Turning a Hidden Expert Into a Recognized Voice

Podcast & Speaking Outreach Campaign 

Client Snapshot 

Maya Chen had spent fifteen years building one of the most nuanced careers in the wellness publishing space. As the founder of a boutique wellness imprint, she had shepherded dozens of titles to market, cultivated relationships with some of the most respected voices in integrative health, and developed an editorial philosophy that balanced commercial viability with genuine depth. She knew her industry inside and out. 

The problem was, almost no one outside of it knew her. 

When Maya came to me, she had a book releasing in four months, her first as an author rather than a publisher and a platform that was virtually nonexistent. No podcast appearances. No speaking history beyond internal industry panels. A social media presence that was polished but quiet. She was an expert with no audience, a publisher who had never had to think about visibility from the other side of the desk. 

The Challenge 

Maya's situation was more nuanced than a typical platform-building brief. She wasn't starting from zero in terms of credibility, she had deep industry respect and a compelling story. But she had almost no digital footprint for podcast hosts or event organizers to discover, and her public-facing narrative hadn't been shaped yet. There was no clear throughline that connected her fifteen years of behind-the-scenes work to the book she was about to release. 

The timeline was also tight. Four months to build meaningful momentum before a launch is workable, but it leaves no room for a slow warm-up. Every outreach effort had to be intentional and targeted. Scattershot pitching — sending the same generic bio to fifty shows — wasn't going to cut it. We needed a strategy that could generate early wins quickly while also laying groundwork for opportunities that would carry through the launch window and beyond. 

There was one more layer of complexity: Maya was ambivalent about self-promotion. She had spent her career centering other people's stories, and stepping into the spotlight herself felt uncomfortable in a way she couldn't quite articulate. Any approach that felt performative or overly salesy was going to stall before it started. 

My Approach & Process 

The first thing I did was slow down before speeding up. Rather than immediately building a target list, I spent the first two weeks working with Maya to excavate and articulate her narrative. What was the thread that connected her editorial work to her own book? What did she believe about wellness publishing that she had never said publicly? What made her perspective genuinely different from the hundreds of other wellness voices already in the podcast ecosystem? 

What emerged was a positioning framework built around a single, compelling tension: Maya understood wellness from the inside of the machine. She had seen which books changed readers' lives and which ones were simply well-marketed. That insider perspective — honest, warm, and occasionally surprising — became the engine of every pitch we wrote. 

From there, I built a three-tier outreach system. The first tier targeted mid-size wellness and publishing podcasts with highly engaged audiences — shows where a thoughtful, story-driven conversation would resonate and where hosts were known for doing their research.

These were our best-fit opportunities and got the most customized, relationship-forward pitches. The second tier targeted speaking opportunities: wellness conferences, book festival panels, and publishing industry events where Maya's dual identity as publisher and author would be an asset. The third tier was a longer-horizon list of larger, more competitive shows to approach closer to launch once early appearances had established social proof. 

Every pitch was written from scratch. I researched each host, identified specific episodes or themes that connected to Maya's work, and opened every pitch with something genuine and specific before ever mentioning the book. The goal was to initiate a conversation, not close a transaction. 

I also built Maya a simple one-page media kit and a speaker bio in three lengths — a discipline that sounds minor but consistently shortens the back-and-forth with producers and event coordinators, and signals professionalism immediately. 

Tools & Strategies Used 

• Narrative positioning framework developed through collaborative intake sessions 

• Three-tier target list built using podcast research tools, event databases, and industry contacts 

• Fully customized pitch templates tailored by audience, format, and host relationship 

• One-page media kit and tiered speaker bio 

• Outreach tracker with follow-up cadence and response analytics 

• Coordinated pitch timing aligned with the book's pre-order and launch windows 

The Results 

Over the course of four months, Maya went from zero public presence to a recognizable voice in her space. The campaign secured 14 podcast appearances, including three shows with audiences above 50,000 listeners. She was booked for two speaking engagements, a regional wellness conference and a publishing industry panel both of which led to follow-on invitations. Her book launched with pre-order momentum that her publisher attributed in part to the podcast groundwork, and within six weeks of release it had reached the bestseller list in its category. 

Beyond the numbers, something shifted for Maya personally. By the third or fourth appearance, the discomfort she had felt about self-promotion had largely dissolved not because she had learned to perform, but because the positioning work we had done together meant she was always speaking from a place of genuine conviction. She wasn't selling. She was sharing something she actually believed. 

The longer-horizon pitches we had seeded in tier three began converting after launch, extending the campaign's impact well past the initial four-month window. 

Reflection 

"I spent years helping other authors find their voice in public. I didn't expect that the hardest part of doing it myself would be figuring out what I actually wanted to say — not for the book, but about my own story. That early work of getting the narrative right made everything else feel possible. By the time I walked into my first interview, I wasn't nervous. I knew exactly who I was talking to and why it mattered." 

— Maya C., Wellness Publisher & Author