Podcast Interviewing Skills – with Andrew Warner from Mixergy | DMR #266

Full transcript:

David Bain
Digital Marketing Radio Episode 266: How to host an interview podcast like a pro

Bot
Digital Marketing Radio with David Bain.

David Bain
I’m David Bain. And this is Digital Marketing Radio with a place where today’s modern marketing masters keep you up to date with the latest tools, tactics and trends have everything that helps to accelerate your digital marketing success. Now, content is at the heart of Modern Marketing Mastership. And it’s very hard to continuously create great content without the help of others. And if you’re able to persuade some of the leaders in your industry, that it’s worthwhile granting us some of their time, you’d better make sure that you make the most of it, you better make sure that you know how to interview. That’s what we’re going to be talking about on episode 266 of Digital Marketing Radio with a man who created the entire category of entrepreneur interview podcasts. Since 2008. He’s interviewed 2144, founders of key technology startups. He’s the founder of mixergy, and the author of the soon to be published, stop asking questions, how to lead high impact interviews and learn anything from anyone. Welcome to DMR. Andrew Warner.

Andrew Warner
Thanks. Thanks for me on.

David Bain
But thanks, Andrew. You can find Andrew over mixergy don’t come. So Andrew, what’s your podcasting? longevity secret? Oh, yeah,

Andrew Warner
you know what, 14 years it’s not you know what, when you say yours, it sounds like okay, no big deal. It’s the number of frickin countries that I’ve done this in. I mean, I remember starting out in Santa Monica and then saying, my wife wants us to move to Argentina. I don’t even know how the internet’s gonna be in Argentina. What’s the lag gonna be like, we’ll figure it out. And then going into Argentina with within days of landing I had an interview scheduled and I had to find space to record because our house was not ready to record in and I’m walking all over town with Olivia we’re exploring the city looking at office space locking in office space and then come Monday I think it was a Monday time to record boom I’m in my space ready to record with a brand new guest and it’s been years of situation like that I mean, frankly David just to come in and record with you because we’re we happen to be in Austin and we moved from one Airbnb to another this weekend. I said I need a space our Airbnb does not have enough space for me to record, I got to find a place and I rushed with my bike. I showed you how sweaty I was because Austin is so hot. I bought a bike because I was tired of renting scooters. Ubers take forever. So I bought a bike this weekend, I rented office space on my phone last night. And I said I’m going to record with David. So the question then is, how do you do it? Because you always have an appointment. If it’s on us, we’re never gonna get anything done. The problem with the American Self Help system is it’s all self help. How do I get myself to produce more? How do I get myself to have longevity? How do I get to sit down and write it’s all about i i How do I do it. And if it’s just all you at some point, you’re going to fail at some point, you’re not going to be able to do it at some point, you’re not going to have the energy or the caring to follow through. The beauty of working with other people. The way I have when I’ve done interviews is there’s always someone else they’re holding you accountable. Someone else, they’re being considered someone else there with the setup with information. So if I didn’t have you here, and I just was a writer, for example, or frankly, an online marketer, and I had to find a quiet space to record I might have gotten lazy quiet space to work. I might have just said you know what else didn’t a house and do it. And then my wife would have been working from home and I would have had all the distractions from home and the Airbnb wouldn’t have been good to go. You know what, it’s a Tuesday. Who cares? I’ll skip it. It was a short week, yesterday was a holiday Bubba wouldn’t get it done. But because I know I’m talking to David today, because I know that I’ve got an appointment with you. I show up. Same thing over 2000 interviews. Every one of them is somebody who I think in some ways benefited from me because they’ve gotten me to interview them, bring out their ideas, get them in audience. But more importantly, I benefited from them because they held me accountable. I had to show up at the time I had to have myself prepared. And then you don’t just show up physically, you show up mentally you show up where you’re trying to absorb as much information and learn as much as possible. And that’s the beauty of interviewing everyone else who’s an online creator I feel is on their own. They have to do it. They have to get something done. As an interviewer. There’s somebody else who’s working with me. There’s somebody else who when I interview says Andrew show up at this time, Andrew, here’s why am I expect you to do a little bit of homework on me. And since you’ve done the hour, Andrew, I’d like to see what happens as a result of it. And all that holds me accountable and keeps me going. That’s the secret to accountability and longevity. Work with other people who hold

David Bain
the exact same way that I hold myself accountable. Actually, I schedule interviews with other people and then I kind of have to do it. I’m committed to doing it. It scares me a little bit to either produce a show just by myself or a show on using seasons because some people say oh, that’s the end of season one. We’ll come back to you at some point with Season Two that scares me because they’re no committed. meant to. So me to one other question in relation to keeping on going is how do you actually stay refreshed and stop yourself from getting jaded,

