The interviewer (me) gets a chance to be interviewed by you, and this time it’s questions about the podcast.

Leader Assistant Podcast Ask Me Anything

In this Ask Me Anything episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, I do my best to answer the following questions about my podcast from assistants all over the world:

  • How do you handle negative reviews about your podcast?
  • Who are the top three people you would love to interview on your podcast but haven’t had the opportunity to?
  • How long does it take you to produce each episode?
  • How do you decide who to have on the show?
  • What tools do you use to record, edit, and publish your podcast?
CONNECT WITH ME
Jeremy and Meg Picture on Hike
ABOUT ME

I’m a longtime executive assistant, international speaker and trainer, founder of The Leader Assistant Community and Premium Membership, author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book, The Leader Assistant: Four Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant, and host of the #1 podcast for assistants – The Leader Assistant Podcast.

I’ve worked with CEOs, professional athletes, Fortune 100 board members, billionaires, pastors—and their assistants—in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors.

I’ve also had the opportunity to speak at administrative professional and executive assistant conferences all over the world, including Hong Kong, Thailand, and Germany.

I’m currently EA to the Founder and CEO of Capacity, a fast-growing artificial intelligence SaaS startup with an AI-powered, support automation platform.

My passion is to help you lead well, resist burnout, and automate before you’re automated.

I live in Kansas City, MO with my amazing wife and 2 boys. My hobbies are podcasting, beer, music, stocks, and entrepreneurship.

THE LEADER ASSISTANT PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP

To learn more about how you can join the now 200+ growth-minded Leader Assistants, check out our Leader Assistant Premium Membership for ongoing training, coaching, and community.

Leader Assistant Membership Circle Screenshot Welcome APR 2021

LEADER ASSISTANT LIVE EVENTS

Check out our constantly updated schedule of events for admins and assistants at LeaderAssistantLive.com.

THE LEADER ASSISTANT BOOK

Download the first 3 chapters of The Leader Assistant: Four Pillars of Game-Changing Assistant for FREE here or buy it on Amazon or Audible.

JOIN THE FREE COMMUNITY

Join the Leader Assistant Global Community here, or the Facebook Group here for bonus content and to network with other assistants who are committed to becoming leaders!

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to The Leader Assistant Podcast so you don’t miss new episodes!

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pandora, and Stitcher.

Join my email list here if you want to get an email when a new episode goes live.

LEAVE A REVIEW

If you’re enjoying the podcast, please take 2 minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts here. Each review helps me stay motivated to keep the show going!

—
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Intro 0:03
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident game changing leader assistants.

Jeremy Burrows 0:14
Hey friends, welcome to episode 127. It’s an Ask me anything about the podcast format episode. So this one is going to be fun because I’m gonna start with a negative review. And we’re going to talk a little bit about a little bit more about how I handled negative reviews. I talked about that in regards to the book review that I read last week in Episode 126. So here we go. Today’s negative review is from K L. S, in Kirkland, Washington. And this is from March 2021. This is a two star review. And the title is great guests, but something a bit off. Happy to find a podcast about EAS and the guests are great. But the host does not seem into it at all. It sounds like he is reading from a list of questions, and just moving from one to the next without listening or caring about the answers. So first of all, KOLs thanks for listening to the show. And thanks for taking time to actually share your opinion and your feedback. I really appreciate it. This this negative review again, it’s one of those things where every time I read one, I have to check myself and say, Alright, this does not impact my value as a human being. I can’t take it personally, I should put myself in their shoes, and really try to understand. So again, that’s how I try to really my mindset when I’m looking at negative reviews. This one was interesting, because I actually had a few other negative reviews that mentioned the idea that I wasn’t listening, or I didn’t care about the answers, and that I sounded like I was scripted or reading from a list of questions. The funny part is it’s true I for most of the interview episodes, for the first, I don’t know, 80 episodes or so I was reading from a list of questions. My process was I would write out a bunch of questions and send them to the guest ahead of time so that they could, you know, be prepared. And then I will just go through those questions. And for the first probably 50 interviews that I did, honestly, it was mostly the same questions. And I crammed in a ton of interviews in a short amount of time. This is before I started working on my book. And I basically just went through question, you know, I was very robotic and very scripted. For two reasons. One, I was trying to produce a ton of content in a short amount of time, so that I could get ahead and actually have an episode every week published to I was new to this whole interviewing thing. And I wanted to I do this with my public speaking to actually, early on, I would write out word for word, everything I was going to say. And I would just practice it over and over and over. And so I did that with the podcast, because I didn’t trust my instincts. I didn’t trust my experience, because I didn’t have any experience interviewing people. So when you are not confident about something, and when you’re new to something, it’s a good idea to script things out and follow the script. As you get more practice and what I’ve started doing, if you notice the trajectory of my interviews, and the style of my interviews, I’ve been less and less scripted and more off the cuff. What that does is that comes across as at least I hope it does more conversational and more like I’m actually listening. Because I usually was listening. It was just I was just like nervous and trying to get to the next question. I did care about the answers. But I was like, I gotta record five episodes this week. And I haven’t done this before. So I’m gonna just stick to the script. So KOLs I appreciate your feedback. You’re right, something was a bit off. I’d never done this before. I’m new to this. And I was just learning. But now after I’ve interviewed 100 And I don’t know how many now 100 plus people on the show. I would like to think that I’m getting better. And I would love to hear from you. And I’d love to hear from others as well. Let me know if they can tell any difference between some of the early interviews and then some of the more recent ones. So again, how do I handle negative reviews? That’s kind of my my fly ossipee tried to learn from them, but specifically about the podcast, it’s a living organism. So I can go in and record a new episode every week. And I can learn and I can make it better or whatever. Whereas the book, I mean, it’s done, it’s out there in the world, and to really make a revision on the book would be a huge undertaking. And I may do that someday, but it’s not in the cards right now. So it’s more of a kind of final stamp of approval product that’s out there. Whereas the podcast is, is ever grow, ever changing. And it’s a living organism. And so I’m excited to take this feedback and try to be better, try to try to have more empathy towards the guests and really care about the answers and really listen better, and be a better interviewer honestly, be a better interviewer. So anyway, again, that’s hopefully helpful as you think about how you receive negative or constructive feedback in your life and in your work. The next question is, who are your top three people that you would love to interview on your podcast, but haven’t had the opportunity to yet? I would love to interview a couple of CEOs, honestly, I’ve interviewed a lot of assistants, and I’m going to continue to interview assistants. But I would love to interview Jeff Bezos, even for like 10 minutes, and just hear his thoughts on working with an executive assistant. I would actually like to interview, there’s a couple of top CEOs that I’ve actually reached out to before that they don’t actually have an assistant. And they’re like a pretty successful CEO with a very fast growing company and large, you know, high revenue numbers and all that, but they don’t have an assistant. So I would love to hear and kind of just go back and forth with a CEO that’s really innovative in forward thinking, but for whatever reason, doesn’t have an assistant. So there’s a couple of them. I’m not gonna mention names right now, but there’s a few of them that I’ve kind of seen on online over the years and just kind of even tried to reach out and ask them to participate, but no luck yet. And then lastly, Conan O’Brien assistant is awesome. And I would love to interview her. It’s her name Sona. I don’t, I don’t know. How to pronounce her last name. I think it’s most Sen Sona Movsesian. So Sona. I’m so sorry if I screwed up your last name. But I would love to interview you on my podcast if you’re listening to this by some reckless reason. I know you just had twins and I’ve been kind of Twitter and Instagram stalking you trying to ask you to be on my show. I know you’ve got a book coming out called the world’s worst assistant. I can’t wait to read it. It’s gonna be hilarious. But I would love to talk to her. She’s super fun and engaging and she has been on his Conan’s podcast, and on his TV show several times look

