Top Opening Interview Questions To Ask Your Podcast Guest This Year

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to Feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, my co host, Tracy, and today we're going to talk about a topic that should be of interest to every podcaster who ever has interviews or guests on their show of any kind. And that is how to ask the best opening question. I hear, actually, Tracy, from a lot of people that we work with about what kind of questions should I ask? That's probably one of the most common questions, and we've addressed that before and there is a masterclass on that. But what about asking the first question, the opening question? When you think about it, you've got a quick opportunity to hook people and get them like, wow, this is gonna be a great episode. I wanna hang on and listen to this whole thing. And I can tell you, I listen to a lot of shows and I find one of the most cliche questions is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? When you get to the guest and I'm like, oh, my goodness, you've just relinquished control of this discussion to the guest. You're not driving the conversation. So anyway, you. You do have tons of experience in this, Tracy. And even though you and I have podcasted and I've probably recorded what podcast episodes somewhere, neighborhood of 8 to 900, I think, and you've done a whole lot of more interviews than me because of your experience as an ink columnist, as well as you've hosted a lot more podcasts than me. So this is your mojo and I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it.

Yeah, yeah, we were talking earlier and I think I'm about 3,000 interviews in somewhere around there because I've done about 2,700 articles or so, and not every podcast that we've done becomes an article. So that's really where it's come from. But, you know, I wasn't great at it to begin with. Like, it wasn't something I had trained in. I went to art school. I mean, for those of you who don't remember, Tom and I went to Rhode Island School design. We went to art school. I didn't go to journalism school, I didn't learn about interviewing and in any of that process. So this is something that I've had to learn both by doing and by really observing others and learning what really works. And I have a few people that were my favorites that are my go to and I listen to them for tactics and techniques and things that they do. And one of those is Veronica Dagger of the Wall Street Journal. She has a podcast called the Secrets of Wealthy Women. And her prep is incredible. What she does in advance, how she gets to know the person she's going to interview. And one of the things that I admire the most about the way she does it is she starts in right away with this kind of hard hitting question because she's a hard hitting journalist. And I appreciate that. And I said, well, how can I learn how to do something like that? These are tactics that I wanted to experience, wanted to figure out. And so I started asking around to some other people and another one, which was one of our clients and a really good friend, Dustin Matthews, who's a direct response marketing genius. He's great with copy, great with all marketing tactics. He felt he had to up his game and went training and learning how to interview. And when I interviewed him for the Binge Factor, he was telling me his tactics about how he does it. And he does the same thing of starting right kind of in the middle. So this is my, my just straight out, out of every tactic and every process I've tried, the best interview question is one that jumps into something. Doesn't start at the beginning of something. Even if you're doing that kind of historical look at somebody and you want to have a timeline, it doesn't mean you can't start with one of these kind of like in the middle questions. Right on melu, if you're gonna use the French term for it. Right in the middle. It's a writing technique, right when we open up a chapter to a book and it start in the action, we start a movie and it starts right in the action scene. And we don't know what happened before we're gonna get there, but we're jumping right into something that's action oriented. We're grasping our audience and pulling them right in. And so that's something that I strive to do in my interviews is I want them to go in without this like, oh, let's get through the like boring. Get to know you. I wanna get to why they're here. And so that's how I always look at it. I say, I'VE got this person I'm interviewing. I have a reason. I invited them on my show. Now, how can I get to that reason at the very beginning and then sustain interest over the long term? Because I also don't want to give everything away in, like, you know, the first minute. So then everybody tunes out as well. So how can I do that in some way, shape or form? The first thing that I want to set up is say, what Tom was pointing out before is very often inexperienced interviewers give away their authority. That's the word that you use, Tom, right? They give that to the guest. And reality is, as a host, you are the ultimate authority because you invited that guest on. It's your audience. You need to maintain that level of authority and control. And by doing a proper introduction, you do that. So when you don't do an introduction and you just do this, tell us a little bit about your history and yourself, because you don't want to take the time to prep for an introduction, then you've given away that authority. And actually your audience doesn't perceive you at a high enough level and a high enough value in the process of it. I mean, you might as well have just invited the guest on and let them talk, right? And let them do everything. And so you need to maintain control. And one of those is a proper introduction. So a lot of times what I do is I'll do an introduction. I will read it if I need to, because you don't want to mess up somebody's introduction. It's the only thing and the only time time I ever read something. But when I hit to a point where I want to jump off, or I might tease it and say, oh, I'm coming right back to that, so don't go anywhere. Right? And I finish out the introduction. Now, my first question is going to start at that point where I was looking at, like, what was the most exciting thing in that introduction that I did? And how can I jump that into a question? This is the one thing that I think clearly about before I start my interview. It's about the only thing that I really take the time to, like, make sure and say, this is my starting point. So if I was going to interview Tom on my show here, and I'm going to interview Tom, and I'm going to say, Tom has this great engineering mind. He has 40 patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office pending or issued. He's got 86% commercialization rate with those patents. Like, these are some exciting numbers, people. Do you understand that? That is the elite 2% of innovators in the world. My first question might then be to Thomas. Tom, you've had so much success with all of this. How do you create that success again and again and again?

