There are so many things that can go wrong in podcast recording. But what happens when it's that you don't actually like the show? Or you have to ask your guests to rerecord? Well, in today's episode, I'm talking about exactly that. So, we're gonna go over reasons, you may have to ask your guests to re record their episode times when you could actually avoid re recording and use post production editing instead, when you may not actually even want to re record and just scrap the episode and how to tell the guests how you're feeling. So let's dive into today's episode. Before we dive in, here's a word from our sponsor. I have been in the podcasting space for a while now. And let me tell you one of the biggest struggles I see podcasters dealing with is the quality of their podcast recordings. From choppy audio to lagging video, the list could go on forever, but not with Riverside FM. As a virtual recording studio, I can rely on it for creating studio quality content in both audio and video formats. Riverside has become my go to tool for recording solo episodes, interviews, mic check society trainings, and even taking my calls with their built in editor. It's an all in one software for podcasters, especially if you're just starting out. Not only is it easy to use, but it's a lifesaver for repurposing content. My absolute favorite feature is magic clips, where with the click of a button, you have already made social media clips for easy promotion and sharing to drive even more listeners to your podcast. Get started today with Riverside FM by heading to the link in our show notes or going to creators.riverside.fm forward slash clocking in and use the code Gaffin 15 for 15% off. Hey y'all welcome to the clocking in Podcast, the podcast for podcasters entrepreneurs and professionals making their way in the working world while building their own personal brand in the podcasting industry. I'm your host Haylee Gaffin, owner of Gaffin creative a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. If you're a podcaster, or even just dreaming about launching your own podcast someday, this show was built to help you merge your love of conversation, education and business. You can find resources, show notes and more for the clocking in podcast at Gaffin creative.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Mike check society, a community that was built for podcasters who are looking to take their podcast from good to great, scale your podcasts, improve your processes and connect with your listeners through our educational trainings are private members only community and our monthly calls. If you're ready to join us, you can head over to Mic check society.com and enroll today. And you can get $10 off per month with the code podcast. Now let's clock in and get to work. All right, friends, welcome back to the show. This has been a very highly requested topic over the years. And I finally decided it was time to create this product, but also to create a podcast episode all around it. And that is how to ask a guest to rerecord an episode, or maybe even scrap it. Okay, so first, I want to start off by saying it is very, very, I won't say common, but it is normal to walk away from an episode feeling discouraged or feeling like it wasn't the right fit. And I'll be completely honest. Sometimes it's in your head. Like I have had plenty of clients who have asked me hey, will you listen to this? I just do not feel like it was a good episode. And it was a great episode. Like sometimes we just get in our head. But other times, it might just be that the episode was bad. There are a few reasons for that too. So let me go through a few reasons. You may want to actually ask a guest to rerecord their podcast episode with you starting with the least hurtful. Okay, the first one is one that you probably should have handled from the get go of the recording but technical issues, whether it's glitches in recording, or maybe they didn't have a good microphone or maybe there was an echo because they weren't wearing headphones. These are all things that I as a Podcast Producer believe podcast hosts can correct before they ever spend the time interviewing. So if you get on to a recording and your guests does not have a microphone, they don't have headphones. Their internet is glitchy. Well if it's glitchy Riverside can help you fix that. They heard about that the beginning of the episode but if they have no microphone, no headphones and it's just not sounding like a solid interview. Well, that's where you can say you know what, I'm having a little bit of feedback or I'm your audio is not coming in clear.
