Andrew Warner: Interviewing techniques, life transitions, and the business of podcasting

Back on track with legend Andrew Warner that sort of grilled me last time. That was funny. We were talking pre-pods about the lessons learned here. So yeah, if you guys know Andrew, he has the Mixergy podcast, a podcast I grew up on that I literally learned probably at least 15% of how to run a company, how to found a company, how to lead a company.

So really grateful for that Andrew. Plus I read your book which is quite amazing, Stop Asking Questions. One of the best book I read in 2021, I would say I think it was released, something like that. Um this pod is brought to you by podfire.com. If you want to start, scale, or be invited to a podcast. So now Andrew, you know what I'm am focusing my time on.

Podcasts are great way to get insights from folks, learn from them, get subscribers, grow your community, get leads, and even get clients. So without further ado, to pick up our convo, Andrew, I told you that yeah, last yesterday was somewhat of a rough day. I was fasting and had two roughish experience with some guest. And you're known, Andrew, to kind of challenge people.

You're good at that. I guess that people that are emotionally mature can take that feedback. Some cannot, but you had guest on the pod, you challenged them. I'm pretty sure at some point you had to stop the podcast because some people were like too pissed. So first, how do you react to that? How do you make sure the guest like stays comfortable to actually keep on dropping value bombs?

I try to just keep the recording going, and then I get vulnerable and be open about my my challenge or what I'm trying to do. You know when it happened, and it was really painful, it was when I interviewed Tim Ferriss live at an event in Austin at South by Southwest that I was hosting when he came out and he did it for me as a favor and the first thing I did was I introduced him by saying Tim Ferriss, you lie and you cheat and like that was and he goes,

"That's my introduction?" And what I was trying to do there was be playful about some of the negative press that was coming out that about him that was completely unfair. And we now know years later there's substance. He's not some kind of shady fly-by-night guy who's peddling a get-rich-quick scheme. And I was trying to make fun of it by doing that and it didn't land and it came across as really rude and what I did was I turned the conversation into that.

I said, "How do you handle things like that?" And I got open about it and by acknowledging it openly, I think I set a a place where he could talk openly about his uh challenges. And so that's what I do. I try to call it out and I try to say what my mission is. Now what you're bringing up is where I was way too aggressive with you last time that I was on here with you.

And the reason that I was was that I had been interviewing the founder of Wistia, a video uh publishing company. And I could tell that the founder wanted me to be challenging and I wasn't. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it and I could tell that people sometimes come to me for those challenging questions and I said after that interview I should be more and I sensed that that's what we you were looking for and I just kept going and just kept going instead of realizing it's a different situation.

The founder of Wistia has done a million interviews where he's been interviewed and a lot of them were too nicey-nice and what and he'd known me for years and what he wanted was the full Mixergy, the full Andrew Warner experience. You weren't signing up for that and it wasn't the right place for it, and it just didn't work out. Yeah. Um and also but yet the founder of Wistia / CEO quite an accomplished guy, you know, like me.

Still at the start of my journey, I think I'm going to make amazing things happen. Um and yes, I do need focus, so there was a lot of truth there. So, I can understand that. I also think you're not going to be the first to challenge me. Actually, you're you'll be probably one of the nicest. Um I think folks are going to demolish me, you know, like Tim Ferriss of often speaks about the 1% crazies of his audience.

You probably get that at your stage. Uh people will try to attack you. They'll try to mess with your feelings, your family. They'll go for the cheap shots, you know, under the belt. Do you get that and how do you react to this? I have to say I've been very fortunate. Most people have been really nice to me and I haven't had anyone be be attack me, be in be in an attacking mode, and I've been really fortunate that way.

Um and so I don't know why. And and maybe it's because uh in a lot of the interviews that I've done, I've been attacking myself and I feel like constantly I'm not doing enough and I bring that up. So, what's um what are Andrew's flaws, you know, like nowadays? What could you improve? I'll tell you the thing today that I'm wrestling with is something I've never wrestled with.

