How Great Thought Leaders Use Podcasts to Scale Influence | Ryan Estes

Founder-led marketing, podcast strategy, and the art of authentic conversation

What makes a podcast truly move the needle for thought leaders? Peter Winick and Ryan Estes explore how founder-led marketing and smart podcast strategy turn conversations into powerful demand engines. Learn how to choose the right shows, show up with purpose, and build lasting credibility through your voice.

What happens when senior executives step into a room and speak with radical candor?

What makes a podcast truly powerful — and worth your time?

In this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, Peter Winick sits down with Ryan Estes, co-founder of Wildcast and Kitcaster, to unpack what separates a great podcast guest — and host — from the rest. Ryan’s work connects CEOs, founders, and thought leaders to the right audiences through strategic podcast placement. His mission: to turn conversations into meaningful distribution.

Ryan explains why founder-led marketing outperforms brand marketing — by as much as 80%. He reveals how showing up authentically on podcasts isn’t just about exposure; it’s about building credibility, creating demand, and sparking conversations that open doors to your ideal clients.

Together, Peter and Ryan explore what makes a podcast worth appearing on. It’s not about chasing the biggest show or the biggest name — it’s about relevance. For many business leaders, the right niche podcast might be the only place where all their potential buyers are listening. Ryan walks through how to identify the right shows for your goals, the importance of energy and chemistry in a podcast conversation, and how to develop the skills — from delivery to lighting — that make you a guest worth remembering.

They also discuss the “guest hygiene” problem: why so many smart leaders fail to prepare properly, neglect to promote their episodes, or treat podcasts like disposable media hits. Ryan argues that building a personal distribution network — your own voice, audience, and presence — is an investment that carries over to every project, every company, and every new venture.

If you’ve been thinking about launching a podcast, or becoming a sought-after guest, this episode is your roadmap to doing it right — and doing it with purpose.

Three Key Takeaways

Founder-led marketing drives results. When leaders speak directly to audiences through podcasts, their message builds far more trust and engagement than traditional brand marketing.
Relevance beats reach. The best podcasts for business growth aren’t always the biggest — they’re the ones where your ideal buyers actually listen and engage.
Consistency builds credibility. Thought leaders who prepare well, promote their episodes, and keep showing up authentically develop a personal brand that outlasts any single company or project.

If this conversation inspired you to think differently about using your voice and platform, take the next step by listening to our episode with Srinivas Rao. He dives deep into how creativity, curiosity, and personal expression fuel powerful thought leadership. Discover how to build an audience that connects with your ideas — not just your brand.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, this is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage and you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest, who is no stranger to podcast, is Ryan Estes. He’s the co-founder at Wildcast and Kitcaster. Kitcaster was acquired recently by Moburst and he’s got a lot of experience in sort of the every angle of the podcast world. So welcome aboard today, Ryan. Peter, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me on your show. Oh, my pleasure. So two questions. Why the hell would anyone host a podcast? And then why would anyone want to even be a guest on one?

Ryan Estes That’s a great question. Um, why would somebody want to be a host of podcast? I think some people are just compelled. There’s a whole sector of people that just never shut up, but did they have anything to say? Yeah, it’s arbitrary, you know? So those people must find microphones and must talk, you know, I, I find podcast hosts to be kind of the most extraordinary, dynamic, curious people out there. You know, we get this amazing opportunity to make connections. And that happens all over the place. But like KitKast is unique largely because you put away your phones, you tuck away the browser, like you’re actually engaged because recording something like bubbles up the butterflies in your belly, you get a little bit of excitement about it. So yeah, I, I love podcasters. Why would people do, uh, be a podcast guest? Now KitKaster, that’s exactly what we do over on KitKasters. We, we work with funded startup founders, entrepreneurs with exits, CEOs. Pretty much the whole C-suite and book them on other people’s podcasts. And largely the biggest reason is they’re looking for distribution. You know, there are the, I’ve met the most brilliant people in the world that have created things in their closet, but they don’t have anybody to tell. And you know, founder led marketing is shown to be like 80% more effective than brand led marketing. So for them getting out there, talking to their audience, talking about their product, talking, about their project, being able to like find an open audience is really important. So. I think it’s important for their business, but I think personally, it also resonates kind of a different vibe too, largely because Peter, you’re an entrepreneur, you understand, you know, probably your friends, your partner, they’re sick of hearing about your business and what you’re working on.