Do you have a microphone? Do you have corded headphones you could at least use correct those issues up front, especially if they're tapping desk or their jewelry smooth that moving. You can do all of that. In the beginning, like during the interview, you can pause it, correct it. But say something went wrong post interview, maybe you didn't notice that there was an echo. Or maybe it was something just happened. You can go back to them and tell them, hey, I want to give you this clip of the audio, I want you to hear it. There is a glitch in the system, the sound, whatever. And I want to re record. So technical issues may be one reason. And that is probably one of the simplest ways to ask someone to rerecord is if there was a technical issue, because you can go back and correct that. Now, the second one does kind of get into the harder conversations. And that's content clarity. Maybe you asked a question, and they never really answered it. And so you tried asking it again. And they still never really answered it. That happens, it happens because a guest may have their own agenda of what they want to talk about, but you have yours and you're trying to figure out how to get it out of them, but they're trying to get to their point. Content clarity is a huge, huge mismatched alignment of a goal. And this is where, again, you can correct this upfront of here's, I'm going to provide you with a topic. And I'm going to provide you with the questions I'm going to ask you, do you have any feedback on these, and this is where a guest can come in and say, You know what, I would really love for you to ask me this, because I am going to launch this thing, and it would be perfect in an alignment. Whereas you may not know that so that on the front end can be corrected during the interview or prior to the interview happening. Now, the third reason is incoherent or off topic responses. So maybe they are using examples that don't make sense. Maybe they're using language that your audience wouldn't get. Or maybe they don't even know who your audience is. So they could come in expecting to be talking to, like, say on my show, maybe they think that my audience is YouTubers, and they're talking to podcasters. And some of those answers may lean a different way. Like, say I wanted to talk about the best practices for podcasting on podcast players, but that's different than on YouTube. So maybe they keep like referencing YouTube, because they just don't know who my audience is. And that's where, like, maybe I'm trying to steer them in the right direction, but they're just not getting it, you can always go back and ask them, hey, you know, my audience is actually this person, not that one. Maybe we could re record type of thing. Now, the fourth reason you may have to ask a guest to re record is there was mismatched energy. So what I mean by this is, maybe you were having an off day, or maybe they were or maybe you were more excited about the topic, or they were and it just something fell off. conversations can definitely feel off. And here is what I would say in those moments. Like if you are having a day where you're going into a podcast interview. And if there are 500 other things going on in your business or in your brain, take a moment to like step out of that prepare yourself for those interviews Don't Don't be the reason you have to re record, make sure you're going into them really excited to learn and you're focused on the episode because a lot of times, conversations can be dull or lag because one person isn't listening to the other. Like, I don't know, if you've ever been in a conversation and you just kind of Daydream off, and then you look back and you're like, I don't have a clue as to what they just said. It happens. And in those moments, especially in podcast interviews, if you have a production team, like a producer and editor, you can straight up I'm not even kidding. You can say I am so sorry. I'm Miss. I don't think I heard exactly what you said. Can you repeat the answer? So that you can give them a solid answer, but sometimes maybe it's awkward and it's them. They're the reason maybe it's they're just not the same person you've seen online, maybe you don't know them, and something just feels off. That happens too. Now those are just a few reasons you may want to ask a guest to rerecord. But sometimes in many of these cases, it may not be a full rerecord that's required, but instead maybe just an edit. Maybe there's something they said an answer. So here are a few times that you could actually just fix the problem and post production instead of asking for A foolproof record. And I have run into each and every one of these. So it's not that I'm like, oh, here are just a few things I'm, I could possibly happen No, all of these have happened, every single one of them. Okay, so number one is they respond to one answer with something you don't agree with on a high level. So maybe it's like a strategy that you know doesn't work or maybe it's a tool that doesn't actually do what they say it's doing or anything, discuss it with them if it's like, they believe something different than you. But if it's like to your core, you would not want to put it out on your podcast as a potential way to do something because you truly disagree with it. That is something you can edit out. And I will say discuss it with them. Tell them hey, you know, I in this episode, we talked about X, Y, and Z. And I just really, I didn't agree with it. And I struggled to put that out on my platform, like, it's not something I would ever recommend to my clients. But I still love the episode, would you mind if I just cut that whole section of the conversation out, just so we're not, you know, I'm not misrepresenting what I believe that is what you could do. A second time that you could actually edit out someone is, maybe they recommend someone that you're not a fan of, or they recommend a platform or a tool that just does not align with you. And a lot of it comes back to values. So if like you to your core, know, what you believe what you want to represent, you can go to them and say, hey, you know, person to person, friend, a friend, colleague to colleague, I just want you to