How To Be A Better Podcast Interviewer / Closing Up Season 5

Boy. This is a special episode of the podcast report. It's episode 147. Thepodcastreport.com 1, 4, 7. There's going to be no music. There's going to be no transitions. There's going to be no fancy stuff. The tip of the week that I've been doing in past episodes, we're going to skip out as well. This is just a conversation between you and me. Now. The topic of the conversation is how to be a better interviewer. And we'll chat about that. But I'm also here to tell you how and why I'm closing up season five, what we're going to do with season six, what I think is coming down the line, and we'll go from there. But first, let's chat to the topic of how to be a better interviewer. This is a question I get all the time. And what's funny is I get the question from amateurs who are scared to talk to anyone, let alone interview them. I get this question from people who have made a living interviewing people in one way or another, not necessarily as a professional interviewer, but sometimes tape sets, CD sets, training programs on stage, that type of thing. A lot of us really want to give the interviewing experience, which I get. The more you love your audience, the better you want to perform for them. This is why I haven't released an episode in the past couple of weeks, because I don't have something. Did not have something for you, and I did not want to waste your time with it. So if we bring someone on the show, we want to serve them. We want to ask the right questions so that we serve our audience. I get that. But here's the thing, and this is really important. You're not Oprah. You're not Dave Letterman. You're not one of the great interviewers. And that's okay because, you know, we've already got an Oprah. We've already got a Dave Letterman. We've already got the great interviewers of this world. And yes, I think Dave Letterman is a great interview. If you have not seen his new Netflix show, give that a try. Absolutely fascinating stuff. But enough from that. What you are is you are a podcaster with an audience with an understanding of what it is that your audience needs, and you've got someone that your audience needs to meet. This combination is powerful, and this is so much more powerful than the interview. When Dave interviews Malala or George Clooney, he is providing a show, and many of us like to think of it as a show, but really, you know me, if you listen to any episode of the podcast report, you know that I see the podcast as a service. So we're not here to entertain. We're here to introduce. We're here to connect. So it's not really an interview as much as it is a party, as much as it is a chance where you're introducing someone to someone else. It's not an interview as much as it is a fly on the wall opportunity. By bringing somebody on the show, I know what it is that you want, and it's not me asking the questions. I'm not the hero. I'm not the star. My interviewee. Interviewee is. It's not an issue of providing a great interview. It's an issue of providing great service to my audience. And it's not really an issue of you participating in a good interview as much as it is you participating as almost a fly on the wall as I and the guest have the conversation. Now, you may not feel great at interviewing, but you probably know you are much better at interviewing. I'm sorry, you are much better at conversing and having a conversation, at talking with. To. In spite of other people. And the podcast can become. Instead of this interview, instead of this moment, instead of this, you know, great orchestrated thing, it's the opportunity to. To be the fly on the wall. Now there is a show called Roderick on the Line with Merlin Mann, who. I'm a big fan of John Roderick, who every episode, everything I've ever heard of John, I really like what he does, like the music as well. But the whole explanation of, you know, the whole tagline of Roderick on the Line is a frank and candid weekly call. The idea is Merlin calls John. They talk on the phone. The recording is obviously better than a phone call if you listen to recent episodes of the show. But it's just a frank and candid weekly call. It's not an interview. It's not Tuesdays with Maury. It's two friends chatting, and that comes through, and that makes for the show. So don't do an interview. Do something that someone would want to be the fly on the wall for. This is the opportunity of podcasting. We don't have to provide perfection. And as a matter of fact, if they want perfection, they can go to NPR or they can go to public radio, or they can go to Netflix, or they can go to different things. What they want is you to introduce them to someone that you think would be good for them, and that could be anything from. Would radically Change their business and finances to. And I think in the case of rhetoric on the line, might just change their insight on life a little bit while providing some entertainment and, and some ideas. Instead of going, and now we have an interview with so and so, maybe say something like, listen in as we chat about. It's so much easier to let someone participate in your conversation than it is to orchestrate and manage and run this entire interview. Make it an experience. Think about the great conversations in life that you would love to be a fly on the wall for. Provide something like that. And it is, for all sakes and purposes, the same content as an interview. But instead of you trying to figure out what to ask so that the audience and all the pressure and all the comparisons and all the things that happen, just have the conversation that you'd want to have. Maybe visualize your audience right there, maybe even a picture of your avatar. Make it an experience. Listen as we chat about and you will be at a much better place. Now, with that said and done, I understand that we are in a place where interviews are the expectation and where interviews are one of the standards of podcasting. So, you know, if you need to call it an interview and it's just the fly on the wall experience, you can do that. I have several products and tools that my clients get and I don't give the majority of them to the world, but I have a interview hacks worksheet. It's seven interview hacks. It's things that you can do on the interview, or things that you can do during the fly on the wall experience or things that you could do on your frank and candid weekly call that will help bring the thing together. And you can grab it if you text interview hacks. All one word interview hacks. All one word. Not all one word, obviously. Just interview hacks to 503-966-8066. It's