Peter Winick Likely so. The other piece is that the exchange is really, the guest is providing some interesting content or perspective and idea, et cetera, and the host gives to that guest, we’ll talk about the audience in a minute, a platform and an audience that they’ve worked years and years to develop and curate, right? So that exchange of some time is really a cool exchange. The audience gets the value of both sides of the equation, obviously, right. For me, I don’t like to write. It’s not my favorite thing to do. I’m not great at it. It’s something that needs to be done from a marketing perspective, but I have conversations all day and, and as a host, I don’t have anybody on that doesn’t teach me something. So selfishly, you know, I’m learning something. I get to share that I’m building relationships. I’m elevating the brand and unlike media hit, which is kind of a dopamine hit, kind of the assets that you create on a podcast from the, from the perspective of a guest have a much longer shelf life, right? You could use. Derivatives and repurposed pieces of that as collateral, almost in perpetuity. Sort of shift a little bit, the market’s gotten real crowded, right? The world doesn’t, you know, they’re podcasts, right. So how do you make a decision as a guest as to which ones you should be on relative to your specific agenda goals objectives?

Ryan Estes You bet. You know, I think at any given time there might be 2 million active podcasts, which is, feels like a big number, but when you start to really get into the different niches, you know, they’re actually a very small amount, you now, so I think that relevance is going to be the most important thing, you, especially with the folks that we’re working with. Startup founders. I mean, right now I would say 80, 90% of our clients are building with AI. They’re making very kind of a small audience buyers. In some instances, podcasts might be the only place that their buyers are in aggregate, you know, it’s not like a B2C play. Like if I was selling black sweatpants, I would sell it on Instagram. And I know that because that’s where I buy black sweat pants.

Peter Winick Right, exactly. Well, and black sweatpants are a commodity and you don’t really need to understand the philosophy of the manufacturer of the black sweat pants and price and convenience are probably a factor. I think a lot of what we’re doing today, whether it’s professional services or technology or whatever, it’s fairly complex, right? Like once you tell me black sweatpants, I’m thinking, okay, I get that. Like now I might ask you, are they lightweight? Are they, you know, what’s the material? And they’re like. Close it a little lemon to the gap, whatever, but it’s not like, you know, a tech stack or something more complicated. And sometimes a conversation that a listener has with two people answers questions they might not even know they would have as a potential buyer. 100%.

Ryan Estes There’s a big demand gen because you know folks are building very specific tools to solve problems that to your point that users don’t even know they have yet or they haven’t been able to like enunciate the problem and but once somebody comes on it might take 15-20 minutes to unpack the value prop and then they’re like oh my god actually yes i didn’t know there was a tool that fixed that boom then they have customers so you know i think that kind of relevance is is huge. You know, I think the other point is, is to find… Podcasters that illicit great responses from the guest. Yeah, there’s a, there is an energy and there’s a vibe that happens on a podcast and it might be tangentially related as far as the relevance of the public, but if

Peter Winick Stay there a minute, because I find a couple of things, because I’m a guest frequently as well as I’ve hosted 650-something episodes. As a guest, the podcast that I refuse to go on lately, and maybe I’ve just moved into my cranky old man phase of life, which is fine too, is when they’re so structured that they’re sending you, here’s the seven questions I’m going to ask you. Well, there’s nothing fun about that, right? Like, there’s nothing. I can’t connect that to in three weeks from now when we’re going to record and say, you know, it’s interesting. I was just reading an article on it’s so scripted. It’s so not felt like why do we need to allocate time live if you want to ask me questions, right? Like that’s like doing my taxes, right. So totally.

Ryan Estes It’d be like, it’s like the most boring cocktail party ever. Yeah. These are the questions we will be discussing.

Peter Winick Yeah, and sometimes there’s variations on that where during the course of a podcast, we typically do A, B, and C, but it shouldn’t feel so, at least in my opinion, so, so structured that the guest has to stay in the lines of the coloring book. The other thing I think is really interesting, and again, I’ll swivel to my host chair, I’m shocked at what I call sort of horrific guest hygiene, and I don’t mean that they smell. Maybe some of them do. Maybe they do. That. But I think about it and say, hey, when I’m a guest, here’s what I wanna do out of respect for the host. Number one, if there’s a pre-call or some prep work, I wanna know something about them, right? And I find we always do pre-calls just to make sure we put out a good show, we get to know each other. You know, you and I did one, right. Yeah. Surprised at how often people will say, y’all ask them, you know, have you listened to any of our episodes? Have you checked anything out? I don’t expect them to invest hours, but the second. No, I was going to do that after, you know, uh, uh we scheduled the time. And I’m kind of like, not that this is a job interview, but like, if you’re on a job interview and somebody said, do you know anything about the company? They said, well, after you hired me, I might’ve done some of that work. It’s kind of lazy. Yeah. You know, there’s not a lot of stuff. Then, and then the after we do a lot of the heavy lifting and say, Hey, when this podcast goes live, we’re going to give you a bunch of stuff like for you to share that on social, right? We want you to amplify the message, get the word out, whatever. We’re going to do the same. The compliance rate on that is, is under 50%. And I’m like, why did you bother to waste your time? If you’re not going to take the asset that we created together, this bespoke thing and share it with your community.