Andrew Warner
I try to ask questions that really matter to me, what am I going through? What am I dealing with? So, last week, I had a situation where we’re in Austin, my wife’s not sure if she wants to move to Austin, go back to San Francisco. She’s feeling frustrated. I’m feeling just energetic and optimistic about it. And I and I don’t know why. Because we haven’t found a house here. We don’t know where we live. If we go back to California, there’s no reason for me to feel at all optimistic, but I’m feeling optimistic. And as I do it, Olivia who’s very sensible thinks you’re just being you’re, you’re not being reasonable, you’re not paying attention, you’re not thinking about what’s really going on in the world. And I thought about that, when I went into my interview last week with this entrepreneur, Jerry, who’s owned and worked in the parking space business for years, guys done an Iron Man marathon, he’s climbed for the top peaks in the world. And he says to me, Andrew, the reason I could do it is because whenever I go with a friend to climb a mountain, and they see how tough it is, after all, the preparation, they say, something went wrong here, we have diarrhoea, we have to get off the mountain, something went wrong, our equipment failed, we have to get off the mountain. And he says, I see it. And I think this is just part of what I signed up for this is going to be great, because at the other end of this diarrhoea, we’re gonna end up feeling lighter, and we’ll have less to carry in our bodies, and we’re gonna get to the top. And he says his friends leave, but he stays. And so I asked him a question about this. Do you do ever have somebody who feels who feels like you’re not reasonable, like you’re living in some kind of Fairyland, and you’re going to cause trouble for them, because you’re not thinking rationally. And we had a really clear conversation where he talked about how it happens often enough that people believe it, it happens often enough that he will in crisis, find the opportunity that he has trained himself to do it. And I thought, the way I’m way I’m holding myself, it’s reasonable, we’re going to figure out where we want to live, we’re going to that’s not even the one of the biggest problems of our lives, this is going to end up with something much better coming out of it. And so for example, today, I got a great office in San Francisco, everything recorded Well, I love that I was able to come in here and out of nowhere, find a spot that feels comfortable, feels refreshing. And it’s because I shifted out of the place that was comfortable into a place that was causing not a major crisis, but a small little issue for me over the weekend. And then I solved it. And so that’s what I do. Whenever there’s something on my mind, I seek to a person who I want to have a conversation with, who has not just overcome it, but done something amazing because of it. And that’s the secret keep guiding the conversation or something useful.

David Bain
I see you’ve got the same microphone or appears to be the same microphone that used to have it also boom arm, is that something that you had to take with you? Or did it happen to be available to you in the place that you’ve actually reserved?

Andrew Warner
I was going to throw out this boom arm and go light. And I left it in our house that we left in San Francisco and my wife says to me, you can just leave it here. I said, Yeah, we can. We can just throw it away snow, you can throw it in the back of the car. And I didn’t have the heart to throw it out on my drive from San Francisco to Austin. And I’m so glad I didn’t. It really does help it lets me have the ability to lean back. It lets me have a microphone. That sounds good. I am a strong proponent of boom arms. I think a lot of people look for the best possible mic and they spend money on mics and cameras. A boom arm will cost you about 100 bucks. Huge difference. It means you have more desk space means when you tap the desk, nobody can hear it. Let’s do it. I’m gonna hit the desk right now. Yeah, you can hear the desk but the mic isn’t making a sound. That’s huge. And I’m hitting the desk pretty hard.

David Bain
Definitely, definitely. You’ve learned I’m sure so much over the last 1213 what is the 13 and a half years, 14 years almost done? I’m sure it’s hard or been hard for you to distil everything you’ve learned into a single book. So you decided on interviewing skills? Is that the most important skill that you happen to have developed? Because of podcasting? You think?

Andrew Warner
I think so I think what I’ve discovered is that I can have conversations with people beyond interviews in a way that is extraordinary. And any interviews even better, because I’ve done this not just for 14 years, I’m kind of an obsessive person. So when I finish an interview, I’ll go through the transcript, and I’ll look and see what did I do that got that person to feel comfortable? What is it that that person did that made me realise that there was more to dig in and find out about how they broke up with their wife and why that set them off on a new journey? And like how do I get that when a stranger just pops up on my on my screen and doesn’t often want to do the interview but just needs it for attention. What is it that I do to make them relaxed and so I just go through all these transcripts year after year and when I find something that works, I name it and I put it in a Google Doc when I find something that makes sense. I Add it to a doc with not just a name, but I also clip out the section of the interview where that happened. So that I have an example of it. And after a year, I didn’t do this for 14 years, I did this for just under a decade. But after doing that, for that long, I’ve come up with techniques that helped me have decent meaningful conversations with people. So you’ve

David Bain
kindly shared a pre publication copy of the book with me. And I can see the book is actually split into four key sections. So firstly, the tools of deep conversations. Secondly, preparing for interviews, landing great guests, and then the business of interviewing. So for this conversation, I’d like to focus on one tip for each section. So from this first section, the tools are deep conversations, you say that you can block aggressive selling by before the interview starts asking what’s a win for you? And then you ask that for me right at the beginning of this interview before we started recording, so why is that so important for you? And how does it work?

Andrew Warner
You will want to know what it was, what a win for me was, if you hadn’t done that I would have thought the whole conversation is does David know that I’ve got this book? Can I squeeze the book into this conversation? Can I make sure that I let him know that the audience knows, because as I’m talking to you, Ben, from my publisher, damn, gravity is texting me, I haven’t even read his message. But I’ve seen his name. And I could feel him saying, we’re putting in all this effort. I need you to put your your work in and make sure that you get the word out about the book. And if you hadn’t said, What’s a win for you, and give me a chance to say, I’d love if we can just mention the book. I wouldn’t trust that the book would come out and I would push it awkwardly endlessly. Once you once you ask me, what is it that your goal is I was able to relax? And be here and answer your questions, even if they don’t directly lead to my end goal and know that at the end, I’m going to get what I wanted, because you cared enough to ask about it. I think we need to do that in interviews, I think we need to do that in private conversations. If somebody gets on a call with you, I think it helps to say, what’s a win for you in this conversation? What’s What’s your ideal goal before we start, so that you could get to that and know where you’re going and they could feel reassured and that you’re working towards it together?

David Bain
I love that. And I think that I should use it more predictably, at the beginning of each conversation that I have, I think the biggest challenges that I have is, when I reach out to someone to interview them for my podcast, then usually people aren’t sales oriented in terms of selling what they do. But when someone reaches out to me to be on the show, then they’re much more sales oriented. So they’re much more likely to be selling something a book or something else. And that that might be a good way to manage that. Do you I’m sure you get many people that reach out to you want to be on mixergy do you normally not take people that reach out to you or what’s your process for dealing with people that like that, too, to ensure that they don’t become too salesy.