Now it gives them an opportunity to tie into what he was saying and tap into one piece, one tie into a success story, One thing that he's going to touch on, and then I'm going to say, I loved that, that you said that, Tom. I love that you gave us this tip here, but you had to start somewhere. What made you file your first patent? Now we can get to an origin story. So we've moved from something helpful, exciting, into an origin story. And more people want to listen to that, because now they're like, oh, this is how it started. And I want to get back to that success again.

Sometimes if you take the obvious linear path, Tracy, and you start from the beginning and then you move through it, you don't really know.

Why am I wanting to listen to this? Why do I want to hear the origin? I like that technique. By starting with something really key, something powerful, unexpected, it does a few things. I think it not only is of more interest, going to be more. More interest to your listeners, but it's also going to be of particular interest to the person you're interviewing. Because what I said earlier, Tracy, is if you ask your guests to tell us a little bit about themselves, it's like, well, you're letting them drive the direction of the discussion. You're giving up some control of it in what's kind of an obvious way. And I think that sort of rookie podcasters often start there because maybe they don't have a lot of experience or maybe they haven't given it a lot of thought where else to go or how else to start. And while there may be a really compelling origin story, I think it makes a lot of sense what you just said, which is, why do I care about this person's origin story? Why should I care? And if you show it may not be the end, it may be somewhere in the middle that you're highlighting something, but some level of achievement that is really notable and impressive. And then you must say, well, wow, how do you get from here to there? And I'm not trying to get my own horn here at all. I mean, we don't have to discuss this at all. But to, like, I can't even. How does somebody get 40 patents? How do you. How do you. How does that happen? I don't even. That's kind of mind Boggling, Right. Then how do you get from here to there? Or like you were saying, you know, what was the first one? Or how did you start that? Or, you know, whatever.

Right. Your segue is easier to handle from that point forward to go into the more linear story, which people do want to hear. Right. It helps to do that. And so some other people like to start with the more personal, like, tell me your story, like, you know, why, you know, why are you, what's your why, or things like that. And I don't have a fundamental problem with all of those. But if you're going to do that, frame it so that you're transitioning from that introduction into a frame up as to why. You're asking them the why. Right. So if you're making the two things tied together, first off, you're making this a better transition. To understand the expertise of my guest is why I brought them on my show. And here's a taste of what you're going to get out of it. That's kind of the model for that interview question. And so how you best make that happen is totally up to you. I mean, it needs to be something you're comfortable with, you can do. Not all of us can be the Veronica Daggers, Wall Street Journal hard hitting journalist kind of model of it, but it will give you your path if you're thinking it through from this perspective. One of my favorite ones that Veronica did was she was interviewing, I can't remember which reporter it was. It was one of the financial reporters who had been one of the first women of the trading floor at the stock exchange. And she dove right into this question right after the introduction of saying that she was the first woman who was on the floor interviewing and reporting from the stock exchange in whatever year that was. And so she hit that as a point in the bio and then immediately asked her the question about. Because it was very public, I know that there was some sexism that happened there. Tell us about how that manifested itself on the stock exchange floor and what that was like for you to be the first woman there. And what you had to go through, you're hitting into the, the heart of the story immediately. But her interviews are shorter. She only has like a 30 minute spot overall. So the interview's about 20 minutes. You gotta get into it. And that's part of why her technique works the way that it does. Maria Bartiroa, that's her name, Maria Bartaroma.

