How to pitch the Hello Monday podcast

We love pitches at Hello Monday! We love it when people who love and listen to our show get in touch to say they have great ideas for guests. As 2023 gets started, we're just drawing up our episode list for the first half of the year. Often, people ask how to pitch us. Here's a primer on how to be successful at it:

?? Understand what our show is about!

This is the FIFTH YEAR of our show, friends. And this year’s theme is more than a title. It’s an embodiment of everything that I believe. This year, I’m going all in on the Case for Optimism.?

Why optimism? We need it. Things are changing so fast around us. Pandemics. Climate change. Social unrest. The integrity of our elections. Layoffs. A recession. Artificial intelligence that can write a love story better than I can—in Biblical language! in less than 10 seconds! How do any of us make sense of all of this change, if not through fear??

As humans, we have a negativity bias. We look for the ways in which these challenges may harm us. This mindset quickly leads us to fear. But if we act from fear, our future will reflect it. If, instead, we embrace optimism, we set ourselves up to be more equipped for our future’s unique challenges. Optimism is the promise that we have agency, and it’s our own belief that we can exercise that agency in any given moment to create better circumstances for ourselves, better solutions to our most intractable problems, better lives for our children and their children. It’s a bet on humanity.

This year’s guests will bring us tangible strategies for how we can shift our mindsets, optimize how we work, and deepen our connections with each other. This is the stuff that matters most. This is where meaning comes from.

?? Email your pitch to [email protected]

We receive ideas on so many channels that we can't always address them all. But if you email us at [email protected], we'll always get back to you.

?? Tell us why your guest idea fits. Answer the following questions:

What's the takeaway for our listeners? How will listening to this guest help them in a way that listening to a previous guest did not??

Is there another podcast or video that will provide us a sense of their interview style?

Are they promoting a book or product, and if so, what?

How many followers do they have on LinkedIn, and how often do they share??

Do they have a presence on another social platform, or a newsletter or podcast??

Are they willing to share the episode???

?? Listen to the show

This seems obvious, but many people don't listen before they pitch us. More than a show, we are a community. We want to invite our guests to be part of this community, and to do that, we need you to step up, too. The most valuable thing we have is our time, full stop. If you'd like us to spend it with you, please spend it with us. Here are a couple of episodes from our archives:

Here's one of my very favorite episodes:

Here's an episode that is reliably a listener favorite: