What if I told you that most interviews are mind-numbingly boring, and you're probably doing them wrong? Today I interview Tracy Johnson, and after decades in radio and working with countless shows, he's written a book, Mic Drop Moments, that shares the secrets to transforming mediocre conversations into absolute "Didya Hear That?!" moments.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on selecting guests that will electrify your audience, ask questions that make people lean in, and tell stories that keep listeners hanging on every word. Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, what we share will completely change how you approach interviews forever. So if you're ready to stop settling for bland, forgettable conversations and start creating audio magic, hit play right now.

The Triple Threat Filter for Interview Guests:

1. Familiarity

- How well-known is the guest to your audience?

- A familiar guest brings built-in interest and recognition

- More famous guests typically make better interview subjects

- Provides an immediate connection for listeners

2. Relevance

- Does the guest's story or background matter to your audience?

- Must align with your podcast's theme and target listeners

- Simply being famous isn't enough if the content doesn't resonate

- The guest should provide value specific to your show's focus

3. Interest/Entertainment

- Can the guest tell a compelling story?

- Ability to be engaging, dynamic, and captivating

- Brings unique perspectives or unexpected narratives

- Makes the host look good by providing memorable content

Aim to have at least two out of three criteria met. If you lose two out of three, the interview will likely be challenging to make interesting. The ultimate goal is to leverage the guest's story to enhance your podcast's entertainment value.

The 3E's of Entertainment:

1. Enhance

- Add extra details to make the story more interesting

- Go beyond the basic facts

- Ask questions like "What were you thinking at that moment?"

- Create additional context that wasn't initially present

- Make the story more vivid and engaging

2. Exaggerate

- Slightly amplify the story's impact

- Turn a small moment into a bigger narrative

- Example: A small fish becomes "the biggest catch of the season."

- Create dramatic tension without losing the core truth

- Make the story more memorable and exciting

3. Embellish

- Add creative storytelling elements

- Stage the story for maximum entertainment value

- Take a brief moment and turn it into a full narrative

- Example: A simple backstage conversation becomes an epic ping pong challenge

- Use creative license to make the story more compelling

As audiences crave authenticity, Tracy isn't saying to lie, but you can bring in adjectives that trigger the theater of the mind.

Resources Mention

Mic Drop Moments Book

Tracy Johnson Media Website

School of Podcasting

Episode 677 The Ultimate Guide to Hosting and Guesting Podcast Interviews

Drew Carey on Jordan Harbinger Show (start at 48:14 nsfw)

Howie Mandel on Jordan Harbinger

Jordan Harbinger Show

Find "All Things Dave" at powerofpodcasting.com

Say Thanks for a Great Show schoolofpodcasting.com/thanks

Mentioned in this episode:

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Where Will I Be?

Today, on episode number 984 of the school of

Podcasting, I sniffed out a subtle marketing trick

that had me tripling the downloads from Jordan Harbinger.

And if you are a person that does interviews, what

if your next interview could be a game changer? Well, Tracy

Johnson, author of the new book Mic Drop Moments, he's going to

reveal the secrets to turning boring guests into podcast gold.

Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with

Dave Jackson. Podcasting

since 2005, I am your award

winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so

much for tuning in. This is the longest running

podcast about podcasting. And what do we do here? We

talk about planning your podcast, launching, growing,

monetizing. It's all there. The website is

schoolofpodcasting.com Use the coupon code

listnr when you sign up for. And this is new

monthly, quarterly. Yep. Brand new or

yearly subscription. And again, that coupon code listnr L I s

t e n e r. And so

I was listening to my buddy, Jordan Harbinger show.

He does a podcast creatively named the Jordan Harbinger

show. And he was interviewing Drew

Carey. Now, Drew Carey is kind of from my neighborhood,

he's from Ohio. And if you get anywhere near

somebody from Ohio and just say, oh, we like, it's in our DNA,

we have to say IO. And so I listened to that.

