How To Create a Great Interview

Speaker 1 (00:02)

Hello and welcome to Podcasting Anything and ask me anything for all things podcasting.

Speaker 2 (00:06)

I'm your host, Ben CLOY.

Speaker 1 (00:07)

And I'm joined here in the studio with Mathew Passy, the podcast control. Matt and I wanted to move the conversation beyond the Podcasting 101 topics and move into the intermediate to advance podcasting strategy.

Speaker 2 (00:18)

To reach your goals.

Speaker 1 (00:19)

To interact with the show, submit your questions to be answered live, book a podcast audible with Mathew, or find the notes from today's show. Head on over to Podcastnaeaniething.com.

Speaker 2 (00:31)

Well, welcome back to another podcast, Nana. In case you were worried about my car, I am still looking for it, but there is hope. I'll find it somewhere. I couldn't come up with a better dad joke, although to do a good, healthy dad joke. How do you follow Will Smith in the snow?

Speaker 3 (00:57)

You follow the Fresh Prince.

Speaker 2 (00:59)

You follow the Fresh Prince. Yes. You are trained in the dad joke universe.

Speaker 3 (01:04)

Yeah. And the Will Smith pond universe.

Speaker 2 (01:07)

Yes. And now we can officially hashtag Will Smith and we post his podcast and trend with everything else Will Smith is going on in the world. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We are here to talk about before Will Smith became famous on Sunday night, we're talking about podcast evolutions and a lot of stuff was dropped. And interesting enough, I don't know if it was because in La, if that timed with. But usually Apple doesn't really time their news or anything with the podcast ecosphere. And we had a big Apple week and we had a big Podcast evolutions week out in La where a lot of big things were launched. And two things that we want to talk about for Apple is one, the mysterious how to bank the charts was finally revealed. And I know, Matthew, this one is kind of personal because you get really annoyed because there's a lot of fine print out there that people bought into. There's a lot of, like, hearsay just passed on. And you find it really annoying that this bad advice keeps getting repeated. So I can only imagine how validated you felt in the advice you've been given for probably the last five years.

Speaker 3 (02:05)

Yeah. This one was really particular, like peculiar because this wasn't even an evolution thing. This just like the week prior to it. All of a sudden I'm scrolling Facebook and somebody post this thing that says Apple finally reveals how their charts work. I was like, what? Why? Just because. And I guess it was a precursor then to the announcement that we saw later, which was Apple is going to start telling you your follower account, which is something that every day I'm asked by podcasters, how many subscribers do I have? We don't really know. Well, now we have a much better idea, especially since the largest platform, where the most share of podcast listening comes from, is going to start revealing those numbers. So you're going to have a good sense. But to your question, yeah. I mean, the big thing is that sometime, I don't know, six, seven years ago, somebody came out there and said ratings and reviews will help you grow your podcast in Apple. And I believe this was from one of those big digital marketing gurus who had a podcast. And so it was seen as gospel. And that myth, that belief has just spread like wildfire and kept being perpetuated year after year after year, that ratings and reviews are the key to gaming the charts inside of Apple.

Speaker 3 (03:24)

And actually for a long time, credit to Rob Walsh over at Lipson. He's been saying for a long time, that is not the case. Todd Cochrane may have also been on that saying it was not the case, but Rob made a big point of it. I think they even did some experiments to try and figure that out. But Apple has come out and they said, we'll post this link to this little blog post that they did that for certain. Ratings and reviews are not factored into the algorithm that determines the rankings for top shows and top episodes. So while ratings and reviews can be useful as social proof for your show, they are not the reason that will help you advance in the chart. So we still have the exact algorithm that they use. But what Apple said is the factors that go into it are listening. So they say when listeners are engaging with episodes, it's an indicator of content. Popularity follows. When listeners follow a show to receive new episodes, it's an indicator of their intent to listen. Completion rate. When listeners complete episodes, it's an indicator of content quality. So that mix of how many people are playing your show, how many people are staying with your show, and how many people, after listening to your show or originally checking your show out, are becoming a follower of your show.

Speaker 3 (04:49)

And those are three things that make a ton of sense to impact your show's chart and ranking in popularity in the podcast or not. Ratings and reviews and shares.

Speaker 2 (05:02)

I want to ask your opinion on why do you think it took so long for followers to be shared?

