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This Is Why Your Guest Interviews Suck…
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- [00:00]
A
So, Kyle, I know a little bit about you, but our listeners might not. So can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?
- [00:06]
B
I grew up in this small town in Antarctica. There was a horse farm there, and it really was.
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A
When I was 19, I met this
- [00:11]
B
yogi instructor named Brad. He really showed me the power of meditation. You know, after my third divorce, I found myself worse thereof. My life really got crazy when I learned the skill of martial arts. You know, it wasn't until 2019 that I was defeated by the three Horsemen in the world. Did I mention that stretch in the 2000s when I had lost my whole collection of rubber ducks. You've probably experienced this as a listener. You click on an episode, there's an interesting guest, the conversation starts, and within about two minutes, you already know where it's going. The host opens with something like, tell me about yourself. And the guest starts at the beginning. Childhood, early career, the first job, the pivot, the company, the book. Ten minutes later, it feels like the interview hasn't even started. That question is one of our biggest pet peeves, because we hear it and we're almost always certain this interview is going to suck. Today, we're breaking down why so many guest interviews fall flat and the specific mistakes podcast hosts make. Because a great interview isn't about having a famous guest. It's about knowing how to lead the conversation.
- [01:20]
A
All right, Kyle is back on mic with me. I'm excited about this one, man. We're going to talk through seven things that podcasters can do to have better guest interviews. And we talked about one of the big ones in the intro, the weak start man, the tell me about yourself question. Kyle, why do you hate that question?
- [01:41]
B
Well, I think it's the biggest offender that I see and why it's so bad is because a lot of the times it's a broad question that can go so many different places. And like I said in the intro, 10 minutes later, you don't even know where this conversation is going to. The chronological storytelling I feel like of a guest whole life story is rarely interesting. And a lot of times listeners don't necessarily care about who the guest is. They care more about the problem that this guest is here to help them solve. And a lot of that comes in reinforcing the title and why they even clicked on the episode in the first place. So, Justin, you have a couple examples that might be a better way to approach the intro. Can you go through some of those?
- [02:28]
A
Yeah, Tell me about yourself. One man, I fell a victim to this early on. In my podcasting journey, but quickly realized it was such a boring question. And honestly, as a host, a dangerous question because you had no idea where the guest was just about to take that. That answer. And I often found myself six or seven minutes later still listening to a monologue about a bunch of stuff that I know I didn't care about and then for sure my listener didn't care about. So my suggestion is to start somewhere different, specifically somewhere that isn't vague. I have a couple of angles that I think through. I think there is no right or wrong answer to this, but let me put a couple of categories out there just to provoke some thought on how you could potentially start your next guest interview. One of those is the hot take. Whatever the subject matter that you're covering is, start somewhere, ask them about a hot take that they have on that subject. So, for example, if I'm creating an episode about audio versus video podcasting, and let's say that I'm interviewing a podcast expert instead of saying tell me about yourself or how did you get into podcasting? Which is, like I said, such a loaded question that doesn't have a lot of meat to it, especially early on when the listener doesn't necessarily care about them yet. A better place that could you could potentially start is a hot take. Like you think that every podcaster should start with audio only and not include video when they're launching a podcast. Why is that? And that immediately puts you into a juicy topic, something the listener showed up to listen to and an interesting thread line. Another approach could be the recent event. So you could ask something like, apple recently updated their video experience. What does this mean for podcasting? You pull something that's been happening, that's really relevant in the news or for your audience right now and ask about it. And the last potential option you could take is the big question. I find that most subjects of episodes have that one big question, the thing that the listener really wants answered in that episode. And sometimes I like to just put it out in front. So in this example, it could be something like, how do audio podcasters easily participate in the video movement without necessarily adding video to their production workflow? So I think all three of those places are going to get to the heart of the conversation a whole lot faster and help you avoid a seven to eight minute monologue about the guest.