I've always known what it I what I wanted to do with my life. Um even as a kid, I knew what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, who I was. Now I'm at a point where I'm not exactly sure. I'm much more open than I'd ever been before. And a lot of things that I never wanted to do and it didn't feel like me, I'm doing. For example, I was just out for a in between calls, just checking in on these chickens that we have on our property.

Yeah, and I felt like that's not what I would have spent my time on before. And last night, while I was waiting for friends to come who are staying with us, I realized they weren't going to be here till midnight. My wife decided she just wanted to go to bed around 10. And so for the 2 hours I was trying to teach myself to play guitar, and that's not where my energy would have gone before.

I would have probably spent more time on something work-related at that at that at time. And so, I'm not sure I'm not I'm not as cock-sure as I was before, and I'm I'm much more open. I'm trying to appreciate this. One of the challenges that I always had was I was very narrow, and so I couldn't bring in new ideas. So, for example, I've done video forever, um more sooner than most people who are in our space, but I never really got good at it and creative with it.

So, my interviews were all audio-based. And now I've got here I've got this camera next to me. I use this action camera to shoot things like my runs. I use this camera to shoot things like how I'm working on the property, and it's been really fun. And I think that that kind of thing could help me in my work, even if I don't know how. So, basically, I'm in an unsure place, and I'm trying to embrace it, but it's not easy.

I've seen that in Ben Greenfield as well. He's in a life transition. So, it's like if you're past your accomplisher phase of life, you've done so much, and you probably feel that yeah, the seasons are changing, and you want to explore a new facet, which which is 100% normal. You're the second rancher that I talked to today. I want my ranch, too. I will get it in less than 7 years.

I feel that this is still a lot of fun. Like playing with your hands, like I think you might have maxed out the brain aspect, you know, like the aspect, not maxed out, but like the returns are so low while working with your hands and doing manual stuff has way more serotonin returns. What do you think about that? That is interesting that this is challenging me in a new way.

It's also letting me escape my old self in an interesting way. Yeah. I should say I'm far from a ranch. I've got 5 acres here in Austin. So, I'm still in a city. I'm not really outside much of the city. And I've got maybe 10 chickens and two goats. And maybe we put in 12 fruit trees. So, it's not much. It's more like a dabbler, but boy, I I do get a lot of like serotonin, a lot of positive energy from doing stuff like that.

I read your Twitter the other day. A fox took a chicken of yours. So, it's like very drastically different from the New York life, right? It's stuff that you didn't used to see there. Yeah, I never would have cared about this. My My answer would have been in the past, why am I spending time trying to figure this out? Like we've got a garden. Why am I spending time trying to plant a garden and talk to my neighbors about it and do some research and watch YouTube videos?

Why don't I just go on Thumbtack, hire somebody, see if I could get someone who just comes here every weekend, let them tend to my garden, and then I got a nice garden. That's the way I would have approached things. I'm not sure now. Nowadays, I mean, yeah, it seems that it's a different phase of life, for for sure. Um the the question I have is do you feel that this is like what's next for you and business is less important, and or is just another season that may change and you may go back like full on into business?

No, business is still important. I still get up, and the main focus of my day is what can I do that has a business impact. The difference is that now I have more outside interests. And at some point I probably should pair them down. I do much better with one solid interest that I'm obsessed with. But I'm experimenting. What happens if I do try playing the guitar badly for a bit and try gardening badly for a bit and try chickens and then figure out which of these I want to hold on to.

So, I'm trying that. You also look calmer than you were before. Do you feel that you're happier nowadays? I really think that I discovered a level of happiness a long time ago that's always there, but at the same time there is a dissatisfaction that my friends pick up on and is also there. So, I think I'm one of the happiest friends, one of the happiest people I know, but at the same time I I feel less satisfied and comfortable with what I've done and I'm doing than just about anyone I know.

And I don't know how to merge those two, but I'll take it. What about having friends physically cuz New York is like small, it's stressful and have you done business deals at your place? Like do you feel that has helped you uh get No? It's just like friends and Some The strange thing is that San Francisco was really good that way. I could have people over for dinner and it was incredibly helpful.

