Your Business Will Grow If You Start Interviewing Leaders. I’ll Show You How. With Andrew Warner and Dave Yankowiak

In this program, I want to show you how doing interviews the way I do on Mixergy will help you raise your profile AND draw an audience AND make incredible contacts AND learn more AND grow your business. Plus, I’ll teach you HOW to do interviews and WHICH tools you’ll need.

I invited Dave Yankowiak to join me in this program because he’s someone who’s watched Mixergy interviews for a few months and recently started doing his own interviews. I think his perspective will help you see what you need to get started.

Dave Yankowiak

Dave Yankowiak

Lift Development

Dave Yankowiak is the founder of Lift Development, which helps brands become an influence on the web, not just a presence.

 

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Full Interview Transcript

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Hey, everyone. It’s Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, Home of the Ambitious Upstart. Lots of fists here today. All right. Here’s the deal. Today’s guest didn’t show up, so I’m going to get to do something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’m going to convince you, Dave Yankowiak, who came here to Mixergy with me to cover, and I’m going to convince, more importantly, the person sitting and listening to us at home, or on their i-Pod, or somewhere else, and trying to figure out whether this is the right program for them. I’m going to tell you right now what this program’s about. I’m going to convince you to do interviews the way I’m doing them. And I’m not going to convince you to go out there and be a Barbara Walters.

I’m not going to convince you to go out there and do it professionally. I’m not looking to create professional interviewers. I’m looking to take entrepreneurs, who want to build a successful business, and show them how, if they do interviews the way I’m doing them here, they’ll be able to make connections with people who they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. They’ll be able to do it on their own terms, which means even if you got into the hot parties, you wouldn’t be able to ask the right questions that you need about how to build your business, because you’re at a cocktail party. You’ve got to spend time talking about, you know, the cocktail party. And do a little chit chat. No.

When you’re doing an interview the way I’m doing it, you can get right down to business. You can spend about 45 minutes with the people who you need to meet, who you need to build relationships with, who you admire and want to learn from, who you need to add to your connections. And you’re to get to just spend intense amount of time learning from them, and staying focused on what you need to do. That’s the goal here for this program. Now I could have done it just into a camera myself, but you know, one of the benefits of doing an interview is that you have two voices, that you don’t have to carry the whole conversation yourself. I feel really bad sometimes for bloggers because they have to come up with all the content themselves, because they have to figure out what to say next. Because it’s just them, a voice alone on the internet. Great thing about interviews is that you get to have two people, that you get to have somebody draw out the best in you. And that’s why I invited you here today.

Dave, you’re a web developer. Let’s introduce you a little bit. What kind of development work do you do? And most of this will be, I hate to say it, but it’s going to be directed at me. I’ll be answering questions about how to do interviews, and why people need to do them. But I want to get to know you a little bit better. And more importantly, I want my audience to know who the other voice here is.

Interviewee: All right. Yeah, my name is Dave Yankowiak. I’m a web developer. I live in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, so almost practically Canada up here, a few hours from Canada. But I do, you know, I do, I started out just doing design, maybe six or seven years ago. And I got into ASP.net programming, so that’s kind of my main. My main thing is, you know, Dynamic Functionality on the Web, through .net. And I also dabble in a lot of other stuff. I’ve really gotten into WordPress, and things like that. So I have a company called Lift Development. And it’s essentially just me, and I do freelance web stuff. So it’s a lot of fun.

Andrew: All right. You and I actually met in person at a conference, at a Rails conference called “Biz Conf”, run by Obi of… Why am I not thinking of it?

Interviewee: Hash Rocket.

Andrew: Hash Rocket, exactly, one of the top development firms out there. Obi decided to put together a conference for the Rails community, about the business side of development. That’s where you and I met.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Andrew: And since then, and you started watching some of the interviews that I’ve here. And you did your first one recently. Right?

Interviewee: That’s right. I did my first one yesterday. So it’s been something I’ve been talking about doing for awhile. And some tips…

Andrew: Why did you want to do it?

Interviewee: Just you know, I run a blog called “Anywhere Man”, that’s anywhereman.com. And it’s really, my audience is just people like me who can do their job wherever. You do. You’re an “Anywhere Man”, obviously. You’re in Argentina, and you have your MacBook. That’s your whole job right there, is right on your MacBook. And so, you know, my blog is really targeted at people who are able to do their job anywhere. And so, I was like I want to interview interesting people, who have interesting jobs, or just interesting lifestyles, regarding working from home. Or people who have a lot of expertise in those areas.

Interviewee: Öor people who have a lot of expertise in those areas. I have my first guest yesterday, Lisa Kanarek from WorkingNaked.net, and I thought she’d be a good first because the title alone gets attention. But Lisa is really smart, she really does a lot with home offices, organizations, and things like that. So, it was awesome, it really got me pumped to do more interviews.

Andrew: I saw it. You did it yesterday and you posted it yesterday. Right?

Interviewee: That’s right. Yes.

Andrew: It’s a quick turnaround. It was just ten minutes, you didn’t do an hour long program the way I do it. You put it up on YouTube, which gives you a lot of exposure. I know, because I do my interviews for about an hour. I can’t put it on YouTube, I think their limit is ten minutes. So there’s a lot that’s different about the way you do it, and I want to ask you about how you do it, too. I also want to just point out that we’re going to find our own way of doing these interviews.

Let’s start off with the why, because most people, when they want to do interviews, they’ll ask me how. ‘Andrew, what software should I use? What should I install? How do I ask for an interview? What should I ask?’ All those things, I think, are important, but they’re not as important as why. Let’s talk about that for a little bit. Like I said earlier, I’m not looking to create new Barbara Walters. I’m looking to just allow people in the audience to learn from the people they admire, to learn from the people they want to do business with, to spend about an hour connecting and do it meaningfully, as I said before.

Can you give me an example of how doing an interview will give you more access than just going to an event or being introduced? Fred Wilson, the investor, on his blog – I think it was yesterday – said that he doesn’t like just getting together for coffee with entrepreneurs, with just any entrepreneur he emails and wants to get together. He refered to Mark Schuster on his blog, said that he also doesn’t like to just get together with strangers for 15 minutes to talk about their business or have his brain picked.

But, and I completely understand it, but Mark Schuster’s been here on Mixergy for about an hour talking about business with me. Fred Wilson is scheduled to come on, I think, next month to spend about an hour talking business with me. The point I’m trying to make is that all these people who you wouldn’t have access to, who wouldn’t sit down with you for about 15 minutes to have a conversation. When you’re doing an interview, when it’s more than just about you, but it’s about their exposure to other people. When it’s more than just about you trying to get ideas for yourself, but it’s about you trying to learn from the person and then spread that knowledge, you’ll have access to more people. You’ll be able to spend much more time with them, and they’re going to do it much more cheerfully than they would otherwise. So that’s one benefit, the access that you get to the people that you want to get to know.

The other benefit is that you don’t have to promote it yourself. We know the value of having an audience online. If you have an audience when you build the product, you can shift some of that audience to the product. The great example is when I interviewed Jason Fried of 37signals, I asked him, ‘How did you get people to buy that first book that you wrote? How do you get people to sign up for and pay for the first Web applications that you created?’ He said, ‘You know, Andrew, we had a blog, the blog was very popular. As soon as we launch a product, we announce it on the blog, and people transition into customers. They went from being our readers to being our customers.’

What I’m learning from other interviews is that before they become customers, it’s very often that audience will help you build the product and tell you what they’re looking to buy. Well, how do you build that audience yourself? It’s great if you’re Jason Fried, and you’re a great writer and you know how to get attention with your writing. But I’m not Jason Fried. Most people who are out there, know that they need to build an audience, but they don’t know how to get that audience. It is insanely, insanely tough to be another blogger in a world full of tremendous bloggers who spend hours and hours a day on their craft, who already have built up their audience, who are already established names in the business.

