Hello, hello, and welcome back to Podcasting for Experts. I'm Jess, Co-Founder here at Pristine Podcasts. And today we're going to be talking about how to do better interviews for your podcast. And this is something that I think is a pretty essential part of developing your show, if you're making any kind of interview episodes and to create better content for your audience. The first thing that I want to start with today is to actually discuss the purpose of interviews on your podcast. So I see a lot of small business owners that are doing a lot of interviews on their podcast, and they're doing less of the solo episodes. Now, the thing with doing a lot of interviews is that you need to ask yourself, what purpose do these interviews actually serve is that what is going to help me to get leads for my business and to get clients, right. So we are not doing our podcast, or most of us aren't doing our podcast for the sake of producing content and producing episodes. But we're actually trying to educate our audience, we're trying to get them prepared to go work with us, or to at least create valuable content that they can take away and have you as a good person in their mind, even if they're not ready or not prepared to work with you, you know. So if you're doing a lot of interviews at the moment, and you're a small business owner, and you're wanting to get more leads and clients for your business, I would actually flat out encourage you to stop doing interviews on your podcast, they don't help you to grow your audience very much. Because if I have a guest on my podcast, they might end up sharing the episode with their audience, or they might not most of them actually do not. And their audience is most likely not necessarily going to go and listen to another interview that they made on another podcast, where half of it is them sharing their story them sharing how to get where they are now. And they're not really sharing anything that they haven't heard before, because they've been in their audience space for a very long time. So they don't really have a reason to go listen to another interview where they heard how you made it, and blah, blah, blah, it's actually annoying to listen to that over and over and over again. And they're already in the space where they can just listen to content from that person whenever they like, you know, they follow their YouTube channel, they subscribe to their podcast, they are already in their universe, they're getting all the juicy stuff fresh off the press via email. And they don't really have a reason to go listen to a podcast episode from that person on someone else's podcast that they've never even heard of. So yeah, if you're doing a lot of interviews, at the moment, I would seriously ask you to reconsider whether or not that is really having the effect that you think it is going to have for your podcast. And if you think that interviews are easier to do than solo episodes, because they're less work, because you just have to get on the call with people. If you're not really preparing that to an extent where it is more work than preparing a solo episode, that I have to tell you that you're not preparing for your interviews enough. And likely the end result is going to be a pretty awful to listen to interview. And you might as well not have done it, because it doesn't position you more as an expert, it doesn't do anything for you in the sense of getting leads and clients. So yeah, this is just food for thought at the start of this episode. So as you may know, we are a podcast production and management company. And we work on a lot of content and strategy. And we get to listen to a lot of interviews in the editing process. And all I can say is a very badly prepared and badly delivered interview is so painful to listen to. And we see hosts make the same mistakes again, and again. So I'm going to tell you what these top annoying mistakes are. So if you are going to continue to do interviews, you can take these, and you can do a better job at the interview next time because I can tell you, if I find a podcast that I haven't heard of before I listened to the first interview, and it's a really bad interview. I then check the episodes and I'm like, Oh my God, every episode or every second episode is an interview. I am not going to subscribe to your podcast even if your solo episodes are very good. All I know is my app is going to keep giving me a notification for a new episode and every second episode, I wouldn't listen to it because it's painful and cringe and… Okay, let's go through the top mistakes. So Top Mistake Number one is the host having absolutely no clue about the guest. So the host didn't do any research. They don't know who they're talking to. They don't know anything about the person's story. They don't know what work they're doing right now, really. And therefore they end up asking really bad questions. So that kind of means that the whole interview is like part of the getting to know process that should have already happened through research ahead of time. So there's actually often absolutely no value for the listener in the interview. It's just back and forth, bla bla bla between the host and the guests are what do you do? Who do you help? Blah, blah, blah, and you never get to anything juicy, right? So you listen to 45 minutes of interview, and it's basically just painful hot air. The second thing that we see a lot is the host doesn't actually have a goal for the interview. So there isn't a gold nugget takeaway, that the host is trying to get from the guest, because they've researched the guest. They know their story. They know what they stand for. They know what they teach. So if you know all of those things, and you can think about, okay, this guest like, what value can they give to my audience, what is like the key thing that I would like my audience to learn from that person. And when you have a badly prepared host, plus, you don't have a goal for this interview, it just basically is like a lot of hot air, a lot of waffle. The third issue often is poor time management. So the host, and the guest actually get stuck on the initial topic and time sort of runs off. And at the end of