Lessons

Lesson Info

Putting Your Prep into Practice

If we look at how I move from researching the guest to making sure that the guest is ready for the show itself, I personally wanna make sure that they feel comfortable and that they feel good. I use this prep intake document. This is actually a Google form and this is something that you can easily make, you do not have to copy my fields, they're mostly for internal use. Email address, phone number, I highly recommend who's filling out the form, this is very helpful. Because you'll go, "Wow, this prep is not that good, "who filled it out?" If it's the publicist, you go, "I need to talk to the person themselves," and then they go, "Well, why, this is my job," and you explain why it's important and that you're trying to get personal stories and they go, "Okay, I understand." If it's them themselves and it's not that good then maybe you don't say, "Hey, this isn't really what I was looking for, "I don't like it." They go, "I spent an hour on this." It's okay, you have to know who your audi...

ence is, you have to make sure that you're telling the right person to fill this out. So you get their bio. This is usually, they'll cut and paste it from their website or you can do the same. You focus on which topic and I will have them submit this form, it comes into a Google doc response, and I will make comments in there that then get sent to them. Google does that automatically, you don't have to worry about how that works. And I might say something like compliment, compliment, actually I need an outline for this. And then that way they know that this is something I wanna talk about but I'm not just gonna let them put the bare minimum in here. I want a real bit of prep from them for this. And the reason that this is important for me is because I want them to collaborate on the show creation, I don't want them to just think, "Look, I'm gonna show up, this is gonna happen, "and you're gonna get whatever you get from me "and thanks for having me on your show." That's what a lot of people think media appearances are, that's what a lot of people think podcasts appearance are. I want them to come in going, "This is gonna be some of my best work," not, "Thanks for having me on, I'm eating a sandwich "and my kids are watching Netflix downstairs "and sorry, what are we doing? "What was your name again? "Jonathan, is that your name?" Like no, they gotta have their head in the game. And this is kind of a set of hoops that they will jump through to make sure that they are bringing their A game. If they don't wanna do it, and a lot of people say, "Look, I don't have time for this." You say, "Okay, I understand," and then you just don't do it. Or you can say, "Let's get on the phone, "I'll make this easy for you." So, if it's a really great guest and they don't wanna do it because they're and they don't even understand how this thing works and their kid had to come over to help them, walk them through it on the phone. If they're just thinking, "I'm important and you're not, deal with it," then I would recommend not interviewing that person because if they come in thinking, "I'm gonna wing it and you're gonna like it, "you're gonna eat nothing and like it," that's not the kind of guest you want for your show. Your audience is gonna feel that they don't respect you and then I think the consequences of that are pretty obvious. So, that's why I have each of these sections. I actually, one of the sections that I really do like that usually doesn't yield anything but when it does, it's really good, unique story. A lot of people will go, "Oh yeah, well I don't really have one of these," and then I'll say, "Think of anything, "even if it's not related," and they'll go, "Oh yeah, one time I spent three months "walking through the Amazon with a native tribe," and you're like, "Wait a minute, that's really cool." They don't think it's relevant to their book about team management but then if you make them pull that out of their life, sometimes they'll go, "Actually I did learn a lot about this "because I spent so much time with these indigenous people "and they had this different organization "and I did bring some of that to General Electric." You'll find that they'll make connections in their own work that they didn't know were there. That makes a good show, that makes a really good show. And then of course for me I have practical exercises because that's what I want on the Jordan Harbinger Show, I want practicals. On the guest prep as well, I will show them of course, the guests submit a document, I'll throw this into the prep document like I just showed you for Jim Quick and I will make sure that those are spaced, got my questions written underneath and things like that. I will then do all the highlighting after the notes are in there. So all those highlights, everything that you saw, that happens after I have all those sources read, all my notes typed in, all of this stuff copied and pasted once it's done. That all goes into one doc then I go into that doc and that's when I do all the highlighting. And you'll see also when I flip back to this is that you see things that are bolded, this is me writing something like that where I'm like, "Oh, I wanna make sure that I get this." Or it might be a question that I have about a piece of the notes. So this green here, this is bolded because it's not part of, this was all something that he I think had submitted and then I put my own question in there and I bolded it so that I know it's me that wrote it. Does that make sense? 