know, I'm going to edit this out of the conversation because of XY and Z. Here's the reasoning. And I think being honest in that capacity, really tells them like, there's a reason that this person is making this recommendation or making this decision. And through your honesty, they are actually hearing you and understanding you. Now you may run into situations where it doesn't happen. Like they're like, No, I really liked them. And I want to keep it in there because we have an agreement together or something. And that's where you at the end of the day have to make your own decisions of okay, then I just not going to air the episode. Or if in the moment while you're recording, they recommend them and you're like, oh, you know, that's really funny actually have a friend that I recommend to blah, blah, blah, that type of thing. So, yeah, that's always something you can correct in the conversation. But sometimes you're caught off guard and you can't really do it. Now the third reason you may want to edit instead of rerecord is maybe they're using terminology or language you would not put on your platform. So a few examples of this are curse words, I have a lot of clients that do not curse on their platforms. And we have a variety of options that we do. One is tell them prior that we don't use language like that. But sometimes it's just in people's vocabulary. And that's totally fine. I mean, I I use some language that some of my clients wouldn't put on their podcast to, I typically don't do it on this platform. But in my Lifestyle podcast I do in my everyday life, yeah. But it's not something I would necessarily put on clocking in. Now, the other thing is that they could use terminology language that misrepresent you misrepresent your brand. Maybe that is they don't know that it's language you shouldn't use. And there are so many levels of this that I could talk about. And I've edited those words out before, like, if someone is misusing a word, if someone is saying something that
they don't know is wrong to use. Yeah, there are so many times I've taken that and I've corrected it. On host sides on guest sides, like, the important thing is, if that is happening, you reach out and you tell them, I have had clients who have used language that they didn't know was wrong to use. And so I have had to say, Hey, just wanted to flag this for you. I've gone ahead and edited it out. And if you want to put back in, I could put it back in as your platform and your podcast. But here's why I think we should take it out. And usually that is met with thanks and gratefulness because they were unaware. Now, before we go too far into this anymore, because I I want to highlight this, I don't believe in censoring your guests to a level that like misrepresents them. I really don't. What I do believe in is knowing that this is your platform and it represents you so every single thing in this I really want to highlight this and i If you don't take anything else away from this episode, I want you to take this away As your platform represent you as a person, you as a business, your brand as a whole. So consider who you're putting on your show, what they represent. And if that aligns with you, if that aligns with your brand, and if that aligns with your audience, because at the end of the day, when you hit publish on an episode that has anyone saying anything on it, it represents you, you are supporting them and their platform as well. Now, you can always retro actively go back and remove episodes or update language, like I've had a client in the past, who actually had a podcast interview with someone, we, we worked with. That person ended up ghosting a bunch of clients, and then shutting down his business. But the content of the episode was still so good. So what we did this was like a couple of years later, what we did was we went back to that podcast episode, we re recorded a new intro, that basically said, while the content of this episode is still valid, this business is now shut down. Here's someone else that we would recommend you go to if you are looking for someone to do this for you instead of doing it yourself. And then at the end, we're the guest shared all of the ways you could contact them, we actually cut all of that out, we took away any opportunity to know the brand, but just left the core value of the episode. Now we have talked about reasons you would have a guest rerecord reasons, you might want to edit something, and then highlighted the importance of your podcast being a piece of your platform and representing your brand. Now I want to get into one of the harder conversations is very few and far between that I have actually scrapped episodes for clients or the client didn't even send it to me. But there are times that it happens. The first one goes back to what we were just talking about. Your core values weren't aligned throughout the episode, this could be that you started to realize who they were as a person, maybe you had never had a one on one conversation with them. And you just realize the business that they're building does not align with the business I'm building. And I don't necessarily want this on my podcast, maybe it was a big opportunity and a good interview and someone who had a huge audience and you wanted to get in front of their audience and you didn't do the backend work of figuring out who this person is? Do I actually want to have them on my