For Scotch, I have people who reach out to me who've been to my house for dinner, for drinks a long time ago like early on in their career, further on and I didn't even realize that they were there. I totally forgot. They could have come over for poker, they could have come over for drinks. And it was that amazing that we were right in the heart of the city and we were very open to guests.

Here, I don't know, I get a little bit more distracted. You can't pop in because I am I'm sometime away from the heart of the city and and also Austin is not as accessible as San Francisco was. In San Francisco, you really could get from one end to the other in 10 minutes in an Uber. 10-minute Uber ride and you're there. And getting the Uber doesn't take that long.

Here, it would take you 30 minutes to drive somewhere, and that's a big difference. To drive to me, anyway. Heard good stuff about Austin. Some billionaires use their yachts to make business deals. Some others use their sports team that they acquired, court-side tickets to impress, you know, clients. I guess on your side it's mostly for lifestyle and leisure, diminish cortisol and enjoy life, I guess.

Um I want I want to know though, like the the podcast, are you still at it? Um What do you see in the businessman Andrew and the podcaster Andrew of 20 years ago plus the vs. the Andrew Warner of this day? I think one of the things that I didn't appreciate and I uh when I started was that being a creator can be valuable. I was someone who only thought that having a business mattered and being a creator was something I stayed away from.

I I didn't even like when people called my interviews a show. I thought this was much more serious than that. And they would keep calling it a show, and in my head I'd say, "Okay, I'm not going to fight them out loud, but I want to keep sending the message this is not a show. I'm not I'm not a performer." But in reality, it turns out that there is a lot of business in the show, and I see a lot of people who are not at the Mr.

Beast level, but still are building up a good audience and enjoying creating fun shows for that audience and then selling something. Who would you love to have on the show nowadays cuz you've probably met all of your idols? Uh who would you still love to interview nowadays? Um the one person that I I missed on interviewing cuz I again I under appreciated the significance of him.

Ryan Holiday long time ago told me to have uh Casey Neistat on and I didn't. I just thought he's he's a guy who's on YouTube. That's not serious. When if his business hits then let's do that. Turns out the YouTube part was a important business. I'm really fascinated by the business of Casey and he doesn't talk about that much. Like you'll see Mr. Beast videos about how he has grown his YouTube following in a very analytical way about how he then transitioned into selling advertising and from advertising to his own products and and there are tons of interviews on that, but I feel like Casey Neistat is straight-up creator who also tried to be a software entrepreneur and that that combination is interesting to me.

And I also feel like I want to understand what's not working there, why he's not following through, why someone who is so good just disappears for months at a time. And and to me that's like a there's an there's a personal emotional thing there and he's talked a little bit about burnout, but there's something else there too and I want to get at that.

You have 13 more minutes. Yeah, let's do it. Casey he shows a lot of vulnerability and emotions. He's this special person. How do you achieve that level of vulnerability without thinking too much of the consequences and when is too much? You know, I I hated sharing anything personal about myself. It just felt like what a waste. And then I had some time um after I sold my greeting card company where I just decided to go and learn to be a good conversationalist and have time with people and learn how the the how human interaction and fun works and physical activities works.

Anyway, I said I got really analytical about how I was going to have great conversations and one of the things that I learned was that if somebody brings up a topic that's personal, they usually want to talk about it. And the example that I gave in the book was someone who um at the end of a Toastmasters session, we all had gone out for drinks and this woman was talking about driving to uh Los Angeles and saying something like um and you know, after your sister commits suicide, your life changes and I drove to Los Angeles and came over here and started fresh.

And everyone talked to her about the drive to Los Angeles and what it's like to be new. And in my mind, the thing that was interesting was what she pushed in there, which is her sister's suicide. And so I asked about it and she started talking about that and I felt like this is the kind of vibe that I like with people. And I noticed that picking up on those personal topics and letting people talk about them was very helpful for building relationships.

