Don’t Interview Successful People. Interview Interesting People.

A successful person walks into a podcast studio.

The host asks about the morning routine. The guest mentions discipline. They agree that relationships matter. Somebody says “authenticity.” The universe loses seven minutes it will never get back.

We've built a whole interview industry around asking people to explain why they're impressive.

It's not that the guests aren't interesting. It's that the questions give them very little opportunity to prove it.

I would rather meet the business owner who refused to open a second location because one restaurant was already making them happy. Or the designer who threw out an entire campaign because of a typo she secretly liked. Or the inventor whose first customer was his mother, who then asked for a refund.

I want the story somebody tells after the recording is supposedly finished.

The crooked detail. The embarrassing experiment. The tiny decision that changed everything. The thing the guest was sure would work and absolutely didn't.

Success is an outcome, and outcomes are notoriously good at editing the past. Once a business is doing well, the weird parts of the journey tend to disappear into a polished origin story. Every wrong turn becomes a strategic pivot. Every disaster becomes a learning opportunity. Every happy accident gets a PowerPoint slide explaining why it was inevitable.

Real life was probably stranger.

When YoStella eventually adds interviews, I'd like the selection process to begin with curiosity rather than status. Not “Who has the biggest title?” but “Who has a story I'd want to hear on a long drive?”

And the first question should be something the guest didn't practice on the way over.

Maybe: What did you keep doing long after everyone told you to stop?

That's a conversation worth having.

The morning routine can stay home.

#Podcasting #Storytelling