When you build the blog, you have this vision that millions of people are going to come because you’re going to say great stuff. Nobody shows up, and then you get to five readers, and then you get to ten readers, and then you get to 25, and it just stalls there, 25 forever. One of the great things about doing interviews is it’s not just you alone creating the content, it’s somebody else creating with you. But it’s also not just you alone promoting it, and we’re going to talk about that, how to get those done right.

Every time I do an interview, the person who I interview helps me promote his interview, and helps me promote my work in general. So, it’s lots of people helping me build my audience. It’s not just random strangers who are doing it, too; it’s people who have audiences of their own. It’s people who have a big spotlight on them already, that’s why I’m interviewing them, and I’m bringing that spotlight to my work. We’re going to talk about how to do that.

Of course, we’re also talk about the tools, and I’m going to get into that first. What do you think of that? Did you find your interview with her, I forgot her name, but all I’m remembering of her website is naked, naked, naked. What’s the name of her website?

Interviewee: It’s WorkingNaked.net.

Andrew: WorkingNaked.net. And what’s her name?

Interviewee: Lisa Kanarek.

Andrew: Okay. So, when you interviewed Lisa, did you she promote your interview to other people?

minute 10 to minute 15

Andrew: When you interviewed Lisa, did she promote your interview to other people?

Interviewee: Yes, yes.

Andrew: How did she promote your interview?

Interviewee: I think she’s putting it on her blog. So, right there, it’s a link back to my site from her site. I think she did some Twitter stuff with it and things like that.

Andrew: Yes, and eventually, it starts to just build up and build up and build up. Because, you know what, you’re going to do another interview maybe with a friend of hers or maybe with someone who she admires or maybe someone that she never heard of before. But, she’s paying attention to your blog because she was on your website. As soon as you’re doing the interview with anyone who’s interesting, she’s going to tweet about it, she’s going to talk about. All these people end up being there in your community, in your circle, helping you out in the future. It’s not every time, it’s not for every post, but they jump in there and they help out with the promotions.

Let’s talk about how. I’m going to say something and then I’m going to invite you to contradict me. Even though I do my interviews everyday, via Video Skype, and I’ll tell people the tools that I used the way that I’m doing with you. Video Skype, we’ll record it, I offer it on video and audio, I offer a transcript. I’m going to suggest that the first time people do an interview, they don’t do video. That they don’t get involve with Skype and the connection and introducing other people to new technology, that they don’t worry about that. The first time they do an interview, they look for this cheapest, easiest, dead simple tool that they could find and that’s what they go with.

For me, that was taking a tape recorder into William Quigley’s office over at Clearstone, and I just put it down on his coffee table. I asked him some questions and that was the first interview that I put up, I believe. And then from there, I started doing them over the phone and I recorded them and then I eventually moved on to video. I probably should have spent more time doing just audio. I’m going to suggest that anyone who’s looking to do an interview themselves, it’s not about the production value. It’s not about trying to outdo CNBC and outdo MSNBC and NBC, it’s about just meeting the person and getting their ideas.

I’m going to suggest that you use a service like FreeConferenceCall.com, I don’t even want them spending money. You go to FreeConferenceCall.com, you set up a conference call number, you get your phone number for the conference call, you get a secret password for the conference. You get all little things that we’re all familiar with with conference calls. You send that conference information to the person you’re going to interview, and that’s it. They dial in to it, you dial into it, and the conference call will record it for you. Look at the instructions to figure out how to do it. Then, from there, you grow and you grow and you grow and you start using other techniques and other tools to improve.

Your first interview, though, Dave, was on Skype. Why?

Interviewee: Just it’s so easy. There’s something with Skype, you feel like we’re in the same room, there’s just something to that. Especially, the nature of my site being that it’s for people who are doing like telework type stuff. [xx] because one of the main tools for that. So it’s only fitting that the interviews are Skype-base interviews.

Andrew: I’m going to say this, too. You know more about the technology than the average person. You know about Skype, you know about how to get video online. You have a little bit more knowledge than the average person. Having said that, if anyone wants to, I want to introduce them to your techniques, to your tools so that they could start off with what you’re doing. So, let’s talk about it.

You use Skype to make the connection to your guest, what do you use to record?

Interviewee: I took all your tips. I used ScreenFlow to record it. I had ran into a few problems with trying to record and also get the video from my webcam, so I used CamTwist as well. So, it’s the Skype, CanTwist, and ScreenFlow’s recording from my webcam and what’s on my desktop.

Andrew: That explains why your video looks so sharp. Let’s tell people what this is. Skype, of course, allows you to make phone calls and video calls to people. ScreenFlow captures your screen and your video. So, what you did with ScreenFlow was, you said, record. Everything that’s on my computer screen, record me and record everything that we’re each saying, and then you used ScreenFlow to edit. CamTwist, what that’s meant for is to take your video and broadcast it online. Right?

Interviewee: Yes. Basically, it acts like a second webcam for your Mac application. It’s great, I have used it once before. [xx] the facts and stuff you want to, so if you want to have like a little ticker [xx] the bottom of your broadcast, you could do it really easily.

Andrew: Right. Exactly. CamTwist is a free program, I don’t know if it’s open source or not, but I know it’s readily available, anyone with the Mac can use it. Anyone with a Mac can use ScreenFlow. Anyone with a Mac or PC can use Skype. Let’s talk about for PC, what software they might need to duplicate your setup.

minute 15 to minute 20

Andrew: ÖAnyone with a Mac or PC can use Skype. Let’s talk about for PC, what software they might need to duplicate your setup. They would need Camtasia, that’s a Mac and a PC version of ScreenFlow, so they’re welcome to use that. There’s no version of CamTwist, as far as I know, but frankly, if you’re not broadcasting your video online, you don’t need to have CamTwist. If you are broadcasting your video online, there is a program from, the makers of ScreenFlow make a program for Mac and PC, I believe, that allows you to do the same thing a ScreenFlow. It costs a little bit of money but it also has much better production tools built into it.

My setup is very similar to yours. I use Skype for video and audio to make the call. I use eCamm’s Call Recorder to recordÖI’m using an Altera(?) recorder video on mine. I use ScreenFlow just for editing, not for recording the interview anymore. Now, that changes, I used to do it exactly the way you do it, now I’m using different tools. If you don’t want to mess with any of those, and you’re on a PC, there’s a program called VodBurner, you go and you install VodBurner. I’ve changed a few people’s lives with that. They used to use clumsy technology on the PC, it’s not easy to find it. VodBurner is very easy because it will record for you and it will do editing for you.

If you don’t want to record and you don’t have to record, you could just take notes and then write it up. You don’t want to have to edit it in the beginning, especially. Use a service like TinyChat, go to TinyChat.com, you get an account for yourself, you email that account to the person you’re interviewing. They log in, you log in, you get to see each other and talk, and you get to take notes. I actually think at first, you may not even want to bother with video editing and recording and all that, you just need to edit it.

Guys, if there’s anything that I’m missing here, a lot of things are obvious to me and they’re probably obvious to Dave because he’s done this. If there’s anything that we’re not talking about, tell us in the comments. I know that he’s watching the comments, too, and we’ll both do, as much as we can, to answer what you’re saying. Thank you for linking to VodBurner.com. Also on FoundersMix, the site that we launched here as a sister site to Mixergy, where you can ask questions. There is a question that was asked by a fan about my equipment. If you go to that question, it links to every single tool that I use, every piece of software, and even the hardware.

Let’s talk about the hardware. The only piece of hardware that I have beyond the computer is this right here. This is the mic that I’ve talked up a lot because I used to struggle with the audio. I used to use all kinds of headsets, I don’t think the hardware is important, so I just bought whatever headset I had at first. Then, I realized that with the average headset, there’s a hum. You don’t hear it when you’re editing, you don’t hear it when you’re talking, obviously, but it’s there when your audience is listening to your program. They’re at yours phone and they’ve got the ability to pick up on all the little things, all the little subtleties of the recording. I got this microphone for less than a hundred bucks, it’s so much cheaper than the other microphones that I was experimenting with on my way to this one. It was suggested to me by a couple of fans since then. It’s incredible. You just plug it in via USB into you’re computer and you’re ready to go.