Andrew Warner
I do get people who reach out to us and the level of guests that reaches out to us is extraordinary. And I’m, I’m happy to say yes to them. And we do also have to say no to most of them. So we we do a lot of screening. But because of the reputation over the years, we get phenomenal guests who reach out to beyond. Now once they reach out to be on, they clearly have a goal. They’re working on something launching a book launching a new site, launching a new fun, whatever it is. Actually the number one reason David is it’s m&a or Biz Dev, what they’re trying to do is get the word out before they raise money, what they’re trying to do is raise the get the word out before they consider an acquisition offer or making acquisitions anyway. So if I just asked them, what’s a win for you, they know that I’m going to cover it and they could relax and let it happen. And that’s, that’s the best I can I can do with them. I haven’t had anyone push. But if they continue to push and push and push, I’m happy to say, we’re being a little too aggressive here, I think the audience is going to feel like they don’t know you. And instead they’re getting a sales call from you. If we just let them hear you, they’re going to care about you. And then they’re going to care about what you have to offer. Let’s talk back about what did you do when you started that first company because I thought it was extraordinary. And then we move into that. But I’m happy to say what it is and comfortable letting them know I don’t want I don’t want to be pushed,

David Bain
okay. And you also call it i think is at the mixergy circle, where people listen and then do what they learn and they come on and the become a guest after that.

Andrew Warner
Yeah, that was my vision in the beginning that people would be listening to the interviews and then creating companies and coming back on to talk about them. And I set it with this idea that anyone even listening to the podcast. I mean, I started in what 2016 that wasn’t to be 2006 not 2016 2006 the iPhone did not the iPhone even come out or maybe it came out the next year. Basically I started before the iPhone had a podcast app on it before people had the ability to access it, unless they were super geeks. And so people would hit play on a web browser and not know how to find their spot again, or they would have to know how to download it and put it onto their podcast app or their crazy old phone. But they did it. And so for me at the time with a handful of people who did it to also say, not only you’re going to figure this out, but also I want you to build a company and come back on here and pay it forward by doing an interview and telling somebody else was almost dreaming and wishful thinking. But I put it out there because I wanted everyone to know the spirit. This is not a show that you’re I don’t even consider it a show. I’m not an entertaining person. This is, this is us, almost learning together, almost struggling together to figure it out, and then coming back and talking about it. And if I put that out there enough, people would come back and do it. And sure enough, they did I

David Bain
certainly first podcast in 2006, as well, actually, but I haven’t been as consistent as you I haven’t done the same show for that number of years. I’ve probably done about six or 700 episodes in total. So maybe a third of yours or so. But some I wish I had been more solid man. Yeah, it’s it’s decent. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Warner
All right. Do you think you aren’t consistent? Oh, different

David Bain
things come along in life. I think the way I viewed podcasting back in 2006 was just a small part of an overall digital marketing strategy, or channel or opportunity, I didn’t think that it was possible just to focus on audio as a medium, I thought it had to be a very small part of the overall mix.

Andrew Warner
I get that. I think that makes sense. And for a long time, I felt like maybe I was making a mistake by continuing for a very long time. Like maybe I should have moved on to something else. But I just couldn’t get myself to do it. By the way, David, I travel now with this small light that I bring with me, I’m so glad I do. I have my iPad right here. I’m trying to switch to an app that gives me control of that screen. And look at how it darkens me to do that. Look at that, I’m gonna try to jump in. Let’s see if I could do it. Look, it darkens his face. I know that I care a little too much about this. But I’ve really been enjoying how, how I get different looks, whenever I’m in a different office like different static webcam experience. I’ve been loving it. I love design, I love how you’ve got that old microphone, I love the colours behind you. I really been geeking out on on the design of podcasts, little things that go into it, it doesn’t have to be a huge rig.

David Bain
Yeah, I’ve got into lighting a lot more recently, you have to have a key lines, which is about 30 degrees off centre. And that’s where the where the majority of your light comes in. But I also got a filler light, which is the same angle from the opposite side, not as strong, but it just takes away some of the shadow there as well. And then I’ve got a light, just subtle light over the back of my head as well just add a little bit more 3d. And then the, the the backing lights as you’re talking about there as well. So yeah, a lot going on. I’ve studied a bit of lighting recently as well. And sometimes I’m a little bit too Yeah, I’m a little bit too much of a perfectionist sometimes Oh, sometimes you have to know when to just do something and something’s never going to be perfect. When to try and get it right. I just wanted to give you a little bit of feedback in terms of where I heard of mixergy. So it was it by 2012. And I interviewed a chap called Liam Martin from Time Doctor. And I know I think horse. Yeah, exactly. So he’d been on mixergy. And so I interviewed him for a podcast and he said to me, You know, I asked him what we what podcast he listened to. And he said mixergy I said mixer mixer. What? Never had a mixer, afraid at the time, but I’ve been a regular listener since so he’s the chap that responsible for a small percentage of your promotion.

Andrew Warner
Yeah, he’s been great. I’ve known him over the years. I got to meet him at his conference in Bali, which was such a great conference. I think that’s the thing about podcasting that gets me down is that it’s not a huge audience, like a small youtuber will have a bigger audience than a large podcaster. And so for a while there, it felt like it wasn’t worth putting effort into a podcast and I know it doesn’t have to be either or, but if I’m thinking about the effort involved in doing a podcast versus YouTube, it felt like it wasn’t worth it. The advantage that a podcast has is the sense of intimacy like you are in somebody’s head. And when I listened to a podcast, or it feels like oh, no, like they are. They’re part of my thought process. They are part of my daily life in a way that a YouTuber isn’t in a way that an instagramer isn’t It’s hard to explain and and that is a huge, huge benefit of the experience.