And so at the end of it, which he always does, he plays a

trailer for another episode. All right, that's nothing new,

although most of us don't do that, but there was even more to

it. So I'm going to play this whole clip. It's two minutes of

him previewing another episode of the Jordan

Harbinger Show. And I'll point out the thing that I went, hey, wait a

minute. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger show to

sink your teeth into, here's a trailer for another episode that I think you might

enjoy. So what happened was we were doing, not

unlike we're doing now, we were doing an interview. And he says, thank you, and

we'll probably go to a commercial and thank you, Howie.

And I got up and I started walking to the door, and I thought he

was like wrapping it up and going to commercial. And then I just said

to somebody really quietly, can you grab the. Can you grab the door? And he's

going, what are you afraid of? The door. And then he goes, just open the

door. And I can't open the door. He goes, just open the door. And then

what happened? Is I started getting a panic attack, and I started breathing heavy, and

I just turned to him and thinking that he had already thrown the commercial because

he was just talking to me. Howard, please, this is really serious. I

go to therapy for this. I have something called obsessive compulsive

disorder. I'm about to pass out. If you don't open the door, you'll be

calling 911 and taking me to the hospital. This whole thing was on national

radio, and I thought, oh, my God, that was probably the darkest

space I've ever been. And I'm walking through the lobby toward the door, out

into the teeming streets of Manhattan. I might as well just continue

walking and walk right into traffic. And I stopped just outside

the door, and, you know, millions of people are on the street, but I felt

very alone. And some guy came into my periphery and. And said to me,

are you Howie Mandel? And I, you know, I just nodded affirmatively and

he said, just heard you on Stern. And my heart dropped into my stomach. And

right before I could take off in the traffic, he said two words, which means

something very different today, but they changed my life.

And he went, me too. For more with

Howie Mandel, including some pretty awkward moments of my own making,

check out episode 210 here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

So a couple things here. Number one, Jordan does the nice brain gap.

We'll be talking about that in the future in another episode

about hooking people in. But you're like, wait, what's Jordan going

to confess to? And then the other thing is, he said it was

episode number 210. And I went, wait a

minute. And so I went out to his website@jordan harbinger.com

I'm like, what episode was Drew Carey? Because he wasn't promoting

the next episode. And I'm like, drew Carey is episode number

1150. And Jordan

is sending me back to episode 210, which, by the way, he had a link

in the show notes to that, along with about 400 other links.

And then dawned on me. Drew Carey, former

comedian, now host of the Price is Right. And now

Howie Mandel, another comedian that kind of probably came up

similar around the same time. A host of a game

show and America's Got Talent, very similar

guess. And when he said, hey,

if you're looking for another episode, and this weekend, my power was

out. And I'm like, I'm looking for anything. I have no electricity.

And so I went over and listened to the Howie

Mandel episode. So there's two Downloads for

Jordan and I had already. I went over to

listen to Feedback Friday. I love his version of Feedback Friday. So there

was that one download and then he said, oh, welcome to Feedback Friday. This

week I interviewed some guy about North Korea and Drew Carey and I went, wait,

hold on, let's listen to the Drew Carey one. So there's two downloads

and then that download, he mentioned Howie Mandel. There is three.

And when I was done listening to the

Drew Carey episode and then I went to the Howie Mandel episode,

I went back and finished the original one I went to, which

was Feedback Friday. So he hand picked that

particular episode, I'm positive, because

he's a smart guy because it was very similar guess. And so I'm going to

do something very similar at the end of this show. The other thing I'm

going to do right now, just to show you the power of the mind

gap is now, Drew Carey is kind of known for

writing dirty jokes. And I thought there were a couple things

really great about this because he told one and both

Jordan and Drew laughed

pretty hard and pretty long. And this is actual

like, this is them laughing.

People were like pounding the table. I was so proud of myself. So

that was authentic. And I was really happy that

Jordan left it in there because it's hard to listen to that and not just

start laughing. Now here's the fun part. I'm not going to tell you the joke.