- [04:45]
B
I feel like that takes a lot of pressure off the guest too. I imagine that a lot of guests enter an interview with a decent amount of anxiety and wondering where this conversation is going to go. And that really puts them at ease and probably makes for a better, comfortable interview where they can open up and be vulnerable. So maybe another point one step removed from the having the guest introduce themselves is reading a guest bio as the host. And I often see a lot of hosts go wrong in this regard when they don't introduce the guest with the listeners in mind, really reinforcing the title and the premise of the podcast. What problem this guest is specifically positioned to help your audience solve, what perspectives that they bring within their career trajectory, that they have an expertise to really work on this specific problem that we're bringing up.
- [05:36]
A
Yeah, I I see this mistake all the time. Maybe not a mistake, but I think it's just still probably not the right choice word, but almost a lazy approach is just reading the bio of a guest that they submitted, probably in like your intake form as a guest. I'm even aware of this whenever I'm guesting on other shows, I might change my bio around if they have a place they submit a bio because I know they're probably going to read it in the introduction. But I love that your thoughts were A better approach might be how does their background, their experience relate to the topic and the listener in this episode. So something like, you know, if I was introducing you in this fictional episode about audio versus Video Kyle, I might say something like Kyle's been in the world of video production for the last six years and that time he's produced over a thousand episodes. He works at SimplePod Studios as a co founder. Like I start reading all of your bios off, but instead I might use some of the facts of your bio and frame it for the listener instead. So a better approach could potentially be something like today I have Kyle Peters on here. In his experience over the last six years, he's seen a huge shift from audio to video. First podcasting when he initially produced hundreds and thousands of podcasts. That an audio only form he's now getting requested for video. And today he's going to talk about how a podcaster who's audio only can start adapting video first practices. Something like that. Like, I think there's a way to weave in and gas up the guest while also putting it in perspective for the listener too. So on that note, let's I definitely think probably the biggest place to start in improving your guest interviews is definitely focusing on changing it from a weak start to a fast start. But we have another pet peeve of ours is asking bad questions. And there are a litany of different bad questions that are out there. We're going to go through a couple of those. And how about you start, Kyle? What, What's a category of bad questions that you often see?
- [07:33]
B
So, like the tell me about yourself question where it's so open ended you don't know where it's going to go. 10 minutes can go by and the interview felt feels like it hasn't started. Asking too broad of questions that get generic answers is a bad way to go about framing your conversation. Here's an example of what a bad question might look like. What makes a good podcast?
- [07:56]
A
Yikes.
- [07:59]
B
As your guest, I'm going to be sitting there, I'm thinking of the meme where there's just like a bunch of calculations going on behind their head or like there's so many different directions to take this. But a better question that might tee up the guest to get a more specific response would be, what's one thing that great podcast hosts do during interviews that the average host completely misses?
- [08:20]
A
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I've done a fair amount of guesting and these broad questions are always hard as a guest to answer. You know, what makes a good podcast? A generic question like that or a broad question like that is definitely going to get a broad answer or generic answer back. And I'm probably going to say something like, oh, be consistent or focus on knowing your listener better. You and the example that you shared on the better question, like, immediately makes me target a specific part of podcasting and it actually allows me to get deeper and more specific way quicker. So it's better for your listener. It's probably honestly better for your guests that you are asking more specific questions than broad questions. But I got another one for you. Can I throw one out to you?
- [09:00]
B
Yeah, let's hear it.
- [09:01]
A
Questions that ignore listener needs. I see this pretty often and it's coming up more often than not whenever I'm doing podcast audits now, they're asking questions that on the heart are good questions. Like, you know, some are great questions, but they're not great questions for their ideal listener. And some of this might stem from the fact that some podcasters don't know who their ideal listener necessarily is. But assuming they know who their ideal listener is, sometimes they don't ask the right questions. So we know our ideal listener on this is a business owning podcaster that's 50 episodes into their podcast. They enjoy podcasting, but they're not seeing the ROI they expected from their podcast. So if I ask a question to a guest, like, what advice would you Give someone starting a podcast that clearly misses the mark on who our ideal listener is. That's assuming our podcast or our listener hasn't launched a podcast yet. Could be a great question for another show that does focus on people who haven't launched their podcast yet. So a better question might be, what mistake did you repeatedly make in your first 50 interviews that force you to change how you prepare? Like there I know my, my listener has done 50 podcast already and they might be thinking about, okay, how do I take my interviews to the next level? Now another example of that could be what steps do podcasters need to take to land their first sponsor? Our audience is business owning podcasters. They don't need sponsors. They don't want sponsors. They want leads for their business with their podcast. Um, so I'd probably ask a better question if I was talking to a monetization expert. Instead of that question, I'd probably ask something like, for business owning podcasters, how can they build sales funnels from their podcast to their business? That's gonna be a much better question for my, my particular audience. Any more that you got in terms of the bad question category here?