David Bain
Definitely, definitely. It’s a different type of medium. I am trying to publish episodes now on YouTube as well, but I’ve never had as much success publishing regular episodes on YouTube in the past five 10 years ago, I’ve had quite a lot of success with publishing individual, long talks of me doing seminars on YouTube so that I’ve had number one rankings on YouTube for phrases like digital marketing videos with 100,000 200,000 views, but I’ve never had that consistency on YouTube. I’ve never had those regular subscribers on there. So do have you tried to focus on YouTube at the same time or never really made it on the on the channel.

Andrew Warner
I did in the beginning, and I didn’t feel like it was my best work. I didn’t feel like I had a passion for it. I’m not until recently I’ve not a really big YouTube fan, I listen to podcasts, I don’t have the energy to sit down and pay attention to something like that. I’m much more active. So I want to go for a run. And sure I listen to a podcast and have free gears, I want to go for a bike ride, I want to, I want to move. I am not to sit still and watch with one exception. Before going to bed. I will watch chess videos. And I could never believe that I would like to watch people playing chess, but it helps me with my game. It’s relaxing. I’ll watch that. And then when I fall asleep, I listened to history YouTube shows. But beyond that I’m not even watching them. Just stories helped me fall asleep with a podcast in my ear. There’s something about there’s something about the conversation. There’s something about the the experience of a podcast that draws me in and I’m sticking with what I feel passionate about.

David Bain
So you were live streaming on Facebook for a while? How did that work out for you.

Andrew Warner
I was even live streaming on Twitch before it was Twitch, I thought that there was an advantage to it. My challenge with that was the same thing that Seth Godin said when I asked him why he didn’t have comments at a time when everyone had comments on their blogs. He said that he can’t stop paying attention to you can’t stop paying attention to the comments. And so he’s guided by them, whether it’s directly or indirectly. If you listen to the interviews that I did with a live audience, you can see I’m playing up to the audience in a way that is more about up to the minute happiness up to the minute, make them love me up to the minute make sure that they’re interested enough to stay. I don’t I don’t love that I want the intimacy of a deep conversation. I want to get deep in with somebody I want. And again, this goes everywhere. If I’m together with a father at a playground. While we’re watching our kids, I don’t want to have a BS conversation about how school is going and about playgrounds and how tough it is to be a dad Oh, screw that. Yes, it’s all tough. And whatever, bah, bah, bah, I want to know more detail. I want to know when they’re being dicks. Can I say that I want to know when they’re being jerks. Sorry about that. When they’re being jerks, to their wives and how they’re dealing with it. I want to know about how they feel stressed, I want to know whether they feel like they want to be with other women, I want to know about whether they feel confined by being in in there, I want to know what little life hacks they have for working that maybe fit me I want that deep, deep conversation. And I didn’t find that I was able to get that when I was doing a live stream. It made me want to entertain the audience like a dancing monkey.

David Bain
So the next section of your book is preparing for interviews. I aids like to ask you about pre interviews. So why are pre interviews so important to you? And am I making a big mistake by not doing a pre interview?

Andrew Warner
My issue is that I would at the end of an interview have a guest go. No, I was good. I meant to tell you about that time that I scam somebody out of money. And I felt guilty about it. And but it started the business. I go, Dude, why don’t you say that within the interview? And of course they didn’t say because they weren’t thinking about it at the time because they’re answering my questions that are being a little bit more creative with what their what their thought about because maybe at first they weren’t sure if they wanted to reveal it. But then once they told me they realise, you know what, that’s an okay thing to say. And I would have that happen often. And I realised You know what, I need a way to get these ideas before the interview happens. And so I remember pulling into a jack in the box and doing my first pre interview on a piece of paper that I happen to have in my car, right? calling up a guest and saying, I need to talk to you because you’re going to be online tomorrow with me and this is going to live forever. And when he called me I happen to be driving. And I remember pulling into the parking lot of a jack in the box. asking them questions, writing down quick answers. Realising where he’s interesting, realising where he’s boring, and being comfortable enough to cut the person off to say, Did you get the idea, and then when he goes into bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, like the whole thing that that he’s prepared the origin story that his PR people prepare. I remember cutting him off and go, actually, alright, let’s save that. But what I want to know is why did you and then I asked another question. And then when it’s good, I go, Okay, let’s cut it off. So it sounds fresh in the interview. And in that pre interview conversation, I was able to identify the stories that mattered I was able to cut somebody off because either we want to save it so it’s fresh, or because I want to guide him towards something that’s more interesting, but we don’t have to let it go on. And that helped a lot. And so I think that we all need coaches, I think we all need a little bit of help to get out our best ideas. And that’s partially what a pre interview is about. And so we do that. The other part is they test to see, can I say this? Do I feel comfortable saying it? I and I do think it absolutely helps. It doesn’t have to be a formal pre interview. But I think you asked me a few of the questions that are coming up for later on in this podcast. And I didn’t realise you email them to me or sent them to me somehow. And so I didn’t prepare answers. And then you gave them to me. And I tried to come up with answers quickly, but I couldn’t really. And I thought, alright, I’ll just wing it when we go on. And I think if you were to spend some time coaching me on it and saying to Andrew, I’m gonna ask you about who’s an up-and coming? marketer? We’ll have you had anyone talk to you? What type of things you like, if you coach me a little bit in a forceful quick way, I think I would have come up with a great answer. Instead, I haven’t an answer I feel okay about, but I think we all need help to come up with that greatness.

David Bain
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I send the interview questions for the second section out to guests beforehand. But the first section, I’d like to have more of an open conversation, but I have a few notes for myself, certainly. But if it goes in a different direction, that’s that’s that’s great as well. But for the second section, it’s more structured. So I think it makes sense to send the questions out to guests beforehand. x percentage, maybe 20% of your homework 80% of people don’t do their homework 80% most people do. Yeah.