'Cause you don't wanna read something and go, "Why is it that you said that you ask if memorizing things is outdated?" And he's like, "I don't remember asking that," and then you find out, "Oh yeah, that was my question." You wanna make sure that you've got that sort of set in there and the way that I do that is by bolding it. I just figured that makes it mine. So you'll be cutting and pasting and highlighting during the show itself, naturally on this document. That's why it's important to use the highlighting 'cause if you're trying to rearrange the notes in the order that they're talking, you're gonna spend more time cutting and pasting than you are listening which is not good. Alright, and then on page three of the handout, this is how we set up our environment. This is how I set up my environment so that I'm focused. My phone is off, the lights are up, everyone knows I'm recording, the cat's out of the room, I'm standing up, usually I have multiple screens. And on this handout you'll see that in schedule one, so there's a little sort of script in here that shows people what kind of microphone they should have and that the recording is both audio and video. This is important because you don't want them at the last minute to be like, "Oh," and this will happen anyway, "Oh, I don't have a microphone. "I do podcasts all the time "and I just talk into my keyboard." People still try to do that, I don't know why, it's 2018. Ironically the people that I think are the worst at following instructions are scientists. And I don't know, maybe it's because they do their own experiments, it's like, "To hell with it, I'm gonna figure it out on my own." There are so many people that will say, "You know, this was good enough for CNN," 'cause the bar is low, they talk into their iPad and that was good enough for everyone else. So I'm pretty strict about this. Again, I'm respecting my listener's time. I don't wanna do the interview while you're at an airport lounge, it's not fair. It's just not fair to me, it's not far to the listener. And I also will then start the show using small talk like, "Hey, what did you have for breakfast? "Do you always workout during the day?" Whatever sort of organically flows. This is my secret sound check. 'cause if you say we're gonna do a soundcheck, some people will go, "Well you can do this on your own time." What I'm really saying is, "I'm making sure that you don't sound like garbage. "I know I sound good." But if you say, "Look, I wanna do a soundcheck," they're like, "It sounds fine, I do this all the time." So if you have a small talk conversation and then you have to throw it away because there's a dog in the room and their fax machine started ringing, then you can say, "Hey, can we turn that off? "Oh, your iMessage is still on. "Oh, your Outlook is still on. "How many things beep and ding in your house? "Unplug everything." So you have to do that for a lot of guests. The more expertise someone has, generally a lot of the time the older they are and so they'll be like, "Oh, my landline. "Oh, my kids are here. "Oh, you can hear that? "Yeah, my windows are open." I get it, not everyone's a digital native but you have to make sure they sound like it. That's why ideally everyone comes to you and sits in a studio but we don't always have that luxury at podcasters. Half the time we're doing this on Skype. Putting this into action. Now that you're prepared, the guest is ready for the show, you're gonna put your hard work into practice. I did go over a bunch of this prep document already and talked about highlighting as you go but this process, this live document is going to be what you follow during your show. Don't try to wing it. A lot of people might even come in during this very course and say, "I just let everything flow organically." That's fine, maybe they have 10 years of experience. If you don't, start with this. I have 11 years of experience, I started doing this two or three years ago, there's a reason that the show has the audience that it does. It's not because I'm so funny, that's for sure not the reason. The reason is because this makes sure that the audience's time is respected and that is what everybody wants. That's exactly what everyone wants, they wanna make sure that their investment of time in you is not wasted. And last but not least, treat every show as if it's live. That means you'll build skills for actual live shows of course. What that means is, you don't go, "So I, well actually no, I don't wanna ask that. "Well, what about, no, hang on a second, "let me look this up in my book. "I didn't really write this down." Pretend you're on live radio, you're still gonna flub, you're still gonna cough, people are still gonna sneeze, there's still gonna be dogs and sirens, fine. If you can shuck and jive with it, you're gonna be so much better in the long run. If you always rely on, "Oh, well it's not live, "we can just go back and fix this and fix that." Imagine if this wasn't live. Holy moly, hey, can I start over? Can I start over? Wait, let's start over again. It would be miserable, it would be a miserable experience for everyone.