Is that who you're talking about?

That's who she interviewed? Yeah. I'll we'll link to the episode from Veronica's show right here in the blog post for this episode.

Tracy, I always appreciate your perspective because I don't know anybody who is more well read than you either. I think a combination of your having done so many interviews is incredible experience. But also you read an insane number of books every year, from like 150 minimum to, you know, often many years, 200 to even 300 books. And I know because I see it daily.

I don't know how you're seeing my Kindle account. I try to hide that from you.

Yeah, well, it works for you. So you have a lot of experience. So what would you say is, you know, because that was a great example of what you could do to ask an opening question, and it's something that you could do in every podcast that is still going to be unique because each person is unique. Their story is unique. What makes them interesting is unique. But is there another technique that you can also provide as an example or a tip for our listeners?

One of the things this is that this is also another one that sort of gives away your authority because it starts on a weak point. It kind of has a, like a weak start to it. And you never hear this on any of the news shows or anything like that. Look, they welcome people to the show, but they welcome them and then they go right into the questions. So there's no opportunity for you to respond. So they don't say, hey, Tom, thanks for showing up. And then you respond and you might start, you might commandeer the conversation at that point. Instead, what we do is we say, oh, I'm so glad to have you on this show, because I want to get to finding this out. And I ask my question immediately. A good interview subject might say, oh, I'm so glad to be here as well, and I can't wait to tell you about this. And so, like, you know, let's dive in and I'll answer the question immediately. Right. So I am acknowledging the sort of gratefulness of being here, but I am immediately going in and serving the listenership and answering the question. And that's really important because that chit shatty stuff, while sometimes fun and sometimes great, if we really want to capture attention and grasp it and get people moving through the episode and into it and get deep enough into it that they won't leave. We need to get right into the meat of what we're talking about, to the heart of what it is that you want to get to. And so the faster you get past that Chitchat that stage, the better off it is. So very often we do see a lot of people do that kind of like, well, thanks for coming. Pause.

I'm having calls with existing podcasters daily and anywhere from two to three to six or eight. Okay. And especially podcast audits, because it's one of the newest things that we're doing to help people get more out of their show. I mean, very new. I mean, you listen to this episode. I mean, we started doing this, like, literally less than two weeks before recording this episode. So the audit thing is it's a new thing. And I listen to everybody's show at least one episode. And so many have that greeting, welcoming the guest as the first thing, thank you for being on the show. And then waiting for them to reply. And they said, well, thank you for having me. It is so repetitive, not only within certain podcasters, episode to episode, but show.

To show to show and show notes to show notes. Like, if you looked at your blog starting that way, that's not the way you want it to start. That's why we write those leading paragraphs, they call them right, which is your episode description. At the end of the day, you would put that in as episode description. But if you were using just straight transcription, it would be like, welcome to the show. Like, it's just not. You know, it's the same every single time. You are going to see that you're.