Andrew Warner
For me, alright, I find that people don’t, don’t do the homework enough. And I find that them doing the homework maybe is not enough. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter if they’re if you’re prepping them, if you’re prepping yourself, that’s that’s the win. It doesn’t have to be my preparation, it doesn’t have to be the best preparation. What I worry about is I don’t want my technique to be a limiting factor for anybody else who wants to have a conversation. I don’t want anyone to say Andrew has a great mic, I’m not going to do it until I have a good mic. It’s not about the mic. I don’t want anyone to say Andrew does all this preparation until I do a pre interview, it’s not going to be worth it. Why do I have it online? Or why compete in a world where Andrew is doing, I don’t want that it’s not the pre interview, it’s a conversation with genuine curiosity. I also don’t want myself to be held up to that, because then it becomes a prison sentence for me, if every interview that I do has to be my best interview, meaning I have to do all the prep. And I have to do everything exactly right. I become a prisoner of a book that I wrote in a technique that I discovered before, I don’t want that, at the end of the book, I specifically freed my audience and myself with all those restraints. And I said, this is not a book of things you have to do. It’s a book of tools. It’s just here it is use the tools that you want, I have a toolbox at home, if there’s a tool that I need an order, unscrew a doorknob, I’m going to use it but you know what, if none of the screwdrivers do it, and I could do it with my fingernail, I would do with my fingernail. Just do whatever it takes in order to get the thing done. And for me, the thing that we’re trying to get done is we are and this is this is the thing that’s, that’s holy, for me, this is the thing that’s really important. We’re here to learn from the other person, we are here to extract some knowledge that we couldn’t get anywhere else. There are other people who are going to teach you how to do these types of interviews where you get someone to admit something where you change politics forever, by showing that that person that you interviewed was really a hoax all along or sharp. That’s not me. And so that I feel solid about We are not here to try to trap someone, every trap that we’ve seen in interviews seems to work, but it doesn’t really no one’s politics are changing anymore because of it. What we could do is, we could really affect change in our own lives by saying there’s something I’m wrestling with. I want that direct answer from someone who’s done it. And guess what, if you’re going through it, there’s someone else who’s doing it. And if you do that, screw the rest, pre interview doesn’t matter. Good mic doesn’t matter good. anything good manners don’t even matter. If you just come at it and you say something like this. This is not true. But my wife and I are going through a real crisis right now. We’re yelling at each other because we’re in an uncomfortable situation because we don’t have an Airbnb that feels comfortable. We don’t have a house that we were trying to figure out where we want to live. I know you went through this. You were travelling with your wife for a year. Can you help me understand? Did you ever experience this? How did the two of you go through it? It that is the heart of the of the conversation, find someone who’s done the thing that you’re trying to do, who’s been through the problems that you’re going through right now who’s come out of it the other side with enough charity and concern and excitement for the for the conquest to come back and help you do the same thing, then you got gold, then you’ve got something? That’s it. Bottom line.

David Bain
I remember listening to you eight or nine years ago or so and thinking, I wouldn’t want to be interviewed by Andrew Warner. I’d be a little bit scared that he’s a tough interviewer and the kinds of questions he asked the way that he jumps in the way he drills down into every single little minute shy little bit of information. I may not have the answer there. But now I’m thinking that you’re not quite as scary as you used to be in terms of being an interviewer. Do you think I’m

Andrew Warner
still I’m still pretty scary. Here’s why I’m scared. I think that too many people now are getting coached on how to express what they’re doing and they’re not talking. I want the person to be able to talk from the heart and not give me this made up origins. Dory, that is just it’s just designed to sell. We don’t none of us want that. If you’re really trying to figure something out, you don’t want the blonde answer. So for example, give you give you where I’m going to be scary. I’m going to get together with my friend Brad Weimer this Friday, Brad runs a credit card processing company. He’s a great guy. But what’s interesting to me is we couldn’t meet last week because he was going to run up and down the chute. What is it? I don’t know, I don’t know what his latest feet of adventure is. But he’s gonna go the Grand Canyon. Okay. Now my wife and I were talking about how can he do that while running a business. And we immediately both had the same thought we don’t want that flip and dancer of the company runs without me, I’m not really helpful at all right? We want to we’re trying to work as seriously and as caring and lovingly as he is he is, but also have a life that matters. And as daring as his. We want to know, how did you do it? How does it company continue to run? How do people feel like you still care? And how do you get stuff done? While you will disappear? And go run some kind of adventure or whatever? And if he gives me that Pat, answer, I will be absolutely that mean, Andrew, the people that people love or hate. And I think it’s important. And I don’t think that in the moment the person feels threatened. I think in the moment, the person feels jarred, like, oh, but if they understand my heart, and where I’m going from it, they understand my wife and I are working crazy hours, we also have this ambition to do big things with our lives. And we’re trying to figure out how he did it. And if he could dig deep, and uncover something meaningful, that doesn’t sound right, that doesn’t rhyme, but actually influenced him, he’ll have deep influence on us. And for the rest of our lives, we’ll be appreciative to him. And I know that for sure, because last time I saw Brad in person, I told him, I want to run a marathon on every continent, and I was going to start it with the first one that year. And he said to me, Andrew, why don’t you do it faster? Why don’t you do it? within seven days, seven marathons. And the pushing me to do that made me realise I don’t want to do seven days, seven marathons on seven continents, because I want to experience each continent, but I don’t want to wait for my life to unfold. And so I did it all in 2019. And so when he could give me that meaningful, why are we getting there, my life has changed. And that’s what I want. And every interviewer should do that we should be mean, or taught not mean like mean spirited, but like really tough whenever we don’t get that deep answer that we’re going for. And the only way we could get to it is if we are emotionally enough connected with our lives to know what our problems are, that we can be vulnerable that and say, I need you now and I need your help.

