcast database helps you pitch podcasts in two ways:

• Contact info on every podcast page
• Concierge service

Every podcast page has a Contacts button in the top right corner. Press it and you'll get links to all the podcast's contact emails and social addresses.

If the contacts you need don't show up (it happens occasionally) reach out to our Concierge service and we'll research extra details for you. Press Find Contacts for Me and our team will get back to you within 48 hours.

How Founders get podcast guesting tips

Beyond the in-depth info on every podcast page, Rephonic offers two smart resources designed to help founders become top-tier podcast guests.

• Blog
• YouTube channel

Use them separately or together to get a complete guide on using Rephonic to your best advantage, conducting the best possible outreach campaign and being a standout guest.

Final thoughts

Podcast listenership continues to grow and many successful entrepreneurs and founders view podcast guest appearances as a winning marketing and brand-building strategy.

For founders and business owners serious about podcast guesting, Rephonic simplifies outreach by showing you which shows to target and giving you the data to pitch with confidence. And it keeps everything on one platform, so you won't have to keep switching between multiple websites and apps.

Need to find the right shows? Start today with a free 7-day trial.