Someone in the audience, Vagabroad(?), said, ‘I’m actually surprised that all your interviewees have a webcam for the interview.’ Great point. All my guests, not all of them actually, let’s say about 80% of them have webcams, because they’re all in the Internet space, because they’re Internet entrepreneurs. Many of them are already on Macs, many of them have PCs. If they’re not on Macs, they have PCs that have webcams because they need to talk to their employees in a foreign country or the outsourcers that they have in a different part of the world.

The average person, if you’re interviewing people outside of the space, may not have a webcam. If they have a webcam, they might not have Skype. They may not know how to set any of these stuff up. When you’re starting out, consider just doing audio and writing up some notes, keep it dead, dead simple. Like I said, I would just do an interview, record it so I don’t have to take notes on. But, all I would publish, at first, is my text notes. I won’t even bother with the audio and the video at first. You’re going to have a hard time building that audience in the beginning, why waste your time doing all these editing work for a small audience? But, that’s just me, I’m going to leave it up to you, guys, to decide for yourself. We’re giving you now all the tools that you need.

Let me see, KC Alen, ‘Mics that connect via USB, are much better than the ones that use a mic jack on your computer.’ Exactly. If you need a mic, don’t get the ones that have that standard audio jack than can plug in to any old school tape recorder. You want the USB ones, they don’t hum, they have a lot of other stuff to them, a lot of other benefits that I’m not technically sophisticated enough yet to know.

You did some editing to take your interview down.

Andrew: OK. You did some editing. Man, I’ve got a cold. You did some editing to take your interview down. Right? Why did you decide to go from… How long was your interview originally, and how long was it afterwards?

Interviewee: You know, my goal of the interview was to have it less than ten minutes. And so I actually sent Lisa some potential questions ahead of time. Just, and the reason I did that was just to make sure that the answers were pretty clear, and she had thought them out. So my goal is less than ten minutes. But I did some editing in the middle, a little bit, but I don’t think I ever pulled out more than 20 seconds at a time. It was just kind of dead space. So you actually saw me do the interview right there.

Andrew: I did what?

Interviewee: You saw the main part of the interview

Andrew: I see. I saw the meat of the interview. By the way, there is another reason why…

Interviewee: Well, Yeah, I didn’t trim much.

Andrew: you may not want to deal with Skype. You and I have great equipment. We’ve each done an interview. We do Skype all the time. And there’s still a little bit of a lag. There’s still a little bit of audio issues. The average person, if you’re starting out, there are reasons not to use Skype. And here’s one of them. And frankly, actually, I’ll just leave it at that. I want to welcome you guys to use Skype. I want to help you out. I want to give you the tools. I want to suggest services like Tiny Chat, that might be better for you. I want to say that when you’re starting off, you just want to use the simplest tools that you can. Here’s something else that I’m going to suggest. Are you guys hearing an echo? A few people are saying that they’re hearing echoes.

Interviewee: I’m going to turn your audio down here, Andrew.

Andrew: OK. That’ll be a big help. OK. Let’s talk about one other thing, why I do my interviews live. Did you do your interview live, by the way?

Interviewee: No, we just, I didn’t get that far down the road yet.

Andrew: OK. I think the transition needs to be this. Start with just audio. Use a tape recorder, or use one of the conference calling numbers that will record for you. Don’t even bother editing it. Put it on exactly as it is, or don’t put it on at all. But do include your notes, so that’s there’s something up on the website. Once you’re there, move up to video, where you’re doing either Skype or Tiny Chat, or we’ve used Vocal in the past. There’s a few other services that you can use. Use those for video. Only after you’ve gotten this down, and you know what you’re doing, should you go and do video, do live interviews. The reason for that is, there are lots of issues with doing it live. The person who you’re talking to ends up being a little bit late. You’re keeping the audience waiting. It’s going to be hard to get anybody to come and watch you live. And it will be embarrassing. It’s another piece of technology that’s going to potentially ruin your experience. It’s, right, it’s another thing to worry about when you’re doing interviews. Sometimes I get distracted as I’m doing my interviews. It’s just not worth it at first. By the way, there is an entrepreneur who prides himself on being a community entrepreneur. He’s out on the internet, on Facebook and Twitter and everything, engaging people. He went on YouStream one day and he started talking, nobody was there. I was the only one in the room, and I felt so bad for him that I stayed in the room for a little bit, hoping others would come so I could leave. And I finally had to leave because I had another obligation. It’s hard to get people to come in and do live, to be there to watch and listen. It’s hard. Even me, right now, I got 28 people. I don’t know in the overall live audience how many there are. But I know that the subset of them that are watching here on Mixergy, only 28 people. It’s not going to be where your huge audience is going to be. So why do I do live? I do it for a f

ew reasons. First of all, the live audience gives me feedback and pumps me full of information that I couldn’t get on my own. There was yesterday, when someone in the audience said, ‘ask him about this lawsuit.’ I didn’t know about the lawsuit that my guest had. I didn’t know about the issue. They brought that out. Someone else in the audience said, ‘ask him about the time that he bought a company for talent.’ I didn’t know that story, either. It helps to have the audience do that. That’s one reason. Another reason is, it pumps me up. It makes me feel like I’m not just me and another person talking. It makes me feel like, all right, there’s somebody out there who cares that we’re producing this interview. Also, it keeps my guests honest. If I tell you that it’s just you and me doing an interview, and it’s at 11 am pacific, the way most Mixergy interviews are done, you might show up. You probably will show up. But if there’s something else that you’ve got to do, maybe you’ll tell me, ‘Andrew, I’ve got to be 15 minutes late.’ Maybe you’ll say, ‘Andrew, let’s do it at 12 o’clock.’ Maybe you’ll jerk me around because you have, because you don’t care about me. Maybe you’ll jerk me around because you have legitimate things to do. If you know there’s a live audience out there, that you’re going to be embarrassed by for not being there for, you’re going to show up. So, as soon as I went live, the number of guests who showed up on time and were ready to do the interview just increased tremendously. So there’s a big benefit to that. Here’s another benefit.

Andrew:ok you did some editeine {man i get a cold},you did some editieding to take your interview down right.why did you dicieve to go from, how long was your interview origalyy. and how long was it afterwas

Interviewee:you know my, my goal for the interview was to have it for less than 10 miniuals and so i auusully sent lisa some portensrty quistion at a time. just,the reason i did that was jut to make sure the answers were pretty clear,and the she had thought them out.and that so my goal was less than 10 mins.i did sme editeing in the middle alittel bit.

Andrew: If I don’t do it live, my guest only has one time and one reason to promote my interview; when I post it.

Andrew: And, what I noticed was, they don’t promote it right away. Or they didn’t at first. Because they’re worried that maybe their sound didn’t come across well, that maybe they used too many “ums” that maybe they didn’t come across as smart as they wanted to. So what they would do is, they would say “Andrew sent me this interview, he asked me to promote it, he asked me to tweet it out but first… I want to listen to it. First I want to make sure I came across as smart. First I want to do this and I want buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. And then they never get to it because by the time they’d… because they’d never get to listen to the interview, who wants to listen to something that they already said? Or they would and then they would just feel that its too long, I mean its been too long since they did the interview so they wouldn’t promote it.

Andrew: By going live I have them promote the interview before the interview goes up. They have to say to their audience audience that they’re going to be on Mixergy, go watch me. By going live that thing is already out there people already know that they’ve been in the, in the interview, they can’t hide from it from themselves. It keeps them from listening to that crazy voice inside their head that makes them, that pumps them full of doubt and lets them say: “What’s done is done. The audience is there I’ve gotta promote it” or, “I’ve got to do this interview there will be an audience why not have some of my fans go” and they promote it.. Are you thinking of doing interviews live at any point?