David Bain
So I’m going to skip over my question about asking you how you actually get superstar guests to appear on your podcast, because people can go and have a look in the book for that particular question. But I just want to ask you one more question before moving to the next section. And that is I think it’s a little bit harder to get guests to promote your episode or promote the episode they’ve been on. Once they’ve been on it than it was maybe five years ago, 10 years ago? Is that the case? And maybe What tips do you have to get guests to promote the episodes they’ve been on?

Andrew Warner
It is incredibly hard to get guests now to promote. Because we’ve come to a world where no social media app wants to get their users off the app, no social media users want to. So for example, in the early days of Twitter, I’d finished an interview, and people would tweet out that they were on. And if they tweeted out and gave a link, people would follow the link and go over today. followers on Twitter are not going to hit that link, they’re not going to like that link, they’re not going to engage with that link. Twitter does not want to promote that link that takes people off the platform. And so there’s disincentive all around for people not to do it. I’m trying to think of what to do to get guests to be more promotional to help with the promotion. I have a few ideas from doing these interviews that I’m going to bring back to the interviews that I do myself. There are times in interviews where I tap into some kind of deep meaning about my life, like I did with that last answer why I felt I went long, but I went meaningful. If there is a way for me to somehow pull that in a clip that makes sense, I would want to share that so that now I’ve uncovered a thing that I stand for the thing that I read that I am spending my life fighting for, which is it’s not about the mic. It’s about the depth of you knowing your own problem and holding the other person accountable to find how they solve the problem. I think that I said a little bit better before if we could somehow pull that out and have that be a statement. I don’t care if anyone follows I don’t care if anyone likes if anyone clicks. I don’t care what the algorithms do. That’s important enough for me that I would want to get out there. And I think that that’s that’s something that interviews do they pull those types of gems out of a person that they didn’t know that they felt like I didn’t realise that that was one of the reasons why I do interviews that that’s that’s the goal, or I couldn’t get expressed that as clearly as I did with you, we need to find a way to get that out to for you, since you pulled that out of me to help me now share that with other people. And I don’t know how and it could be a clip that’s that. Like if you came to me at the end you said Andrew, was there anything that felt like it was gold that you’d want my team to clip just for yourself, I suppose maybe you want to share, maybe not. But it would be that right. So that would be the thing I get a lot of clips pulled for, for the interviews afterwards. But they’re stuff that don’t really matter. They matter to the to the host, or they think they matter to the host, but they don’t really matter to me, and I’m not gonna share it with you. That’s one, here’s another one. And since that’s more airy fairy, let’s go to something that’s more practical, a little bit of guilt, I think really helps a little bit of follow through absolutely helps. So nevel madora, from copywriting course, brought me into his house, he sat me down, he recorded he had a producer, who was sitting there actually, in real time flipping my camera and his camera and our shared camera, so that the video of our interview look good. He made sure that I sounded good on mic, he made sure that he had a list of questions, He then took a bunch of photos so that he could help promote it. And when I when he asked me the same question you just asked me in the interview I said to him, my answer is that you need to ask me to promote because I’m going to feel I’m going to feel like promoting the interview is too much of a selfish thing. It’s like too self promotional, why would I want to do it. And I don’t know that I sounded great. You people get all kinds of insecure after they record something. And so I said to him, you should tell me to promote it, you should push me. frickin guys got my text message, he will follow up with me to make sure I have the address to come to record, he will follow up with me to make sure that I know that I need to leave the place my place to get to his place on time at a certain whatever. He didn’t follow up and say Andrew, would you mind tweeting this out? Andrew, I think this photo would look good, Andrew, why didn’t you? I think he should have meanwhile other people who done lesser podcasts have asked me and then I did it. So I do think we need to if we want somebody to promote, we need to understand that they have some kind of insecurity, that they have some kind of hesitation. And the way to get past it is to ask the way to get past it is to follow up. And if you just say to me, Andrew, this interview is posted. I’m gonna go great, and I’ll move on. But if you say Andrew, the interview is posted, and you told me that there are a couple of things that you really liked about it. I think you should point people to that, or you told me in the interview that you’d share it, I would share it. Yeah. But that takes a little bit more work today.

David Bain
Yeah, I love that question there as well. And I’ve tested different things for taking clips. I’ve even actually asked guests additional quest questions at the end of podcast before I or after I actually started recording. And it was an additional question that I used on social media as a clip as well. And that was quite good. But I think your suggestion is something I’m going to test for future episodes, I tell you what, let’s segue to part two of our discussion. So it’s time for Andrews thoughts on the state of digital marketing today. So starting off with SECRET SOFTWARE. So Andrew Sherif, lesser-known martech tool is bringing you a lot of value, the moment and why that tool is important for you.

Andrew Warner
I wouldn’t call it martec. But the thing that I’m really interested in right now is something called bit cloud. And the reason that I’m interested in it is it’s the small cryptocurrency community where some of the top tech people are living right now. And I’m finding that I’m finding that I’m getting a lot of value and understanding how crypto works from this little community because they’re places to experiment. And I’m also finding, I’m finding an audience, and I’m also finding money in it. And I’ll give you an example of something that I did as an experiment in this little community. I said I was gonna create an NFT, whoever holds the NFT at any point in time before I record a podcast. So I have a second podcast. I said in my second podcast, I will before recording an episode, I will see who’s holding that NFT. And then I will give them a mention and promotion. And so there was bidding on this NF T. And somebody bought it for 10,000 US dollars, which was the equivalent of 60 D so that’s the crypto coin that they use on that platform. For a brand new podcast hardly has an audience that’s just like a thing where I’m learning on the side $10,000. And that was that was incredible to see now, before recording later today, I’m gonna see who holds that coin, it’s probably going to be the person who, who bought it, the creator fund, I’ll mention them and then a week from now I’ll do the same thing before recording, I’ll see if they sold it. If they sold it, then I’ll see who holds it at that time. And I’m giving them a mention. And if I continue to do a podcast for the next 2030 years, I’ll do the exact same thing. It is amazing to be in these smaller communities. We keep thinking how do I go bigger, bigger, bigger. I think these smaller communities are really fascinating. Because we could experiment because especially in this whole crypto space, there’s money, there’s incentive in a way that we didn’t have in the old social media days. And so I highly recommend you go to pit cloud and if you have a different crypto or different new community, go use that