an automatic system. It'll shoot that right back to you if you didn't grab that number. The podcastreport.com147. I will put that in the show notes. So I want to relieve you of the stress of having to be a great interview. I want you to think about your avatar, your audience, what they need. Be there for them. Provide that. But don't worry about the interview, don't worry about the questions. Let them participate in this fly on the wall moment. You'll do much better if you text interview hacks to 503-966-8066. You'll get the worksheet it'll come automatically. I've already set it up. So no matter how early you listen to this, you'll be at a good place and we'll go from there. So that's thought number one, and that's the big thought. Couple of other thoughts, Thought number two. Pandora has announced that they are going to get into the podcasting game. Now, I shared this on a recent episode of the Podcasters Roundtable, and I'm actually going to put in here a link to that because I think that'll be good. And we chatted about it. And it's funny because Pandora's numbers, and I give all the numbers on the roundtable episode. Pandora's numbers are bigger than anyone else in terms of name recognition, in terms of use, in terms of the place people go to. More people are going to Pandora for online radio than are going to podcasting for online content. So we got people, more people going to Pandora than even know what podcasting is. And so we've got this opportunity to be on that platform that's pretty fantastic. And in audio, that's sort of along the lines of, you know, suddenly having your stuff carried at Costco or on Amazon or something like that. I think it's a great place. Don't know what they're going to do, don't know how they're going to do it, but it is, for all sakes and purposes, a really, really good thing for us. So look out for it. It'll be something we certainly look at in season six. It's something you definitely want to participate in. If you want my thoughts on it, I will put a link to the roundtable episode@the podcastreport.com for. But, yeah, Pandora is a big thing. I'm really excited and we're going to go from there. Another thought, and it's funny because this is, you know, how you do that thing and many reasons. This is why we podcast. We just talk and then things come out of our subconscious that we're like, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize this about me. I was speaking to a person that I'm going to be doing an interview with soon. And it's pretty exciting, a lot of fun business hero of mine, if you will. And he was trying to better understand what my audience was, who I was working with. He was trying to get some information out of me. Very good. That's what he does. And it was funny. He said, you know, he was asking questions and these are really good. And there's things I've struggled with and we've shared, you know, on the last couple of episodes, like, you know, are you a podcast teacher? Are you like the podcast guru for podcasting consultants? You know, who is your audience? And I found myself saying something really, really interesting. I found myself saying my market is communicators, not podcasters. Can I say that again? My market is communicators, not podcasters. See, I work with people who have a message and the value of their message is so much that they can pay the rates that we afford to get the message out there. My people are not getting up Tuesday morning going, I want a podcast. Many of them are getting up Tuesday morning and going, man, this podcast is reaching a lot of people. This podcast thing is getting bigger and bigger. Maybe that's where I should take my message. But my market is not podcasters, it's communicators. The better I understand my market, the better I can serve them. And my rates have gone up this year, the revenue has gone up this year, the output has gone up this year. And I'm really excited about it. And I just want you to consider the same. I want you to think about who your audience is. I shared before that I don't think most shows should be called should have the word podcast in it. Obviously my show, the podcast report would make sense or spoke earlier to the podcasters Roundtable. You know, but take this Roderick on the line. It's Merlin Mann, John Roderick, having frank conversations every week. The word podcast is unnecessary. What is it that you are trying to do? Who is it that you are trying to communicating with? What is that audience? I think when you define that. No, I know when you define that, you will be at a better place. Interesting piece of News in episode 143. And if you didn't listen, head out to the podcastreport.com 143. I chatted about events and should you go to events and yes, the precursor. There are a number of things I'm going to this year. My flight schedule is fuller than it's been for a number of years. But I encouraged you to go through the process of deciding why you're going to events and where you're spending your time. And maybe it's my own self dealings that I'm working through, but I think it's something that every podcaster needs to do. And I have decided not to attend podcast movement 2018. And it's funny because it's been weird. You know, podcasting has been my life for over a decade and the books and the consulting and the projects and everything. Why wouldn't I want to go to podcast movement? Well, here's the thing. It goes back to that realization I had in the conversation earlier. My audience is not podcasters. My audience is not communicate. My audience is not podcasters. My audience is communicators. And I would dare say, if you're listening this far, you're not here for the tech help, you're not here for the microphone shootout. You're here because you want to be a better communicator. And podcast movement, honestly is not about communication, it's about podcasting. And it's a different element than I am worried about now. A lot of my peers are going to be there and I will miss them. But there are events, cheaper, faster, better for me to see my peers at, to be honest, right now, at the moment. And if you weren't at Social Media Marketing World, please don't take offense. I'm just thinking out loud here as we do the show. You know, my friends all went to Social Media Marketing World west coast, two hour flight, I could be home in time. Whereas podcast movement all the way across the country, Philadelphia in the middle of the summer, it's not the type of thing that I need to do. I have always tried to give back to the community. I've always tried to teach when I can. I submitted a number of proposals and they said no to me this year. You