The thing was at the end of that session, that woman told me I know that you liked it. She said something like Andrew's constantly trying to grab personal information about us. I thought, no, I'm not. I'm not a gossip. I don't even care about this. I had to train myself to give a [ __ ] about somebody excuse me, to to care about somebody's personal life.

I had to train myself cuz if I'm going to be connected to people, I have to do it. And then I I ended up discovering that I like it, but I'm not doing it because it's That's the satisfaction for me. The satisfaction is the connection with someone cuz I never knew how to do it. Anyway, what I realized the problem was I was just asking her about herself.

She was opening up and the more she opened up, the more she felt vulnerable. And what I would start to do was share a little bit about myself and people felt like it was okay for them to share that in themselves. And so I would say something like yeah, I had a family member who tried to commit suicide. It was really painful. Did you find that the rest of the family got depressed, too?

And then I let them go back to themselves, which is what they wanted, but I shared a little something. And if I could do that enough, people felt like I wasn't just leaving it lopsided, but I was caring enough to let them talk and give and and and that was helpful. What I discovered in the process, just like letting people talk became interesting for me, talking to myself also became helpful, more therapeutic than therapy.

And so I I go to the point where it's helpful without overstepping what I feel comfortable with. I remember that part of the book. I also remember you um saying you felt hurt, and I would have felt the same way. Sometimes that I had something that I have hard time dealing with nowadays is the truth vs. happiness, you know? So sometimes I go way too much for the the truth, trying to find out the truth, and trying to get justice, you know, like, "Hey, this isn't true." Um do you how do you negotiate with that?

Because us entrepreneurs are really IQ-oriented, but sometimes I feel it's it's about, okay, understanding their perspective and letting it pass away. So how do you negotiate with truth vs. your own happiness? I think it could be both. I mean, for me it doesn't seem like truth vs. happiness is an issue, unless what you mean is like letting the other person talk about what's what they care about vs.

me being interested in what I care about. Is that what you mean? Yeah, the question wasn't asking the best way, but let's say that um I have um my wife uh she thinks she's right on something, while like in the signs says she's not, and then like I'm going to let it go, you know? I'm just not going to fight on that one. Or if a client tells me something and it's untrue, um but I'm still going to be nice to them um while letting it pass.

Like, how do you pick your fights? I care about what my goal is and I try to aim for that. So, what is the goal? Is the conversation Is the goal the conversation to to get better at the relationship with your wife, or is it to to to speak your truth cuz that's what matters to you most? Long-term harmony, right? Long-term harmony. And then the challenging part is when you're talking about a personal relationship with a wife, someone who I'm around all the time, then I do get challenged where I know what I want.

What I want is the harmony. It doesn't really matter that I'm right about this. And something I let myself down when I still will say what matters to me when I know it doesn't really matter enough. And I try. I don't do it well enough all the time or often enough. In business, it's more IQ-oriented, so you get somewhat less of that. Um what I do have on these podcasts though is people that come and they treat this as a PR show, you know?

How do you make sure that they provide value and that they're not fully there just to promote themselves? Uh um I let them know before that the audience will eat them apart if they all they do is promote. I might even give an example. I think examples are really helpful. Like before we got started, you told me about uh you gave me an example about someone who said something rude to you.

And And in that I could see how disgusting it is to be rude to someone. And so, I might say the same example. I might say, you know, I had someone on here who who kept talking about their book. And the audience didn't even remember their book. They just kept telling me that they didn't like that guy who kept talking about that book. It's not helpful.

Versus and then I might tell them about someone who wrote a book who because he was so amazing people wanted more from him and at the end when we talked about the book, uh they bought it. And then people would send us pictures about it. There's such a thing as an icebreaker NLP that can get them in a state in a suggestive state in which they can drop the PR front.

Mhm. I think that what we're finding now is that most people know that promoting is it doesn't work that if you do sit and promote people are going to be disgusted. Most people don't feel that anymore. But they do feel some anxiety. I know what it's like. Usually like when I was doing my books, there was me doing the interviews, but there was Ben, the founder of Damn Gravity, the publishing company, who was listening in.