Dave: You know… ah. I’ve thought about it a little bit, but what you’re saying, you know, really really makes sense, erm. Maybe at some point I think at this point I really just want to work on erm, my interviewing skills and and just kinda build off up a demand for, for live interviews I guess. Erm. I like what you’re saying about, you know, the feedback from the audience as you’re doing the interview. And so that’ll that.. we’ll see where that goes. My goal is to keep the interviews less than 10 minutes just because sometimes its hard to sit down and watch an hour, you know, they’re half hour, hour interviews so, we’ll see which goes.

Andrew: I agree with you completely. I actually tend to think that if I could just pull out three minute clips from my interviews I’d end up getting a bigger audience for those 3 minute clips than for the whole long, hour long interview that I do.

Dave: Or you could do both. You could have the full interview and then have, you know, three or four highlight clips

Andrew: That’ll be a cascasde. If I do both for more than about a week. er… lets talk about one other thing. First interview that you do, yours is very good Dave. I’m going to talk to the audience, First interview that you guys do suck at it. Go in there committed to sucking go in there committed to just doing an interview, right?

Andrew: I interviewed Seth Gordon, I said “Seth, everything you put out seems to be gold right now. you put out a biz, an internet business and boom. It hits as one of the top 100 web sites. You put out a book it becomes a best seller, becomes if its not a New York Times top 10 best seller it becomes an incredibly popular seller. You put out a blog post or you put out a blog and you end up becoming the top individual blogger out there. How do you do it?” He said “You know how I do it? I, by failing a lot” and then he lists out all the times he failed before he got here and he starts to say “You know a lot of my blog posts, nobody… nobody cares about it or not enough of an audience care about it. You have to gotta suck first before you get to be good and you keep on sucking in the future. The goal is to just keep on producing, knowing you’re gonna get better and better, suck less and less. And you’re going to have, the more you produce the more you’re gonna have a few things, a few programs, a few interviews that are just gold.”

Andrew: Also my goal isn’t to make you a, isn’t to make you a rock star interviewer, your final destination if you’re listening to our interview right now is not to be on PBS replacing Charlie Rose, its not to be on 60 minutes replacing one of those old guys once they die. Your goal is to build a business of some kind. Your own leveraging is to build contacts, to build your reputation, to get known, to learn, to be smarter, that’s why you’re doing this. If you start to weigh yourself down with technology, if you start to weigh yourself down with doubts you’re not gonna do it and you’re not, and if you do do it you’re not gonna do it as often.

Andrew: I would much rather that if your goal isn’t to be an interviewer, I would much rather you did an interview a day by phone, wrote 5 bullet points about it and did it every single day, than do one video interview a month, or one video interview a week and end up having it look like gold, and end up having it look good, and end up having people saying look why isn’t this guy on NBC. Tthat’s not our goal here for you. And if it is your goal then you shouldn’t be here watching me because how am I gonna get you there? I’m not there myself.

Andrew: Ok. So thats, that the… that’s that. Lets talk about how to get guests. I’m gonna start off by asking you Dave, how did you get your guest.

Dave: Er, you know. ah, you know i’ve been a follower of Lisa’s blog for a while and I actually did a guest post a couple of weeks ago and just, just emailed her and said “hey would you be interested in being interviewed, so. I’ve already got a few other…

Interviewee: So I’ve already got a few other set that may be coming on, too. Just same way. You know, right now they’re kind of acquaintances. But at some point, hoping to get access to people that I didn’t know yet.

Andrew: That’s a great point. People keep asking me how can they get to interview Seth Godin. How could they get to interview the top person in their business. They tell me about the top people. Sometimes people I never heard of, but they’re really big in the space that they care about. The way to get those people is to start off small. You don’t want your first interview to be with the person who you admire the most in the world, who finally accepted your interview request, because you’re not going to be as good. You want the first interview to be someone who you feel comfortable with. Someone who, if you don’t publish it because it stinks, isn’t going to be, isn’t going to be too upset. And so what I did was, I interviewed people who I knew. I started off by interviewing people who came to my events, or who I’d done business with for a long time. Start with them. You know their story. You don’t need to spend as much time doing research. All you have to do is just talk to them about why you care about them, why you admire them. And give them room to fill in the gaps. Give them room to tell their stories. That’s my suggestion. When you’re ready to reach out to other people, there are waves of people that you need to think about. You need to reach out to people who are doing lots of interviews. There are people out there who are building their careers, building their names online, building their experience. Those people are prolific interviewees. They’re going to be easy for you. They’re the ones who you see interviewed on every website, and go, “Who the hell is this guy? I don’t even care, but now he’s everywhere.” Ask him for an interview. Those are the people who you want to go to, I think next. Then there is some middle person. Those are the people who are going to be your daily interviewees. For me, it’s not the celebrity entrepreneurs, but the ones who are really successful. Not the guys who everyone knows, but the ones who have s

uccessful businesses. Those you can’t get to right away. Those people are too busy. They’re not looking for interviews. They’re hard to reach. They’ll come later on. Before you get to that middle person, who’s going to be your bread and butter, you have to jump up a level. You have to go the rock star. And you start off with people you know. Move up to people who do lots of interviews. And if anyone’s seen Dave laugh, it’s because he’s reading the chat. I’m going to read it in a bit, too. You go up, and you talk to the top people, the guys who everybody wants to be like, or everybody wants to learn from, what everyone wants to know. The rock stars in your space. I keep using Seth Godin, so I’ll stick with Seth Godin, with Seth Godin.

How do you get to these guys? How did I get to Seth Godin? I waited for him to have a book. I waited for him to have some reason to promote, some reason to be on the promotion track. And then I said, “Hey, can I be in there, too? Can I be one of the people who are going to be interviewing you?” You do the same thing. Entrepreneurs today are writing books. They need some publicity. They’re going to talk to bloggers. They’re going to talk to anyone with a video camera. You should be one of those people. Look for those rock stars, so that’s when you go to the bread and butter interviews, so when you go to the smaller guys, you can say, “Hey, you know that rock star? I did an interview with him. Do you want to be in the same site with them? You know how he must have vetted me before he did this interview. Then he cleared it. He let you know that I’m an OK person. I’m not a psychopath.” Go to those people. Look for those moments when they’re out there looking for interviews. One of those times, I said, is when they come out with a book. Another time is when they come out with a new product, a product launch. Another time is, actually, frankly, anytime they have something new, something new to promote, you want to get out there in front of them, and do interviews with them. And very often, they’re just going to be doing interviews with you because somebody told them that bloggers are important. They’re going to be doing interviews with you because they want to practice on you. You know, when I would go out dating, I wouldn’t go and hit on the hottest girl right away. I’d go and I’d say, “Who am I not so concerned with? I’ll go talk to her first.” And then, once I get in the mood, and once I get comfortable, then I might go over and talk to somebody who I was really into. Same thing. They might be seeing you as that practice swing.

But you do it. You take the interviews that you can. What else do we have here? Questions. How did you, well, actually, let’s see what you’ve been laughing at here in the audience. Jason Cronkite. I’m just going to read this raw. Jason Cronkite. But is interviewing people that build company the most productive way to do things daily? I don’t know. Ah, interesting question. Here’s the thing. We all know we need connections. We need to be able to reach out to the people who we want to do business with. Who’s got those connections? Go and interview them. We all know that when we want to build a product, we have to make sure that it’s, that it’s what people want. That it’s what people are looking for. How do we do that? How do we know that? We go and we talk to our customers. Go and do interviews with them. A lot of your customers aren’t going to be willing to just talk to somebody out of the blue. But if you do an interview, if you tell them it’s for a website, they’re going to be more eager to do it. We know, let’s say Monogiggle. He’s in the audience. The guy who founded Monogiggle. He runs a website that does party supplies.