It's. It's kind of filthy. And I'll put a link to the show.

It's at the about the 49 minute mark if you listen.

But that's a brain gap. And let's see if you can handle

not knowing what the joke was, knowing that it elicited the,

that kind of laughter. In just a second, we're going to talk to

Tracy Johnson, author of the book Mike Drock

Moments, right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, joining me

via Squadcast tonight, he is. It's

official. I looked at his resume and I went, oh, I'm not reading all that.

He is a big shot smarty pants with years in the radio industry.

He's led multiple stations from zero to first

and much, much more. I mean, literally, we could go on for hours. But he's

here today because I got to read the book Mic Drop

Moments. And when I started to go through it, I was like, oh, holy

cow, this has some really good nuggets in it. So, Tracy Johnson, thanks for coming

on the show. Thanks, Dave. And I'm not offended by

Hotshot Smarty pants. But you did pretty

much just call me old about my long resume.

You're wise. That's it. How's that?

Yeah. So what inspired you to write this book?

Several things. First of all, I work with a

few podcasters. Not like you do, but a few podcasters. And I work with

a lot of radio shows, and I have for many years. And one of

the things that this actually started about three months

ago, I've started working with a new radio show in Atlanta. And

a couple of weeks into coaching them, the host

of the show said, we want to start doing interviews. And

I said, why? And it was mostly so they would have

someone else to talk to. And that's as far as they had thought the

whole thing through. It wasn't to add perspective or it wasn't to add

content. It wasn't to make them better. It was basically because I thought they

wanted to be lazy and they hadn't really thought the whole thing through. And so

I said, well, look, there's no such thing as a bad idea in the world

of entertainment. It's all how you apply it and how you make

it work. So let's go, let's talk about

what it takes to do a good interview. And I started to realize that most

of the talent that I work with doesn't do

good interviews. Most of it are. Is tune out. And

there's a lot of reasons for that that we can prevent if we go

through a process. So I started to put everything together in

how I would coach someone to conduct successful

guest interviews to make them entertaining, to make

them useful, and not just regurgitate the same things that they've

been asked on other podcasts, other radio shows, other streaming

providers for a million times. Yeah, that's. I

always kind of cringe. I'll be in a Facebook group and they're like,

hey, I got an episode coming out in four days, I need a

guest. And it seems like the criteria is a pulse.

Like if you have a pulse, you can be on my show. And in the

book, you talk about the triple threat filter because

I guess step one is maybe get someone who can bring value.

And so can you tell us a little bit about the triple threat filter?

Well, yeah, there's three threats to an interview. First of all is if you're

talking to someone that nobody cares about and nobody knows. And

so the first threat is the more famous

or well known a personality is, the better

guests they will probably make because you've got built in

familiarity. If they're not at all Familiar, it doesn't

make them a bad guest, but it means that they're going to have

to really be entertaining for it to pay off for your segment or for

your podcast. So you're going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting on

some of the other criteria. So now it also doesn't mean

that just because they're famous, they'll be a good guest because they could also be

boring. So that's number one. So familiarity of

the guest. Second criteria is, are they

relevant? I might be familiar with them, but do I care?

So if I don't care about what they have to say or about who they

are, then they don't fit the podcast, they don't

fit your show. It's. So I work with a lot of

radio shows who will take a well known

guest, but it doesn't fit the profile of their show or

their audience target. So it has to be relevant. Or

again, just like in being familiar and famous, if

they're not relevant, then you've got to do a lot of heavy

lifting in the other two categories to make them a good guest. And

then the third criteria is, are they interesting, are they

entertaining, can they tell a story? Is there something unique about them

that can make you sound better, that can make you more interesting? Because

the goal isn't to make the guest famous, the goal is

to leverage the guest story to make you famous.

So are they doing that? Are they enhancing the value of your

podcast and what you have to bring to your audience? Because that's the

ultimate goal. Otherwise why are they on? Yeah. And is this a

case where if you get two out of three, sorry, you're gone.