the episode, they didn't even get to the juicy content. And there's absolutely no coherent line of thought in this interview. It's just tangent, tangent, tangent, tangent. So that sort of ends up with like a two hour RAW recording. And at the end of it, maybe the last 20 minutes are interesting. And this should have been a 20 minute conversation, realistically, that gets published. But no, people want to publish the whole thing. So it's really bad. Another problem we see a lot is the host, actually not listening, like actively listening to the guest. So the host prepares that list of 10 scripted questions that they want to ask the guest. And then they asked the first question, the guest gives a really interesting answer. And there's so much opportunity to extract value now for your listeners. But instead of extracting that value, what you end up doing is saying, uh huh, interesting. Okay, next question, and then go into the next question. So it's like an interrogation like the person has been arrested, they've got the light shining in their face, and you're just, you know, interrogating them. Basically, this doesn't feel like a conversation, that doesn't end up being any flow to it. And it is painful. Something else that some people tend to do is to ask closed questions. So they're like questions that can be answered with yes, no, that must have been a very difficult time in your life. Yeah, you know, and you could end up having guests that aren't very talkative. And if you ask closed questions, trust me, you're going to feel very frustrated during the interview, because those people will literally ask your close question that you just asked. So they'll just say, Yes, it was. And they won't add anything else to it, because they've realized that they're supposed to be speaking right now. So you will ask them a question, they will just answer it, and then they'll look at you. And you'll be like, right. Okay, next question. So closed questions should just never be asked on a podcast ever, or in a conversation, unless you're trying to gather information. Another issue is not giving the guest enough room to answer. So if you're doing an interview, you have to understand that that interview is about the guest and not about you. So you're basically giving your guests an opportunity to present themselves and who they are and what they do and who they help on your podcast. So you're giving them a free promo opportunity. And that's why I'm also saying that think twice about whether you need to be having guests on your show. Like they should really be able to give something very valuable to your listeners to be a guest on your show. A nd the rest of the time, it should be you giving value you positioning yourself as the expert. And I think when you're doing an interview, you really have to understand that that interview is absolutely not about you, it is about your guests. And if you can't give the guest room to be room to talk room to share their story without you interrupting them and then sharing your own story. And then trying to out value. The guests like I've seen that where the guests will be given some tips, and then the host will be like, oh, yeah, and I also know these other 10 tips. Yeah, it's great that you know that but you're not there to present the tips that you know, because you invited that person because you determined they were the best at what they do. And they would have the most value to offer to your audience. Now you'll need to let them shine, and not kind of jump on top of them all the time. Another issue is often that's just poorly selected guests. So it's just basically anyone they don't have any value to offer. They've never done the thing that they're doing right now before and there's just nothing in it for your listener. So there is no compelling reason to why should people listen. Then we have the usual poor audio quality. So it's sometimes when you're having guests on your show, you have to remember like if you've gotten yourself a mic and you have a space set up where you can record and then the guest comes on the show and they come with their little headphones that are plugged into their laptop and you're recording via zoom. You just end up with your audio sounding really good and the guests audio sounding like it's been recorded on a calculator that is really not appealing for people to listen to. So if you have higher quality guests on your show, then one of your requirements can be that the guest has a proper mic, that the guest has a proper space to record that the dog is not barking the entire time while you're doing an interview. Like you have to put certain boundaries in place to ensure the quality of your content. And if a person isn't willing to do that, then I would say pass on the opportunity to have them be a guest on your show. Another issue, and that's the last one that's really common is a total lack of rapport with the person that you're speaking to. Yes, I know that not everybody that we interview, we're going to vibe with. But there are ways in which you can create rapport without, you know, needing to really like that person, you can still be on the same page and kind of basically match that person. Okay. So these are all the things that kind of make for a really bad interview, particularly if you do all of those. Now, how do we do better, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to really ask ourselves whether or not we should even be having guests on our podcast, like, I'm going to have some guests coming up. And I think they have some really insightful things to share that I want them to bring on the show because it's value. So select the right guests, and bear in mind that it's about the guest to shine. And it's about your audience to get value. The second thing you're going to do is is that you're going to start researching the guests, and you're going to really think about what can your audience learn from this specific person, which aspects of their character and their journey are the most interesting, and have the most opportunity for teaching something to your audience. The third thing that you're going to do is, before you get on the interview, you are very