Why you need a podcast pre-flight checklist
How to make sure you get a great interview every time
I’ve been an indie podcaster for just under a year now. I started my podcast, One Knight in Product, as an experiment to see if I would be any good at it, to play with content ideas, and of course to build my profile and network. So far, it’s exceeded all expectations.
I have no plans to monetise my content ever, but that doesn’t mean everything has to be a shambles. I’m 70 episodes in and counting — you don’t get to do that without a plan! As a product manager I don’t like timelines and checklists, but as a podcast host I absolutely do. And remember: Highly trained airline pilots use a checklist before every take off and landing.
There’s a whole other side of to interviewing, which is the booking and guest preparation. We can talk about that some other day, but for now here’s the checklist I use with my guests and I’m going to put down words on why I think these things are important.
Fan off, window & curtains closed
I have a lovely tower fan in my room to keep me cool in the summer (my office room is a furnace in the summer, an ice box in the winter — thanks, British construction!). I also live quite close to a main road and the room’s a funny shape. Basically, I need as much muffling as possible. Fan off, window closed, curtains closed — it’s easy to forget!
Check my audio settings
I have a confession — there is at least one interview in my 70 interviews where I found out (after the recording) that my microphone had wiggled out and my laptop had defaulted back to the internal mic; this made my audio sound terrible. So now I religiously check my sound settings in my recording app before the event (and I also set the laptop mic to have a recording volume of 0 to ensure that any wobbles mean no one can hear me, which means I know I need to fix it).
Just for the record, I re-recorded my entire half of that episode, which was a fascinating experience that I never want to repeat.