Oh no! You've been asked or assigned to do an interview for your company, business, or for a friend. And let me guess, you don't even know where to start!

Well, you could start here. In this episode, I talk through three of the most orientations that you can bring to your first interview:

If you can adopt these three orientations, it's very likely you'll have a great first interview experience!

Need some more help? Check out Parts 2 and 3 of this series as well where I talk about three skills and three types of questions you can ask in your first interview.

One of the most important things in doing an interview is to be curious. But how do you know which direction to take the interview and your curiosity? In this episode, I talk about one of the central skills of being able to know where to take an interview - sensing and following the energy. Essentially, it's learning to how be energetically connected to your interviewee and sense where there's the most energy in their responses so that you can know exactly where to go to get the best and most powerful content for your interview.

In this episode, I migrate to my kitchen and answer one of the most common questions (according to Google!) about interviewing: How do I structure an interview?

In the episode, I make four points about structure.

Ultimately, you should have a structure, but never let the structure of the interview get in the way of you following the story, emotion, and the energy where it wants the interview to go.

Sometimes you learn things from an interview by doing poorly, sometimes you're reaffirmed in your technique by killing it.

In this episode, I cover three ways I rocked a recent marketing interview. I talk about how I successfully set the container and followed the energy right to the place that the interviewee wanted to go, ultimately ending up in a fantastic interview and some great sound bytes that will really go a long way in the final product.

In this episode, I get a little bit excited about some recent unexpected developments with the podcast...

Oh, and I also talk about three things not to do in your interviews. From my own painful experiences.

When you're not the greatest at something in the world, why should someone listen to you? For instance, myself. Many people who might listen to this podcast have likely done more interviews than I have over the years. I've studied interviewing officially, and there are plenty of people who likely are way better at it than I am!

So why listen to me?

In this podcast, I get a little personal about why, exactly, I feel like I have (or will have) something to contribute to the subject of interviewing. I talk about my Three C's of interviewing:

And these three things, I think, make me a person who has (or will have someday!) something to contribute to this field.

What makes a good or a bad interview? This is a highly subjective question. However, as someone who listens to and does quite a few interviews, there are a few things I personally like and don't like in the interviews that I consume. 

In this episode, I explore a few of my own personal tastes regarding what differentiates what I think makes an interview that rocks...from one that flops.

What is the quickest way to increase your focus on the interview and drastically improve the quality of the material that you get?

Delegate your tech responsibilities to someone else.

A cameraperson.

An audio recorder.

A producer, cinematographer, whatever.

Get rid of the need for you to focus on the tech and focus entirely on the interviewee.

In this episode, I argue that one of the best things for the quality of your container is to be able to focus in, and one of the best ways to do that is to delegate your tech. It work for Hollywood and narrative films, so why can't it work for documentary?

Have you ever had a really boring interviewee? Someone who no matter what you tried was just stuck in fight-flight-freeze and wouldn't give you a good story or audio byte?

We've all been there. However, the good news is that there are some very practical ways to get people like this to tell an evocative story. And in this episode, I talk about one of them: slowing down time.

Do you ever feel like there's an interview where you just knock it out of the park?

Well, just yesterday I did an interview where I felt like that. I did my research, set up the container well, took control of the interview, and got some amazing sound bytes and really connected with my interviewee.

In this episode, I talk about that interview, in particular how to stay curious and keep it fresh during an interview where you already kind of know what you want to hear.