I see a lot of posts from new podcasters about how to structure interviews with guests. While my process is by no means the way everyone should go about structuring interviews, I still think it is super informative to explain how my process evolved and the feedback I've gotten. Here is an outline of the phases of episode interview preparation:Research the GuestDraft an interview outline(optional) Script specific interview questionsStep 1: Research the GuestFor me when starting my podcast, The Change, what helped me get organized and started was the process I had just completed being interviewed for a corporate documentary that my company SuiteCentric had produced. In that process, our producer gave me a research questionnaire that asked a whole bunch of questions intended to help them identify the "story" or the "angle" they would take in the actual recorded interview. So I created a similar research questionnaire that I then provided to new guests and asked them to provide answers to.DON'T DO THIS!!While this research questionnaire approach is helpful when there is money involved towards the production, your podcast guests likely won't have time to fill this out, or if they do it likely won't give you the level of detail that you can get in other ways. So after my third episode, I decided to take a different approach.So I decided to instead hold short "Get To Know Each Other" interviews that I would cap at 20 minutes (you don't want to have the guest get into too many details that are better left for the recorded interview). The goal in these short meetings was simply to get to know the very high level story of the guest; to determine the general arc of questions to ask that also are intended to keep the interview scoped to the premise of the podcast altogether.However, not every guest has the time or desire to attend these types of interviews.After several episodes, I kind of ditched this short intro meeting to save my time and the guests. I determined that I instead wil rely on:Ask the guest to provide a short bio and a sample set of questions relevant to their storyPublic research about the guests that I could find onlineMany of my guests are authors and for these interviews, I personally felt it very important to read their latest or foundational work. This is pretty time consuming so I will admit that I scanned some of the books and for other interviews, like my episode with the amazing Samantha J, I read the entire book, made notes, and re-read some sections.Step 2: Draft the Interview OutlineThere are a bazillion podcast interviews that are entirely unstructured. I know - I've been guests on many of these podcasts. And I am not saying that's the wrong way to go...every podcast host is different and you should do what feels the most natural to you and produces the results you want. For me with The Change, my goal was to create episodes with an extremely high production value. With that in mind, creating an outline for the interview was very important. The Change is kind of a storytelling interview format in that my guests have a story to tell that led them to the work and life they live today. So an outline was important to create because having this structure helped me to stay on track within the story. You can stop with an outline and let the interview kind of flow wherever it leads, which is great and I take this approach for many of the more recent interviews I lead. But for most of my interviews, I actually scripted a handful of questions based on the outline. This next part (really any of this) is optional. It worked for me, but I won't say this is the approach that will work for everyone.Step 3: Script the Interview (optional)As I just stated, this could be overkill if you have a good outline. It's vitally important as a podcast host to manage all your time efficiently so that you can produce more episodes and this part does take some extra time. Once I had an outline defined, I would refer back to my research and specifically create a scripted set of questions I wanted to ask. I still let the interview go wherever it went naturally during the interview (which is ideal because it sounds very natural) but I would veer back to my questions to stay on point.I ended up coming up with a formula to determine how many questions to ask that would result in the desired interview length I was after, which were 60 minute interviews. After many interviews, I identified that to produce a 60 minute interview (with intro, outro, midroll promotions, etc) I should ask about 12-15 questions. So each question would result then in about 3-4 minutes of content.Wrapping UpHopefully this gives new podcasters somewhat of a feel for what is involved in guest interview preparation. It's so incredibly rewarding to meet so many amazing guests and engage in so many amazing and informative conversations. There are times when you might start to feel burned out or overwhelmed but stay with it. You'll definitely get to a point where you have your whole system down and the results in download numbers and engagement will show. Thanks for reading and I hope this article helps new podcast hosts get started with building their interviews. Good luck!About The AuthorWith over 16 years of hands-on and management NetSuite experience, Adam is the CEO of SuiteCentric, a NetSuite Solution Provider and consulting company. He is a creative and well-rounded technical leader with a unique blend of engineering, functional and architectural perspectives, and expertise. Based in San Diego, CA, Adam was also an international wedding photographer having photographed over 200 weddings spread between the US, Latin America, and Europe. He is also the CEO of EIQ Media LLC, a podcast production company through which he is host of “The Change” Podcast, amplifying the voice of servant leaders working to normalize the mental health conversation and build more empathy into business and produces How I Made It Through, hosted by Kristin Taylor. And if this wasn't enough, Adam is also the CEO and lead developer of this platform, PodTask.