What I learned from my worst interview ever

That headline is not any type of “the worst interview is the one I never did” type of thing. No, this one was a disaster all the way around. Just this past Saturday evening, I had an in-person interview scheduled with a trumpet player who’s from out of town, but was going to be visiting near my area for a gig. We’d been in contact regarding doing an interview, and it seemed the stars were aligning just right for us to meet in person and do it.

So we did meet, but to say things didn’t go well wouldn’t do it justice. I was completely out of sorts from the very beginning. I’ve been extremely busy with getting things in order with Sana just having arrived two weeks ago; getting the house in order, getting my son to interact with the three of us whereas it had been just him and me; keeping my business humming along somehow through it all.

Not exactly in prime “focus on a podcast” mode – but I’m confident in my abilities as an interviewer so I was just going with it.

The logistics were a mess from the moment I arrived. Unfamiliar location, and I can’t find a place to plug in my laptop. No problem, it’s got enough juice to last the interview. I fire it up, go in to plug in my mixer – and that’s right, my new laptop has those USB-C ports, and my mixer has the older USB inputs. I politely excuse myself to grab my USB-C adapter from my house just down the road. I get back, and now the adapter won’t work – later I realized because the laptop wasn’t plugged in so it won’t provide enough power for it.

Even so, I’ve got a backup. A single microphone that we’ll share between the two of us.

But it just wasn’t meant to be. I do interviews very freestyle. Asking a bunch of set questions and having rigid back and forth isn’t my style. But that’s really the only way to do it when you have one mic between two people. He’d say something that triggered a question in my mind – only to have it be lost in the wind by the time he’s finished speaking and hand the mic back to me.

After 10 minutes of this, it was clear to me this was not going to be my best effort – to the point we were both going to embarrass ourselves if we tried to go further.

Can we try again? I asked.

Sure thing, I wasn’t feeling it either, he replies.

So we’ll see if it happens.

Chalk it up to life experience. I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do an interview; and the logistical issues sunk the already damaged ship. What do you do in such a situation, other than pick yourself up and carry on?

But one good thing came out of this experience, as unpleasant and embarrassing as it was. I got to interact with my market. People don’t realize just how lonely it can be to do a podcast. You’re by yourself talking into a microphone, and the vast majority of guests are on a Zoom call, or some other web-based video call. You occasionally hear from subscribers who reply to your emails, but by and large it’s a lonely venture in the best of circumstances. Add to that myself being more or less isolated from my market due to all my travels, it’s that much more lonely.

I’m not saying this to complain, but to bring out the important point that even though the experience as a whole was a total bust (on the surface), getting to interact with someone in my market on a personal level was a net positive. Of course I hope we’re able to work it out and record something, but even if not I got to experience firsthand what turns on, and what turns off someone in the market I’m serving with my show.

You can’t buy that type of experience; you must earn it by just getting out and making things happen.

I guess chalk this up to the “any negative can turn into a positive” category.