Now, two out of three can work, but if you lose two

out of three, if two out of three are missing, it's really, really hard to

make it work. Yeah, I suppose if you have somebody who's a total whack

job and is really funny and in the book

I reference Howard Stern's interviews with Robin

Williams several times and how much he had to edit that and real

Robin Williams in to make it coherent because

he would just go off and start riffing on different things. And it was all

very entertaining, but it just doesn't

resonate with the audience because it's so random. And so

you can work with that randomness. You can work with someone who is

highly entertaining, but you've got to work really hard to tell their story,

to make them familiar, to make it relevant to your audience so

the story they're telling resonates. How do we think outside the box

to come up with those questions that are going to really entertain and

educate. Well, Dave, you're exactly right. The

obvious questions have already been asked, and anybody who is

familiar and is interested in that guest has already heard it.

So you've got to get another layer beyond that. You've got to

get into a story that that guest has never told before,

and usually that's finding an emotional connection with them.

In the book, I go into how you come up with questions that get you

deeper into it. A lot of times a personality

will prepare an interview by creating their list of questions.

Here are my talking points. Here are the things that I want to ask. The

first list that you come up with, you should probably throw away

and go with the second and third list that you come up with

because it'll force you to get a little bit deeper. And the deeper you go

in the questions that you ask, the more likely it is you're going to

come up with a story that that guest has never told publicly before.

And that's where it's going to provide the most value or be the most

interesting. Second part of that is the opening question

should be something that gets them to give you an answer. And it might be

a stiff answer, but it's how you follow up on that in

conducting a conversation. Not just jumping on to the next question, but

listening for little cues that are in their answer that

might be a thread you can pull and take them

deeper into a story, because that's where it gets good. That's where they'll start telling

you how they felt, what they were going through at the time. And that's what

gets really relatable with people. And there's a great

interview. Ellen DeGeneres is a good interviewer. I reference

NPR quite a bit, Fresh Air.

And the way that they get deeper in those interviews

is pausing a beat and employing a couple of tricks.

One is the silence gap. A lot of times a guest

will give you an answer that they've answered a million times. Maybe they've even submitted

the questions they want you to ask because they know the answ answers to those

questions. And so they'll answer the question and they'll stop.

Well, and so as human beings, we want to fill the

silence gap. So normal podcaster will just move

on to the next question if you just sit there and

look at them and look interested. And it

encourages them to fill the silence gap themselves. And that's when

they go on and start revealing some things that are behind their first

answer. And that's a really effective technique. And, and then if you can

stay present, paying attention, using some

improv skills of listen and respond, you can, you

can keep that conversation going deeper and deeper. And that's when it gets really good.

Because so many people want to chime in and go, was it like this? Was

it like this? And they start giving, they make it multiple choice where if you

let the person do that, then you've got a great

moment. And you talk about that in the book. You have a name for it,

the where did it go, did you hear it? Moment. Oh

yeah, you want to have one of those in every interview, a did you hear?

Moment. And so when you are doing the research,

how do you know there's a did you hear it?

Moment? I mean, is this. Well, ideally, and

this doesn't work for every interview, ideally, and this is one of the reasons

why doing a good interview is so hard. Ideally you'll have a pre

interview where you get the guest and you have a

10, 15 minute conversation with them and say, hey, I just wanted to get to

know you. Ask your couple of questions, find out if there's anything you want to

know about me and you just shoot the breeze. And as part of

that you say, so you are. And the example I use throughout the book is

you're interviewing a local owner of a hardware

store that's having a grand opening. And how

are you going to make that interesting? Nobody knows who he is,

he's not relevant and he's probably not entertaining.

So he fails all three points in the triple threat filter. It makes a

lousy guess, but if it's a sponsor, maybe you got to put them on

so they're expecting. So how do you make the best of this bad

situation? So we got the owner of this hardware store in and as you're talking

to him, you throw around a couple of questions in the pre interview. So

what's the weirdest thing that ever happened to you in a hardware store?

