Interview with SkypePart of the Learn With Sally coaching covers creating a Product in one of the easiest ways I’ve ever come across.

We were told to Grab A Guru and interview them over Skype, record the Skype call and then transcribe the audio file or have it transcribed for by a third party.

Getting a guru to agree to an interview would have meant approaching loads of them over and over again until one agreed, unless of course you know one already and are in touch with them on a personal basis.

Last year I won a free transcription from Dawn Kay who owns First Class Transcriptions and at the time of my win I wrote a post asking my readers who they would interview if they were me.

Of all the comments that were left one in particular stood out as it said rather than interview a guru why not interview someone that is further up the success ladder than myself that impresses me and I aspire to.

Now this approach really got me thinking so I posted a thread on a forum that I’m a member of to see if anyone was interested in my interviewing them. I didn’t get a reply so I put the thought to the back of my mind.

This time when interviewing a guru came up I remembered the earlier comment so turned my attention in a different direction.

Who impresses me? Who do I aspire to? Who is approachable?

Regular readers will already know that I turned my attention to my good friend and blogging superstar Adrienne Smith, who agreed to let me interview her. Now I should point out that I have interviewed Adrienne and it went really well. There is a product coming in the near future, but I’ve put it to one side for now so as to finish another project that I had already started.

So, I had found who I’d like to interview and asked Adrienne if she’d agree, which obviously she did. My next step was to write a post and ask my readers if they had any questions they’d like me to ask.

I then listed my questions, chose 10 of the more important ones and forwarded them to Adrienne for her approval and exchanged our Skype ID’s.

I then purchased Pamela For Skype so as to be able to record the interview as an audio file to send to Dawn for her to transcribe.

Adrienne and I agreed a time for the interview so I had to make sure everything was ready. In doing so I had a Skype chat with Dawn to ensure that Pamela was working and I knew my way around, which wasn’t hard as you just hit the record button, but it’s always “best to test”.

As our appointment drew closer I had to make sure that there wouldn’t be any interruptions so I:

    • Turned my email program off,

    • Turned the home phone off,

    • Put a “Do Not Disturb” note on my office/bedroom door,

    • Left my mobile phone in the other room,

    • Printed out my questions

    • Got the highlighter pen at the ready so as to mark off the questions as I asked them.

Adrienne and I connected on Skype, had a little chat and then got the interview under way. As I said it all went really well and I will be making it available to all of my subscribers, friends, followers and readers in the very near future.

Just prior to the interview with Adrienne I was approached by Jean Shaw, who asked if she could interview me about the Learn With Sally coaching. Jean is very experienced with online interviews and has a website dedicated to them at www.jeanshawinterviews.com I thought this would be a good exercise and practice for my one so I agreed. You can listen to that interview by visiting Jean Shaw Interviews LWS students.

AudacityJean doesn’t record her interviews with Pamela For Skype instead she uses Audacity, which is a free software. I’ve never used it myself but Jean uses it all the time, so if/when you’re thinking of conducting interviews yourself you may like to give it a try.

I was then asked by Sylviane Nuccio if she could interview me, I agreed and asked her to send her questions through which she did shortly afterwards.

Now the interview with Sylviane had a few hiccups along the way, it was her first and a good learning curve for us both. We conducted the interview the first time and I thought it went really well, Sylviane asked some really good questions and had a nice flow to the whole thing. Later that day she informed me that my voice was very faint and asked if we could do it again, which of course wasn’t a problem.

We linked up again and started recording only this time my old overworked PC thought it was chasing Sebastian Vettel around a formula one track and was racing to keep up. I suggested we stop the interview before it crashed and died :(

I had got a new PC for Christmas so quickly set about setting it up and getting all my programs loaded onto it :)

On our third attempt I also recorded the interview, with Pamela For Skype, just in case anything went wrong. We both tested our recording software prior to starting, both worked well so we got the interview under way. When we had finished Sylviane informed me that she was having trouble with her recording so I zipped up mine and sent it to her. When the interview is available I’ll let you know ;)

CamStudioNow I should point out that Sylviane was using CamStudio to record the interview as she is going to turn it into a series of videos. I’ve used the software myself and found it very good, but the videos I created with it were only 10-15 minutes long.

While I can recommend CamStudio for creating short screen capture videos, I don’t recommend it for interviewing people due to the issues Sylviane suffered.

So there you have it, my experiences of conducting interviews over Skype. As I said I can’t comment on Audacity as I’ve never used it, but bear in mind that Jean Shaw uses it all the time and it’s free.

Pamela For Skype works a treat and offers a free trial of 30 days. The trial version will only allow you to record up to 15 minutes in length whilst the Pro version is unlimited and records Skype video calls as well.

So if you’re thinking of conducting interviews be sure to have a little play around with whatever software you are going to use and make sure that it’s working before the big event.

I hope that by telling you all of my experiences with interviews you’ll be able to start holding them yourselves and get everything you need in place before starting them.

Leave your comments belowYour Shout!!

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so please share your views:

If you have experience of interviews please share them with my readers and help me encourage them to start conducting interviews and maybe even create a product from them.

If you’ve not conducted an Interview over Skype please let us know if you’ll now consider doing so or is it something you fear?

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Until next time, think products :)

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Filed under: Getting Started • Interviews • Product creation

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