Speaker 3 (05:09)

Well, so we'll get to that in a second. But why wasn't followers shared? I have no idea what the thinking was behind not having the follower number shared with people. I can't come up with a good argument. I mean, I can probably think of some arguments why they finally did it, but I can't for the life of me understand why that information was available. And keep in mind, for a long time, we didn't have a lot of analytics out of Apple, right? It was only a few years ago the podcast Connect came out and we really started to see things like our listens or engage lessons, our completion rate, what kind of devices, what kind of Apple devices, people are using to consume our show and things like that. So they're slowly starting to make all these changes and kind of grow with the podcast universe and give us the information that we need. But I'm not sure why that was restricted from the start. And maybe the fact that you have more platforms giving out that information, making it a big part of what they give content creators. Apple was just like, I guess we just got to finally do it.

Speaker 3 (06:22)

And also I think the paid subscription number, right. So now Apple says you want to issue a podcast and charge people for it. You can do that. Well, if you're doing that, you better know how many people are paying to subscribe because you are getting paid on that number. So I guess it was kind of like, listen, we have to give out this number now.

Speaker 2 (06:40)

We might as well give it out to everybody and make just we already are doing the math and why not make it synopsis? And I can almost tying it back to the podcast reviews. There's a good case to be made. That the one reason why it hung on for so long. It was honestly the only number that you could see, like it was the Billboard of your podcast. Everything else was a mystery. So the way they set up the app almost fed into this idea that podcast reviews because much like an Amazon review, that's how people are buying. So we're already conditioned to think that way. And the bandwagon has just ran and ran and ran. But I can also say I'm glad that it's not just podcast reviews because to me, the actual engagement like they're saying it does to me, that's more beneficial because it's based on someone's real life habits versus something that was just one and done because we know mod podcast reviews is just dropping in and that person never comes back to listen. So this is much more human, which I would expect something like this out of Apple, but at the same time, we should have had it a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (07:49)

They could have easily been the first one to do it. Because correct me if I'm wrong, we already have this from Spotify in the back end.

Speaker 3 (07:57)

Yeah, you have these kinds of numbers from Spotify in the back end. I also think knowing what this algorithm is, I think this kind of shuts down a lot of the spammers and the bots. Right. How many podcasters get a message on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram for a few hundred dollars will get you blah, blah, blah million downloads? And it's like, okay, you might be able to get me downloads now, but it turns out that just downloading the show isn't enough. You've got to play it, you've got to be an engaged listener and you've got to complete it. And I think that kind of messes up their business model. I'll be curious to see how many podcasters will actually adjust their language and start to stop stressing the ratings and reviews because I listened to a few shows where they still make a big deal about ratings and reviews being a way to help grow the show. And I haven't heard a lot of that come down yet or change. I'll be curious if it really does matter. And by the way, if your listings isn't wondering, it's still the end of March. This is all supposedly going to go live.

Speaker 3 (08:56)

The new follower metrics, they should be showing up in your dashboard next month. So possibly at the end of this week or maybe next week is when you'll start seeing it in your Podcast Connect account.

Speaker 2 (09:07)

Correct me if I'm wrong. It did not touch too much on the new and noteworthy, correct?

Speaker 3 (09:13)

Well, so when you say new and noteworthy, you're talking about the main new and Noteworthy section.

Speaker 2 (09:17)

The coveted thing that most marketers are selling on, like the bread butter. Give me the $500 and I'll make you in this basketball boards so people download you all across the Apple ecosystem.

Speaker 3 (09:29)

Well, that's another one that you got a lot of really weird mythological formulas for getting into Noteworthy. One thing I heard was you had to get all your downloads in six weeks of release. And so when I was working with clients early on, people would be like, well, I need to time my release and this and that. I don't want to release too early. Like, that's not a thing. Or again, it was like, if I get so many downloads and this and this and this and you can get into New and Noteworthy, and if I get a New and noteworthy, and that's not a thing either. New and noteworthy. The main page of the podcasting store is editorially created. There are people at Apple who decide what shows to get in there. And how do I know this? Because one of our shows was actually asked to be a new and Noteworthy shortly after we launched. We didn't necessarily have huge numbers. We had just started. But the host was somewhat of a well known personality. He had been on some bigger podcasts. He was doing an interesting topic. And so Apple actually emailed and said, hey, we would like to feature your show on the new and noteworthy.