Ryan Estes That is a amazing question. And I’ve noticed the exact same thing. It is very difficult for folks to publish. And I think that there might be, I’m just speculating here, but I think some people have an aversion to social media in, in general, I think some people are afraid, you know, that like, how am I going to be perceived that like inner narrative? Like a lot of what we do aside from podcast booking is really working on. Kind of the psychology and the enthusiasm behind founder-led marketing and like utilizing, like if you’re, if you are running a company or if you have a startup and you’re not willing to put that company on your back and take some on the chin, then you’re not a founder and you don’t deserve it and you are going to fail. Like you have to develop the tenacity and the grit and the rigor to like get out and put yourself out there continuously to have the risk.

Peter Winick Well, I would argue that I would take that one step further and say, you have a responsibility. If you’re not going to treat your baby like your baby, who the hell else will, right? Like, it doesn’t make any sense to me. And it’s one thing if you don’t want to be, quote, that guy that’s always selling life insurance at every Thanksgiving dinner. Nobody wants to sit next to that uncle, right. But I think there’s some pride that you should have. And you would say, wow, we just did a great episode, Ryan, and I hope that you would share this with your community. And you would feel the same way, unless you emailed me after and say, you know, I wasn’t on my A game, I don’t like the way I answered that, whatever the case may be. But I don’t understand why people think that the effort in the podcasting is show up, hit record, you know as a guest, and then be on with it. Like that’s only a piece of it.

Ryan Estes It really is, you know, and the bigger question too, is like developing distribution for yourself with a personal brand that, that will carry you beyond your current project. You know, because at the end of the day, every business has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Um, hopefully you have some successful endings, but nonetheless, the day after you sell your company or you close the doors, like you’re Hill. Onto the next project. If you haven’t built that personal audience and the personal relationship where people understand your values and understand what you’re bringing to the table, then you’re starting back at zero.

Peter Winick You know, let’s go ahead. So what I think in particular, as it relates to thought leadership, I always tell folks that while leadership is one of these things where at a moment in time, you’re either working for another entity, doing this thought leadership or for your own thing, doing his thought leadership. But as you move to the next thing, you get to, it’s one of the only things you get, you take your ball and move forward, right? Like if you’re a coder, you don’t own that code, right. You work for Google and Google owns the code, but as a thought leader, So you get to sort of take. At least most of those things. And there’s some exceptions to this from an intellectual property law standpoint and take it with you to the next thing and take that audience with you. So I think that’s a great point right.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a five-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast.

Peter Winick I want to ask you for some examples of best practices, right? So what are the things, if I was out there and maybe I’ve retained an organization like yours or I’m thinking about it or whatever, what are things that you would suggest I would do to get the most bang for my butt?

Ryan Estes You bet. You start yesterday on this personal brand. We work with it a lot with folks that show up and they’re like, I want to go on Lex Friedman, Joe Rogan, I wanna go on, uh, the acquired podcast. And as buddy, you got less than 500 followers on LinkedIn. And that’s all I see about you. Yes. You know, so they’re holding like podcasts to a very high standard when their standard is very low. And I don’t mean it to be disrespectful. And I’m not this direct when I’m talking to. Prospects or people like that, but it’s like hey man, if you ain’t shit you shouldn’t expect shit now that being said

Peter Winick And I like that because a lot of thought leaders think, well, my job is to come to the table with an idea or some research or whatever, but I think you’re right. A lot of podcasters are looking at the guests going, does anybody listen to this person? Like I might selfishly find, but are they interesting to anyone else? Have they put in the reps to develop their own sort of marketing brand, their own persona, their own brand, as you say, so.

Ryan Estes Absolutely. And the exchange is fair. I mean, you were finding people that have great expertise. I mean, they these are brilliant people, well educated, they’ve raised hundreds of millions of VC. They’re amazing. But the thing is, is that like, there’s 100 of those guys lining up to talk on podcast now, you know, and it’s like, the differentiator will come down to like, what’s your reach? What’s your audience? How What is your charisma on a podcast? Because that means that difference, you So I think if someone’s considering a podcast tour, there really are podcasts for everybody, if you have zero presence online, but you’re an expert, you’re a thought leader, of course there’s opportunities and there’s like great conversations to be had and there are great opportunities for distribution, but, you know, the, the when you, if you’re coming in, like, Oh, show me who you’ve gotten on Rogan right out of the gate. It’s like, you’re just destined to be disappointed unless you smoke DMT and eat elk meat and then maybe can find some chance with Rogan.