Doing something repetitive unless you're recording your episode live, which admittedly some people do, and they record it live and they're repurposing it. So it is what it is. And obviously you have the opportunity to edit it before you publish it as a podcast. What I mean by recording it live is like, they're streaming it live, like on Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever. If you're prerecording it, as most people are, hey, have that chitchat welcome. You guys, thank them for being on the show. But that's not what you're recording as a part of the episode. Right. You have the opportunity to have more of a start that grabs your attention.

Now, when I record, I've done that in that process with my interview subjects. So we come on, the recording is not on when we get started. The recording is simply it's paused or it's off because I want to give them that comfort zone of they're not on and so that they could say something off the record if they need to. This is a tactic I learned from being an in columnist, is like, you can't get them in a comfort zone to start talking to you if you start with a recording on immediately. So it's not something that I do. So I come in, I say, oh, I'm so glad we're finally connecting. This is going to be a really great conversation. Do you have any questions for me? I'm going to explain the process of how it works and I get past that chitchat stage that they need in the process because to make them comfortable. And so I say, I'm going to turn the recording on and we're just going to dive right in. And you aren't even going to hear my introduction of you. I already know what I'm going to say because I have the bio, I have everything that I need and I've already prepared what my first question and my tie off of that bio is going to be. I've already already like bullet pointed it. I don't write out the question, but I bullet pointed it. And so when I dive in, I'm truly diving in. And so they expect it because I warned them it was going to happen. That really works for them now. This tactic of diving in like that is something I'm really comfortable doing. Because trial by fire, when I was doing the interview, sometimes I would get three, five minutes with some people if I were live. Like I got to interview Steve Wozniak and they gave me five minutes. Here you are, you've got this incredible founder of Apple and I want to have like an hour long conversation with him and I've only got five minutes. I better ask him the best questions in that five minutes. And I better start immediately with that. That's a tactic.

And if I remember properly, because I was there, I got to be the cameraman holding, you know, live streaming the interview with Steve Wozniak.

Yeah, we have the video. We could share it.

We do have the video. We could put it actually in the blog post for this episode. So let's do that. But you ended up getting more than five minutes because you asked some really good questions. You latched on to something that clearly he was passionate about. And so he kept talking and kept talking because he's passionate.

Yeah, right. So I didn't cut him off, give.

Him the hook at some point because you got maybe twice as long as they expected to give you. Right.

That's a great thing when that happens. So it has happened to me again and again where people who said I only have 20 minutes gave me a lot longer. I only have five minutes. And they gave me longer or offered to do a follow up interview because they enjoyed that process of getting to something that they wanted to talk to and not having to like kind of drag this. They have to push the sound bites in because they don't have a lot of time or it drags out and they never get to have their point, which is what they really came to deliver on the, on the episode or on the show.

If you'll allow me, in this episode, especially for the newer podcasters that are listening, I want to just make a comment on a tactical thing because what you said you do of not starting the recording from the beginning of your connecting with them, and you're connected with them virtually over a tool like Zoom. I want to make sure people understand that it's not right.

It's not always in person, although the.

Steve Wozniak one was in person. So, I mean, most podcasters get an opportunity at some point to interview someone in person, and that's a different dynamic and a different situation that we're not really going into deeply today. It may be a good topic for another episode at some point. But you mentioned about not turning on the recording to put that guest at ease, and I appreciate that. However, I do want to mention for the newbie podcasters, for the less experienced podcasters, we have often had people call us up like practically in tears, very distraught when they conducted this amazing interview with one of their very first guests and they forgot to hit the record button when they did it.

Yeah.

So we often recommend for new podcasters, you use a tool like Zoom or whatever that when you connect with them, it is recording from the get go. Because, I mean, it's just horrible when I have to tell somebody, I'm sorry, there's no way to recover it if you didn't hit record. I mean, we do provide to our customers a checklist when they get their microphone from us that has. Here's a checklist of things you do before you start that interview. And one of them is press record. So you, you know, so if you have that checklist, hopefully you remember. But I think it's a little different for you and me that have an awful lot of experience where we do. I mean, my normal Zoom meeting room.

