Day 20: Interview Research & Prep

Today, we're going to discuss how you can start preparing for your interviews by doing pre-interview chats with your guests, creating some question outlines and doing research before you actually interview your guests.

Steps for Skill Mastery:

1. Have a pre-interview
2. Create an interview outline
3. Research your guest

Step 1: Have a Pre-Interview

Before every single interview that I do, I schedule a 10 to 15 minute pre chat on a day before I actually schedule the real interview, just so I can do a little bit of research and kickoff my more in-depth research.

It also gets me acquainted with the guest, figures out what kind of stories they may be able to tell and ask them questions about their goals for the interview.

So during the pre-interview I do two things. I let them know a little bit about how the show is going to be run, who the audience is, and my goals for the podcast. And the second thing I do is start asking some questions and kick off my research for the guest.

Now everyone will have a little bit of a different set of questions they may ask in their pre-interview, but here is an example from my show:

Sample Pre-interview Questions

• For listeners to fully the understand the problem, what do want to make sure we cover during the interview?
• What resource is best for understanding your solution?
• Do you have any unique or greatest hit stories that other audiences really like and resonate with?
• Anything you would like to avoid talking about?
• What would make this podcast interview a win for you?
• Is there anyone else that you think I should also interview about this problem?

Activity: Schedule a Pre-interview

Schedule a short 10-15 minute pre-interview with your guests to start asking them a few questions before the real interview.

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Now lets start creating a question outline for you to structure your questions during the real interview.

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Step 2: Create an Interview Outline

Just like we created content outlines for our solo topic based episodes, we also want to create outlines of questions we can refer to during out interviews.

Below are 2 sample outlines you could start with. These are from Andrew Warner's Book Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone. However think about your own show flow and your topic to begin crafting your own.

Sample Outline 1: Hero's Journey

Example of Episode

The Hero’s Journey is my go-to interviewing framework. Here’s how to map questions to each stage of the journey, along with hypothetical answers one might receive:

A person we care about—our hero.

• Question: What were you doing before you started your company?
• Answer: I worked at a bank. I hated it. I used to listen to entrepreneurship podcasts, wishing I could do something like that, but I couldn’t do it. My family always had financial problems when I was growing up, and I wanted safety.

The hero faces a problem or opportunity worth pursuing.

• Question: What led you to start your business?
• Answer: Then the 2008 financial crisis hit. My boss said to me, “You do a good job, but we can’t afford to keep you.”

They start their journey.

• Question: How did you deal with losing your job?
• Answer: I tried to find a job, but no one was hiring. So I decided to try starting my own online business. I was always into journaling, so I created my own journal and sold it online.

Inevitably, the hero hits an obstacle.

• Question: Did you sell a lot of journals at first?
• Answer: No, I didn’t sell any. I couldn’t get anyone to come to my site.

They find help from an aid or mentor.

• Question: How did you learn to sell?
• Answer: I met an entrepreneur who figured out search engine optimization, SEO. He wrote blog posts using keywords that Google searchers were looking for. I didn’t have enough money to buy ads, but I had plenty of time, so I started doing what he showed me.

The hero improves and starts to succeed.

• Question: How did you finally get sales?
• Answer: SEO took a few months, but eventually, I got customers. People searching for phrases like “journal ideas” and “how to start a journal” would see my site in the search results, click over to read my blog posts, and often buy one of my journals. The writing was pretty bad, but it worked on Google’s algorithms.

But then a major battle emerges. The hero falls into an abyss.

• Question: So after that it was easy?
• Answer: No. I was too dependent on Google. They changed their search algorithm, and almost all my traffic disappeared, instantly. By then, the economy had improved, and I considered going back to look for a job, even though I knew it would make me feel dead inside to live that way again.

The only way to survive is to transform, so our hero becomes someone new.

• Question: Why didn’t you give up on your idea?
• Answer: Actually, I almost did. I got a job offer for a bit more money than I made before I got laid off. But when it was time to accept the job, I started asking myself, “Do you want to be scared your whole life?” I decided that if I figured out SEO before, I could relearn the new way. And if I could learn SEO, I could figure out how to do social media, buy ads, and do other marketing things. So I stopped thinking about a job and started obsessing over self-improvement. It took me a year to get my site’s traffic back to where it was before Google’s algorithm change, but I did it.

The transformation leads our hero to victory and self-actualization.

• Question: How’s your business today?
• Answer: Today, I get my customers from a mix of five different places. If Google changes its algorithm again or something else shuts down, it wouldn’t be the end for me. I have a real and sustainable business. I now know that everything in life is learnable. Now, when I feel I can’t do something, I know that I could learn it. It’s like a superpower.