Peter Winick But even stay there with Rogan. So I get that all the time with clients in terms of New York Times bestseller list or media placements or whatever. And it’s like, you want to say, why would Rogan possibly have you on? But I think a variation of that question is why do you think that that would be a good show for you? So I think when I’m working with clients and I’m sure you’re doing similar things, we want to find out who their target market is with the highest level of specificity that we can. So if someone comes to me and says, Oh! My target market is CMOs in the Fortune 500. Okay, I’m not great at math, but the entire universe is 500, right? Just by definition. So if you think about that, and I’m gonna spend tens of thousands of dollars to get on Joe Rogan, okay, well, what percentage of the 500 people that I care the most about, because they can impact my business the most, are listening to him versus some, maybe obscure or unheard of marketing podcast that happens to have a big followership in the CMO community. So I think it’s not a gross number issue, it’s the percentage of the addressable market that you’re trying to hit issue.

Ryan Estes And I think really what it comes down to is, and I think most people are sophisticated enough to understand that, you know, the reaches are in the niches. That’s where you want to go to get customers. But the thing that happens with podcasts and conversations, you have nerves. Some people it elicits a lot of big emotions. If you’re not hitting it off with the host, or you scumble or something like you can end a conversation with somebody and it feels, I mean, you don’t know how it is, you got to burn sage or something to get, get the stank off you. So if you have that, like naturally you’re going to want to dissipate that feeling. And oftentimes that comes out to being like, I shouldn’t waste my time unless I’m talking to Oprah or I, you know what I mean? Like it, it just becomes an outlet for that big emotion. So, you, what we talk a lot about is like working on the things that don’t scale, which is like how you show up, how do you look, how you sell, how’s your lighting, how, do you, do feel comfortable? Do you feel excited? Do you feel like if- the podcast host completely tanks. You can take the whole conversation over and still deliver, you know?

Peter Winick Don’t scale. These are what you’re… But those are skills, right? And there are some people that either historically or naturally or have high charisma or whatever have those skills. And the reality is a lot of folks I deal with might be academic or they’re kind of behind the scenes. Maybe they’re a little bit more into research. The things that you talk about are important, but they’re all trainable, right, whether it’s media training or communications training or you wouldn’t go on stage as a keynote or without understanding sort of how does this work. Right? How do my presentations work? How does the microphone work? How does my audience interaction work? So there are some teachable things. And then the other thing I think that you get better, at least for me, as both a guest and a host, by listening to others that you admire and respect. And I’ve reached out to lots of folks that I’ve heard on podcasts that I listened to that were just really good guests. Like just the way they articulated something really complicated or their. That maybe they were funny, maybe they weren’t sort of counterintuitive or something about them like, wow, that was just, that a good listen. Other times, you know, things could kind of blend into one another. Yeah. Oh, totally.

Ryan Estes I mean, I, I’ve done enough podcasts that like, there’s a lot of times I’ll start a sentence and have no idea where I, what I just said at the end of it, you know? So it totally happens. And I think that, yeah, it’s like, you get better by training. You get, you, get better with reps. You get better, with like reviewing what you’ve already done to your point. You find people that you really admire, like who’s the, you know, who’s, the bird Parker of podcasting. Go listen to them. If that’s vibrating with you and see if you can. You can use some of those attributes into your interviews, you know? So it’s definitely, I mean, I think conversation in general is like a place for mastery. I think there’s true virtuoso conversationalists. And when I find those people, I’ll trap them in a corner for hours. It’s good just to listen to them talk.

Peter Winick Oh, that’s very true. That’s very cool. So as we start to wrap here any Final thoughts recommendations insights wisdom life-changing, you know a limerick perhaps

Ryan Estes You know, I, I would say to the audience, they’re interested in thought leadership. Like just be brave and start publishing. Just hit record and play and put it out there. You know if it’s a little bit nerve wracking in the beginning because you’re like, Oh, what if people judge me this and that and this and people will forget immediately. But what will happen is you will get better at it. And whatever your project is, it’s going to benefit with eyeballs and distribution. You know, hold on. Don’t be the person building in your closet. Let people see it. Get the feedback. Promote it. Let people know that you stand behind your product. The value is self-evident. Put it that way.

Peter Winick Yeah, I love that. The one, the one thing I would add to that, Ryan, is that for many folks, different modalities require different things, right? So if I fancy myself a writer, the written word is very different than the spoken word, right. And if everything I write require, you know, I’m editing in every word and every pause and every sentence and you know all that, you That’s different than how do I bring those concepts, those models, those methods, those frameworks to life in an organic conversation. You just have to practice that, right? I know, set an example. Because a lot of you guys have got just rotational art. Totally. Cool, well this has been great. I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing what you’ve got today.

Ryan Estes Love you, Peter. Thanks so much.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter at thoughtleadershipleverage.com, and please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.