In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- The value of the recorded human voice
- What Engel learned from 1,001 interviews in three months
- Personal reflection is the foundation for good conversation
The Interviewing Blitz
Engel has always been an entrepreneur. With his father’s hustle and his mother’s insight, Engel started a number of business ventures that eventually led him to making podcasts.
Engel was fascinated by the conversations EO Fire host John Lee Dumas had with his guests. But the more he listened, the more he wanted those conversations to go further. So, he decided to start his own show and compete with the number of interviews EO Fire had produced up to that point.
That led to a crazy goal: 1,509 conversations in three months.
Just shy of the mark — yet no less impressive — Engel conducted 1,001 interviews. Four years later, he has conducted over 2,922 podcast interviews.
Pursuing More Than Money
Engel says doing 1,001 interviews in three months did help him gain the podcasting skill set he wanted — and enabled him to start podcasting for a living. While monetary gain was always part of his podcasting plan, it was never its totality. An acronym his wife taught him serves as his definition for what really constitutes wealth:
- When
- Essential
- Action
- Leads
- To
- Happiness
This phrase serves as a guiding principle for his work.
Conversation Master
Engel shares that because each of his episodes are only 12 minutes long, he has to get to the heart of things quickly. He wants his questions to be constructive for his guest, prompting them to continue developing the conversation with others off the podcast.
Engel strives for his podcast to act as a heuristic tool that prompts listeners to more deeply consider the mechanisms of their lives rather than telling them how to live.
“I’ve taken another route . . . helping others pursue excellence by giving hope.”
Engel stresses that asking good questions and postponing personal judgments are key to helping others achieve excellence.
Archiving The Voices Of Humanity
Engel is a huge believer in the power of human voice, as well as the inner voice of intuition. He reflects that multitudes of voices abound in today’s culture, making it difficult to focus and listen.
“The individual who has fine-tuned their listening to understand that voice that they’re hearing…is really amazing.”
For Engel, the voice is more of a window to the soul than the eyes, and it can reveal a person’s deeper emotions. When recorded, it creates a timestamp of a person’s life. Engel says he didn’t set out to develop an ear for what the voice communicates — but after years of listening, he has found it’s very challenging to hide emotions in your voice.
“When I’m listening to prepare for a conversation on the podcast, I’m not just listening to what the person is saying. I am actively listening to the sound of their voice.”
There is value in the voice.
Those willing to listen to their own voice and develop a curiosity about who they are will find themselves listening to and partaking in great conversations.