Andrew: …the guy who founded Monogiggle. He runs a web site that does party supplies. We know that there are certain contacts that would be helpful for him. But we don’t know what they want. We know it’s going to be people who have wedding invitation web sites, we know it’s people who have sites geared towards teaching, I know it’s more than weddings, but let’s focus on that. We know that it’s bloggers who talk to brides about what they need to do for their wedding. We know there’s certain people out there who he needs to connect with. He can just be another guy reaching out to them and saying, ‘I want you to link to my web site. I want you to link to my web site.’ Or, he could be one of the first people in their lives who says, ‘hey, I just want to listen to you. I want to know what it’s like for you to run a blog geared towards women who are getting married. I want to know what it’s like, or how you built this wedding invitation web site. Teach me.’ Now once he knows, once he gets in their head, don’t you think it’s going to be easier for him to partner with them and say ‘hey, you know what? All those things that you told me, I think I can help you, not with all them but I can help you with two of them. One of the things you told me is that you got this wedding invitation site, but you’re not making any money from it. Tell you what. When people finish creating the invitation, why don’t you link to my web site? I’ll give you an affiliate code, so that we can track how many orders are coming in. You recommend certain products on my site to them, they’ll buy it from me. I’ll make sure they get the cheapest price, and then I’ll funnel them right back to you. You told me that is one of the issues that you had. What do you say, do you want to give it a shot?’ Now you know what they want, now you also have buttered them up by listening to them for a while. They feel a little close to you, they feel a little more open with you, there much more l

ikely to try it out. Is this the only way to build partnerships? No, there are lots of other ways to do it. Is this one? Absolutely, and I think it’s a good one, because you know what? He’s going to talk to those guys, all their friends in the industry, all their competitors in the industry are going to come over to the site to see, what did those guys in our space talk about on Monogiggle’s interview site? What did those guys say? I want to learn. And when they’re there to learn that, they’re also going to end up on the rest of your site. They’re also going to end up finding out about you. That’s why I think interviewing works. It’s the only way known. You can go out there and you can buy, you can try to buy, here, drink lots of coffee. Actually, I shouldn’t be reading these out of order , I guess they’re talking about my energy here, I don’t know. Let’s see what else there is here, what people are saying. ‘Andrew, maybe doing high quality interviewing once a week with a strategy to help others, i.e. customers, Cathy Cyr’s advice.’ There’s lots of reasons, I think, to do it. You want to do it with potential partners. You want to do it with potential investors. How about this? You want to get investors for your business? You can talk to, at cocktail parties, entrepreneurs all day long and investors, about what it takes to build a business. You can be just another guy at those events trying to get their attention. Or what you can do is say, ‘look, before I even need money, I’m going to do an interview a day for a month with different entrepreneurial guys finding out how they did it, with a different investor who funds businesses to talk about how and why he picks the people he’s going to invest in. That’s what I’m going to do for a month, and I’m going to learn.’ Beyond the contacts, you’re also going to learn. You can read a book a day. You can read a blog post a day. I think those are great ways to learn, but there not as interactive as

doing an interview with the person, with the source. OK, let’s see, we talked about who you interview, let’s talk about how to get interviews. I’m just going to say one quick thing about it. Actually, let me ask you. How did you get your interview, what was the e-mail there, what was the approach that you took to get her to do an interview with you?

Interviewee: You know, I just grabbed her e-mail address off her site, and she kind of knew who I was. I commented on her blog a few times and just said, ‘would you be interested in doing this?’ I know you give a specific time and things like that, but I didn’t even do that. ‘I’m working on doing interviews for my site, and I’d like to interview you’, and yeah, she said, ‘sure’, and that was that.

Andrew: OK. I get that. Do whatever you guys want at first, but let me suggest this. When you go to buy a car, the guy doesn’t say, ‘so, do you want to buy a car?’ No, he’s very clear, he says, ‘do you want to buy this specific car at this price? Why don’t we do it? Why don’t we get you signed up?’ And then he turns his little paper around, and he hands you the pen, he practically puts it in your hand so you can sign. You want to make it as easy as possible. You want to imply that they’re already committed, and you want to make it so dead easy that they could say, ‘yes’, that it’s harder for them to say, ‘no’. I got a request earlier today to do an interview. The guy wrote a paragraph of information about his project, and the last sentence was, ‘can I interview you some time?’ I would ordinarily, I was just trying to clear out my in-boxes. I’m going away next week, so I spent a lot of time reading it. But ordinarily, I would just say, ‘this is too long. I’ll come back to it later, and never come back to it.’ Instead what I did was, I responded. Now, we can go back and forth with, yes, I want to do it, and him saying, when do you want to do it?, and I’m saying yes, ba, ba, ba. Here’s the way I think you should have done it. You should have said, ‘Andrew, can I interview you via this tool, it’s going to be by this phone number…

Andrew: … by this phone number, on this specific day, at this specific time, here’s why I want to do it, and here’s what I expect from you. But the first sentence should be the ask. Very clear, most people are too embarrassed to ask, so they bury the ask at the last sentence, where it’s least effective, where you’ve worn people out by talking too much or typing too much. The first sentence is the ask, the next sentence is who you are, the third sentence is what you want them to be interviewed about. I’ve got a link to that on Mixergy.com so people can see the format that I use. If you have a better format, not saying you do, Dave. But if anyone out there has a better format, I’m always looking to learn, I’m always looking to improve, I’m not looking to shove my format down your throat. I’m just saying that this is the one I’ve tested and works best. All right, let’s talk about, by the way, one of the influences for me for doing interviews is Robert Gobel. I read this blog post by Robert Gobel a few years ago. Where it said, I went to Boot Camp, I was invited by Tim O’Reilly, I got to have all these great late night conversations with people who are influencers and thinkers in the internet space, and I learned a lot. And then he never invited me back. And I was a little upset for a while, but I said, ‘you know, I’m going to create my own Boot Camp. I’m going to go out there, and I’m going to do an interview a day with somebody who I really care about, somebody I could learn from. And he said, that has made all the difference. He’s gotten smarter, he’s gotten to learn more, he’s gotten to, yes, he gotten a raise his profile, but more importantly, he keeps learning every day. I think this is a spectacular way to learn. You make a phone call a day, you don’t have to spend an hour like I do. Half hour a day, you do an interview with someone you care about. You let them talk. You ask them questions, you see how much you’re going to get out of it. Al

l right, promotion. How did you promote your interview?

Interviewee: I put it out on Twitter, I put it out on, there’s another site that’s called Amplify, which actually has been a really good way to promote the pulse on my blog. That was really all I did. And then people retweeted it, and yeah, I don’t get a ton of traffic. I’m just starting out, but it took pretty well.

Andrew: OK, I’m going to drink a little Yurba Matte. I love it in Buenos Aires, one of the best things about this place. Yurba Matte. Everybody talks about the steak. Steak is incredible, it’s incredibly cheap. You really can get one of the best steaks of your life. For me, the best steak I’ve had down here, you can do it for 30 pesos, which is under 10 bucks. Best steak of your life, under 10 bucks. Unreal. But I still prefer the Matte. OK, so what’s Amplify?

Interviewee: It’s where you can take little clips if you read an interesting blog post or something. You can actually, like what caught your attention in that post, and share it. And then you can sent it out on Twitter or Tumbler or Facebook, anything like that. But, it’s great because it really, you see a lot of people sharing bookmarks on Twitter. And it’s like, well OK, what caught your attention in the article? The pulse might be 4 pages long , and this really allows you just to grab just a little snippet and give a little introduction and say ‘I really found this interesting because, and then you can share it. So, it’s…

Andrew: And you’re actually getting traffic

Interviewee: What’s that, Andrew?

Andrew: You’re getting traffic from it?

Interviewee: Yeah, and you get a lot of good feedback from it. People are pretty open, it’s really easy for them to share it on their own stream. And so, you get a lot of good feedback, and there’s a lot less noise there than like at Twitter, where it’s a lot of spammers and stuff. It’s a really, so far it’s pretty spam free.

