So I have a confession to make. I used to be the worst interrupter there was. I can say this now because I have learned that this is a skill to not have this bad habits. And or maybe I should say it's not a skill as much as it was me breaking a bad habit that I had of interrupting people. And it wasn't really until my children, I have three boys, if you don't know this,
there are 12, nine and six. It wasn't until I was fed up to my eyeballs, and then interrupting me all the time that I realized, Oh, this is how other people feel when I interrupt them. Oh, it's that like, cringy? Oh, gosh, I did not realize this about myself. It's like just a, it was a bad habit. It was a terrible habit that I needed to break. And thankfully, after four years of podcasting, it's not something that I'm consciously worried about all
the time. But it is something that if you're like, Well, how much is too much? And how much should I be talking whenever I'm doing guest interviews, or I'm on a live stream with somebody like what is that balance and dance of how that should work? Between me and my guest? This is what we're talking about today. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast where we teach you how to start launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, and I'm so
excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?
So there's this really cool tool that I use for transcriptions, you've probably heard me talk about it. I've mentioned it here a lot. I mentioned it on the YouTube channel, and that is otter, o t t e r.ai. I've used this for let me think I think two years, I've been using it, I'm trying to think of what else I use. Before that. I think I tried a few different tools, but that's the one that I kind of
settled on. And let's just be really honest, Buzzsprout came out that they have a discount for otter and I was like, sign me up, done. So if you're a Buzzsprout user, you can actually go into your resources tab and get a discount on otter. I think it's the yearly Pro Plan, something like that. But yeah, it's it's what I use on a regular basis. But here's the reason why I'm bringing this up. I love the fact that you can open up one of your
transcriptions. So after I record a podcast interview, or do one of these episodes, I will export it as a WAV file and upload it into Buzzsprout. So it airs out like all the fancy things that happen with a typical podcast episode. But then what I will also do is upload it into otter, and it will tell me how much I'm talking. And what I mean by that is it tells you based on the voice recognition software, it distributes the time that you're talking versus your guest in a
percentage, which I love. I love, love, love love this, because instead of it just being like color coded like oh, like here's Krystal's voice, here's the here's the guests voice like, it will actually tell me how much I talked in a number. So it is a measurable thing to ask myself, well, am I talking more or did my guest talk, because my goal is always for my guests to share their stories, their information, their wisdom, and I'm just kind of guiding the conversation.
So I'm actually I'm looking at Episode 329, which was myself and my guest Nyssa. And I can see our percentages based here. And she spoke 64% of the time 64% And I'm like, Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness, like that's fantastic. So that meant I was talking 40% of the time. And I can actually look at I had another one I'm clicking around because I'm looking at all of the different episodes that I recently did. So I'm like, Oh, I didn't want to talk about this and then be like, Oh, wait, I
really didn't do a good job. No, no, I did a good job. I did a good job. I left some restraint on how much I was talking. Because I'm looking at the episode I did recently with Chrisella and Shireen one of our recent interview Use in Shireen spoke 56% of the time Chrisella was 14%. And then I made up the rest of the percentage of talking now that was a three person interview, which is a little bit trickier to kind of measure like that dance between who's going to talk how much and
when. But for a 55 minute episode, which you know, it's almost an hour long episode Shareen was in there for 56% of the time, which again, as long as that 50% does not fall on me, as long as it's not 50% Krystal and above, I feel like it is a successful podcast interview. Now this is for me as the host perspective, I want people sharing that is what they are there for. So if you feel like and this is Hang on, I have my
notes here. So I want to, I want to really bring it on home because there were a few very key points I wanted to make today. So number one, you can look at your auto transcripts to see how much of the time you're talking versus your guests. I love the percentages. The second thing I want to point out is you should not be talking more than 50% of the time, I think this is a just a ground rule. Because if you are hosting a show, people already know that we hear you, we hear you talking most of the