For those things the record turns on.

Well, no, it does not. My, my personal meeting room, it's not set to record and I do have to turn it on. And I record a couple podcasts every week first thing in the morning at 6am because that's like when me and my co hosts like to record on One of our shows and it's never on. We have our beginning chitchat, talk about what our subject is, what we're going to talk about, and then I turn on the recording. But I've just done it so much. I never forget. I do think that it is very hard to oftentimes is for a new podcaster recommended that record everything until you're more experienced and you're never going to forget to turn on record. It's just. It's a big rookie.

My process of it is, are you ready to get going? Okay, I'm going to press record, so I'm alerting you of it, which also triggers that in my brain to do it. It's kind of my repetitive process. So I'd never forgotten to turn it on. Of course I just said that and I probably will forget now that Tom jinxed me on it. But I've never forgotten to because I'm announcing it as a part of the sort of process that I'm going through at the time. So, yeah, I just want to recap with where we left off. So like, the idea of what the best interview question is is really up to you. But here's what it is. It's the one that captures your audience's attention, pulls them into the episode with you as fast as possible, gives context as to why you're there and that guest is there, why the two things are combined or why your show's purposes and the guest fit to that is. And it's not repetitive, it's unique because all of those things are going to give you the highest authority possible as a good interviewer, as a show worth listening to, a show worth recommending and a show worth coming back and binging on again and again and again. Because remember, that's why we don't like the repetitiveness of things, is we don't necessarily want that to recur right at the beginning of everything. We want it to. Recurring segments are great, but let's not make them at the beginning always because we want to have that differentiating driving them in to make sure they feel this episode, this particular one, is worth listening to today. And we don't want them to feel like it's just the same old, same old. We want them to feel that differentiation from moment one of the interview process. And those segments are wonderful. They give people a lot of comfort that they're in the right show, that they're going to get something delivered to them. But I don't always give them at the same point. That's My personal viewpoint on it. It's just how I do it because I deliver everybody's binge factor on the Binge Factor show, right? But I do it at the right moment when it comes up and I can properly discuss it rather than say, okay, and now we're going to do analyze the binge factor, right? And so it's just a different process. You can choose your process for it, but it is not my recommendation to do it at the opening because it loses that unique driver pull. And that's our whole goal with our opening question, is really get somebody into that episode so they will not leave.

You've been a guest on a lot of people's shows, too. What's the worst opening question you've ever heard?

Oh, that I don't want to.

Stop. I totally don't want to out somebody. But the worst ones are the ones who, like, didn't bother with any kind of thing. And so tell us your background, because the problem with that is, is if I didn't do my homework on your show and I didn't know who your audience is and what your show is, what am I going to do? Is like, I was born, I have two parents. Like, you know, how far back are you going to go? You'd be shocked at how. How much people do go back, give you their whole resume, their whole history of where they went to college and what they did. That question could last forever and be extremely boring. I pretty much. If somebody asks me the question, Tom that I don't like, I won't answer it quite that way. I'll be like, I hear you asking me about my origin story. But I think what you really want is this.

You help maybe inexperienced podcast interviewers make that interview better because you have this experience, and you'll pivot it because you want to help make it more engaging. Is that correct?

Absolutely. And the other part is, I don't go on a show that I haven't done a little research on. So if I didn't listen to the show, read through their description, kind of get a sense of. Of what their audience is, and if they gave me an opportunity and I still didn't understand it, I would clarify that before we started the interview. So now if you're doing a live stream, I don't have an opportunity to always ask that question ahead of time. But if they gave me that opportunity, I would have asked them that question before they started interviewing me. So at least I could provide the tightest context possible with an understanding of the audience. So I'M picking and choosing my case studies, my stories, everything in relation to, oh, this is an audience of all professional doctors. Like, okay, I'm going to tell a lot of healthcare stories. That's fine. I'll just think that through in my head and come up with the ideas and make sure that I've got the right examples. But that is just because I'm experienced both as an interviewer and an interviewee.