David Bain
you’re challenging guests because I keep on wanting to follow different rabbits that you throw out there and go in a different direction. But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to say moving on from something that you currently use to something that you’re going to use so that is it. NEXT ON THE LIST. So what’s more one marketing activity or tool that you haven’t tried yet, but you want to test soon,

Andrew Warner
I want to do a little bit more teaching. I’ve been finding that when we teach on Twitter that we end up with a lot more a lot more followers, a lot more people buying, I need to go back and do more teaching and get. And just and do that teach more as a way of getting followers as a way of getting people be interested. If you’re looking for social. Actually, no, that’s, that’s basically it. We’re not using as many tools as before

David Bain
well, form of teaching keeps keeps people engage for longest at the moment, the publisher

Andrew Warner
did something really amazing for my book, Ben pertanto, the owner of the company said, we are going to take control of your social media strategy, and we’re going to help you talk about interviewing. He interviewed me on calls, turned it into a set of tweets, put that out online, and suddenly I’ve got people who care about my book, I’ve got people who, who are, who want to buy it. I’ve got people who are joining the email list that we created for this book, all out of nowhere. And so what he’s doing is he’s saying how did you do this thing? And he’s just taking notes. And then he turns that into a tweet storm. And just plain old text on Twitter has done mazing Lee Well, not just numbers of likes and followers, but actually people buying the book actually people going and signing up at stop asking questions.

David Bain
co so let’s move on to this or that route. This is the quick response round 10 quick questions, Just 2 rules here. Try not to think about the answer too much. And you’re only allowed to see the word both on one occasion, so use it wisely. Are you ready? Okay, yep. Tick Tock or Twitter. Tick tock, Facebook or LinkedIn, LinkedIn, YouTube or podcast, podcast, traffic or leads.

Andrew Warner
Traffic,

David Bain
paid search or SEO was the first one paid search or SEO, paid search ads or influencers? ads, Google ads or Facebook ads, Facebook, email marketing or chat marketing, chat, or tech stack all in one platform.

Andrew Warner
My tech stack

David Bain
one to one or scale. One to one. I could dive into there as well. The first one intrigued me where you said some Tick Tock instead of Twitter when we just been talking about Twitter. But um, I just like to go into chat marketing, actually, because I thought you were gonna say email marketing there. I know you have involvement in chat marketing. But I haven’t seen chat marketing actively involved in the promotion of your book. Are you using that?

Andrew Warner
I don’t think we’re using chat marketing. nearly enough. I don’t think we’re I know we’re not using it in promotion of the book. I think that chat marketing is what breaks through for me. And I didn’t take any of the lead on marketing. The book, I wrote the book, and at the end of it, I was freaking exhausted. And I was willing to say yes to any to anything, I was actually going to take some time off. I wrote the book. And I said, All right, great. I’ll take some time off and we’ll move on. And then then at the at the publisher is the one who just kept pushing me you need to do this, you need to do that I’m sure he’s going to talk to me about whenever we’re done a few minutes after that, about what else I should be doing. And it’s just growing and growing promotion. But I left it in his hands. I think he was right to talk to talk on Twitter, I think he would have seen more response if he went to chat, then email. But I also was at a place where I said I need to take a break. Truthfully, once once the book was done, I was exhausted, I continued in order to promote it. But starting 2022 I’m going to do interviews and nothing else. Probably no ads in the interviews, probably nothing just do interviews and then take some time to do nothing play chess all day to read to do something to find some kind of activity I’m into I want to take a little bit of space. Do you have an audio version of the book planned? Ah, no, we should. And we launched the text to paper digital version first. I guess there is one other thing I’m gonna have to do. I’m gonna have to record the audio book.

David Bain
It’s not fun. Trust me on that. And yeah, that’s a tough one.

Andrew Warner
Especially not for me. I don’t like to be scripted at all. Even the people who pay $10,000 to get an ad in every one of my upcoming podcasts. I told him I can’t You can’t script me. You just need to give me a name and not even expect me to use a name. I can’t be scripted. I’ve had sponsors pay me over $100,000 and then in the ad system Do my ads with my guests, the guests will say I don’t use them, I use a competitor. I’ll go, why do you use a competitor? Why do you prefer the competitor, great, boom, it’s just the way it is. Now the advertiser ended up getting a replacement dad, and so it’s fine. And I want the audience to know, I’m gonna be as open and honest as I possibly could. And if my guest doesn’t like them, I’m not gonna pretend that my sponsor is perfect for everyone. I’m going to dive into why my guest doesn’t like my sponsor, and understand the limitation of the sponsor, so that you as my audience can make an informed decision and not say, Andrew think it’s, it’s great. It’s great for everybody all the time, and then be let down later on.

David Bain
So moving on to the $10,000 question, if I were to give you $10,000, and you had to spend over the next few days in a single thing to grow your business, what would you spend it on? And how would you measure success,

Andrew Warner
I would put together parties. with people who matter or dinners or scotch, I find scotch nights and wine nights to be better. They’re better for conversation and better economically. So you know, if it would be like that, just nothing but the people who matter in the world that I care to be in and just do dinners with them, they will give you ideas like you wouldn’t believe I was I happen to be at a at Neville medora his house last night, Sam Parr who owns the hustle was there. And we were talking about moving here and how real estate taxes are high. And he said, you know, you could contest it. And I said, Yeah, but it’s probably not going to, if you can’t contest taxes and get much goes oh, I did. And then he told me about a guy who lived down the block, who he signed up with, to contest his taxes. And he gave me at the amount of money that he’s saved on his real estate taxes here in Austin. Because of that. When you get together with really smart people who know about the thing you’re trying to do, they will find money for you, they will find opportunity for you way, I would much rather do that. And I would do it not just one, I would do a series of scotch nights a series of wine nights, and something like that, because we went and we were watching the Dave Chappelle show on Netflix. And so we got a little bit of chatting before then we watched the Dave Chappelle, I would, I think that the car, it has to be all about conversation, I wouldn’t even do dinner, people sit down for dinner, they talk to the person next to them, they don’t talk to everyone else, it has to be something where you get to talk to everyone else at the table. And so scotch wine, something like that. Absolutely. 100%. I’m going long on the answers. But that’s the answer.