Speaker 3 8:17
it up. If you haven’t yet, it’s it’s definitely worth your time to check out those funny videos they do.

Jeremy Burrows 8:23
How long does it take me to produce each episode? On average, I was gonna average out all 127. Now episodes, I would say it takes me two to six hours per episode. This includes, you know, planning out the content, recording it, editing it, publishing it, writing the show notes, getting the website updated, all that kind of stuff. So two to two to six hours total for each episode. Another question is how do I decide who to have on the show? So honestly, I’ll have anybody on the show that I think has something to share that’s relevant for the assistant world. So I’ve had people on the show that aren’t assistants that don’t even have assistants, but they do you know, maybe communication coaching or personality, you know, assessment coaching or whatever things that I think will be helpful and help us as assistants lead well and resist burnout. But really anybody that will have that will give me a few minutes to talk with them. I would love to have on the show. If you’d like to be on the show. Email me at podcast at leader system.com If you know someone that would like to be on the show, or that would be a good guest that you can introduce me to or suggest email podcast at leader system.com I’m open to anyone and everyone that has something to say that could be helpful to assistance which is kind of a broad range. But when it comes to assistants, I think every assistant has a story to share and has insight that they can share. And I’d love to talk to you as well. All right, last question about the podcast is what tools do you use to record edit and publish your podcast. So I use a MacBook Pro with GarageBand. And this other software called Audacity to record and edit the show, I have a microphone from Audio Technica, that’s a USB microphone that plugs into my laptop. And then I have like a pop filter, whatever you call it, that hopefully takes out a lot of the esses in the in the T’s and the peas. Doesn’t take all of them out, as you can hear, but and then I use a software as a service called Buzzsprout. And that is who I host the podcast. So for those of you who don’t know, when you listen to this podcast on Spotify, or Stitcher or Apple podcasts, or, you know, wherever you Pandora podcast, wherever you listen to it, those services don’t actually have the file, they don’t, they don’t actually have the audio file of my show. So the audio file gets uploaded to Buzzsprout, which is a podcast host provider. And they host the audio file there. And then there’s what’s called an RSS feed, that buzz sprout creates and submits to and I submit it to Spotify and Apple podcasts and all your different podcast apps. So that they can read the, the, you know, metadata or whatever for the file. But they can tie it to the mp3 file that’s hosted by Buzzsprout. So bus routes, my host provider that I use for that. And then from my website, I use WordPress. And I use, you know, blog posts as my show notes. For all that. I think that’s all the tools that I use, is trying to double check. Yeah, so Audacity. So I actually edit it in GarageBand, just because I’m more familiar with it, and I can do it more quickly. And then I compress and kind of master it, if you will. Give it a little final editing in Audacity so that it sounds a little bit more even and professional. And then yeah, I upload it to Buzzsprout. So anyway, that’s a little bit about the podcast. Thanks for being interested in it over the last couple of years. And thanks for listening. Please do leave a review an honest review on Apple podcasts if you have enjoyed the show or if you haven’t enjoyed the show and you have feedback. And then please let me know if you have guests or have you want to be a guest on the show. Email me at podcast@leaderassistant.com. All right. We’ll talk to you next week.

Unknown Speaker 13:11
Thank you for being a leader.

Speaker 3 13:25
Please love you on Apple podcasts. Goburrows.com

Download FREE Chapters