time, it's your show. But if you're having a guest on there, let your guest speak and don't interrupt them every single time and all the stories. If you don't know this, I've shared this a few times, but I will sit on my hands. I physically sit I will put my hands and I'm doing it right now. Like you can see me, I put my hands underneath my thighs. And I will sit on my hands when someone else is talking. So I do not interrupt. I don't want to interrupt. And
this is kind of hard. I will be honest that whenever you're having an episode with someone whose Internet is a little laggy, it can be really awkward to sit there because you're staring at them. And then you're like, did they finish their thought. And this is where it gets really awkward because some people I will interview and there's like they do these long pauses in between their thoughts. Y'all give your guests that space to think get in this is something at this point. I've
done hundreds of interviews. So now I know this, but I'm sharing this wisdom with you. If you don't know this, let the awkward pauses happen. Let them happen. You know, because people will kind of give you that like nod of like, okay, I'm done. You're a podcast guest like our your podcast audience, they won't see that. So don't worry about if there's any kind of, and you can edit out if there's some really, really awkward long pauses that
are way too long. But don't interrupt your guests, because that messes up the flow of the conversation. And again, this was a really bad habit that I needed to break and I'm still not 100% at it, I will catch myself. Especially I don't I don't always notice it when it's happening. But I will notice it when I'm editing an episode, which kind of brings me back around to why I enjoy editing my podcast, I enjoy editing my YouTube videos, because it helps me see areas where I can get
better. If I were to hand that off to let somebody else produce it and edit it and do all those things, I wouldn't see these little subtle things that I can actually make me a better content creator. So that's just another thing that I'm like throwing in there. But number three, if you are speaking more than 50% of the time, it's time to practice your interview skills to draw out better answers from your guest so that you can have better
conversations. And I was talking to you I was recently a guest on podcasters Live, which was so much fun. I'm going to link to in the show notes. Had a great conversation with Steve worthy over there. So shout out Steve fantastic conversation. It was so much fun. But we were talking about and this was really off air like we were done recording, but I gave him a compliment. I was like you know what, you're a
really good interviewer. And we were talking about I've gotten people have told me that as well. And I always ask which may sound kind of funny but when people say Oh, I really enjoy this or you know, they give me a compliment I asked what what do you mean by that? Like, can you actually give me a little bit more information? It's not for an ego boost? It's what what am I doing right? Because sometimes if somebody says, Oh, you're really good at something, yeah, of course it makes me feel
validated. It gives my ego like a big shot, but at the same time I'm like, Whoa, What what is it that I'm doing? Because if I don't know, how can I replicate it? And how can I keep making it better and keep improving on this skill that I'm doing pretty well. And what Steve and I talked about was the fact that he was a great interviewer, because I could tell he was genuinely interested, genuinely interested. And I think that this is when I think of the podcasts that I love to listen
to. That is the quality of the host or the interviewer. They are genuinely interested in the guest. They're not reading the scripted interview questions. And I'm not calling out those of you that do have your scripted interview questions. I think
that's great. I think that those are great guiding posts to make sure that you hit on those specific topics that you want to cover, and that you really steer the conversation towards, you know, you don't go off on all these different tangents that happens and a lot of conversations, but I think that when you can tell everything is scripted, you lose me, you lose me as a listener, I don't like to listen to everything, where it's all scripted. It's all
planned out. And it doesn't sound like there's any genuine pneus in it. So if you want to be a better host, a better interviewer a better conversationalist. be genuinely interested in what your guests are talking about. And make sure they're talking more than you do.