Speaker 3 (10:37)

And so we did. But just so you know, it came with conditions. They asked us to make some changes to the website where we were featuring the show and specifically change how we talked about where to subscribe to the show, to prominently feature Apple and use the right button and put it above the fold as opposed to where it was below the fold. They were willing to promote the show in this section, but it came with some conditions. So it is all editorially controlled. Supposedly, you can email Apple and maybe be like, hey, we're a new show. Any interest and maybe if you have decent numbers, high ratings and reviews, a little bit of engagement behind your show, you might be able to get on their good side and possibly get in there. But for the most part, this is probably something that's going to be reserved for larger media organizations, celebrities, and some of those viral hits that pop up that quickly gain attention in the ethos of the podcasting world, not just I think my show is really good. I should be featured. Probably not going to happen. Also, being in there doesn't necessarily mean you're going to see a huge bump.

Speaker 2 (11:53)

Yeah. And you know what? This kind of gives me a topic that maybe we could actually do next week. I do not think we Pmaid podcast conferences yet, have we?

Speaker 3 (12:04)

No, we haven't really done that. I mean, this show was launched originally at a podcasting conference, but no, I don't think you and I have talked about them yet.

Speaker 2 (12:13)

Definitely. I think that's something to look forward to in the future. I think there's some good topics we could dive into because you might have heard them. But I think there's a lot of things we could dive into of how to know when to go, what to go, when to go, how often you go. Is it a yearly mecha thing that you do and visit? So stay tuned on that one. That one, definitely. I think I'm going to add into the queue for a future contest.

Speaker 3 (12:34)

The Mathew on that has changed, especially post Pandemic. Right. It was a lot easier to just go three years ago, and now I think you got to be a little choice choosing about them. Yes.

Speaker 2 (12:45)

But then you also have to manage your own internal itch to get back in real life. That's something that also struggles me for that. But I don't want to dive sidecar into that conversation because we could easily rabbit hole. And I'm not even sure if we would come back up for air and actually be able to finish out the episode and what we do want to talk about today, because I'm positive we could go the rest of the episode just on that. Well, let's go ahead.

Speaker 3 (13:06)

Where is your car?

Speaker 2 (13:09)

It's waiting in New Jersey to get the gas pump. That's really what it comes down to. I've been at this gas station. No one's come out to pump my gas. And I'm really concerned.

Speaker 3 (13:17)

I'll tell you, in the winter. It's glorious, though.

Speaker 2 (13:19)

Anyway, well, let's dive into our question for today, and the question that I want to dive into is something different. But it's also something that leads more into Podcast Etiquette. And Podcast Etiquette is something that we just don't spend enough time on talking about because we get so bogged down in the overall tech of the podcasting, from microphone to set up to RSS feed to all the things that come with podcast set up. But Podcast Etiquette and understanding what creates a great interview. That's just something like a muscle. No different than going to the gym and doing a bicep rep. It's the same idea. So when you're coaching new clients, Matthew, how do you coach them to curate a good interview?

Speaker 3 (14:08)

So there's a few things that typically come up in one of those early calls when we're talking about how to be a good interviewer. One of the first things I tell folks is a good interview is really a good conversation. Right. So the podcast that you tend to see rise up to the top, the podcast that get major coverage and huge followings. When you listen to the people who are doing those interviews, it doesn't sound like someone who is sitting in front of the police being interrogated. It typically sounds more like two people who are sitting in a bar having a cup of coffee, hanging out on the couch. Right. It feels like you are driving down the road and these two people are in your back seat just having a good conversation, and you get to be a part of it. And it's a hard thing for a lot of people to get over because they have a goal or a mission or something in mind that they're trying to accomplish in these. And so it's hard to just kind of relax and be conversational. But I usually tell clients to try not to think about the mic, try not to think about the camera.

Speaker 3 (15:21)

Try not to think about all this other stuff that you have going on and just talk to this person as if you were sitting with them outside having a drink at a bar or something like that, because that's when you're going to have the most organic, real conversation, and that's what is going to make people really enjoy it. Also, really good interviewers are really good listeners. Some of the best interviewers out there. You might hear from them 10% of the time on a good conversation because they know to ask a question, get out of the way and let the person talk. Right. There is a reason why we brought somebody onto the show. And so if we want to get stuff from this guest, let's get stuff from this guest, let's give them the room to shine. So really good podcasters are usually really or I should say really good interviewers are really good listeners. And that also comes up because a lot of people want to prep for their interviews. And I actually have this there's a discussion on Facebook recently about does anybody do pre interviews with their guests? And in the 15 years that I've been doing radio and podcast broadcasting, I have never once requested a pre interview with anyone.