Because, oh, there's one this one time with this weird guy came in and he

brought a chicken and he didn't have any money and wanted to change a trade,

a chicken for a drill. And you go,

there's a story I can work with. Yeah, so.

So, so you start asking questions about that and you've

identified that as this is going to be the high point

of the interview. This is the did you hear Moment. Now you're building your

entire conversation when you go to the real interview around

that. And in the process some of the other talking points will

come Out. So where's your hardware store again? Well, it's right there on

Main street. So that you're at the hardware store on Main Street. Now, where were

you when this gu in? And what was going through your mind? And what. How

did your staff react when that happened? And so now he's going to be describing

what's going on inside the store. Instead of telling you about drill bits, he's

telling. He's telling you a story. So most every

guest has that story in them. It don't expect

them to volunteer it. You're going to have to find it, identify it, and

then put them in a position where it's easy for them to tell it. I

know you talk a lot in there about, we talked about the triple

threat, you know, the filter. You also talk about the three

E's of entertainment. And so I thought this was just a great

way of, you know, sometimes it's like, well, don't be boring. Okay,

well, how do you define boring? Well, and then. So you had the

three E's of entertainment, so. Well, I stole this from,

of all people, Tommy Chong. Okay, all right,

so remember the book or the movie the Wolf of Wall Street?

There is also. There was a. There were two books. There was the Wolf of

Wall street book, and then there was the follow up after the

subject went to jail. And what happened between when

he went to jail, what he had, what happened while in jail, and when he

got out. And the while he was in jail, he meets Tommy

Chong. Tommy Chong was in the same jail that

Jordan Byford, I think is the guy's name. This guy

was. And so he. So Tommy said, you need to write

all this down. Your life was so interesting. You should write a book. And you've

got nothing else to do while you're in jail. I'll help you. And

so he spent months writing the first draft, and

he brought it, Tommy Chong. He read it for a little while and he said,

this is boring. Nobody's going to read this. This is going nowhere.

And he said, why not? He goes, because you made it boring. You've got an

interesting story, but nobody's going to going to pay

attention to the story the way it is. You got to turn that story into

entertainment. And so many

creators, content creators, are afraid to do this because they want

to be authentic. And you can be authentic to your story and still make your

story interesting by practicing what Tommy Chong called the three E's of

entertainment. And it's to enhance,

exaggerate, and embellish. It's not

A really big party. It's the biggest party of all time. And

you fill in with details of what that demonstrate what made it

that big. Big parties. So you, you. Exactly. It's like your uncle who caught the

fish, and it starts out to be a little fish. And by the time he

finishes telling it, it's a giant fish he's getting caught, one that he can hardly

reel in. So it's, it's what movies

do. It's based on a true story, but they take

some storytelling liberties to make the story more interesting when they put it out there

to the public. So that's exaggeration. Enhancement is to

add some things to it that make it more interesting

so it can be something, something as small as when you're

telling a story or when you're getting the story out from

the, from, from your guest to get them

to tell you what was going on in their mind at the time.

So what were you thinking at that time? And they'll probably never remember

what they were actually thinking, but they'll recreate something that they might

have been thinking or they, they could have been thinking. You're enhancing their

original story by adding some things to it that weren't there when it

actually happened. So you're not doing a documentary. You're. You're

creating some entertainment that is compelling. And the third

is embellishment. Embellishment is. I've got a. There's

a story that I. It's been long enough now. It's past the

statute of limitations, so I'll tell. There's a radio show here

in San Diego called Jagger and Christie. And this was,

this is back when Phil Collins and Genesis, and we're a big

band and we had, they were taking some

listeners backstage to meet the band before the

concert. Pretty typical meet and greet thing. And so they,

Jagger and Christy came to me and they said, so how are we going to

make this interesting? I said, well, just look for little things that are happening

backstage and then tomorrow we'll figure out how to tell that story on the air.

