A question I’m often asked: how did you get Ray Dalio to appear on the podcast? It took 2 years and started with a cold email from me to Ray…
In April 2020 I spent 10 minutes on Google and found Ray’s email. Easy enough so far.
Next, I put together a cold email inviting him to join the podcast, pitching the 5 episodes I’d already created and suggesting topics we could discuss.
Later that day I received a quick reply from his PR team: “thanks but Ray will pass”.
At this point, I gave myself two options – leave it and move on, or create a long term plan that would slowly increase the chance of him saying yes over time. The potential downside was tiny but the upside was huge, so why not give it a go.
I divided the plan into two ‘Ps’. The first P was Persistence. This meant creating a calendar reminder for myself to email his PR team promoting recent podcast episodes in a friendly, not annoying type of way.
The second P was Proof. To make the invitation stand out from the hundreds he probably receives a week I needed to have individuals join the podcast who either he knew, or at least recognized, as a form of social proof. A few screenshots of these individuals could add credibility, a scarce resource when you’ve only created 5 podcast episodes!
The Persistence part took care of itself. Create episodes, create summaries of those episodes, take screenshots, promote via email to his PR team.
The Proof section was a bit trickier. You need someone senior and influential to accept, with little upside for themselves.
Luckily, Sheila Patel – Chairman at Goldman Sachs Asset Management at the time – accepted. She joined a fantastic episode with our then President John Berisford. After that, it became progressively easier to recruit new guests and finally, the flywheel started spinning in the right direction.
That flywheel effect meant that suddenly Michael Milken accepted. Mohamed El-Erian accepted. Even Anthony Scaramucci accepted!
Nearly two years after my initial cold email, and after 50 emails exchanged with his PR team, I got the news that Ray was free to join a special 1-hour episode with our President Martina Cheung.
One month after publication, the episode is now the most viewed video ever on our YouTube channel with over 10,000 views. It’s on track to be the most popular ‘Fixed Income in 15’ episode ever.
So when people ask ‘how did you get Ray Dalio to appear on the podcast?’ My response is ‘I just kept asking him’.