- [10:48]
B
Another problematic bad question that I see are the double barreled questions. So these are the loaded questions. Here's an example. How did you start your podcast? What advice would you give to a new host? And how has podcasting changed? And while that might be a bad example because obviously it's three separate questions, a lot of the times it really is pretty easy to conjoin two questions into one, thinking the guest is going to be able to remember exactly what you stated, when in reality the guest is going to answer one part and ignore the rest. Or worse, they try to remember everything and then five minutes later you realize they've been rambling because they didn't quite understand the specific question that you were trying to ask.
- [11:34]
A
Oh, I'm still a felt in this one. To be honest, I'll catch myself if I'm having a bad interview day. Just like loading up five questions in a row to a guest and I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, let me take this one at a time. This is, this is an obvious one that I think podcasters can focus on. I think there are moments when you can like conjoin two questions, but more times than not, like once you get three, four questions deep into like your question to the guests, that it's begging to be split apart into multiple conversations.
- [12:05]
B
Let's move on to number three. No narrative or direction. Do you have any thoughts on where hosts go wrong in the interview with
- [12:12]
A
this, ooh, this is a big one. And I think this is a 201. Like, if you want to go from being a subpar or average interviewer to an above average interviewer, this is the place to focus on. And that's pre deciding what the narrative, what the direction of the conversation is going to be. I listen to so many interviews, and I often find myself creating interviews too, that just feel like a random Q and A. There's like no core problem or theme or central takeaway. A lot of the questions just feel disconnected. There are some podcasters like, I love Tim Ferriss, and he, he can do this well. Um, he can have just like the, the random show with. With his friend Kevin, and they can just tackle a bunch of different questions, but they're already really interesting people that have really interesting thoughts. I don't find this working very well in the independent podcaster space, in the smaller creator space. And I often think this is actually a lack of preparation. Creators are not putting in the work to properly plan for their podcast interviews. They haven't decided what their podcast interview is going to be about. So I think the simplest approach, if you want to get better at this, is just pick one problem to solve in each of your guest interviews. Focus on what the title of that episode's gonna be. Then, before you even have the conversation, create a really good intro that keeps the title going, and then spend two thirds of the content of that conversation on that problem. And I know many of our creators, they don't have. They're busy business owners. They don't have time. They don't have 10, 15 hours to prep for their guest interviews. So what's my suggestion on preparation? On. On a time budget, let's say you had 30 minutes or an hour to prep for your interview this week. If that's the case, I would spend it in. In three different areas. I would a figure out what is the guest expertise? What do they know a lot about? What do they love talking about? Number two, what does your audience want? This should almost be natural, but sometimes you got to spend some time on this. Like, what is my audience want? What are their needs right now? What are they struggling with? And then make a Venn diagram and find the overlap. What is the guest expertise and my audience want? Where's that middle ground? Where's. Where's an interesting thread that's gotta be interesting for the guests to talk about and interesting for our audience to listen to? You work on that and you're gonna have a direction and narrative for each one of your podcast episodes. And honestly, that might cut your interviews down from an hour 15 to 20 or 25 minutes. And that's okay. Don't feel like you have to fill 45 minutes or an hour by asking random questions to your guest. I think it's much more appropriate to have singular focus for each one of your, your guest interviews and then invite the guests back on if you want to have another episode with them.
- [14:52]
B
Yeah, I think the Joe Rogans, the Tim Ferrisses of the world, have really led people astray when it comes to conducting their interviews because they're serving these broad audiences, they can cast this wide net when in all reality, what we're seeing is shows becoming more and more niche. If you want to attract the right audience and grow, which sounds counterintuitive, but is totally the case.