Speaker 3 (16:43)

I've had a few people who want to do it, and that's fine. We do it. But people who want to do a pre interview are people who want to over prepare either as the host or as the guest, they're either going to give you all the questions in advance and the person is going to script all their answers afterwards, or that kind of organic thing that happens when you're meeting someone for the first time and you're like, oh, that's really interesting. It's hard to recreate that magic, that genuineness of discovering something new about someone and really want to follow it along. A lot of hosts that I work with and a lot of interviews, the phrase that drives us all crazy is, well, before we started talking, well, no, I want to hear you talking. I don't want to hear what happened before you start talking. You're trying to recreate some magic that happened when the mic was off and we're all just like, no, bring that magic to the microphone. But so when it comes to preparing for interviews, what I would typically say to clients is, yeah, write down some questions, especially if you're kind of new to this and you're going to be a little bit nervous and you're not sure how the clock is going to make you feel.

Speaker 3 (17:46)

And if the on air light is going to create some sort of pressure on you and anxiety and nervousness have a few questions, right? Maybe jot down six to ten questions or talking points, things that you know, you want to cover with this person in the midst of this conversation and really treat that as a safety blanket. Because the other thing that drives me nuts is somebody who writes down five questions and asks those five questions, 12345 without really listening to the guests. So, Ben, where are you from? I grew up in New Jersey. I live in Wisconsin right now. Where were you born? I grew up in New Jersey, but we moved because of a fire. Where do you work? What do you mean, where does he work? There was a fire. Stop. Listen. Did you hear what he said? Go back and listen to your guests because you have questions. You think you're going to take a person in one direction. They're telling you their story. They might take you in a different direction if you're not listening. And if you're so hell bent on just asking these questions one right after the other, you are missing the opportunity to find out things about a person that you probably didn't know.

Speaker 3 (18:51)

Either you didn't do enough research on the person or that the information you're getting from them isn't out there, or it's something that they haven't talked about on a bunch of other podcasts. So you actually have an opportunity to get something interesting out of them if you listen and let them guide the conversation. So, yes, have questions, ask a question, but then listen. Be curious if you are overly prepared or if you are overly scripted, you're missing out on an opportunity for curiosity and for discovery because your audience has no preparation. They haven't done background research they haven't practiced their questions, they haven't done a pre interview with the person. And so remember they're hearing this for the first time. And so if they're hearing for the first time and the guest is something that's peculiar interesting or different or unique and you're just like, well, I already knew that. And you're moving on to something else. I guess the audience is like, but wait a minute, they just said something interesting like go follow up. Anyway, point is, I think it's good to write out questions so that if you get to a point where you're like, what do I want to do next?

Speaker 3 (20:00)

You can quickly look down at your paper like, Ah, that's right. I remember there was something else that I found out that I want to ask you about, but really good interviewers. They can ask a question and never look down at their paper again because they're just genuinely curious about the person and it just leads to a really great conversation.

Speaker 2 (20:17)

I absolutely love that. The only thing I'm coming to my mind is regret that somehow we didn't connect back in 2019 when I first connected or when I first started my podcast, military veteran, because I took a lot of your advice in what you said to start questions. You were nervous. I had ten questions that I was prepared. I was kind of even following like John Lee Dumas. He still does a lot of pre questions. Like some of those five questions. Yeah, the five questions. And I was like, there's nothing wrong with this. It feels good. But then I was getting a few close friends that were listening it and kind of just give me feedback. They're like, you're flying right over the gold and they did it. I was doing exactly what you said and it was by episode 20 that I had to take the crutches off and it led me to frame this advice the way I described it. So if you're kind of in the middle of where Matthew told you to be, but then you're like, I really feel like I still need the question. Most importantly, I've said this a couple of times.

Speaker 2 (21:07)

The podcast, your ability to hit publish is the most important aspect of podcasting. If something's going to hinder that publish button, you create a crutch to walk that distance. And if questions will be that crutch, by all means you crutch the hell out of that and make it the best crutch you've ever had. But the moment you feel like you can walk without that crutch, then you take off that crutch and you start walking. And that's exactly what I did. And it gets nervous because there's two kinds of interviews. One that flow and it feels nothing like work. And then there's interviews where it's entirely work where you ask the question, you're hoping for a couple of paragraphs and they give you three sentences and you're continuing to search now those are the ones that I really feel like it's going to amp up your anxiety a little bit. But then it's also going to make you a stronger interview because you're going to have to fly with questions as you go. And one more quick story of how this kind of mindset evolves, of where I'm now in the Marine Corps, we used to have to do uniform inspections.