But, uh, I wanted to cover Yeah, so ways not to interrupt, sit on your hands. Very, very important. Make sure that you just don't give into that awkward long pause, let it happen, let it happen for a little bit, maybe once or twice in the conversation, and then you will develop this, like, I was gonna say rapport, that's not really the right word, but you'll develop this knowing of how your guest speaks after five or 10 minutes of a conversation. So you'll know, okay, she pauses for about two to three seconds in between her thoughts. It didn't sound like that thought was totally complete. So I'm going to keep my mouth shut until she's totally done. These are just things these are skills, okay, these are skills that I have honed over the last several years of interviewing people. So if this doesn't come naturally to you, that's fine. You can learn to do all these things. But it does take an appreciation of paying attention to how people speak be aware of when people insert pauses in the conversation, to know whether they're completing a thought, or they're completely finished talking. And again, it's a skill, you can get better at this. Okay, I promise you, if you go back, go back. I always tell people go back and listen to the first few interviews that I did on this podcast. They were not as good as the ones that happened here today. Let me tell you, there was lots of fumbling and stumbling and interrupting like, I don't even I didn't do transcripts. On the first few episodes. I don't even want to do them. Now. I don't want to see the percentage that I talked versus how much my guest talked because it's it would not be good. It would not be good. I would just be embarrassed, so
embarrassed.
But okay, the last thing I wanted to cover today, if you're like, well, Krystal, I find myself talking because I cannot get answers out of my guest. What do I do? Well, you have to learn to ask better questions. And these are questions that aren't just yes or no answers. Okay, if that is all you're asking, you've got to develop better questions. So in the planning process, as you get ready to interview your guests, you need to have questions and ask yourself, Is this a yes or
no answer? And if it is, you need to change the question. And I do have a few prompts that you can add into your question bank as you get going and developing questions for your, your guests. And a few of those prompts are starting your questions with tell me about explain to the audience. What was it like when? Because these offer up? Like if you just say, can you or do you have you then those are all yes, no, maybe like I can easily just give you a one word answer and
be done with it. We can move on. So you want to really open up the doors to say, well tell me what it was like whenever you first started your business or can you explain to the audience how it was whenever you had this one specific thing happen in your journey? Or what was it like whenever you decided to quit your job and go go all in on content creation? Like, these are different levels of questions. And again, this comes with time it comes with practice. And I think that you
can be a better interviewer. If you take time to plan these things out ahead of time. It allows you to kind of steer the conversation, but also allow for that genuine curiosity, right? Well, we were talking about earlier, what Steve and I admire so much about each other, is that genuine curiosity, like, I was genuinely curious about him as an interviewer and the different parts of his content
journey. And he just genuinely seemed to want to know about my background, like, we talked about things that we didn't even plan on talking about, because he was genuinely curious about these different pieces of my journey, but it's still fit under the umbrella topic that we wanted to cover. So it it worked. And you can do this as well in your content, you just have to be intentional about the questions, you're gonna ask how you can make them a little bit
better. And just just keep honing and crafting this, y'all. This is just a dance, it is a dance with you and your guests. And in order to get better. You have to practice, practice, practice, practice. And I don't want to sound super cheesy, but I'm going to anyway, because I had to preface everything I'm about to say now with that, but practice with your family. Practice with your kids, if you have children or a spouse or someone that you live with. And you can say, Tell me about your
day. That's it not Did you have a good day? Yes or no? Right? That's, that's, we we, as parents, we often fall into this trap of, did you have a good day? Yes or no? Okay, great. And then you move on. But if you say, Well, tell me tell me what happened today. That's a very different question, or a very different statement, that you're trying to get information out of people. And it really does work. And I actually have a YouTube video that I'm gonna link to in
the show notes. It's an older video, so don't mind the quality. It's like the quality when I say that I'm talking about the video quality, the content quality is still there. It's really good. But the video quality is a little different because it's an older one, but you know what, it's there. It's still helpful. It is still helpful. So go to the shownotes KrystalProffitt.com/episode335. And you're going to find a YouTube video about Interview
Questions to Ask any guest. So regardless of the topic that you cover, or what you talk to your guest about, these are more general questions that can get the ball rolling, and it even has some of these other prompts that you can think about as you prepare to interview your guest.
So I hope that you found today's episode helpful. Please reach out if you have any other questions about interviewing or you want to hear more content on being a better host to being a better interviewer or interacting with your guest in new ways. Make sure you reach out in again the show notes are KrystalProffitt.com/episode335. And I would love it if you would take a screenshot and share this on social media. Let me know what your number one takeaway
was from today's episode. And if you have not, make sure that you hit that subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast, and as always remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere