Welcome to the Productive Flourishing podcast! If you’re reading this, you have been pre-selected to be a guest on the podcast because we believe your story or ideas will be beneficial to our clients, readers, and friends. The Productive Flourishing podcast is about personal journeys and rich ideas that need exploration. You’ve been selected not just because of your body of work, but because we know you have rich and interesting stories under that work.
What makes for a great interview on the Productive Flourishing podcast? On this page, we’ve outlined how the interviews work, what makes a great show for our listeners, and what you need to do to be prepared.
Show Description
The Productive Flourishing podcast reveals a behind-the-scenes peek at creative success so you can start to understand what really separates those who are successful in their careers, businesses, and professional endeavors. (Hint: it’s not what you think.) Join Charlie Gilkey as he hosts authentic, transparent, and illuminating conversations with a wide range of people, from the well-knowns like Seth Godin, Jonathan Fields, and Pam Slim, to up-and-comers deep in the throes of surfacing their body of work.
Interview Duration
About 45 minutes. Please schedule 60 minutes in your calendar for the interview. If you have specific time constraints, please let us know and we will make sure to end the interview within the time you have specified.
About Our Audience
Productive Flourishing followers are smart, compassionate, driven, and creative people who have shown that they’ll give you the space to finish your thought. Our listeners are loyal and looking for valuable, relatable, genuine, up-to-date, forward-thinking advice.
How the Interview Works
All interviews are recorded via SquadCast and we’ll send you a link for your interview. Click here for a quick tutorial and information on using SquadCast and setting yourself up for a successful interview. No downloads or account creation is required. While we’ll use video for rapport and flow, we’ll only publish the audio.
Please make sure to use a reliable microphone so that we get good audio quality from your end. One of the biggest things that will determine how many people listen and how long they listen to the interview is good audio quality.
The podcast episodes will be published on the website at ProductiveFlourishing.com and on Apple Podcasts here.
Before the Interview:
- We highly encourage you to listen to one of the episodes to get a feel for the flow. Pam Slim’s is a great example here.
- Make sure you’re in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Close the door if possible. Put pets in another room or outside, etc.
- Silence your mobile phone and your home/office phone.
- Have a glass of water handy in case your mouth gets dry. We recommend no ice as some microphones are sensitive and can pick up the sound of ice clinking in the glass.
During the Interview:
- Join Charlie on SquadCast at the start time of the interview.
- You’ll chat for a couple of minutes and do a soundcheck before Charlie starts recording.
- The interviews are usually around 45 minutes, depending on how the conversation goes.
- Relax and be yourself! Charlie will ask a variety of questions, mostly geared toward your journey, overcoming obstacles, what has allowed you to be successful and to accomplish your achievements, advice for the listeners, etc.
After the Interview:
- After you and Charlie say your goodbyes on the podcast, don’t hang up. Charlie will stop the recording and then you can chat for a second about the interview.
- Once the podcast is produced and published, we’ll send you a link to it. We’ll tweet about it and share it on the appropriate social networks (potential for sharing on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest). We encourage you to bookmark and share your episode, too!
- Feel free to use the podcast in your marketing materials.
- Use Apple Podcasts to Subscribe and Rate & Review the Productive Flourishing podcast so others will find and hear your episode.
Tips on Improving the Interview Sound Quality
- Make sure to speak into the mic you’ll be using.
- Remember to remain in front of your microphone. Guests who weave back and forth or front to back as they talk can fade in and out of the recording which can make it very difficult for listeners to hear you, even after extensive audio edits.
- Make sure you do NOT touch the microphone or the table it is on. The “bumps” can be quite distracting and sometimes very difficult to cut out.
FAQs
Can I do the interview on my iPad, smartphone or other tablet?
No. You must be at a desktop or laptop with a high-speed internet connection and microphone. Please make sure you’re in a quiet environment with little or no background noise as well.
When will my interview be posted?
We publish interviews once every 4-6 weeks, on Thursday morning. We usually keep a backlog of episodes, so most guests have to wait for one to two months after recording before the episode is published.
What microphones do you recommend?
I use the Heil PR40 run through a Scarlett 2×2 in my office and the Apogee Mic 96k when I’m traveling, recording courses, or on webinars. They may be a bit overkill if you don’t do host your own show or do a lot of audio recording; the Audio-Technica ATR2100 is a much more affordable microphone, and honestly, Apple earbuds plugged into your computer can also work really well.