show? Can they provide value to my audience? It maybe they didn't provide any value. So are your core values aligned? Did they provide value but then, in addition to that, the guests could have made you feel uncomfortable through statements or language they were using. I have seen this personally happen on clients podcasts, where maybe they were talking bad about other people, maybe they were talking down to the hosts, there's so many ways that a guest can make you feel uncomfortable, especially if you don't know them. So you can instead of like going back and having to sit through another conversation that you're not looking forward to and you just do not see happening, you can actually go back to the guest and tell them you're scrapping the episode. Now you can do this in a much nicer way. But that is an option. Now the last thing I want to highlight is how to actually approach a guest in all of these situations. So there are three things that could happen in across the board in this episode. So maybe you want to edit the podcast, maybe you want to re record the thing as a whole. Maybe you want to scrap the episode. Here's what we're going to do. If you want to edit something that they said, approach them express your concern on what they said and why it did not align with your podcast or your brand. And then highlight that you'd be interested in using the rest of the conversation but not that specific part. The second thing is if you want to re record. So again, approach them, ask them to re record their episode and describe why the first episode is not an option to err. I think this comes really really hard to a lot of us because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. Now. When it's a technical issue, no problem that's easy to go back to them and say hey, I want to re record but when it comes to how they answered things, if you are struggling either during the conversation or after to actually air an episode, I want you to consider how you would want to be treated here. Would you want them to go ahead and air the episode and then you kind of look silly because you especially in conversations like when you are live on a recording, you get a little nervous, maybe they weren't nervous, maybe you were nervous. Just think about what you would want to happen here. Would you want someone to be honest? Would you want that feedback, especially if you're going on like a podcasting Tour, where you're doing all these different podcasts, consider that, like, make that the forefront of how you approach is, how would I want to be approached. Now, if you're wanting to completely scrap the episode, there are a few ways you can go about it, only one of which I really recommend. The first is you can be honest, and that's the one I want to recommend. I think honesty goes so far as a podcaster. And as a person, because if it is something that maybe you maybe how they approached you as a host was rude or how they approached you in the conversation and like made you feel a little less than which that happens to like, there are guests that will come on and think they are the I mean, they are the expert in whatever you're having them on us. But they talk to you that way. That is something that, in my opinion, you can be if you're honest, you can change their approach, you can change the industry. And I think the same thing about pitches. I talked about this back, I'll link the episode in the show notes. But I had an episode on how to reject a podcast pitch when it's not good. And I talked about how I think if we as an industry start to tell people that their pitches are bad, that they will go change, and that makes them improve. But also it makes them do the research. So we're not having to get podcast pitches that are so terrible, or irrelevant to our audience. I will say, I don't necessarily respond to every pitch that comes in because I do file them into like, oh, one day I would actually interview this person. But when a pitch comes in, and it's like, this is a terrible pitch, why in the world would I have a porta Potti company on my podcast to talk about putting porta potties and event spaces like, that's not, that's not ideal for me. So what I do instead is I tell them, Hey, I just want you to know, this has nothing to do with my audience, I highly recommend you do a little research, or even the ones that are like podcast production agencies pitching me and telling me how much they loved my episode, despite the fact that it says this podcast is produced by Gaffin, creative a podcast production company. So I just want to highlight that, like, honesty goes so much further. So I personally recommend the honest approach. Now, there are two other ones that I've seen happen in the industry, and I'm not gonna lie. In certain cases, we have used them. And that is one, you lose the files. Oh, no, they're gone. And I'm saying this very sarcastically because I don't love this approach.