And so they went through, they did the whole handshake and the

pictures with the, with the artists and everything. And he

noticed that in one in, in the green room there's a ping pong table

set up. And so he asked Mike Rutherford to the band and said, what's that

ping pong table doing over here? And he goes, oh, that's Phil's. Phil Collins, the

drummer. Because that's Phil's. That's how he warms up. He plays, he Plays ping pong

before every concert. But by the time that was told on the

air, Jagger challenged Phil Collins to a game of

ping pong and got beat three times in a row, 21 to 3, 21 to

2, and 21 to nothing. So he embellished

the story. So he exaggerated. He took something that was maybe a

15 second conversation and turned it into a story by staging it

properly and made it more interesting. Nice. Well,

you talked about enhancing things, and one of the things

you also talked about, how do you make a did you hear it? Moment

is through editing. So sometimes the magic is adding something

to it, and sometimes the magic is taking things out that

aren't needed. So what are some of the things you hear

that you go, yeah, that was me, I would have taken that out.

You hear it all the time. And a lot of, a lot of times,

personalities, podcasters are their worst critic, their

own worst critic. You're over overly critical on things

that you're not sure should be there because it doesn't sound normal.

So you take out some of the best moments and at the

same time you're afraid to

edit too much because, well, what if that was important? We needed all

that background information for it to

the biography. We needed to set up that background for the story to make

sense. And that's really not the case when you hear

it on the air. The key is to take

out everything that doesn't need to start with the essence of the story.

What's the most interesting thing that happened in

that interview? Get that up front and then fill

in the gaps. Use the details, use the facts

to support the essence. Because if it takes you too long to get into it,

if it takes you a minute and a half to get into the story, a

lot of your audience has either tuned out, turned off,

or stopped paying attention by the time you get to the good part. So get

the good part up front and you'll sustain you all the way through. And that

comes through the editing process. So take out the things that don't need to be

there and then edit yourself in to

stage the best moments to make that guest look great.

Because that guy, when that guest shines, the reflection comes back on the

host. I know when we were getting ready for this

and I started off and I'm like, what made you. When did you decide to

write the book? And then immediately I went, oh, no, that's not a big bang

opening question. I was like, oh, this is

so hard interviewing somebody who knows how to interview. I'm like, oh, you blew it

so talk about that. Because so many people, I cry.

I have one tear will come out of my eye when I hear, so tell

us a little bit about yourself. I'm just like, oh, that's like one of the.

That just screams like, hey, I didn't do any homework, and I don't know where

to start. Can you just give me a big canvas and I'll see if there's

anything here that's interesting. So how do you figure out

where to start? If you've done the pre interview or

you've done the homework where you found a story that you want to tell,

then you can usually start.

Because all interviews should be recorded. You can usually

start with some get to know you questions, and it could be some small talk,

and that's all fine, but then edit yourself in

to stage that big moment. 60 Minutes does a great

job of this. When Barbara Walters had her television special,

she would come on at the beginning and say, michael Jackson

this, Michael Jackson that. And I asked him what was

the moment when he realized that maybe he went too far.

That interview tonight. And you play a little clip of that.

That. That is a tease for what's coming up later.

And then you go into the interview because the hook is in you.

You've made me want. It's like giving you a sample at the end of the

aisle on Costco. I'm gonna go buy those waffles now, right? I don't

want waffles. I don't even like waffles. But you've just made me hungry, so I'm

gonna go buy your pack of 600 waffles and take them home.

So it's giving them that sample and staging that at the beginning and

then taking out the things that don't make sense and that

don't need to be there. And what you'll usually find is that

the audience stays hooked and they start caring about things that they

didn't care about at the beginning because you made them interested

in it by making it that third thing. The entertainment

value in the triple threat filter. Okay, somebody's

asked you, hey, I want to come on your show. I think I'd be a

good guest. And you run them through the triple threat

filter, and they don't pass any of them. How do you

politely tell someone no.