get a little insulted on the way. But the fact of the matter is just logistically, the committee decided that, you know, there were 300 other people that need to speak to their audience before me. And if you think through that, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Like they understand who they are, their organization is growing, they are getting bigger, but they don't have a vision for me being there. I don't have a vision for me being there. The cost and the confusion and the distraction from my business of me being there makes it the type of thing where I just don't know how I could even morally and ethically attend. So I'm putting this out there. You know, if something changes, who knows? The industry is always there. But you know, my customers aren't going to be there. Maybe your customers are. My audience is going to be there somewhat, but we're communicating and we're chatting right now. The hug and face to face, party attending thing. There are just other events that are cheaper and easier and you know, we'll go from there. And somebody on the east coast, this might be easier than coming to something like San Diego and Who knows? But, yeah, I've just decided in my focus not to attend podcast movement this year. Not blowing it off, not throwing it away, not saying I'll never come, but just a series of things kind of led to this. And we will go from there. I'll see at other events, I'm pretty sure. So now, closing this up, this is going to be the last episode of season five. I had visions of making season five a ending with episode 150. You know, this is episode 147, and I had these visions, but not going to happen. And let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you why I think it happened, and let me tell you what I'm thinking about it. Number one, I did something very quietly with season five. I didn't tell anybody. Maybe four people on the whole planet knew. I handed season five entirely over to a podcast consultant, production company, that type of thing. And it doesn't matter who, because I wanted to eat my own dog food. I'm telling other people, as you produce a show, just worry about the content and let me get it out for you. As I tell other people to do that, they have every right to ask, well, are you doing that yourself? And so season five was an exercise. I created the content, I put it in a Dropbox folder, I filled out a spreadsheet. I let the consultant take everything over, and the job wasn't to the quality that I wanted. But here's the question, and this is the important question. Was the quality not to what I wanted because of something they did wrong, or was the quality something less than what I wanted because of something I did wrong? As the content producer, was I communicating with my consultant the way I needed to know? I wasn't. And as a result, the show didn't represent what it was that was in my head, because what it was that was in my head wasn't necessarily presented to the consult. Now you can see why I'm not necessarily giving that consultant's name out. But again, it's not a critique of the consultant. It's an understanding and it's an experiment of the process. This is what I wanted to do. Season five. I got my answers. And early in season six, when we launch, I'll tell you exactly what I did wrong. I'll tell you exactly what the consultant did wrong, and I'll tell you how I'm going to improve the process for myself and how I'm going to improve the process learning in dealing with my clients. And many of you are podcast consultants as well, or do some side work and maybe you can learn from that. And if you can, I hope you will. So closing up season five pretty unceremoniously. I don't know exactly when season six is going to come back. It won't be that long. What's season six? How is it going to be different? Well, I'll tell you this. If you take a look at the roundtable episode that again I'll link to@podcastreport.com 147. If you look at that episode, you'll see that I've upped my video game, I've upped my lighting game, and I have I'm doing more Facebook Live. I met the ECAMM Networks guys out at Social Media Marketing World this year, and the product and the tool and the process of going live to Facebook now and the opportunity to go live to Facebook now is so much easy that I'm going to do some form of, at the very least, recording my show live before a studio audience now. Well, Paul, if you've got this and you're doing this, why aren't you doing this right now? Ah, here's the thing. I actually attempted to do this on Wednesday. I did a preset event. I did all this stuff and Facebook pooped on me. It didn't work. And I could go back to the studio today and I could produce all that, but I wanted to get this content out before the end of the week. And so as I look at video, I want to figure out what's going on there, what are the hiccups? When will Facebook poop on you? When will it not? And we'll go from there and we'll learn. So season six might be always live, might not be. If you are on any of my mailing lists or follow me on any of social, you'll get the updates of when that happens. But I think the production model of Live 2 video is there and having a good time. So those are not five fairly unceremoniously. The interviewer thing. It's funny, I actually didn't say this in the notes. The interviewer thing actually came from a client who was really feeling bad about his interviewing skills, as many of you do. But what's funny is that his show, people were loving it because his show was the epitome of the fly on the wall. He had connections that his audience would love to have connections with, but simply doesn't. He knew the conversation to have. He knew the questions to ask. He was just feeling bad because it wasn't Oprah or Dave and the fact of the matter is his benefit, his gift to the audience was not in being Oprah or Dave, it was in being himself. And I kind of learned from that and that was kind of the trend for this. And that's why I decided to give away our little interview hacks tool that traditionally is client only. I get that if I put it out there it's not really going to be client only anymore but the tools we've got for our clients are plentiful. Not that big of a deal. So season five ends today. Season six coming soon. Don't know when between now and then the Alexa skills should be coming out. I sent that over to Libsyn. That should be great. We'll have fun. I'm available on all the social things. You can chat with me then. I'm sure I'll be following podcast movement remotely, although not attending physically. I love you guys. We'll be chatting soon. Thanks for listening. Bye.