Andrew: OK, I’m going to check it out. If anyone’s listening to this, and knows of another tool like that that I may not be familiar with, let me know about it. I love it. I want to hear as much as possible. I don’t want to pretend here that I know every single thing there is to know about interviewing, about promoting interviews. I just want to keep asking the audience for information. By the way, earlier when I said, ‘fail, make the first time you’re out there, make it as bad as you want or as bad as it’s going to be.’ One of the reasons for doing it bad and doing it publicly is, you’re going to get feedback. No one is going to teach you, no one is going to give you feedback if you’re just a little bit off. But if you’re a lot off, they’re going to jump in there and they’re going to say, ‘hey, this guy needs some help.’ And they’ll jump in and they’ll help you. There’s something about the internet community that that happens a lot. All right, so Amplify, Twitter, I use Twitter, I post my Facebook. I use, what else do I use? Those are essentially it. Here’s another thing, though. As I said earlier, after an interview, e-mail the person who you interviewed, and ask them to promote it. You don’t have to say ‘you need to promote it.’ You don’t have to urge them on. I know these are people you respect, and that you’re not necessarily trying to push them to do it. But invite them to do it, and make it easy for them. Say, ‘look, here’s how you can tweet it out, here’s how you can embed the interview on your web site. I’d appreciate a link.’ Ask for the sale, you’re more likely to get it. I hated asking for the sale in the past. I hated asking, not for the sale…

I hate it asking for the sale and I hate it not for the sale people to do this for me. Someone interviewed about the past how to get traffics andrew absolutely have to make it easy. You have to encourage them to do it make it , try even traffic go up absolutely did it… helps a lot. Its one of the best sources of traffic you know. You know what the people you are interviewing they are followers …should be your followers because if they care about the person you interviewing ..you have interviewed them ..you have something in common, you both care about this person so that’s helpful.mm See what else also helps. Excuse me 1 sec….ahh ok…. Transcripts . I hate it posting transcripts. I hate still today but the audience keeps asking for it and so I keep adding transcript. What is transcript have to do with promotion. It turns out. It does help for search engine optimization. I kept saying that it didn’t help, it didn’t help, it didn’t help. But you know what I have realized ..it is growing my traffic. Its just that the other parts of traffic have grown even faster than the transcript than the ..than the traffic I am getting from the transcripts…. so what I am saying is it is growing fast but not as faster than all other things I am doing and so why before I didn’t recommended transcripts. ..now i am saying is absolutely haven’t done. They don’t have to be people perfect looking for something they can print out and put it in their bouquets. They are just looking for something that’s gonna guide them ….for something they don’t have the hour or ten minutes to do, to listen to your full interview. They want to be able to scan it and reading is the fastest way to scan. You can Ö.go to a service like casting words and pay 230 dollar…i think per hour or have your stuff transcribed. That’s very expensive. 230 per hour. I pay 14$ per hour for transcripts and the way I do it is to go to a service called Mechanical Turks…its by amazon. What mechanical turk does is t

akes small projects and forms it out to people at pretty low prices. What I do is… and I can’t get into the details of how to do it here but you will have to figure it out and you have to do a little bit of google work yourself to learn how to do this, but what you do is take your full hour long interview and you assign each 5 minute section of it to a different person on mechanical turk and you say all you to do is this 5 minute section and you pay a buck 10 or I pay right now a $ ten cents for each 5 minute transcripts. That all it is! They type it out by the next day and sometime within 5 hours even..the whole thing is done. It’s a tremendous service and very helpful that’s all you need to get the transcripts done. NowÖ. it’s cheap, but its not very great. It sucks at times but you know what..its that suckiness…because its random strangers doing your work. Each of them working on 5 minutes and don’t even know what the previous 5 minutes they are working on ..and how even relate to the previous 5 minutes or the upcoming rest of the programs. So they get a lot of typos. I found that helps, that helps. Because I give you an exampleÖI did a search for Avin Pegan and suddenly I was the first researcher of Abim Pegan. And i said who the hell is Abim Pegan. I had a typo when I typed it inÖwhy will I will even link to it. I came back to myvid google even looking to me for this, this guy Avin Pegan. I did search Ö.. I did search on my site Ö And somewhere in the transcript ..and one of the transcribers miss spelled Abin Pegan name. Its actually abin pegan who in one of my interviews was spelled once or twice. But because the transcriber got it wrong, and wrote Abin Pegin and there is no Abin Pegan really, I was the only search results. I was the top searcher of Avin Pegan. Anyone else who miss typed it would come to my site as a result of it. I looked it at my google analytic s..I got a good chunk of traffic for the word Abin Pagen in my transcript so now I am going

to recommend you do a transcript I am gonna leeway all crappy on your website because the way transcribers screw it up other people gonna screw it up too. And its gonna help you get traffic. So we talked about mechanical turk for transcription, we talked about casting words. I’m gonna give you one other option for transcription. You go to the Christ list and put a job offering transcript and put a job offering transcript and you request transcribers, you ask people how much they are paying for it. Let me slow down here. I think, I’m not articulating it well. Put a job on the Christ list for transcribers don’t offer price just ask them to pitch for the price and pick top 10 people who are going to respond put them in 1 sheet whenever you need a transcript to done, email all of them and say which of you is willing to do this and let me know.. and then in 1 or 2 hour somebody or other would jump on it and let them do it to send them back in the morning if they get it all done by morning you pay them, I think 20 buck for the work.

Andrew: If they get it all done by morning, you pay them, I think 20 bucks an hour for the work, because they’re going to do more work than the Mechanical Turk people, and pay them by PayPal after it’s done. That’s another option for doing it. Are there other services in between those three options? Absolutely. Are there better services? Absolutely. I think those are the three best services for transcripts. What do you think about transcripts, Dave? Do you think it’s helpful? Are you thinking at some point of doing them?

Interviewee: You know what? Yeah, definitely. Even I may just start kind of focusing on some of the highlights. Luckily, my interviews are going to be pretty short. So it’d be a lot easier to do. But a couple things. One, like you said, getting even misspellings are good. You know, I’m going to be doing some blogging for a bigger site, and they actually, they have a few topics where they want you to misspell words on a few of those topics, so they get some of that search traffic. So I totally agree with you there. The other service that I would maybe recommend is called “ODesk”. It’s just odesk.com, and it’s the same thing. You can, you know, just put the details for “OK. I have a 45-minute interview I need, you know, transcribed.” And you can get some quick bids on it. Same concept as what you’re doing. So, yeah. I agree. I think they’re very helpful, especially for me. If I don’t see the interview, and if I don’t have time, I can just skim down and kind of get the main points out of it.

Andrew: Yeah, actually it helps me, too. When I want to go back and see “What did I talk to that guy about?”, I’ve got it there. ODesk is a great recommendation. I see Viking Abroad. Yeah, Viking Abroad, that’s the name. Viking Abroad in our audience is saying elance.com is another option. Absolutely.

Interviewee: Hmm-hmm.

Andrew: OK. So that’s essentially it. We talked about why people should be doing interviews. Because it’s going to connect them with the people they want to meet. Because they’re going to get to know the interviewees. Oh, let me say this, too. I was interviewed recently. And at the end of the interview, I just loved the person that was interviewing me. Now I didn’t know the guy. He was just, he was a stranger. But he interviewed me. At the end of the hour, I loved him, not because I got to know him. I did most of the talking. He must have said ten sentences the whole time.