One way of doing that is to get back to him and say, you know

what? I've looked into this. I've tried. I've come up. I've tried a lot of

different ways to make this work. I don't really think that you are

a good match for my audience. And I don't think you're going to look good

if we put you out there in front of them. That's it. So.

So it's like, I want to take care of you here. You kind of did

that when I, when I sent you the first email saying, hey, I got this

book. Take, let's take a look at you. And you. And you wanted to vet

the book first, which is a great thing to do. So, hey, I want to.

I want to take. So I sent you a copy of the book. You said,

yeah, I think I can work with this. Yeah, you vetted the interview. You did

your homework on it. You said, you looked at it and said, this is something

that I can make relevant to my podcast students.

Yeah. And I'm. I'm not completely all the way through, but I'm

through a big chunk. And the more I read it, I was like, oh, this

is good. And it was just obvious that your, your background and your

experience was just shining through the whole thing. It wasn't,

you know, so well. And so. And so a host should

put the guest through that process as

well. And the number one, that you want to protect your audience from

putting something out there that will be boring because that protects your brand.

Have you ever had to deal with someone that

is just convinced they're right and you're trying to give them pointers?

Because I asked this because there are so many tools

for podcasters to survey their audience

and see what the audience thinks. For me, I was just raised with a

constant improvement mindset. I'm always looking for a way to do things

better. Is there a way you can kind of point someone towards

that attitude? Yeah, I think that

every great talent

is motivated by two things. Same thing as on Wall street,

fear and greed. The greed in this case isn't

necessarily going out and making a fortune, but the greed

is getting their ego fed. Anybody who wants to get

behind a mic and put content out on the Internet, on social

media, do a podcast, do a radio show, be a video streamer, is

doing that because they want their voice to be heard. They want

to have their soapbox. And there's an ego

gratification and it feeds that self sense of

greed. So they're motivated by greed. If you

have that, then that passion

for how can I feed that greed as much as I

possibly can should be what motivates you to constantly improve

and grow. Because what was good enough yesterday is not good enough

tomorrow because the world is Moving so fast today. Yeah. So

you should always be looking for better ways to do things. The other side of

that is fear. And fear and greed work together.

Fear is, what if I'm not good enough? What if it doesn't measure up?

What if nobody downloads this? What if they don't like it? What if I suck?

And a little bit of greed is healthy, a little bit of fear is

healthy. If either of those get off on the extremes,

that's where you lose it. Because if you no longer

are no longer fearful, and if you no longer have greed, then you're no longer

motivated. You don't care what anybody thinks, and then your show is going to get

sloppy and nobody's going to listen. Listen. If you've got a lot

of fear, then you're going to be petrified because you've got to be confident in

this. There's got to be a swagger. If. If you don't

think, if you're afraid that you don't have anything to say and anything

of value to add, then you won't. But if you think that

the only thing that matters is what you have to say, you'll also fail.

So it's all things in balance with those. And if the talent

is in that place where I don't want to screw up, I've

got a lot. There's this anxiety where I want to make sure I don't make

mistakes. And at the same time, I want to not make

mistakes because I want to be successful. I want to be the best that I

can be. The talent coach can work with that.

And the way that I work with it is identifying the things that

the talent does well. What are you great at? What are your

superpowers? What inspires you? What motivates you? What

are the things that you do best? Let's do those more. Let's

be great at those. And then let's identify the things that you're not good at

and stop doing them. It's more fun

that way. It's easier. And so when a talent coach or

a program director or a mentor comes in and say, you

know what? When you do this, this doesn't work. That's not what you're

good at. They think you're criticizing them and you're not.

You're just telling them how they're going to be successful. So if you can have

that meeting and say, here's your path to success, we're going to maximize these

strengths and we're going to let all of these things go away. So this can

shine. Now you're working from the same on the same

page. And that can be really inspiring. Have you ever seen

or been part of the ultimate train wreck interview?