- [15:16]
A
100% agree with that man. Let's keep moving though. Let's talk number four, and that's letting the guests control the episode. This can be a big no, no. And this is almost often a side effect of number three. When you have no narrative or direction for your, your interview, oftentimes the guess starts to take control. And a couple examples that that could look like is letting guests ramble, you know, starting with the tell me about yourself question and getting an eight minute monologue. You know, having guests give you 10 minute answers to every single question. Letting them pitch themselves constantly, you know, bring up their products, their services, not just at the end of the interview when you prompt it, but anytime that they want throughout the conversation. Also accepting vague answers. You know, maybe you ask them something specific and they give something generic back and you let them off the hook and, and you don't, you don't pinpoint them down a little bit deeper into that. And something that I struggle with pretty often too is just being overly agreeable. Um, when there's something they say that you want to push back on, but you don't push back on every single time they give an answer. Oh, that's a great point. Or I love that point. Or I totally agree. Like, like those are. It's a hard habit for a host to, to break. And there are many times that I use that because I genuinely mean that. But there are some times that that's a cop out and I want to push back a little bit. My suggestion with all of this is be a host that guides the conversation. Ask clarifying questions when you need it, especially clarifying questions that, you know, your listener needs to know. We do a lot of personal finance shows we host, we help a lot of financial advisors and there are some financial advisors who have shows for the 101 audience. They, they don't know some of the very basics of personal finance. And then we have some financial advisors that are creating more 201 shows and they know all the basics. There are times when if you have a one on one audience and your guest says something blazes by a terminology or phrase that needs clarification, that's your, that's your job as the host guiding the conversation to ask for those clarifying questions and to know what your audience needs and what your audience doesn't need. And then once again, push back. Sometimes pushing back or, or diving deeper into a response is going to create the depth that really takes a, an interview from a basic conversation to something that is super helpful and tactical for the audience themselves.
- [17:27]
B
Yeah, and there's this interesting dichotomy of how do you stay present, maintaining the control of the episode where you want to take it, while also listening to the guest and understanding what unique pieces of tidbits that they're offering while also knowing that you don't want them to go on a tangent with something that wasn't necessarily in the planned framework with what you wanted to discuss with them. Do you have any thoughts on this?
- [17:54]
A
Oh, it's so hard, man. It is so hard. And honestly, I think that's gotta naturally descend to number five, which is when the host isn't listening. Um, but it is super hard. Although a guest might be doing 70, 80% of the talking, sometimes the host, a good host, even one that doesn't talk very much, is working a lot behind the scenes as well. Maintaining the current thread honestly, paying attention to pacing and making sure the conversation has some, some pace and speed to it. Making sure they don't drop the ball and miss interesting threads that are, that are coming up that the guest is breadcrumbing to them. So number five is a host that isn't listening. And a host that isn't listening is often a symptom of the fact that they are focusing on the next question. They have their five questions that they want to ask the guest. They're looking at their list. As soon as they ask question number two, the guest starts answering question question number two. And then they started looking at question number three. And what's gonna happen because of that is they're gonna ignore some interesting ideas that guests bring up. They might miss opportunities for some deeper follow up questions and sticking to that, that question list is really gotta ruin some of the originality and spontaneity that could come from interesting conversations. So to answer your question, Kyle, I think it's hard, it's a really challenging skill to kind of keep that tension, you know, to follow conversation while maintaining the pacing. I think that's tough. And to know when, when to ask, when to add, but then also when to move to the next thread. I think you should be easy on yourself if you're practicing some of these things. If you know you need to practice a lot in this area. I think the best thing that you can do is just focus on one thing first. Like, don't try to focus on keeping the pacing going or asking a great question. Maybe this one interview, you're just focusing on dialing in and listening to the response of the guest. And as soon as you feel like you got a great response from them, then you can move on to the next thread. I think focusing on, on one specific area to start with is going to help you develop a skill that then you can almost kind of leave it simmering in the background. As you develop that skill, you know, a trigger starts happening in your head like, man, this, this converse, this conversation's slow right now. I need to pick up the pace. Or oh, that was an interesting thought that they just said. I want to double down on that. It becomes natural as you do 50, 100, 150, 200 different guest interviews.