Speaker 2 (22:07)

Well, loose threads were very common on the uniforms that we were buying. I would literally spend hours in my barracks with nothing more than a little scissors and a tweezers pulling threads from my uniform for hours at a time. These little threads had a name. They were called Irish Penance, and we're the only branch of the military that called them Irish Penance. And so it made a good story for my own branding as well. But those Irish pinnace are what I'm looking for in the interview. Every time I see a loose thread, that's what I pull. I either listen to my intuition, I listen to my Spidey sense, and I'm like, there's a thread, I'm going to pull it. Those are where I've gotten the best feedback on. And I even warned the guest because I was like, you could tell me all the things that you're going to say, but there's going to be a moment where you show me a thread and I'm going to pull it, and then I'll pull it. And then they're like, man, that was really good. Those threads is where the most gold comes from. So I really appreciate what you've just said, Matthew, because it echoes what I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (23:03)

But it also validates that I don't like doing a lot of preshow interviews. And I often feel like I'm being lazy as a podcaster by not doing a preshow interview. So you also allowed me to push that interview anxiety away and keep doing what I'm doing and knowing them doing the right thing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:19)

Something else that you brought up, that podcasters. Don't really think about it. We maybe discussed this in a previous episode and whatnot. But especially if you're doing this ahead of time, you're pre taping them, you're going to edit them, you're going to do all that other stuff. And we talked about it. You can pause, you could stop. You can think. You don't have to fill every second with noise, especially when you were taping your interview.

(23:48)

Right.

Speaker 3 (23:49)

There's so many people listen. If you're on live radio, live television, even in those cases, silence can be very good. Not a ton of it. Right. But a two or three second pause can really add emphasis to a moment, can really stress the moment, can really give the audience a second to absorb what was just happening. But especially when you're taping, it's okay for the person to finish saying something, you need to be like, all right, where do I want to go?

Speaker 2 (24:19)

For me?

Speaker 3 (24:19)

Let me think about it. You have time. Look, go through your notes to be like, and you can even talk to your guests. You can go in and take that out and remove it later. It doesn't have to be that big of a deal. We talked about this. We definitely talked about this in the previous episode where I'll be interviewing someone, I'll start asking a question. No, never mind. That was stupid. Let me start again.

Speaker 2 (24:39)

And I'll just you're brilliant at it happens regularly, and I have to remind myself of that permission. Even the intros, you can F up. And most people don't even like your first few seconds in just start over. And even that was something that I also felt wary of as well. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:55)

So, I mean, it's okay to pause. It's okay to think. It's okay to pivot anytime I'm talking to someone for the first time. My little thing that I always say is, listen, if I ask a question you don't like, just tell me. We won't continue on. I don't want to make a bad experience for them. Or if they're struggling with an answer, like, no problem, take a breath. I'll be asked the question. You could start all over again. Now, I don't want to do that too many times in an interview, because then it starts to get a little annoying. And then you have people who are perfectionist, and it kind of takes away the organic nature of a good conversation. But just the fact that you have that ability to stop and fix something should give you a little bit more freedom, a little bit more latitude. Just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the conversation. And also two other pieces of advice. One, don't wait to talk. Right? This is not just a podcast thing. A lot of people struggle with this every day. There are people who are not listening because they're basically waiting for their turn to speak.

Speaker 3 (25:54)

And they've caught onto a point that came up two or three minutes ago and they've missed out on something else because they're just so focused on getting in their next point or their next job or the next joke or the next whatever it is, really listen. And it's okay to have a piece of paper and write down a few things while the person's talking.

Speaker 2 (26:13)

I'm always writing keywords down. It's like a giant, just Breadcrumb trail.

Speaker 3 (26:18)

Yeah. So it's okay to take a few notes, especially if you're doing in a way where you can mute your microphone or silence the microphone later. So we don't hear you writing or typing your questions. It's fine. The other thing that I think a lot of people don't think about when they're doing a podcast is this advice that I give out to lots and lots and lots and lots of people. We do not listen to podcasts en masse. Right. We do not gather around the campfire to listen to the old podcast. We don't gather the family and sit behind the speaker and listen to these in a group setting. I would venture to say 90 times out of 109 out of ten times people are listening to podcast content alone.

