Lesson Info
7. Q&A
Lessons
Lesson Info
Q&A
Do you send the guests advance questions? I know you have them fill out your form, but are you ever feeding them those questions? No, I never, so the question is do I ever send the guests advance questions? Yes I never do that. I do not like to do that. Guests will often ask for that, and I don't really like doing it because then you end up with sound bites, and I don't want sound bites. I don't want, "Thanks for asking Jordan. "I spent six hours last week crafting the perfect answer to this." I want them to think on the fly. My job, and your job as a host is to make them sound good. So, if they say, "Ooo, this is hard for me to talk about. "It's so emotional." And then they stop, and then they have some really strong reaction, you don't have to leave that whole thing in, right? Or you can say, "Let's not talk about that." What you don't want is for them to give the perfectly, cleared with legal, cleared with PR, cleared with HR, cleared with everybody answer. It's kind of a bori...
ng show. You see that on news outlets, where they say, "So, "Tell us what the hot new trends are for 2018." "Well, thanks, Jordan, great, we're gonna talk about this and this." And everyone's like, "This is so fake." It's not a real conversation. The one advantage that podcasts have is that we are actually having real conversations with real people, whereas on television, even reality is completely fake and fabricated. This is the final frontier right now, podcasting is of having real conversations with people. Even radio, even a lot of podcasts done by people who make radio are so scripted. They're recorded, there's music on every segment. We're kind of, the people in this room and those of us who have purchased this course and are watching online, we're the only people, some of the only people having real conversations and sharing them with others now. So, you don't want to do anything to get in the way of that. Alright, in studio. We'll start right here. Thank you. I worked in advertising a while ago, and we had to get releases for every single media format to use any talent stuff. Do you find that you need to get multiple releases, or is it an omni release that covers all promotions and all formats? I don't worry as much about releases, and again, this is not legal advice. Even though I'm a lawyer, I'm not your lawyer. Right, so I include release language in schedule once, which you could get off of the internet. It's going to be pretty reasonable for people to say that they gave you permission if they appeared on your show. If somebody doesn't wanna be on my show, I'm probably gonna get rid of it anyway. If I got some letter from someone that's like, "Hey, "This has copyrighted information that I willingly gave you when you interviewed me." Fine, I'll delete it. It's a little bit of a pain. The problem is, if you're interviewing corporate types, you might wanna get a stronger release. If I'm interviewing entrepreneurs, they're gonna go, "Hey, I don't sell that anymore. "Can we get rid of that?" And I might say, "Sure." But if you're interviewing somebody who works at General Motors, and then a week later they get fired, and they're like, "Hey, you can't air that." You wanna be able to go, "Yes I can. "They said so. "Y'all signed it." I'm not deleting my newest show because you guys don't know what you're doing. So, it depends on who you're interviewing. Small businesses, ask for permission in writing an email. They show up. That's kind of usually good enough. Big corporations that wanna run you through red tape left and right, fine, while you're talking with their lawyers, make em sign a stinking release already. But I worked on radio for years, satellite radio, and there was a whole stack of releases next to the door of the studio, and I remember everyone going, "Yeah, I've "never used one of those." And the station manager being like, "Yeah, we're sorta "supposed to but we never do...." It's really kind of like, I wouldn't worry about it unless you're really doing corporate stuff. Go back here. Hi, thanks for the great advice. I wanted to ask if you ever pay or compensate guests. No. Especially if you're just starting off. I do not pay or compensate guests. The reason that I do not pay or compensate guests is because I don't want my guest selection to be based upon who's got cash, because you know who's got a lot of money? Shysters got a lotta money. Rip off artists, con men, internet markety, scammy people. They've got a lotta dough. People who don't have a lot of money? Interesting non-profits, authors on a book tour, things like that. So, if someone's gonna cut me a check, you're gonna find that there's gonna be... If you wanna do a sponsored episode, that's fine. But be, sorry? Who's paying? You paying them, yeah that's fine. Yeah, I understand that as well. I would say no, don't pay them. Yeah, good point. I answered it backwards. You paying them, no I don't want that either because one, I don't really wanna spend money getting a guest. Two, I don't really get why you would ever need... Look, if you've got a budget for this, and you've got a million dollars in a trust fund somewhere, and you wanna get John Stewart on your show, and he wants 50 grand, go ahead. You know, fine. I would try to negotiate that fee, however. But what I would say is that anybody who's coming on that has a new book or something like that, or has some sort of need for media, really, that's what they're doing. They're doing a press tour. If you have no listeners at all, then maybe it's not worth their time, and maybe you should compensate them. But I don't ever do that. And I don't really think you should either. I don't see anybody who's gonna be worth taking a fee. If they come over to your studio, and you pay for their lunch, that's different. But if they say, "I need a thousand bucks to come on." Or, something like that. I don't really get who those people would possibly... Why they think they would be entitled to that is sort of a mystery to me. Thank you so much for all this information. You're welcome. So, it sounds like you do a lot of prep beforehand to gather content, but you're not giving them the questions. So how much of the interview would you say you have questions written out that you're following and how much is more off the cuff, and you're kind of following the tangents and information that they're giving? So how much is prepared and how much really isn't? Yeah, I would say it depends on the guest, but that answer stinks, so I would say, let's say half and half. Right, so I do prepare a ton of questions in advance based on what they are gonna talk about, but I don't.... I call it kill your darlings, and I was gonna throw that in a summary if we do have another minute after this, which we don't. (laughing) Sorry! But, it's called killing your darlings is a show biz term, and what that means essentially is I have a ton of notes, and I have a ton of great questions, but what I don't wanna do, and I explained this a little bit earlier, is go, "Oh, wow, "you got kidnapped by Somali pirates? Do you have a favorite piece of software?" Right, I just wanna be like, Okay, that's not gonna fit in the show at all anymore. We're clearly talking about this. I wanna go down that road, and that's where it's at.
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Ratings and Reviews
Lacey Heward
Workflow? Spot on! This answered so many questions for me. I really appreciated Jordan being so transparent about how he sets everything up, preps guests, and communicates with his network. There were some other gems like reasons you don't send questions ahead of time, and how important it is to have recording and video dialed BEFORE the interview. Plus, I loved that this was such a short class that got straight to the meat. I watched this before going to work! Great format! Thank you!
Martin Backhauss
Really good class and many great tips and tricks. Jordan is great on camera, is well prepared and is an open book. Highly recommend this class.
wendy fite
This course will get you organized! With great recommendations on how to build a very workable, repeatable plan for your pre-production podcast activities. Jordan is awesome. The handout is the 'frosting' to his awesome 'cake' discussion.
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