Different types of interviews, as well as interviewing people for articles, written articles that weren't intended to be a podcast. First really valuable stuff. And I'm sure our listeners are getting a lot out of this as well. Do you have anything you want to add?

Yeah, the last thing that I really want to add is that, remember, for most of us we are repurposing everything that we do. And so it's not just a podcast, it's a blog. And in all those formats. That's why my recommendation here to you on the uniqueness matters, because it does matter in every one of those formats. In video, one of the hardest things to do is get past the first minute. Every minute of video. Your viewership declines almost 70% past the first minute. So that's serious. Like if you're losing 70% of your audience on video every minute that goes by, you need to get to the point quickly. In audio, it's longer than that, right? You have more time. People don't turn on an audio without the intention. It's a sort of long tail media type that people are more comfortable with. But that doesn't mean that they're going to stick around. If they aren't getting what they want, they'll go find another episode. You do still need to get to that. Capturing their interest within the first five minutes of the show.

I think, you know, that's a really good point, Tracy, and you're right. We can also share that as a company, we've been engaging in social media marketing of a few different kinds and our social media team for promoting us in general is engaging in more video and we're going to be experimenting with some, you know, TikToks, among other things, which is not my platform. But anyway, video is the point. And especially when we're doing creating ads for video. And I did this recently to create actually ads for our podcast audits that are 30 seconds long, a minute long at most. The marketing company was really pointing out you've got to engage them in the first few seconds because on social media, if they're not interested or hooked, they're not going to stay. So in doing this, I made sure I didn't do the common thing of introducing myself, who I am and where I'm from first. No, I'm immediately jumping in with a key value point that the audience, the right audience would be interested in that will hook them and say, okay, what is this? What is this about? I want to, you know, I want to pay attention to that. And if I introduce myself at all, it's later, after they're already hooked. And so I'm Tom Hazard, apologize. And here's where you can take action to get this value. But that's at the end, after I've hooked them on the what, the why, whatever, right?

And uniqueness is rewarded everywhere. And that's something that you need to remember, is that when you are pointing out that uniqueness, pointing out what that story is that's going to happen, pointing out what that key factor of success that you're going to discuss in today's episode, when you get to the uniqueness, every single media type, all of that repurposing, the audience sticks around when it's something they haven't heard before. If they think this is going to be the same interview because this is their favorite guy that they've heard on lots of other episodes. But if they feel like it's going to be the same interview, they're not going to stick around because they feel like, oh, I already heard them say that before. And so they want to find you getting to the something new that they haven't heard before. Right. That's why they're tuning in again to their favorite person. Google in blogging will reward unique content. We know this again and again that that uniqueness is a value factor and truly a binge factor if someone's going to stick around and stay with you. And that's why I look for that, it's why I strive for that, and it's why I up my game continually. Listen to new podcasters, check out their tactics, and you should, too.

All right, well, thank you, Tracy. That's awesome. Why don't we drop the mic there, so to speak. And I hope everybody's gotten some good value from this episode. And, you know, if you haven't listened to the episode about asking the best podcast interview questions, or I think it's called structuring the best, actually podcast interview questions, you can go find that episode and listen to it and get a lot more detail on not just that asking that first question, but how you structure all the questions of an interview. You can find that episode on poditize.com just go to the feed your brand section and I think it's actually one of our featured episodes. It might be just on that page for feed you'd brand right there.

Yeah, I think it might be one of our top featured. It's one of our masterclasses that we send out to people as well, so but we'll be sure to link to it for the episode for this episode blog as well, so you'll be able to find it anywhere you go. Thanks everyone for listening. We really appreciate you being here for our episode and we look forward to bringing you more great episodes and great topics. And as always, you can reach out to us anywhere on social media oddities and you can share with us questions and things that you would like us to cover in future episodes.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcastersunited.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.