How to Get Booked on the Top 50 Podcasts That Actually Move Revenue
Picture this: Itâs 6:47 a.m. Iâm on my third coffee, scrolling through a founderâs calendar. Sixty-three podcast appearances in nine months. Total closed revenue from all of them? Zero. Not one demo. Not one signed contract. Just a lot of âloved the episode!â messages and 1.8 million downloads that bought exactly nothing.
Then I opened another founderâs calendar. One single podcast appearance. A show Iâd never even heard of. Eleven thousand downloads. Fourteen million dollars in closed ACV inside ninety days.
I stared at the screen so long my coffee went cold.
That was the morning I realised 99 % of podcast âstrategiesâ are pure theatre.
The dirty little secret nobody in corporate tech PR wants to admit
Most podcast bookings are comfort food for foundersâ egos.
You get to talk for an hour, feel smart, collect compliments, maybe even hit the âclip for LinkedIn.
Meanwhile the sales team is still sending cold emails.
The podcasts that actually move revenue donât feel good in the moment.
They feel slightly uncomfortable. Sometimes they feel like therapy. Often they feel like confessing in public.
Because the episodes that close deals arenât the ones where you sound perfect.
Theyâre the ones where you sound like the only person whoâs actually been through the fire.
The four types of podcasts in 2026 (only one type prints money)
Type 1âââVanity Giants (Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Diary of a CEO) Downloads: 500kâ8 M Revenue moved: almost zero for 98 % of guests Why: listeners are consumers, not buyers
Type 2âââMid-Tier Ego Shows (50kâ300k downloads) Everyoneâs favourite âI got booked on [cool show]â flex Revenue moved: occasional $50kâ$200k deal if youâre lucky
Type 3âââNiche Authority Shows (10kâ40k downloads) The ones your competitors pretend donât exist Revenue moved: $1 Mâ$20 M deals if you say the right thing
Type 4âââThe Silent Killers (3kâ18k downloads) The ones nobody screenshots for LinkedIn Revenue moved: $5 Mâ$80 M+ deals while you sleep
Every founder chases Type 1 and 2. The ones printing pipeline live in Type 3 and 4.
The episode that closed $14 million while the founder was on vacation
Letâs call him Marcus.
He runs a supply-chain AI company. $22 M ARR. Enterprise sales cycles that used to take 14 months.
He got booked on a podcast called âThe Private Equity Operating Partnerâ 9,400 average downloads, host is ex-Bain Capital, guests are mostly anonymous ops people who fix broken portfolio companies.
Marcus almost cancelled. âNobodyâs ever heard of this show.â
He went on anyway.
For 84 minutes he told the story of how he lost 73 % of his revenue in 2023, fired 60 % of his team, and rebuilt without taking a single dollar of new funding.
No slides. No âfive key takeaways.â Just the truth, slightly too raw.
The host loved it.
Episode dropped on a Wednesday.
By Friday Marcus had 41 inbound messages from private equity operating partners asking for demos.
By Monday he had three term sheets for new investment at a 40 % higher valuation.
By Christmas he had closed $14 million in new ACV from three portfolio companies who heard the episode while driving to their kidsâ soccer games.
The four questions that get you booked on Silent Killer shows
The agencies that actually deliver bookings on revenue-moving podcasts donât send cold pitches.
They send one of four emails:
âI lost $11 M in 2024 and rebuilt without new fundingâââhappy to share the ugly details if useful.â
âWeâre the only company in our category that survived 2024 without layoffsâââhereâs what we did differently.â
âI turned down a $180 M acquisition because the buyer wanted to fire my teamâââwant to talk about it?â
âHereâs the one metric nobody tracks that predicted every winner (and loser) in our space last year.â
Open rate on these emails: 91 % Booking rate: 68 %
The âboringâ shows that closed the biggest deals in 2025
Here are ten Silent Killer podcasts that moved more B2B revenue last year than the entire Top 100 Apple charts combined:
The Private Equity Operating Partner (11k downloads)
Revenue Engine (8k)
The SaaS CFO (14k)
Enterprise Ready (9k)
The CRO Playbook (12k)
Back From the Brink (7kâââexploded during market recovery)
The Turnaround Table (6k)
Category Design Radio (15k)
The Exit Ready Podcast (10k)
Mid-Market Growth Secrets (9k)
Average listener profile:
$50 Mâ$500 M ARR company
Personally authorised to sign $1 Mâ$40 M contracts Listens on 1.8Ă speed while running or driving Never posts on LinkedIn about podcasts
One placement on any of these shows is worth 47 placements on âvanityâ shows.
The mid-market recovery podcasts nobody saw coming
After the 2024â2025 downturn, a whole new category exploded: âhow we survived when everyone said we were deadâ shows.
These became pure rocket fuel for mid-market PR strategies.
Founders who admitted they almost went bankrupt, then showed exactly how they clawed back, became instant heroes to every other founder doing $10â$100 M who thought they were alone.
One cybersecurity founder went on âBack From the Brink,â told the story of going from 110 employees to 11 and back to 180 in 18 months.
Result: 180 inbound leads in 30 days. $9.2 M new ARR. Three competitors copied his go-to-market and publicly credited the episode.
Why your current PR agency will never get you on these shows
Because theyâre still measuring success in âdownloadsâ and âimpressions.â
The new game is measured in closed deals.
And closed deals come from being the only guest who told the truth when everyone else was still pretending.
The exact 2026 playbook the pros are using
Stop chasing big names. Start chasing the hosts who actually make buying decisions.
Build the âscar storyâ packet
The night you almost went bankrupt
The customer love letters (unprompted)
The one metric nobody else tracks
The decision you made that everyone said was stupid but saved the company
Pitch with vulnerability, not authority Subject line: âI lost 73 % of revenue and rebuilt without fundingâââhappy to share the receipts if usefulâ
Deliver the moment on air that makes the host say âIâve never heard anyone admit that before.â
That moment = the clip that gets shared in Slack channels of Fortune 1000 companies.
The part most founders get wrong
You donât need to be polished. You donât need to be real.
The episodes that move revenue arenât the ones where you sound like a LinkedIn thought leader.
Theyâre the ones where you sound like the only person whoâs actually been through what the listener is going through right now.
The step to take
Stop collecting downloads.
Start collecting scars.
Because in 2026, the podcast that closes your biggest deal wonât be the one with the most listeners.
Itâll be the one where someone heard you say the thing theyâve been afraid to admit out loud.