clear what your goal of this interview is, and what the main takeaway for your audience from this person should be. And if you can't identify what that is, then you may as well at the start of the interview, discuss that with this person, like, hey, what do you think is the top learning that you've had like, ask the person because they know their story. And if they know who your audience is, then they can often help you to establish what is the thing that they can most gift to other people. The fourth thing that you're going to do is that you're going to actually prepare your guests for the interview, you're going to tell them what they need to have, from a quality perspective, you're going to tell them how you would like them to record, you're going to prepare your questions that you would like to ask the person so you're going to have some key questions that you will definitely want to ask to make sure that the episode achieves the goal that you've previously defined. So if you know there's a time in that person's life, where they've learned something that they can really give to your people, then you've got to make sure that you have two or three key questions that extract that kind of information from that person. So you're going to prepare those questions. And then you're gonna have some backup questions in case the person isn't a big talker, and you're gonna keep having to stimulate the conversation a little bit. But you're going to focus on making sure that you're going to get the key questions answered, at the rest of the time, you're going to go with the flow, you're going to respond to what the person is saying you're going to keep, if they go too far on that tangent, you're gonna keep bringing them back to the conversation topic, then you might say, Hey, okay, there's another time in your life where this happened. And I was really interested in this, could you tell us more about that part. So you're going to go with the flow, but you're going to keep bringing them back on the track that leads towards your call for that episode. The next thing I would like you to do is that when you get on the call, I would like you to have a few minutes chat time planned in. So just assume that if it's a one hour long call, the first 10 minutes are just like getting to know you 10 minutes, and then you're going to go and start the interview. And I want you to use that prep time to build rapport with the person. So there are a lot of different ways in which you can build rapport, even if you're not naturally vibing with that person. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to match their body language. So if they're recording the interview standing up, I want you to adjust like push your chair back, lift your mic up if you can, and match their position and also record the interview standing up. If they are speaking in like a very musical tone and that is how they usually speak. Then I would like you to adjust your language a little bit not too obviously but think about just matching their language for a little while because these things they help and if the person is speaking very fast and they're like super excited, then I want you to speed up and I want you to speak super fast and very excited. And if the person is just a little bit more thoughtful they take a lot of time to think think it's very important that you adjust and that you just take more time to think and ask the questions a little bit more slowly. So you want to match the kind of body language, the tone of the speech, the kind of words that they use. And you can also, if you can see them well enough on Zoom, you can also match people's breathing. So all of that already helps to get into rapport with somebody who you don't actually naturally have any rapport with. So even if you're doing an interview on a political topic, and you are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, it is way easier to have a discussion with somebody about a topic you disagree on, when you are in rapport. So it just works. So try that out next time that you have someone that you don't automatically vibe with. Then during the interview, I want you to really listen attentively to what the person is saying. And I want you to focus on asking follow up questions, because that will make it feel naturally like conversation. If you meet with your friend and you say, Hey, how was this week at work? And they're like, Oh, well, on Wednesday, this thing happened and I'm very upset about it. Honestly, you wouldn't just go haha, okay, and how's your husband? Uh huh. Okay, and how is this? Uh huh. Okay, and how's that? Like, you would obviously ask follow up questions like, oh, no, what happened at that time? Oh, are you upset about that? You know, so yeah, that that is naturally how you would speak to another person. And that is exactly how I want you to speak to your podcast guests. I don't want you to just have them explain something and then say, Aha, okay, thank you, and move on to the next thing. And then of course, keep focusing on tying them back to the key theme of your interview, to head them to what's the main goal that you want them to, you know, you want your audience to take away from the interview. And if you're doing all of those things, you will feel way more comfortable with the people you're talking to. You will be in rapport, you will ask better questions, it will feel like a good conversation. And still, you will know that your audience got something off value from that interview. And if someone contacts you, and they want to be a guest on your show, and they're just not a good fit, it is okay to say hey, I just don't think that this is a good fit for the upcoming content that I have planned. But I will reach out to you again in future if I'm looking for additional people to come on the show. And that is also perfectly okay to do because this is your show. And you'll get to call the shots already. I think that's it for me today for the topic of interviews. In the next episode, we're going to be talking about cold emails and creative pitches. So I'm really excited for that one. And yeah, as always, I hope you have an amazing day and I will see you for the next one.