Interviewee: [Laughs]

Andrew: Why I love him? Because he gave me an opportunity to talk. He gave me an opportunity to talk about my favorite subject, which is me. When you go and you interview somebody, about their favorite subject, which is themselves, or their company, or their project, they’re going to love you without you having to say anything to get to win them over. That’s one of the big reasons. So you get to know the person you interview. You also get to know their network because they’re going to recommend your interview of them to their network. And you’re also going to have bait for bringing other people in your space to you. So, that’s why you should do it. You’re also going to learn. I love reading. People saw me do my interviews in my Santa Monica place, in my Santa Monica office, saw that I have tons of books behind me. I miss them in Buenos Aires while I’m traveling. But I had them there because I love reading, because I love learning. Learning through interviews is so much more powerful. You get the specific answers you want. You go into depth with people. You get to learn in a way that you can’t in any other medium. We talked about how, and I gave you all the tools, and Dave gave you all the tools, and I’m sure you can e-mail him, and I know you can e-mail me to ask more. Yeah, he’s nodding for anyone who’s listening to MP3 in this interview. But don’t focus on the tools, seriously. Focus on the person who you’re interviewing. That’s so much more important than the tools. We talked about promotion. I think that might be where I could have added a little bit more meat. We talked about how you can put it on Twitter, you can put it on Facebook, you can have your guests. You should ask your guests to promote it to their followers. And we talked about Search Engine Optimization that comes from transcripts. But I know people are going to want to have a broader audience. I think we should spend just a couple of minutes here seeing if we can find

other ways for them to grow their audiences. So, here’s something that’s worked for me. And by the way, the reason I’m doing it is, I know it’s not about having a huge audience, it’s about connecting with the person you’re interviewing. I’m not trying to make somebody here into an internet celebrity through these interviews. Though you’re going to find that within your space, if you’re in the wedding space, you’re going to find that you become a celebrity within the wedding space. You’re going to find that if you’re in the design spaces, AndrewSG is, in the style space, people in the style space will start to know you, because you’re the person who knows all the people that they care about. Whatever space you’re in, you’re going to get a broad, you’re going to get recognition. But I also know that unless you look at your Google Analytics and start to see a rise every day, you’re going to get discouraged. You going to feel like, why am I doing this? I’m doing this for nobody. Nobody cares. Woe is me. And so, I can either buck you up and tell you ‘screw it, don’t care about how nobody cares about you. Care about the few people who really are passionate about your work, and keep at it, because you’re not here to be a celebrity. You’re here to learn.’ But I know when it comes down to it, there’s nothing like seeing your numbers go up. So, let’s spend a little more time talking about how to increase traffic from these interviews. Do you have a suggestion, or should I jump into one of mine?

Interviewee: Jump into one of yours

Andrew: Okay, here’s something that’s worked for me. A lot of websites want interviews with the people you’re going to be interviewing. A lot of top sites would love to have some top guests on their site, but they don’t have the time for it, they don’t have the resources to do interviews, they don’t have the knowledge to do interviews, they can’t get these top people to do guest blog posts. You offer to be a guest blogger for the top sites–for the top blogs in your space–and offer to do it as a way of getting the big names in your space to come and do an interview. So, for example: I know that in my space, Mashable has a ton of traffic. I wanted to guest blog for Mashable, but I didn’t have anything interesting to really tell them about. So what I did was, I interviewed a few people: Timothy Ferriss was one. I interviewed Timothy Ferriss and posted it on my site, but said, “Hey guys, Mashable, how about if I take a few excerpts from this interview and I repurpose it for Mashable.com. What do you you say?” They loved it, they put it on, it was a hit blog post because a lot of their audience loves Tim Ferriss, and it also sent a lot of traffic to me because a lot of their audience said, “Who is this guy who did this interview, let’s go over and check him out.”

Now, here’s the benefit of doing audio and video. If I were just doing a text blog post on their website, I don’t think I would stand out, but because I’m doing an interview, and it was audio and there was video, anyone who saw it got to also see me. Anyone who got to knew Tim Ferriss from that interview got to know Andrew Warner, the interviewer, and so more of that traffic came to me as a result of it. Also, I went to a conference–the same conference you and I met at–soon after my Mashable series of blog posts; a lot of people at that conference knew me because they saw me on Mashable. So it helps a lot that way, and I’m going to recommend that you do interviews, not just for your website, but for other people’s sites as a way of growing your traffic. And go for the big guys; go for whoever has the most traffic, and don’t be afraid to promote by saying, “Hey, I’ve got this top interview with this top entrepreneur, can I put it on your website?” Use that person as a way of getting attention for yourself, as a way of getting permission to do the interview.

What do you think, is there anything that we missed? Before I ask you, guys in the audience, is there anything that we missed? Actually, Todd W. in the audience was saying, “I found you from the interview with the guy who allegedly ripped of the Crunch Pad and made it into the Juju.” Yeah, that’s something I have been experimenting with. When there’s something big in the news, because I’ve been doing an interview a day, what I’ll do is I’ll reach out to the person who’s in the news and I’ll say, “Can I do an interview with you on Mixergy?” I don’t love doing those interviews; this one happened to be one that I did enjoy, but I know that it’s great for bringing new people in. I know that it’s one of those attention interviews that brings traffic in. So I go after them; that’s a great way to get traffic. It’s a great way to get people to recognize you. Is there something else, Dave, that you think we should add here?

Dave: You know, one thing that I’ve thought about doing is using–have you ever used HARO before? Peter Shankman’s?

Andrew: Yes.

Dave: I’ve thought about putting out interview requests on there once in a while. Just for if I’m looking for a really unique type of set-up, especially for what I’m doing. I’ve thought about putting out the word out through HARO, and I’m guessing–I mean, they have a lot of subscribers to that, so I’m guessing you’d get a lot of just interests from something like that. So I haven’t done it, but that’s something I’ve thought about trying.

Andrew: I haven’t done it either, but I have responded to interview requests through that. HARO is Help a Reporter Out. I interviewed the founder of that company on Mixergy a while back. And that’s a great idea. If you want to get somebody to do an interview with you, post a request on Help a Reporter Out. Let’s see, have you ever dyed up (?), what did you do? I don’t even know what that means. Jeremy Wilde, what do you mean? Be clearer.

Alright well, anything else? Let’s see. The Viking Abroad–Viking Abroad, what is that? Is that your website? Let me know. Let’s see. Andrew, in that notion, would you ever allow a site to post your interview with proper credit even in a more organized fashion? Yes, yes yes. Okay, here’s another benefit of doing interviews! If you just write a blog post about your industry, yes you’re going to get the word about yourself. Yes, you’re going to be known as a thinker in the space. But there are few people who are going to link to you. No one’s going to embed your blog post on their website unless they’re ripping you off. But if you do an interview and you post it on YouTube, or even if you have audio, people are going to be more likely to embed it on their website. Absolutely, great point. I’m excited when people embed my work on their site. I love it that they give me credit when they do. I encourage it as much as possible. Doing interviews is a great way to get people to put your work on their site and to expand your reach.

Cover Cash in the audience was saying, “What about hacker news?”

Andrew: Actually, I don’t think he, I don’t think he is asking you, he is

bringing up Hacker News. I don’t want to rephrase this question. So let me,

let me just make up my own question, “What about Hacker News?” Yes, whatever

space you are in, there is a community of people who are rabid fans in that

space. All you have to do is, is go become a member of that community, find

out what it takes to really get your stuff, get your your self, get your work

recognized in that space and then start letting those people know what you are

working on. Now Hacker News is one site from my space but you know what, I

have talked to lots of other people who say that they are linked in for some

space. Believe it or not, they are linked in roots that are helpful for some

spaces. There are vBulletin forums. There are V placed a B in other spaces.

So yeah, you want to see what you can do. You want first to get into that

community care not for about that you want it, you would shape your work to

fit that community. And then, shape it a little bit by that, you shape it to

fit that community so that you can get traffic. I specifically picked Hacker

News as a place for me to target because I said, “Look if I go after the Digg

audience, the Digg audience is going to make my work stupider. It is going to

just take the life and the creativity out of it, and it is going to make

everything that I do into a top ten list that includes bullying women.” But if

I go to Hacker News and I say, “This is the place that I want my work to be,”

and they say, “Andrew, you are being too loud. Andrew, you are getting the

wrong people.” I could respect their point of view, and I will be happy to

adjust to their based on their feedback because it is going to make my work

better. It is going to make me care about it. And I don’t ever want to wake up

one day and say, “Am I doing this for people I don’t really care about?” Who

are these smucks? And I could have.

