Start a Podcast Production Business
Companion to "Record It Right" and "Interviews That Open Doors."
One page per recording. Prep is thirty to forty-five minutes and has a specific shape: skim their recent writing, talks, or posts to find the live wire, not to quote them back.
| Guest | Record date | ||
| Episode number / title format | Publish date | ||
| Live-wire topic (what they are saying lately that got energy) | Share-kit delivery date (within 24 hrs of publish) |
| Move | Your question |
|---|---|
| Story opener (start inside their story) | "Walk me through the week you decided to ______." |
| Follow-up 1 (ask the second question) | "Wait, why did that work?" |
| Follow-up 2 (if the answer opens a door) | |
| Gift question (one nobody has asked them) | "What did that cost you that people don't see?" |
| Close 1 | "What do you want listeners to do with this?" |
| Close 2 (referral engine disguised as a pleasantry) | "Who else should I be talking to?" |
Send the guest three or four broad topic areas the day before, never the literal questions. Hold the outline loosely during recording: structure, not script. Redirect gently if they lapse into a pitch: "that's the pitch, now tell me how it actually happened."
| Energy set in the first ninety seconds (guests calibrate to the host) | ☐ |
| Silences let run two beats longer than comfortable | ☐ |
| Guest's best line not spent in your own commentary | ☐ |
| Edit policy applied (content cuts, not cosmetics) | ☐ |
| Loudness target met (-16 LUFS stereo / -19 LUFS mono; MP3 at 128 kbps or higher) | ☐ |
| Share kit sent within 24 hours of publishing: link, two-sentence blurb, clips with captions, permission to reuse | ☐ |
| Personal note to the guest the week the episode publishes; check-in a month later; quarterly touch; no asks attached | ☐ |