Eddie Barstool’s 3 Keys To Interviewing

One of the cool things about being on OG member of FromThe108 is that over the years we have built up a good reputation and made a lot of relationships with people who do this thing. My weekly interview show the Au Jus (Powered by Punky’s Pizza & Pasta) affords me the opportunity to go one on one with some of those people. Recently, I had the pleasure of talking with Eddie Farrer from Barstool. The full interview is below.

Watch the whole thing when you have time, but most importantly, I wanted to rack Eddie’s brain on #content and more specifically, interviewing. Below is a 2 minute clip from the discussion, he provides his 3 keys to interviewing, which I elaborate on more beneath. ENJOY!

Natural Curiosity

I think this one is self explanatory, but probably ignored more than it really should be. If you aren’t interested in the guest, then the listener sure as fuck won’t be. Sometimes you see hosts going for the guest that is going to get them “the most clicks”, but if you are truly interested in the person / subject matter, then that’s when you’ll make the absolutely best piece of content. Let your own natural interests be the gauge with which you select guests and you are already one step ahead.

Listen

This is tougher than it sounds, but listen to what the guest is telling you. Later in this interview, Eddie makes a note that he judges more on how good the entire piece of audio came out than how he specifically did. This is a particularly important point when it comes to overall quality. If you don’t listen to what the interviewee is trying to give you, you might miss some great follow up question or path you should go down while ignoring others. To me, my interview with Chris Tannehill is an example of when I specifically let listening guide the action.

Put Yourself in the Interviewee’s Shoes

Eddie brings up a point that I confess I do not use enough. Think through what the person you are interviewing is going through on the regular and use it to ask questions. To me this likely serves two purposes. 1) It could give you insight into the part of the discussion where the subject’s waters may run deeper. 2) You can avoid the mundane or matter of fact to the interviewee and get right to the meat.

-BeefLoaf