There are lots of communities of self, self-help get rich quick people. Those

people will go to any website. I get traffic from them every once in a while.

I see to my lots. I could say to myself, “Screw these Hacker News people.” I

am going to target those people over there because they are the most click

happy. They don’t have any job. They don’t have anything to do. They are just

looking to get rich overnight. But I could never respect my work after that.

(Interviewee laughs) Let us see, “Andrew, can you improve the quality of your

image and sounds, I think that will take you the next level, something like

Vendor Tv quality. I know you do it via Skype, but is there a way you can

improve the quality?” Good question, I know that I should improve my own video

quality. But right now, my eyes are so freck and dark, it is like looking at

two caves and a big nose every time you watch me in (xx: 1:02:20), I know

that. I should have a light shining on here. I don’t care enough about that. I

care more about the content right now.

At some point in the future, I am going to have to focus on that. Not yet, but

yes, I will have to focus on that. I will have to focus on finding a way to

make my guests look better because a lot of times there is such a lag, and

there is such a bad video quality coming from the person I am interviewing,

that it feels like they are talking to Max Headroom. (Interviewee laughs) It

is a little bit, “Oh, look, he is actually down blanking the audience and Max

Headroom.” Yes, exactly, so we are both on the same page. I understand and it

is painful. Now, other people have beaten that by doing one or two things.

Either they go to just audio and phone connections are more dependable than

video, and I am not going to do that because video is just my, where I live

because there is something to doing an interview with someone for me by video,

and I know we are going long. So we are going to cut it off in a couple of

minutes.

But the other way to do it is when I was on (xx: 10:03:15) Leo Reports this

week in Tech. What he did with me is, he spent I think about an hour making

sure that our connection was good, making sure that I understood that I need

to get my mike really close to my face making sure that everybody who was on

this program, not an hour just with me, but an hour with everyone who was

going to be on this program making sure that the equipment was fine. I think

his guests put up with it because they are looking for, they are professionals

in that space because they are, I am not going to say. They are broadcasting

professionals. They are looking to be on shows like that. They are looking for

the right equipment. My guests are not broadcasting professionals. They are

entrepreneurs who can give a (xx: 10:03:52) rats ass, who just want to do a

quick interview. And so, I don’t have a quick answer for that.

Interviewee: Can I give a…

Andrew: Can anyone else, tell me? Here is another thing, final point. Always

ask for feedback. I had learned that from our mutual friend, Jason, the guy

who runs a website called iwearyourshirt.com. He keeps asking for feedback. It

is one of the big lessons from my interview with him. I started doing it.

Asking for feedback is phenomenal. The audience will make you smarter because

you are going to see things in you that you can’t see in yourself, and so they

will help you improve. The audience will get used to feeling like they are

part of the project. The audience is going to start reacting by commenting and

it is to, everyone has an opinion, it is easy to give an opinion. And once

they do that, they are going to feel more engaged, more part of it. And once

they do all that, they are going to help promote you, and they are going to

help make you better, and they can introduce you to their friends.

Always ask for feedback. I am going to that right now. If anyone is listening

to this and says, “Andrew is a smuck, the ideas that he said here are

absolutely wrong. How can he possibly not care about his eyes looking like two

caves, and he thinks his nose looks big. It is gigantic. I think there are

more things here that he needs to learn.” I am all yours. I have never once

been pissed when somebody gave me feedback. So give me feedback. You can do it

publicly on (xx: 10:04:59)maturity.com. You can also just launch a ….

Andrew: Ö you can also we just launched a question and answer site if you have any questions I didn’t address, you can ask them there. And either I will go in there and answer them, the site is called Founders Mix, Foundersmix.com and either I will answer it or someone else whose also doing interviews will answer it. Or you can, what do we say, comment that, you can send me email, and that’s about it. Dave, how can people connect with you?

Interviewee: Well sorry, I’m getting, I’m getting some leg here, so hopefully you’re seeing me.

Andrew: I am seeing you. I don’t know if you can, can you give out a quick website?

Interviewee: Yep. My website its liftdevelopment.com, is my business but my main blog is anywhereman.com. And yeah, you just email me dave@liftdevelopment. But there’s one thing Andrew, can I give a quick tip while were still on here.

Andrew: Yes, yes You know what actually, you give a quick tip and I’m gonna give a quick instruction to anyone whose listening to us. What’s your tip and then I’ll hit my instruction.

Interviewee: Well you’re talking about the video stuff, one thing I do my desk, right in front of a white wall, and so what I’ve got is just the $8 from IKEA, its just one of these, desks lamps, and I don’t aim it at myself, I aim it straight at the wall, so the wall acts like a, diffuser. And it gets really, it gets really even light. You know, here’s, if the light is on me, it’s just, it looks good. So that’s one thing I do that seems to work pretty well.

Andrew: You know what, can we see three ways there? I know most people will listen to this interview, but let’s for the people who are watching, let’s show them what it’s like, so, can you turn it off and let’s see what you look like?

Interviewee: Here’s with the light off. So, this is if we were just, you know, no light.

Andrew: Ahh yes, hard to see. Now let’s have the light now directly on you.

Interviewee: Here’s the light, if the light was on me, it’d be, let’s see here, you know its, a little brighterÖ

Andrew: Yeah, that doesn’t look so good, it looks like you’re in a cave now.

Interviewee: Öa little more harsh. And then there’s aimed at the wall, actually there we go. So it’s a little more, it diffuses the light, fills up the room a little bit more.

Andrew: I like that a lot, great tip. Okay, anyone else who has another tip like that, I don’t have the wall in front of me guys, tell me what you think I should do with the light. I’m going to give you instruction right now guys. You can listen to me all freakin day long, I will love it. Look at me, I get more fired up at the end of these interviews than I do at the beginning because I get all this attention. People are listening to me its great for me if all you do is listen to me. Let me tell you what’s great for you. Go and do it. Go and find one person that you can interview in the next 7 days. What day is today? You think about it in your head, I don’t know what day you guys are listening, what day you’re listening to me. But say in your head right now, say is it Monday, is it Tuesday? By the next time, by the next, within 7 days from this day, if you don’t do an interview, you’re a punk. If you don’t spend an hour, just talking to one person, you’re telling me you can’t find one hour, in fact, it doesn’t even need to be an hour, Dave is doing 10 minutes. If you can’t find one person that you can learn from, and don’t man up or woman up and go ask them for an interview, then you’re a punk, might as well been listening to Britney Spears, she would have jazzed you up a little bit more, her audio quality would have been a lot better, and, she’s a lot sexier than I am. So go out there, find one person, forget about the, don’t tell me, ‘I don’t have a blog.’ You can go and find a place, you can put it up on your facebook page for all anyone cares. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to get a posterous account, you can get a posterous account in a second, you don’t need wordpress. Don’t tell me you don’t have the video, don’t tell me you don’t have the audio, you have a phone call, and if you don’t have a phone to make the phone call, go to a freakin phonebooth, I just gave you a free, toll free number that you can use, to do the interview. There should be no excuse.

Do it. And here’s one more thing, I want to be proud of you, I want to see what you’re doing. I want you to have an audience of at least one very important person, which is gonna be me. Send me a link to it, I would love to see what you guys are doing. Seriously, I’m here because, not because I need the 27 people who are in the audience to pump up my ego, I just got married recently, there’s nothing like having a new wife to pump up your ego, and I have a Jewish mother whose going to pump up my ego, so I’m not doing it for that, really. Dealing with the bad lighting and all that cuz I really want to see people go out there and build something because if you do it, then it means my life is worth something, and if you don’t do it, then it mean all I’ve got is an audience full of punks, and not even a big one. So go out there, do your interviews, send me a link to it, and I’ll see you guys all in the comment. Dave, thanks for coming in here last minute to do this program with me.

Interviewee: No problem, thanks for having me Andrew.

Andrew: Thanks, bye.

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Who should we feature on Mixergy? Let us know who you think would make a great interviewee.

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