David Bain
How many is the ideal number of people to have at one of these nights?

Andrew Warner
Oh, good question. Ideally, seven. I don’t think you want to get much bigger than that. But it depends on your space. If you could get seven people around a table, absolutely fine. I would also do a collection of different whatever’s that you’re doing. So even if you’re not into alcohol, I would then say we’re going to do a non alcohol tasting party. Right? Justin, mares just created wine that has no alcohol made from real wine. So not grapefruit juice that tastes like wine, but wine without the alcohol. There are people who have beer without alcohol, I interviewed the guy who created rituals, zero, which is 0%, whiskey and rum and other spirits. If you’re not into alcohol, get all of those, get the wine, get the fake whiskey, get the fake beer, and you’re gonna do a taste test of all of them. If you are into it, get the wine and get like three or four, it has to be three or four with a little bit of snack in between. So we do a tasting, we talk about it, then we have a conversation, then we say okay, let’s have the next bottle. And we talk about what that is. And then we have a conversation, it has to be about conversation.

David Bain
Okay. And one other follow up question. Ideally, in those seven people, how many people would have been there before and how many people should have been new people that haven’t been there before,

Andrew Warner
it doesn’t matter. If you’re a good conversationalist, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all, you should find something that they have in common, something that makes them care about each other. But that’s it. And so when my kids were when my first kid was born, I got fathers together who were from all Spectres of life, is that the word? They’re from all different parts of life. The thing that they had in common was they were all about to have a baby. And so that created a connection. If you’re looking to market something, if you could get all these marketers together, then then that’s enough. But here’s the thing, if you don’t have connection to these people, right, like maybe you’re not like me, you know, you have a known sound par for about a decade and Neville medora for 15 years, whatever it is, how do you get these people Neville is a great copywriter, great marketer, how do you how do you get these people? You find two of them that can get together, and then everyone else is going to come for them? Or you find one of them and you say, Can I organise an event for you? Where I bring together these people who matter who obviously don’t say people matter, but I want to bring these marketers together. So for you can I put this together? You find it you do the legwork, and they will absolutely say yes to doing it. And I know because I’ve had people where I said to them, you could do it. Just in marriage. For example. He’s the guy who created kettle and fire this bone broth company do incredibly well. When he was younger and just getting started. He wanted to meet people in tech. He organised a dinner party At my house, he invited people over roommates at the author, he invited Tucker Max, he invited Ryan Holiday over to my house, we did a dinner at my house, he got to know all of them. And you know, using one person, you could connect everyone else together? That’s the answer.

David Bain
So to finish off, MAGICAL MARKETER who is an up and coming marketer that you’d like to give a shout out to, what can we learn from them? And where can we find them?

Andrew Warner
Alright, it’s these two brothers who use the same name on social media called Crescent Stein. And the reason that I think that they’re interesting is because the crests and Stein brothers are doing marketing in the crypto space. And what they’re doing is nothing that can’t be duplicated by people who have no interest or no understanding of crypto. So they have decided that they were going to get into bit cloud as a platform. And so they’re in the chat room for bit clout, they’re in the discord rooms there, they’re doing a YouTube video every day. I think that YouTube video is just glad it’s okay. They’re just, they have a bad mic, they will interview somebody with their bad mic in an echoey room. And then they’ll put it up on YouTube, they’ll have a few 100 people watching them, not even 1000 each one of these episodes, but they’re super into this world. And as a result, their coin on bid cloud keeps going up in value, the money that they’re pulling out of it keeps going up, the connections that they’re making keeps going up. And their ability now to create a product from it is is phenomenal. They just created an NFT marketplace where you can go and buy and sell NF T’s. That’s the answer, to not care about broad audience, but to go super like deep in this one world. And I think you’re gonna see some big things from them.

David Bain
This was Episode 266, of Digital Marketing Radio, where Andrew Warner author of stop asking questions shared so many tips and let’s pick up three. What’s a win for you? That’s a good question to ask before you interview someone, and that helps to manage self promotion and dig out exactly what’s important for your guests, pre interviews as well. really worthwhile considering that you could perhaps do virtually ideally in person, dig out the best question the most likely content that they want to talk about, make sure you don’t miss anything at all. And then thirdly, have a personal gem to share as part of the content in terms of guests and actually asking them that question afterwards. What was the biggest gem? What was the most important thing that you share it afterwards and perhaps use that as a clip on social media? Your SECRET SOFTWARE, Andrew was a bit klout.com your NEXT ON THE LIST was teaching and your MAGICAL MARKETER will make sure there are links to them as well in the show notes at Digital Marketing radio.com. Andrew, what’s the best social platform for someone to follow you and say Hi.

Andrew Warner
Come see me on twitter at Andrew Warner.

David Bain
absolutely superb stuff. Well, I’ve been your host David Bain. You can also find me producing podcasts and YouTube shows for B2B brands over at Casting cred.com until we meet again, stay hungry, stay foolish and stay subscribed. Aloha. Radio down.com Digital Marketing radio.com Digital Marketing Radio, Digital Marketing Radio, Digital Marketing radio.com