Behind the Mic: My Experience as an Introverted Podcast Host

It can’t be a unique experience, you’re an introverted creative and you spend most of your day daydreaming about the things you would do if you were someone else. And I don’t mean that in a “I don’t like myself” way, I’m just not necessarily interested in being the spotlight person. I’d love to have the experiences, but I just can’t see myself as that person. Until I found myself in one of those out of body experiences where I’ve forgotten who I am and I volunteer to not only host an episode of a podcast on a topic I have no professional, or personal, experience with, but I’ve also volunteered to manage the podcast. Thus, not only volunteering to host an episode, but being the go-to person if I can’t find a host for each months’ episodes.

So, here we are, about a year in with more experience and a few episodes of my voice (which I had to listen to repeatedly to edit by the way) talking to people who have careers vastly different than mine. Where did I start? Firstly, I had no experience interviewing people, I only really ever “interviewed” people by sending them a list of pre-written questions to fill out and I’d clean it up to publish some weeks down the road. Needless to say I felt a bit in over my head, so I dove head first into research. What do I like most about the podcasts I listen to? Is it the content or is there more to it? Inheriting an established podcast meant I needed to conform to the predestined format, but what made our successful episodes work?

Once establishing my “vision” I had to confront the reality that I actually had to record the episode, and that meant having a conversation with someone who was an expert at their craft, which I was moderately aware of, but not to any real degree. Looking back, my first episode was… shallow. It sounded very “question, answer, question, answer” and wasn’t engaging unless you were passionate about the subject, which isn’t the case for all of our monthly listeners. They all have varying backgrounds in their field and their jobs cover a vast number of roles and industries. I made a mediocre episode for a niche group. I had established before the episode’s recording that that was NOT the kind of episode I wanted. I wanted banter, I wanted to have an episode that flowed and felt natural, and yet I created the opposite.

Where did I go wrong?

Well firstly, I went into the interview with a stark idea of how the conversation would go. I had questions prepared, which is not where I went wrong, but I wasn’t mentally prepared to leave some behind and actively participate in the conversation. If I’m completely honest, I even prepped jokes. I scripted this episode in my head unbeknownst to my guest, who went off script a lot. I was so anxious about the conversation that I didn’t allow it to be a conversation, you know, the kind where you actively listen and bounce thoughts and ideas off each other and ask thoughtful questions relative to what they are talking about.

So how did the episode do? Unfortunately, podcast analytics aren’t the most complex, at least with the reporting tools I had on hand. The downloads were fine relative to our other episodes but I can’t be sure how many people listened to the episode in its entirety. In my eyes I made a dud of an episode. So it’s time to regroup and improve.

Lessons learned:

In order for the conversation to sound natural, it needs to be natural.

Prepping questions for a podcast and topics is a no-brainer, but that should really just be a soft outline for the conversation. These are things you know you want to cover, but they shouldn’t dominate the conversation and you should be able to move away from them if need be.

Prep your guest.

Depending on how you found your guest, whether from them pitching to you or vice versa, you should give them a general outline of topics as well. I’ve found that sending them all of your questions ahead of time can lead to them scripting out their answers, so I find a general outline better. If they have a pitch for the end that they’ve scripted, maybe a promo for their book or website, that is fine, but unless you do a lot of public speaking people will know if you’re reading from a script and the same goes for your guest.

Too general can be a snooze-fest.

If you have an audience that widely varies in work or even just interests, you may find yourself thinking “gee, the broader I am, the more people I can appeal to.” Except you’d be wrong. Casting a wide net doesn’t work for niche content, which is what I would consider most podcasts to be. Don’t be scared to get into nitty-gritty details. If your guest is an expert in their field or topic, you should probably be asking them intermediate level questions at the least. If your podcast covers general questions that can be answered by clicking the first result in a google search, you’re too broad. People aren’t listening to podcasts for low-level content, that’s what blogs are for. (Self burn?)

Be yourself.

I’d be remiss to not include this cliche. This is especially important for introverts who have a hard time being true to their personality, especially in stressful situations that require you to be at 110%. I’m often clunky in conversations, I may ask dumb questions or make a joke that falls flat. I am not everyone’s cup of tea because no one is. But there is no denying a person’s allure when they are authentically themselves. Lose the facade, and let yourself enjoy the conversation, ask questions YOU want to know the answers to.

Now go on and hit “record”.