Speaker 2 (27:05)

I would go 9.9% out of ten listen.

Speaker 3 (27:09)

There's still some people who maybe they are driving with their spouse or significant other, their friend. They listen to a podcast.

Speaker 2 (27:15)

You're right. Those moments where the car is like they're mutually interested in the same thing.

Speaker 3 (27:20)

It happens. But I would venture to say most of the time people are listening to podcast content alone, right? They are driving, they are working out. They are cleaning the house or doing the dishes. They're sitting in their office working. They're going on whatever it is. Most of the time we consume this content alone. And while the instinct is for you to address your podcast audience as if you were talking to thousands of people at once, what you really should be doing is focusing on talking to one person 1000 times. And what I mean by that is a lot of folks they'll talk to a consultant, they'll go back to their broadcast experience, and it's always like, who's our avatar? Right? Who's our ideal listener? And that person, we're going to call him Dave. Dave is 35 years old. He's a man. He's got 2.3 kids. He drives this kind of car loose, blah, blah, blah. We're going to make a picture of Dave, and I want you every time you do your show, you talk to Dave. Dave is bullshit, okay? Dave is not a real person.

Speaker 2 (28:28)

I like this version of it. Dave doesn't bring this guy out more often. I love Dave.

Speaker 3 (28:32)

Well, Dave sucks. Dave is absolute and utter crap. When you are doing a podcast, I don't like the idea of you either making up a room full of Dave's or picturing your audience naked or standing in front of blah, blah, blah. No, forget all that. Picture one person. Picture R1 person in your life, colleague, a friend, a significant other spouse, whatever. Whoever it is, picture that one person. That when you are thinking about this topic, when you are interviewing someone, when you're talking to someone, you want to get that one person totally hooked, right? The kind of person who every time you talk to them, your shoulders are up, you're leaning in, you're smiling, you're engaging, and you want that person to be your microphone, right? You want an actual Dave in your life to be this microphone. Because if you can make Dave feel like he's coming on the journey with you or you're teaching Dave a lesson or you're engaging Dave or you're making him understand the topic, whatever it is, if you can convince Dave, if you can be super engaging with your real Dave in your life, everybody else who's listening to these podcasts with an earbuds directly in their ear is going to feel like Dave.

Speaker 3 (29:54)

And so I think it's. One of the brilliant things that smartlist does is that when they talk to their audience, they always say listener. They always say that singular person listener. They don't say, hey, audience, hey, everybody, thanks for listening one person because we tend to consume these things alone, and it's supposed to be an engaging, intimate medium. So act like you're talking in an engaging, intimate way.

Speaker 2 (30:16)

I love that. And you actually just interrupted a thought that I think I might even be doing on this podcast. But I know I'm doing it on my podcast of using the word everybody. And then I also want to point out there's often a lot of advice pointed out there of connecting with every email subscriber that subscribes, send them an email, like saying, hey, how can I help you? What's going on in your life? Because the more data points of that listener, the more that you don't actually have to worry. If there's a Dave in your life, you literally have this email, maybe a five paragraph essay. Sometimes you can get from these listeners about what's going on in their life and be like, I'm going to talk to that person. And that allows you to understand exactly what they're thinking. And this is a real listener that is engaged. It's not just one that you're imaginary and it's not one that you hope is out there listening that someday he'll finally find your podcast. Because I think that's often where the Avatar trap comes into is it's built outside of reality and you're hoping at some point that perfect person finally tunes in where the whole thing blows up.

Speaker 2 (31:20)

But you don't have a bunch of perfect people showing up the podcast. You have a bunch of imperfect people looking to try to improve their life and get entertained for a little bit. And they just want you to know that they're talking to you. That's an important, powerful feeling. So thank you for that. That would be a powerful lesson there that I want to make sure everybody picks up on listening this episode.

Speaker 3 (31:40)

I'll tell you, it's why this format of the show has worked so well for me. Because truthfully to me, this is a one on one consulting call with Ben. Truthfully, Ben is asking me questions and I'm talking to Ben, and I like chatting with Ben. I like teaching Ben.

Speaker 2 (31:57)

I think it's a real problem that we actually have in the early days. We would see up to like midnight chatting way too long.