Oh, yeah, many times. I relate a story in

the book of a morning show in Boston that was

interviewing Kanye west backstage at a concert. And Kanye's a

terrible interview to begin with, especially when he's in a bad mood.

And the host was not prepared, had a list of generic

questions that had been asked a million times. And

so she started the interview with, well, it must be

really exciting to have this new album out. And Kanye goes,

that's not a question. Nice. And he sat there

and so she thought of something else. And he goes, still not a question.

And it just went nowhere. It was. It was a bog. I've still got the

audio somewhere. It was. It's so bad that it's funny.

And you hear that over and over and over. And if you do that

homework, if you go through the steps that I talk about in mic drop moments

where you vet the guest, you do your homework, you find out something in

there, you ask a provocative question to get it started, and you have

the right response. Once you get them in a conversation, you can turn

just about any guest, no matter how difficult they are, into something

that is magical. But if you're not prepared for that,

and a lot of times it's the host that just hasn't taken the time to

really be prepared. I told you before about the show in Atlanta that

wants guests on their show, mostly because I think they're lazy and

they think that they don't have to prepare that segment. If they've got a guest

coming on that works, then that's not the case at all.

There's more work involved because now you're responsible for the performance

of someone that you probably never met before. That's really

hard to do. And that's a lot of work that goes into that to make

that successful. Well, the book is called Mic Drop

Moments. You can find it@micdropmoments.net and if

you want to know more about Tracy, you can go to tjohnsonmediagroup.com

I'll have links to that out at the website. Traci, thank you so much for

coming on the show. My pleasure, Dave. Thanks for having me.

And everything we talk about today will be

out@schoolofpodcasting.com 984 One thing I want to

throw in here, and I don't believe Tracy meant this in any way,

I'm still reading the book about the three E's of entertainment.

That second one, actually the second and third

exaggerate and embellish. Because one of the

things that we kind of mentioned earlier is

especially the young kids love authenticity.

So you don't want to exaggerate and embellish so much that

when you finally meet one of your audience members and they're like, hey, how's the

Porsche? And you're like, the Porsche, you need

my, you know, 2007 Toyota Corolla.

They're like, what? Yeah, you gotta be careful with that. But I know what he

means. There are things you can do with storytelling. My favorite storytelling

book is Storyworthy by Matthew Dix. And

he talks about how you can really leave things out of

the story is really a great way to embellish it

because it's not something that moves the story forward and it

doesn't add anything to the story. So those were the two that I was kind

of like, don't think people are outright

lying. And so take that with the way it's meant. Not like, hey,

just make up stuff and say, it's yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey. And if you're in the mood for

another podcast about episodes that goes super deep,

check out episode number 677, the Ultimate Guide

to Hosting and Guesting Podcast Interviews. This is where I

did a giant brain dump. It's actually one of my

longer episodes. And yet for a while there,

it had over a hundred percent because people kept going back and

listening to it more than once. So the book will be out there,

this episode will be out there, and of course, a link to that episode with

Drew Carey from Jordan Harbinger. In case you're dying

to know. What the heck were they laughing about? If you want to

laugh about starting a podcast and have some fun with a great group of people,

check out School of Podcasting. Use the coupon code listnr

when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or

yearly subscription that comes with step by step

courses. It comes with an amazing podcasting community

and unlimited coaching with me. And

in case you needed it, a 30 day, not 7, not 14.

We don't play around. 30 day money back

guarantee. Check it out. Schoolofpodcasting.com

until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is

dismissed. Hey, this is Doug from King's X. And if you like what you

hear, go tell someone and may the groove be with you.

So much for tuning in. This is where we. This is.

Wow. Really? I'm like, I'm just starting out and my mouth is already

checked out. The modern day Robin Williams now is

David Lee Roth. And I actually love watching. I

love watching people interview him because he'll just spew

something. It's like, well, sometimes the giraffe is going to go down the

drain. You know what I mean? And you're like, what?

What does that.

What you hear, man, go down someone.