No interview will follow the Hero’s Journey outline perfectly, and that’s OK.

Sample Outline 2: How To

Example of the episode

Below is an actual outline that Andrew did for interviewing Scott Bintz.

He based this outline on his book, Principles to Fortune, as well as their own research and a short pre-interview. You’ll notice the outline doesn’t include full stories. You just need a short prompt that will guide your guest to his story.

Topic: How to Create a Company Culture That Grows Sales

Interviewee: Scott Bintz, founder of RealTruck, an online auto-part store

Before: Scott’s story about how he started to hate working at the company he founded and led. He tried creating a company culture by writing down the company values, but his team ignored them and the effort fizzled out.

After: After a recommitment to his company’s culture, Scott’s team focused on hitting goals while still having fun. They even convinced Scott to shave his head if they reached their goal of $10M in sales. After they hit the goal, Scott cut off his shoulder-length hair and donated it.

Tactic 1: Ask your employees what they already value.

Story: Instead of writing the values he wanted his company to follow, he asked everyone on his team to write down what makes the company meaningful to them.

Tactic 2: Condense the team’s responses to core company values.

Story: Scott sat down with all the responses he got and looked for common values. Then he picked the ones that he thought would create a fun environment and help his company grow.

Tactic 3: Track only metrics that matter.

Story: Scott eliminated his customer support team’s sales goals because they blocked a core value: “deliver more.” As a result, the team started delighting customers. Once, the wife of a customer called to say her husband loved his truck like a mistress, and she wanted to buy a surprise treat for it. After placing her order, the support person sent her a surprise bouquet of flowers with a note that said, “We think the wife deserves a little treat too.”

Tactic 4: Roll out values one at a time.

Story: In the past, Scott posted his company’s values and was disappointed that no one lived up to them. His new approach was to roll out each value individually and spend an entire month teaching and reinforcing each one.

Tactic 5: Embed each value into the company.

Story: At a meeting, he asked everyone to think of ways they could live one of their core values. Everyone wrote down a suggestion. He picked some and got the company to implement them. That’s how the company ended up writing cards to customers, sending them free fuzzy dice for their rearview mirrors, and surprising them with gifts.

Tactic 6: Recognize and reward employees who live the core values.

Story: Scott’s team had many prizes made up so employees could give them to coworkers who were living out the company’s values.

Activity: Create an Outline

Use one of the outlines above or create your own for roughly how you would like to structure your interview questions.

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Now lets start doing some research on your guests to be filling in these interview outlines with questions.

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Step 3: Research Your Guest

Once we have some guest scheduled for interviews, it is time to prepare. I recommend giving yourself at least a couple days to research and learn about your guest before the interview.

To prep for my guests I always do the following:

• Listen to previous interviews the guest has had on other podcasts
• Read their book
• Watch their Ted Talks
• Read some of their blog content
• Listen to their podcast (if they have one)
• Dive deep into their website or companies website

Then I keep a running list of questions I may want to ask my guest as I go through these. Something that will help organize your research is to create a research document for yourself.

A good research document may include:

Data: The top of the research doc has links to data—basic facts, not stories. We’re living in a world full of data aggregators, and every interviewer should know the tools that relate to their business. Here are some of my favorites:

• Semrush tells me which websites send people to my guest’s website. It helps me understand a company’s marketing.
• LinkedIn tells me how many people work at a company.
• AngelList and Crunchbase tell me who invested in the companies I feature.
• The Internet Archive shows me what a website looked like over the years.

Below the data is a timeline of the guest’s past experience. Since I’m covering the business side of a guest’s life, I like to know where they worked and for how long.

Basic Concepts: I also love having basic concepts condensed into a single sentence. If I’m interviewing a founder about her company, I want a sentence summing up the problem the company solves. If the interview is about a product, I want a sentence describing what it does. If it’s about a book, I need a sentence about its purpose. The brevity helps me explain my guest’s work to my audience.

The Hook: The research doc also includes a single sentence hook for the interview. Founders who built a $1M business are everywhere. “How a founder went from homelessness to creating a $1M business” is a story that will get the audience’s attention.

Pre-interview Notes: Then comes the most important part: the pre-interview notes. These include summaries of the pivotal stories in a guest’s life or the steps they will teach. We already covered the pre-interview notes earlier.

Additional Research: The final touch includes excerpts from articles about my guest. If a reporter, blogger, or social media influencer writes something about my guest that might help me, my team adds an excerpt of it to the doc.

Activity: Research Your Guest

Begin researching your guest and creating a research document for yourself. Write down some questions you would like to ask your guest based on your research, the biggest questions your niche often has, or even personal questions that help you learn more about your guest.

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Now you are ready to interview you guests and prepared for success!

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.