Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

This is a guest article by Corinne Edwards, who is following the training she has received in Blog Mastermind by submitting guest articles to help build her traffic.

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I had a TV show for eleven years and did more than 400 interviews for a major cable station. I was fortunate to have a great interviewing coach so I thought I would share some of the techniques and advice I was given. Take what you need here to put together a great interview.

1. This is probably the most important point. Your guest is the star of the show. Not you. Do not give your opinion on anything. Do not tell stories about your experiences. People are listening because you have an important guest and they want to hear what that person has to say. What you have to say is on your blog. You can write a follow up later if you like.

2. Your podcast is on your blog so the listener already knows where they are. Do not spend more than one minute introducing yourself. Just a warm welcome and thanks for being with us today and your name.

3. Your introduction should obviously be longer when introducing your guest. Give their credentials. Also, ask for a bio in advance so you know what they like to stress about themselves. Ask them. Do not mention why you asked them to be on your show. That’s about you. This interview is about them. Thank them warmly for coming on.

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Last week I headed out to a bunch of industry specific social gatherings in Toronto that all happened to fall on the same week. I attended the monthly Third Tuesday social media meetup, the Mesh/B5 blogger meetup and the second Toronto Mastermind group meeting, which was organized by the people from in and around Toronto who are all in Rich Schefren’s Internet business coaching program.

All the events were good fun and it was fantastic to meet so many bloggers, podcasters, Internet business owners and folk who work and play online in similar ways to myself.

At the Third Tuesday meetup Shel Holtz gave a spiel about podcasting and given the room was full of PR related professionals and podcasters it was a captive audience. It was interesting to hear Shel’s speech and the questions from the audience since the group were clearly focused on the PR industry and how podcasting is used as a promotional tool, which is slightly different to the Internet marketing mindset I generally see things in.

At the mesh meetup on Wednesday night I hung around Darren Rowse trying to keep the Australians in the room in one place so we didn’t get lost, which turned out to be an interesting place to stay as different people came up asking Darren - “Are you Darren Rowse?” - obviously recognising the Problogger. When I introduced myself to people they usually had trouble pronouncing my name (as usual) and most were not quite as well aware of my blogging legacy as Darren’s. There were a few who knew “Yaro” though and it always blows me away to meet people in person who know my blogs and work online.

A big hello to Leesa Barnes, Vince Chan (the (in)famous amblogger), Tony Hung (the first real life doctor blogger I have ever met, strangely enough blogging about Web 2.0 and nothing medical), Gary Grant (another blog network owner) and of course the rest of the b5 media crew in attendance, Jeremy Wright (who I had dinner with when I first arrived in Toronto) and Mark Evans.

On Friday I attended the second Toronto mastermind meeting with my fellow Rich Schefren coaching victims. This group is entirely self-motivated and came about via the forums available to Rich Schefren’s clients. There are geographic mastermind groups all over the world that came about through Rich’s coaching. We have a good group going at the moment communicating with teleconferences and the near-monthly get togethers.

The spread of businesses is quite interesting, although we are mostly focusing on the online elements of our enterprises. When we meet we generally discuss a range of topics and also take turns in a “hot seat” to get feedback and suggestions on specific problems we are facing. I find the input from other business owners helpful in reducing the clutter in my head when it comes to decision making and there are always new ideas sparked in our meetings. I think everyone involved finds the gatherings useful and I would recommend masterminding if you get a chance.

Hugh MacLeod Business Cards

During all these social events the fact that I don’t have a business card became apparent as I was given cards from other people plenty of times and asked for my card a couple of times too. I am certainly committing a networking 101 faux-paux by not coming prepared with my card so I decided I better get something to give to people.

Some of the cool people had business cards with Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid.com) artwork. I stumbled across Hugh’s blog on the weekend again while reading my feeds and happened across the link to the site where you can buy the business cards from and went and ordered some with I think a very appropriate piece of artwork to use as my business card for the time being.

You can see it here.

Now I’m one of the “cool” people too and have something to give out at my next social gathering. Beware!

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From the same team that brought you Australian Blogs (news release) comes Australian Podcasts, which strangely enough focuses on podcasts from Australia or by Australians.

The site uses the same simple, tag-focused structure (hence the Web 2.0 moniker), and is ready for you to submit your podcast. I’ve just submitted mine to the growing list, which over time hopefully will become the definitive place to find Aussie internet radio shows.

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