And in my mind, I just wanted to have a conversation and I knew that the audience would get there and would go and buy the book. But I also felt this obligation to Ben. He published the book. He might have helped me put together the interview. He cares about sales. He's promoting the book. And so, because of him, I might feel eager to make sure that I did the thing that I came to do, which is promote the book.

And I know that my interviewees have a similar pressure. It's not just them being pressured. It's not them being annoying. It's there's someone that they care about that they want to live up to. And so, before the interview starts, I ask them, "What's your goal? How can I be helpful?" They'll tell me something like the book. I'll say, "Okay, I got you.

I'll make sure." And then they know that I got them and it's now on me and the burden is off their shoulders and it's on mine and they don't feel they have to promote. How can I make sure that someone likes you, a podcast brain, grows podcast brain cells while while we speak and or any other CEO that's on my pod? How can I make sure that like going at the brain spa and they're smarter than when they left the interview?

Ooh, um Yeah, you I do love that feeling when someone says, "I hadn't thought of that. That's so helpful for me to have gone through that." Yeah, um Joel the fan founder of Stack Overflow said that to me at the end of an interview and I just felt so good about that. Um You know, if you help them think through their decisions, business people are really interested.

They care about why they did the thing that they did. They like analyzing. Um and that's really helpful. Also have to just get a sense of the person. What is it that they feel good about? There's some people who just don't know how to communicate and if you can help them communicate, they're going to feel good that they could do that. A little conversation beforehand will help with that.

And frankly, sometimes I just aim for what I want and hopefully they want to go for the ride and if they don't, I'm okay with saying this is just not me. Can I wing preparation if I interview 10 CEOs a day and just use AI apps to give me info on them, have their LinkedIn, their website, and a Google search while I interview them? Honestly, I don't know.

I've tried some of that and what I found is some really good results and I also found some junky results that are what they call hallucinations that screw things up. I don't know. I think if you come at it from a real curiosity, like what's the thing I need to get out of this? Really clear, the audience will come along for the ride and the guest will support.

They know that that's what they're there for. And if you have that and maybe even announce it at the beginning, whether your AI is right or not or exists or not, doesn't matter. So, if it's What's I'm I'm sitting on this Twitter account and all I have is 100 people. I've been admiring your Twitter account a lot. I need to get to 10,000. What do you think I should do?

And spend time with the person there. And then to make it a little more personal about them, say, "How did you do that?" That's helpful. What I try to do is before I I think interview the AI, I used to try to interview Google to get the answers. Now we interview Google and an AI and and see if you could come up with answers on your own and then ask them about that and then ask follow-up questions that don't exist.

So, what's the equilibrium between being in the present here with Andrew plus the prep that I have? Is it 80% present, 20% prep? I don't know. I don't know. There is a a point of too much prep, but I don't know. You have to feel where it's right where it's right for you and that's where doing it a lot helps. For me, one of the things that I realized was I will do the prep in the amount of time that I have because as much time as I give myself, I will continue to prep.

So, what I decided to do was not start to prep for anyone until an hour before the interview and I said, "Okay, I'm willing to give an hour to each interview." Because if I care about the guest, then I care about the topic, then I would do the research anyway and the guest is just an additional level of research. And that even meant if there was a book, I had to force myself to learn to read the book within an hour.

It was a lot of pressure and I eventually got there and after screwing up a bunch. Love that one. Why do you think silence is power? Um I happen to have been looking at some other people's interviews today and I did see that there are a lot of pauses in between some thoughtful answers. And when people don't have a thoughtful answer, they tend to just jump in and give you the answer.

But I'm looking at a Sam Altman interview done by Eric Reese back during the pandemic. The transcript reads really beautifully. Sam doesn't have a lot of ums. He's clear with what he's saying. The weird thing is when I go back to hear him say it, there's a 3-second, 5-second pause after an answer, I mean, after a question. Um I don't know if those numbers are exactly accurate, but it's a long enough pause that it feels uncomfortable for me.

