Podcasting Q&A

What do you do with a bad interview or guest?

December 29, 2023 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
What do you do with a bad interview or guest?
Show Notes Transcript

What do you do if you find yourself not liking the guest you’ve asked to be on your show? How do you decide not to use the interview without offending the person?

In this episode, I'll teach you how to break the news in a way that minimizes conflict and protects your podcast.

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Travis:

Today on five minute Monday. I'll tell you what to do if you decide not to use a guests interview. welcome to five minute Monday where we bring you the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Now, Aurora wrote into us asking what to do if you find yourself not liking the guests that you've asked to be on your show. All right? How do you decide not to use the interview without offending the person? And that's a tough pickle to be in. On one hand, you know that publishing a bad interview is going to detract from the quality of your podcast and you don't want to do that. You don't want to put out something that you're not proud of and that you know your listeners aren't going to really like listening to. But on the other hand, it's not fun dealing with conflicts and saying to the person that just spent an hour being a guest on your podcast. You know what? We're actually not going to use that. So what do you do? Number one. I would say you need to make a decision and not look back. Second guessing yourself and playing the what if game isn't healthy and I would encourage you to trust your gut on that. If you think after listening to the interview and even in the middle of doing the interview, you're thinking, yes, the interview should not go out. Don't publish it, don't publish podcast episodes that you're not proud of. But then the second thing that you need to do is email or message your guest and there's a couple of things that you want to do in that message. Number one, you want to thank them for taking the time to do the interview. You want to recognize that it was something that they did for you, but then you also want to tell them that their interview will not be published and you can give them reasons why. If you want to or you know not, it's really up to you. Now if it's simply a bad take and you want to try and do a do over, then this is where you can reschedule the interview and say, Hey, this interview was not great, but I would like to do another one. That's also something you can do. But if you just want to cut your losses and move on than say, hey, thanks for coming on, but we're not going to use the interview. And then the third thing that I found has been really helpful, a is to take responsibility, right? Take responsibility for the fact that you failed to ask the right questions or didn't lead the interview as well as you could have, which are both true, right? If you asked great questions and if you led the interview in such a way that it wouldn't get scrapped, you know, hypothetically, yeah, you can take responsibility for that. Now sometimes you just do a poor job of screening people before you bring them onto your podcast. You Think, oh, they got 10,000 followers on Instagram, there'll be a great guest, and they get on and you're like, this is a train wreck. So sometimes that happens, but if it's something that you can recognize that you could have done better than, extend that olive branch to them and then also after you take responsibility, thank them for being understanding a little dose of humility goes a long way to diffusing any ill will on the part of your guest and if you do that, a rational human being will certainly feel disappointed, but they will understand. They'll accept the fact that you are in control of your podcast and we'll thank you for the clarification about why their interview is not going to be published. Now, if they aren't rational and they start making demands of you or asking for the audio so they can publish it or just give you a hard time, feel free to ignore them and move on, right? Don't dwell. You have plenty of other things that you can spend your time doing other than continuing to have a conversation with somebody that needs to get cut off. But ideally you'll want to screen your guests before you jump on the mic with them, right? You don't want to interview someone just because they will boost your downloads for an episode or two. Make sure that you're playing the long game. Make sure that you're investing in your audience, trying to make your podcast better. And in the long run, you're gonna be much better off. That is it for today. If you're new here, hit the subscribe button. If you're watching this on youtube, or subscribe to the five minute Mondays podcast and your favorite app to squeeze even more podcast related content into your life. And we're gonna start incorporating more listener suggested topics into these episodes. So if there's something that you want me to talk about or address on a future episode, click the link in the show notes to submit your question in the application form. Thanks for listening. And as always, keep podcasting.