- [20:14]
B
So much of what makes a great host comes from repetition. Truly, just having 250, 500,000 interviews under your belt, all this is going to feel so natural. But identifying these seven areas that might be problematic and actively working on them is really going to speed up your journey and becoming a better host. So let's talk about number six. The host talks too much. I certainly would not have this problem.
- [20:43]
A
You wouldn't? Man, you're so. You're a great listener. And honestly, you don't jump in and talk over people for sure. Tell me kind of how this shows up or how you see it in some clients or shows that you edit. Whenever you see it kind of tipped too far on the other side and a host ends up talking too much.
- [21:03]
B
Yeah. So honestly, I think not speaking up is more problematic than speaking too much. And maybe not problematic, but common. I think it's a lot more common for the host to not speak up enough to be able to really steer where the conversation's going and everyone's going to have their own style. Like, some hosts are a little bit more energetic and some are A little bit more conversational. Some are a little bit more relaxed. But, you know, the whole point at the end of the day is you're bringing on this guest to fill a gap that you cannot fill yourself. They have expertise or perspective or experience where your audience wants access to. And I think, you know, that's where the host can lose the plot a little bit. And this can, you know, show up in a bunch of different ways. You know, one is turning the interview into your own story, doing these long setups before every question. You know, the preamble was longer than the actual question. And sometimes you think you're adding context, but you're actually really just draining the momentum from the conversation.
- [22:01]
A
I do this all the time. I still struggle with this sometimes where I'm like, dude, just ask the question. Like, all the preamble is unnecessary. I notice it sometimes when I'm listening back to interviews.
- [22:10]
B
Another big one is interrupting guests before they even finish their thought. Or just like, asking a question and immediately answering it yourself. And suddenly the guest barely has room to respond. And at that point, it feels more like the guest is there to validate post opinion rather than explore ideas together. And like we were saying earlier, a lot of the, like, great thread lines that come out of a conversation are really based on this idea of exploration and stumbling across perspectives that you might not even known your guest would have until you sat down and had a conversation with them. And I think the. The important distinction here isn't that opinions are bad. If you have a lot to say as a host about a topic, great. But maybe structure the episode differently. It could honestly be a whole separate podcast. Could do a solo sode that is framed in a way where it's like a part one, part two. You know, you either recorded it before or after this interview, and it's going to be a really great place for you to point listeners if they enjoyed this episode, to go check out that episode. You could do a monologue attached to the beginning of the recording and kind of explore some ideas, and then also be in control of how the intro and the hook are formatted so you can really reel listeners into the conversation and then introduce the guest. Or I really actually like a, like, recap segment at the end where you kind of reflect on where your favorite moments were and expand on a couple ideas or really connect the dots for the audience afterwards. But I do feel like great hosts understand that the interview is all about facilitation and that the audience wants moments that couldn't happen if the host Just
- [23:50]
A
talked the whole time. Yeah, I love that point. I do love your thoughts on the fact that the host that talks too much is usually the minority issue. It's usually a host that doesn't add enough of their commentary in here. But there are definitely some hosts that I've worked with that could probably use a little bit of tough love in this area. But let's bring it home. Kyle, Number seven. Our final point in turning bad guest interviews into good interviews is weak guest selection. And this is one that is a problem before you even start recording. There, unfortunately are just some, some guests, some people that really know their stuff, but they're just not strong communicators or storytellers. They can't articulate their expertise well enough on a audio or audio video format. There are also some guests that are everywhere and they repeat the exact same talking points and they're not bringing anything original to your show. I saw this happen one time actually on my show where a guest went on a really big guesting sp and it was all centered around a book launch and just about every personal finance host had him on their podcast and he was kind of talking about and saying the exact same thing on every show. And then I saw my normal downloads for episodes dip probably about 20, 25%. And I think I related most of that to the fact that this guest A had been everywhere. People are starting to fatigue from hearing him two, three, four different times and he wasn't necessarily bringing anything different to each one of those interviews. So sometimes it's just someone that, that has the same talking points or it's just a guest that's not relevant to your audience. Could be a great guest. They're great storytellers, they have really good expertise, but there's just, you can't find a way to wedge them into what your audience cares about in the subject matter that you talk about. And then finally it's just booking big name guest that aren't the right guest. It's kind of one in hand in hand with, with the last point that I made. But sometimes we just unfortunately we get a little bit stuck in the stardom and we're like, oh my gosh, this is such a big guest. I can't wait to have them on. And they don't deliver like a really high quality guest would for your show. We did have part of a conversation that's episode 10 around selecting the right guest. So if you want to start going deeper on that, I think that's probably an episode that you can check out.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah, this point of weak guest selection is actually really interesting to me because sometimes it's in your control and something that you're always going to be balancing is that you don't have complete control of the conversation, which, as you were saying earlier, like when done right, leads to the spontaneity and brings in these takeaways that you may not have thought about that can really elicit some great information for your audience. But at the same time, sometimes it can just go awfully astray. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on, you know, if there is, if. If a guest comes on your show and it just didn't land quite right, what to do with that episode?
