The Prepped Connection - Duane Dufault - Creating The Greatest Show - Episode # 031

Today’s guest is an entrepreneur that has taken an unconventional route and a superb salesperson that worked their way up from selling toilet paper to selling Fortune 100 Enterprise Software. Duane Dufault is the Host of SellingSaaS and Chief Everything Officer at SellingSaas. Duane spills the tea on holding back bad episodes, how to dig into what you are genuinely curious about, and how to reformat your podcast to better fit your audience’s content preferences.   Takeaways: If you can’t become genuinely interested in your guest then your audience won’t either. Your podcast’s analytics don’t matter if you can’t have real conversations with your guests based on your authentic curiosity.Researching a guest before recording with them is essential to having a great conversation right from the start of your podcast. Check out their social media, blog, and past podcast interviews to find out what they care about personally.If your conversation doesn’t go well and you or the guest really doesn’t like it, you don’t have to publish that episode. In order to give yourself some breathing room, make sure that you have a backlog of a few episodes so you don’t miss a release date.Don’t expect your podcast to be perfect, especially right from the start. Mics will fail, cameras will fall, and guest introductions will be flubbed. These issues are not the end of the world and if something is really bad it can be fixed in post-production.Give yourself time before recording an episode to make sure that all of your equipment is on and working. Double-check if your recording platform has the right video and audio inputs. It can be helpful to have a pre-recording checklist to help remind you.Using a prep call or pre-recording chat is crucial for getting to know your guest and establishing a rapport with them. Guests can tell when a host and guest are just meeting for the first time because the first twenty minutes are usually very awkward. As a host, you need to make sure that your podcast resonates with your ideal listeners and the best way to do that is to ask them. Find out what format, duration, etc. they prefer to consume content in and meet them where they are.   Quote of the Show:“The more you can get to the person behind the specific topic, the better the conversation usually is.” - Duane Dufault   Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanedufault/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DuaneDufault Company website: https://www.duanedufault.com/ SellingSaaS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/selling-saas/id1616701627    Ways to Tune In:Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/12f108ea-018f-44a6-8bb0-9444e9cbf3cc Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creating-the-greatest-show/id1638399900Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1B7OnWCGoxBRzH2rbkEFIf Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2NyZWF0aW5ndGhlZ3JlYXRlc3RzaG93L2ZlZWQueG1sPodchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creating-the-greatest-show-4823789 YouTube: https://youtu.be/feDA4bL9di0   Creating The Greatest Show is produced and sponsored by Ringmaster, on a mission to create connections through B2B podcasts. Learn more at https://ringmaster.com/