Improve Your Podcast and YouTube Interviews | Riaz Meghji, Author of Every Conversation Counts

tell me a little bit about the first day actually pursuing this career like you're you're getting in front of a camera for the first time what are you feeling do you feel like you're supposed to be there do you feel timid or scared what was kind of the the mood in the atmosphere terrified terrified and and when i think back to it it's because you know when you put something out there and you have a drive to just create and you do then come expectations it's like hey getting to the top is one thing but then staying there is another and the interesting thing that was happening over those two months was i when i was handing out flyers i did question i'm like am i making the right decision and i was very fortunate to have parents that i could tell they were concerned but they said if this is what makes you happy we're going to support this for now i i know my dad was always like when are you going to get your mba but they were in my corner and that helped but when it came down to the cameras rolling the audience is here the pressure is on the one thing i realized early on in my career was and this was a great mistake was it's not about me and i was thinking about how am i coming across am i saying the right thing when the most important thing to do is to think about that one person on the other side of this camera and how to light them up how to engage them how to bring them an enjoyable experience so i got in my head a lot and even i would say six to eight weeks into that time on camera i had a producer pull me aside and say you don't look like that confident guy that came to us in the beginning what happened and it was that overthinking that analytical mind of am i doing this right am i in the right place imposter syndrome so many thoughts went through my head where what ended up happening four months later was i was replaced and the person that came in to replace me uh is a friend to this day because what ended up happening and this was an excellent lesson in just humility that he always said to me hey when i i was replacing you you could have been a jerk to me but for me that imposter syndrome is like i can't even believe i'm here right now but it taught me a great lesson of what it takes there's going to be highs there's going to be lows and even though i parted ways with mtv canada in 2002 four months into the gig a couple of years later that same host that replaced me needed a co-host and he made the call to bring me back in and then we created a a i'm just an enjoyable fun dynamic on a brand new show on the same channel so it really gave me a valuable lesson of remembering to just point that focus forward on what the audience needs and just remembering you never know when you're going to cross paths with someone again just to embrace it and not take it personally and that's that's easier said than done especially with this format in the public eye well it's so often i think the default is to burn the bridges you know like fine i'm out and and burn those relationships but it does they circle back so often in unexpected ways and um i i'm curious for just before we get into kind of the networking side which you kind of hint into that here in a big way um what advice would you give to people who are in the space we've got a lot of podcast hosts that listen we've got a lot of people that listen who do you know different forms of interviews they're having at least conversations uh how do you prioritize the person in front of you how do you turn the conversation and really make it count when you're talking to somebody who whether it's an interview whether it's something for a just a relationship building moment what are some tips you could give to people to have these conversations in a better more meaningful way one of the things that i really discovered in in the two decades of interviewing people for a living on television was the mistake i was making was coming up with what i believe to be all of the greatest questions to ignite the person in front of me yet the opportunity to unlock something that's unique personal and something you can't google was always being missed so step one is inviting the interviewer or networker to over prepare to improvise and to do that work i mean eric you've demonstrated that you know you listen to the ted talk you've seen you know a bit of my background and you've brought me into moments that preparation will always give us confidence that we need going into the conversation but one of the questions i would always ask in the green room before we went out on live television was to you know greet the person but then simply ask this question and then get out of the way and it was what's on your mind and the first response i would get from guests would allow me to prioritize what their priorities are and where their emotion lies and what's occupying their mental space and think okay i had all of these ideas that i had researched but i'm gonna park all that because you just gave me something i wasn't even thinking about so first things first is how to over prepare to improvise because the preparation will give us confidence but leaning in improvising and just listening that's that's the part that's going to give us real connection the second part is how can we ask for stories not just answers and you've done this as well take me into that moment that conversation you had with that director and producer at mtv what was said what happened what were you thinking because what that's going to do is ignite the conversation where it's less about information and it's more about emotion and i find that is where the deepening of connection happens because emotion is what connects us it polarizes us but above all it is what motivates us to act and the greatest way to connect to emotion is to tell someone or ask someone about a story because our brains are wired in a way that we're absorbing the stories as if we're living through them right and in any interview my guess is if someone's listening to this right now they're going to remember the comment the story behind the conversation of that moment of just going for it with the director and the other thing is finding a way to practice simplicity and just getting to the point with questions sometimes we as interviewers and i've been guilty of this early on in my career of wanting to have the intention of not just fitting in but standing out and doing this great job and then what i would end up doing is coming up with complicated setups that consisted of multiple questions or the person in front of me is overwhelmed thinking okay i don't even know how to answer this because you just asked me 10 questions in one thing but simply getting to the point with the first question of you know what motivated this moment how did that feel when you did this and then getting out of the way and listening to them and waiting for the moment to dive deeper with follow-up questions because the first question is always the appetizer for the main course that comes through some really engaged follow-up [Music] one