I think people just need to think and the people who don't think are the ones who are so scripted they've said it a long time already. And you need to give people time to think. Yeah, that somewhat answered a previous questions on prep vs. present. What are you drinking? Um right now, I drink tea almost non-stop. Yeah, same here. bored with the tea right now for some strange reason and I decided to try something bitter that would slow me down.

And so I got bad decaf and it's awful. It's god awful. Oh man. Yeah, it it So the taste bad and no effects suddenly. Yeah, sounds terrible. I just want something to slow me down. I do enjoy the idea of drinking. I also like the I like something to do. You know, so I was chewing on my pen intentionally and people started thinking that it's a vape pen of some kind.

So I went to I went to chat GPT. I said, I'd like to chew on my pen. Give me an alternative. Um and it didn't give me anything that was great unfortunately. There are these here. It said, try sugar-free gum. I'm not doing that in a conversation. Try chewable pen toppers. I'd never even heard of those, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'd like something like, you know, the old school guys that used to have cigars.

They would smoke the cigar, smoke even a cigarette or chew the cigar without smoking it. Give you something to do. And it wasn't until I talked with the found with the author of um uh Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence, where he found that there was a connection between this movement and thinking that I finally respected and appreciated it. And so chewing the pen doesn't really help and it's not good.

Walking around I used to have a treadmill under my desk. Distracted people also didn't make me feel great. Walking outside is good, but it's not good if I'm talking to you. I'd like to have a place to take notes. So I go to just sipping tea and coffee. And frankly, if we weren't talking, um I'm trying to learn the guitar and my computer will not pick up on the guitar sounds.

And so I might fiddle around with the guitar to try to teach myself that and I don't think about it so much. I just move my fingers and that allows me to steady my brain into think. Mhm. Nootropic toothpicks, but yeah, they would kind of impair your your mouth movement. Um this one here, 300 lb squeezer. Uh-huh. So, last time when you were making me anxious, I should I should have brought it and kind of tried to squeeze your neck, you know?

Like Just kidding. It's help It's helpful. Yeah, imagine my neck and just keep squeezing it. Whatever works. Yeah, no. Um You know what I used to do? I used to ask really tough questions, and I would have such a hard time sitting in the moment. And so, there are a few things that I would do. If it was in person, I'd put my hand in my pocket and I used to pinch my thigh to get me to shut up and to look like I'm holding steady.

Because I ask the question, give the person a chance to answer. If it's more difficult, they want to formulate an answer and think about it. So, I'll just go, "But you don't have to answer." Anyway, and I And then when I was doing the early podcasts and I didn't do any video, I would literally put my hand on my mouth. But you need something like that.

Yeah, 100% right. So, when I did the squeeze your neck joke, I should have stopped and not say just kidding. Um yeah, that's mastery right there cuz you're like a legend in my mind and I need more exposure, I think. So, so that I can just hold on and and wait for your answer. Last question, um are you trying to build the back end of the podcast? I mean, you already have tons of newsletter subscribers, plus uh yeah, you sell access there.

So, like on the community level, what what are you trying to build there? I'm not at this point. I'm not doing any of that. Um just feeling my way through and trying to see what gets me excited to do next. And so, one of the things that I've been doing is giving some of my past interviewees some feedback on their interviews and thinking through how they could do it.

Before that, I was uh doing just random coaching calls with people on Twitter who had businesses who wanted to talk to me, and I let them talk it through. Um I don't know. I don't know. I'm in an exploring mode right now. So, I'm here. Andrew, thank you so much. Um, I think that one was way better than the last time. I can pick up a bunch of YouTube shirts out of it.

Really grateful for your time. Where can people find out more about you? Uh, they could go to my site. Um, m i x e r g y, mixergy. And I'm Charles Cormier, your host. That was another CEO/Founder with Pod. If you want to start, scale, or be invited to a Pod,