When trying to get experts to agree to an interview you want to attract them to what you are doing. Basically, what’s in it for them is free advertising, it’s free publicity, it’s free exposure, and it’s free distribution. They do trade a little bit of their time for it, but it’s basically free. It is easy for them and you’re not asking them to write the interview.
I get approached from people who say they’d like to do an interview with me and they submit me maybe 20 questions that I have to write the answers to. I’m not going to do that, it takes way too long. It’s hard to write, but it’s easy to do an audio interview so it’s not a big deal for an expert to do it.
Plus, people love to talk about themselves. Whoever is listening, whatever expertise you are in, whatever you are passionate about, how many people do you really know who just love talking about what you love. So having someone who is really interested and be willing to listen and brag and talk about yourself, you know people will do it free just for that.
These are some reasons why people will do an interview. Then the higher profile people generally, they are the nicest people out there. There may be some cases where they weren’t nice but they are professionals and they are really nice and the real experts they like helping people out. They probably struggled from the beginning; they could probably see you in them of when they were getting started.
People like to help other people even if you say, “Can you help me out. I’m a nobody, I’ve got no Web site, but I want to do something with this interview, would you honor me to let me interview you and spend an hour on the phone with you.” You’d be surprised all you have to do is ask.
I think once you get them to agree to do the interview then you can kind of go over the outline of what is going to happen and you set the criteria. I guess if they are super busy, yeah, you could go over. You could go over and you could make an agreement with them. “Hey, we’re scheduled for 20 minutes; if it goes over would you be willing to do a Part 2 with me?” They may say yes or they may say no. Even if you have a very high profile person just to do 20 minutes, that is valuable. It could be 20 minutes of a couple great ideas.
But what else is really valuable? It could be being able to use their name on your Web site or in your promotion. That name could lead you to another interview. You know I interviewed John Carlton and I bet I can go get an interview with Clayton Makepeace. “Hey, Clayton, I’m Michael Senoff, I’ve interviewed John Carlton, Bob Blye, Joe Vitalie, a couple other copywriters,” which he knows, “would you like to be part of the copywriting interview series?” Why would he say no?
So you can use your interviews as proof to climb up to higher and higher levels. Definitely.