I don't I really, really don't. But sometimes it's easier to do that, especially in hard conversations. I will say that if you go to them and you tell them they've that you've lost the files, or there was a corruption in the file or whatever their immediate thought is, let's rerecord. So, that is one thing you're going to have to deal with. So my opinion, honestly, is probably better. Now, the other approach is ghosting them and I do not recommend this. I don't like this approach. Because I don't think it's kind. Now if they were a complete butthole do you go small you want if they were rude, and but at the same time, I honestly feel like I would go back to them. If you decide to ghost them. And then they reach out, I would tell them the truth like hey, you know, after much thought and consideration, this is just not a good fit, and blah, blah, blah. But again, honestly, is probably the best approach in that situation to now, this is actually a little bit longer of an episode than I normally do for my solos that are like how tos. But I want to just remind you, your podcast, represent you and your brand. I know I talked about that a lot. But when you are pitching when you are coordinating with your guests when you are releasing episodes, think about that. Think about that in every situation. Now as a Podcast Producer, I feel like a part of my job and my responsibility is to tell you when something doesn't sit right. I can count on quite a few hands. The number of times I've had to go to a client and tell them hey, you know, I really enjoyed most of this conversation, I did not enjoy this section, it felt this way, it made me see this, it made me think this, like, the way you make your podcast, listeners feel is really important. And so when I as a podcast, producer slash listener, I'm listening to these shows to when I hear something said, that doesn't sit right with me. Or maybe I know something that my client doesn't know about their guest, I am going to go back to them. And I'm going to say, Hey, I just want you to know this. In case you want to consider it for how it represents your brand. And that is, I feel like a huge responsibility for producers, editors, team members alike. If you know something, speak up. If you are aware of something, maybe someone else isn't speak up. The other thing is, these conversations can be really, really hard. It's hard, especially when it comes to being a business. Because maybe your business could be hurt by the other person. Maybe they could drag you down or talk bad about you like there are so many what ifs. And I understand that. And that is why I think it's important to start somewhere with this honesty conversation. And that is where templates come into play. I'm a huge fan of using templates as a starting point. And that's why I have quite a few email templates in my podcast shop. But I specifically wanted to create podcast templates for conversations like this. How to ask your guests to rerecord their episode how to tell a guest that you are not airing their episode, or how to edit your guest and tell them that you've edited them. So inside of my shop at Gaffin creative.com, forward slash shop and we'll link in the show notes. I have just released a brand new podcast, email templates for how to rerecord with your guest, or how to give your guest feedback. Now, if you are someone who is like us is right for me, maybe you don't need them right now. But one day, if you ever do, they are in the shop, they are available to you. In case you need to have those hard conversations, my hope is that you never have to. I really, really hope you never have to have those conversations. And I will go ahead and point out like if you are like, Oh, but where's the line? Where do I tell them I'm editing them out. I don't think it's wrong to edit out curse words, and not tell your guests, maybe you put a beep over it like the beep, you can do that too. For me, I will edit out content. Like if they're being redundant, or, you know, just make sure your guests know that you do have an editor on staff or on your team. And you will be edited to an extent, as long as you're not going over the top and changing their I guess narrative, changing their belief system, changing their core values, anything that's going to alter who they are, I wouldn't change and like you could argue, oh, but cursing is a part of my brand. That's fine, but it's not a part of yours. You know. So I really hope that you took some interesting takeaways away from this, you are prepared in case these things come up in conversation as you are creating content. Maybe you are more equipped to actually handling this in the moment. And you can push back during the conversation and say, hey, you know, I want to pause for a second because this maybe it's audio maybe it's the way they're talking. Maybe it's language that you're using cursing, blah, blah, blah. I hope you're equipped to do that now. But in addition, I hope that you can have these hard conversations and are ready to so that we can make the industry a little bit better as a whole and continue to create really great conversations for our audiences. All right, friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I will talk to you all next week in another Back to the Basics episode. I'll see you then. Thank you so much for listening to clocking in with Haylee Gaffin for resources mentioned in today's episode head to Gaffin creative.com. If you're a podcaster looking for a community that will help you improve your podcast, make sure you check out Mike check society, our community for podcasters who are looking to take their podcast for from good to great. Enroll today at Mic check society.com and use code podcast for $10 off per month. If you love this episode, I'd be honored if you'd leave me a review in the Apple podcast app. Until next time, I'm your host Haylee Gaffin clocking out