- [26:40]
A
Oh, I'm almost thinking this should be a whole episode in itself too. That's such a fascinating question, but a couple of quick highlights that jump out to me. First, you don't, you don't have to air it. And I know we tell our clients this all the time, that if there is a podcast cast that just didn't land for you, didn't land for your audience, don't feel an obligation that you have to publish it. Sometimes that's easier said than done. There's something called sunk cost fallacy. You put the time to research, schedule, have a conversation with that guest, and oftentimes, and probably the more problematic issue is you're up against a tight deadline and you got to get an episode out. A couple of other things that you can do if you feel it going off, off the rails and the interview itself, shorten it. You can shorten this in the actual recording or in post, but once again, don't feel like you have to fill an hour's worth of time when you, within the first 10 or 15 minutes of the conversation, realize you're not going to get what you want out of this conversation. Make it a 20 or 25 minute episode. Second, just go deep into one specific area instead of trying to, to tackle all the things that you wanted to tackle in this conversation, just pick one, go deep, get heavy in it and see if that turns around the conversation. Um, but yeah, I think there's a, a couple of different things you could potentially do and I'm excited to, to flesh it out in a future episode with you, man.
- [27:55]
B
Yeah, that'll be fun. So, Justin, you want to wrap all this up?
- [27:59]
A
Yeah. In conclusion, we had seven points for why your guest interviews suck. Point number one is weak starts. Point number two is you're asking bad questions. Point number three, you got no narrative or direction for the episode. Point number four, you're letting the guest control the episode. You're not controlling it yourself. Point number five, you're not listening as a host and you're missing interesting points. Number six, you're talking too much as a host. And number seven, you're selecting the wrong guest or weak guest. So really, the big idea with this whole episode is that great podcast interviews aren't about famous guests. They're not about big names, they're not about impressive resumes. They're about how a host actually leads the conversation. There are many things that you can do as a host to turn bad episodes into great episodes. A great guest can absolutely elevate an episode. There are a couple people that are on my routine list that I always reach out to because they are fabulous guests. But even the best guests in the world can't save an interview if the host doesn't guide it, ask better questions, or actually listen. So if you're trying to improve guest interviews, don't focus on booking bigger names. Focus on becoming a better interviewer. And if you're not sure whether your interviews are landing the way you think they are, go check out episode seven. We have gotten so much feedback on this episode. In this episode, we break down the three signs that your podcast content is actually working. So you're going to know right away if your audience is enjoying your guest interviews or they're not. I think it's a great place to start tracking whether these changes in this episode are making and improving your podcast episodes. And of course, if you have questions about your show, about guest interviews, about anything podcast related, feel free to reach out to us anytime. You can email me@justinsimplepodstudios.com and Kyle, what about you?
- [29:40]
B
I'll be Kyle.
- [29:41]
A
Simplepodstudios.com we keep it easy on you guys. So once Again, that's justin simplepodstudios.com or kyleimpleplepodstudios.com we'd love to hear from you and help you make your podcast better. Thanks for listening to this episode of Podcast Playbook.