Speaker 3 (32:02)

Yeah, our 60 Minutes consulting calls would turn to three hour consulting calls. But honestly, this is the best free service that Ben could get because he comes here with questions, I answer them, he gets all that knowledge. But I'm talking to him. And so hopefully if you're listening to this, you feel like Ben, you feel like I'm telling you specifically, this is what you got to do. And it's so much easier for me to get passionate behind the mic about this because I'm not talking to everybody, which is what I feel like I do when I'm hosting the show, but I'm just talking to you. And so that's kind of what I try to emulate. That's kind of what I try and teach clients is to find your Ben, your Dave, your whatever. One guy used to work with him radio. We reached hundreds of thousands of people. He's like, I talk to my mom every night in the show, right? If I can get her to understand the news, then everybody else listening is going to understand the news. That's pretty brilliant.

Speaker 2 (32:55)

There is another question that I am actually not going to reveal, but I just wrote it down for a future episode on how we could actually take these interview topics and go even bigger would be a way that I would foreshadow it. But I want to keep moving because we also have a wrap up question that ties this perfectly, because not every interview goes the way we want it to. And there are those interviews. If you've been doing podcasting for a long enough time, there's going to be that interview where you're like, I do not want my name next to that name or just even that quality of a conversation out there on the podcast. And it's going to feel like you're going to get downgraded. So how do you coach people to let go of an interview? Maybe that's saying that you don't have to publish every person that comes to you, that you spend an hour recording. Is it okay to not publish an interview?

Speaker 3 (33:43)

Yes.

Speaker 2 (33:44)

How do you help someone walk through the anxiety of telling the person, or do you tell them there's a whole bunch of things like, do you tell the person who interviewed that you're not going to publish, or do you just let it go and they probably won't notice anyhow? And if they do, you just tell them the truth? It's an awkward moment that I think a lot of podcasters who are probably more introverted than extroverted not really okay to walk through or to give themselves permission to not publish an interview?

Speaker 3 (34:10)

I don't think there's a one size fits all to this question because I think there are times where you've done an interview with someone and like you said, you're trying to pull stories out of a person. You're getting one word, two sentence, like some really short answers. And it happened because the person was nervous or because they were in a bad mindset. But you really want that person on the show, right? You really want their content to be there. You really want to give the audience the experience of hearing from this person. In that case, I would actually offer the person the chance to do the interview again. Listen, I don't think this went as well as I had hoped or as you had hoped. It sounds like, you might have been a little bit nervous. Are you willing to come back on and do it one more time? Right. So I think that is obviously a different scenario than you talk to someone you're like, man, this person was not right for my show at all, right? They claimed to be a cause Potter. It's happened a couple of times. They claimed to be a cosplayer.

Speaker 3 (35:18)

And then you listen to the interview like, this person is really just selling themselves and they fake their way onto it, and it's really just not appropriate. And in those cases, listen, you don't have to apologize for not airing something on your show. It is your show. That's not the same as saying the person is going to love you for not airing their interview, for wasting their time for all these different things. But I think obviously the best advice is to be honest. Listen, I don't think this content is actually really appropriate for my audience, and we're not going to use it or I don't think we got from this interview what we were hoping for. Or I think the full contents of this interview are inappropriate or whatever your reasoning might be. I think you just have to be honest with the person. And yeah, they might be nasty about it. In that case, if it's someone who you want to give them another chance, fine. But if it's someone who you don't want to give another chance to. Okay, well, they were nasty about it, and they show their true colors. And you're even better off not airing this interview on your show.

Speaker 2 (36:28)

There's a part of growing up as a podcast that I've heard, I've heard of blogging, so it easily carries over here is called posturing. So, like podcast, posturing is how I would brand it. And it happens, really, when you start getting like five pitches a week and there's a component when you first start getting pitches, you're like, OOH, free people. I don't have to go out there and find them. And I would say yes to them because I'm like that means I don't have to do that work. Then there's a component where you're getting multiple pitches and switching to feeling like I don't owe this person that pitched me anything. I actually have this platform that's now valuable. I get to say no. And that is a powerful switch in your mindset, is you don't have to publish every episode. And I think there's even going back to what you said about re recording. I think there's some permission that you can also accept because it's podcast, it's recorded. You have a lot of flexibility with how you produce it. If you feel it's off in the beginning, pull the plug and say, hey, would you like to reschedule it feels like something is going on in your life.

Speaker 2 (37:31)

And I don't want this to be a distraction. If you've got to go be somewhere, I want you to go be somewhere. And sometimes it could be like I've had times where I probably should have done it because I've had sick kids or something and I didn't reschedule because of that. And I tried to push through. And I'm sure if you were told exactly what episode that was, you may be able to tell that my energy was off a little bit. So I think there's just some permission and posturing that comes with like, this is your platform. You don't owe these guests anything. You're doing them a favor. There's even a mindset that was really hard for me to switch until eventually I got to the point of where I got tired of editing and I was like, you know what? If I valued my time, it actually happened. When you start we started working as an editor. I started working for you as an editor where I was like, you know what? I've never really valued my time of editing my own podcast. And so if I valued my editing my own podcast at $100 an episode when I get a pitch or when I get a bad interview, would I really pay $100 to edit that?

Speaker 2 (38:30)

Because if you were paying a QuadCast consultant to edit your episodes, you're going to be damn sure you're not going to have Matthew editing an episode that you don't even like because you're paying for it. And I think there's again, posturing, valuing your time, valuing your story, valuing your words and your money and your time. The whole thing allows you to get closer to answering that question and putting space between it being like, this is just what happens when you create a platform that is yours. These are so unique for most of us to actually experience. These are just things we have to grow up with thinking.

Speaker 3 (39:04)

Well, I would add to that one, the big thing. Value your audience.

Speaker 2 (39:09)

Yeah, value their time.

Speaker 3 (39:11)

They are investing time to listen to your show. And if it's not really appropriate for what you've told them, the values of your show don't air it. Don't waste their time. Number two, I think there's a little bit of a difference between knowing what your show is about and politely declining and saying, Listen, I get a bunch of pictures for call spots, right? Oh, so and so it's very active. He does this charity, he does this. Wow, that's amazing. Does he have a podcast? Well, no. Alright, then he's not right for the show. Like, as opposed to having this, like, I'm too cool for people attitude. Listen, they're going to be people like that. I can't stop you. You do you. It's not really my thing, but there's a way to and especially if you're getting pitched by PR people constantly, there's a way to kind of handle that, that you can turn a no into an opportunity by saying, thank you for reaching out. I appreciate that you'd want to put somebody on our show. This isn't exactly the right one. But if you do have anybody that is blah, blah, blah, that would work out.

Speaker 3 (40:25)

And so now you might have been able to create a relationship, an opportunity with someone who is pitching lots of guests, actually get the right pitches your way. You don't necessarily want to have a reputation of being, for lack of a better word, addict to guests who come on your show. Right. That's not going to help you either. There's nothing that will stop a guest from leaving a nasty rating review on your show if you're just a jerk about it. But I think you just have to be honest and it is hard. It is hard to say to someone, listen, I just don't think this is right or I'm not really sure that we jived as well as we thought we were going to or God forbid, I think I lost the recording. Right. That has happened. People who had great interviews and like, why didn't you hang interview? I didn't record it. It's hard to tell somebody that. But you will be better for it if you just do it, get that experience under your belt and then you'll feel more confident to a say no to guess who you know just clearly won't be the right fit for you and save yourself the headache.

Speaker 3 (41:39)

But two, it'll just give you confidence in knowing that you're putting out the right show because you're not just editing the audio and editing this. You're actually editing what enters your universe that you have to filter through to put out there.

Speaker 2 (41:54)

I wholeheartedly agree and I love that extra. And what you're essentially saying is make sure Dave doesn't show up in your podcast pitching process. And as long as Dave isn't full of bullshit shows up in there, you should be at least better off and making sure that that persona that you're trying to read into that's going to mess up all your thinking isn't the one making your decisions.

Speaker 3 (42:17)

We miss you, Dave.

Speaker 2 (42:19)

Well, Matthew, that does it for another episode. We went in a lot of different topics. We talked in the beginning about podcast evolutions, which is just wrapping up in Los Angeles as a plug for podcast movement. Podcast movement happens in August and I want to say it's August in Texas, if I were to quote myself. So Google podcast movement, if you want to check that out or look forward to a future episode on podcast conferences. Another one coming up is podcast Expo. It's coming up in may, which is in Orlando, which is a great community organized podcast, massive amounts of following, massive amounts of people. And it's just a great community on their podcast in may. But Matthew, that does it for us. Another podcast me anything. Thank you. And until next time.

Speaker 3 (43:02)

Have a good night, Dave.