I Think I Like Being the Guest Better

I have done a few podcasts lately, with a couple more coming out next week, and I discovered something unexpected.

I really like being the guest.

Mostly because I have absolutely no idea what I am going to say.

This is a somewhat dangerous quality in a man who has already written a book revealing considerably more about himself than most reasonable people would recommend.

Writing is different.

Writing gives you an enormous and completely unfair advantage.

You get to edit.

You can write something incredibly stupid, stare at it for thirty seconds, delete it, and nobody ever has to know it happened.

I have benefited enormously from this technology.

With books, anyway.

Personal emails, apparently not so much.

Writing also allows you to make yourself sound considerably more thoughtful than you were in the actual moment.

In real life, you might have stood there completely confused thinking, What the hell just happened?

Six months later, sitting at a keyboard:

It was in that moment that I began to understand the complicated nature of human connection.

No, you didn't.

You had no idea what was happening.

But congratulations on the personal growth.

Podcasts don't give you that luxury.

Someone asks you a question.

There is a microphone sitting six inches from your face.

Apparently an answer is now expected.

So you start talking.

There are other things you apparently need to think about as well.

Lighting, for example.

I did a podcast last night and forgot to turn on a lamp.

This seemed completely inconsequential when we started.

Then the sun went down.

Very slowly, over the course of the conversation, I began disappearing.

By the end, I looked considerably less like a podcast guest and considerably more like I was being held hostage in a closet.

The host never mentioned it.

Which I appreciated.

Either he didn't notice or he has interviewed enough people to know when not to ask questions.

The content should be interesting.

The authorities may also want to review the final twenty minutes.

But that unpredictability is what I have come to love about podcasts.

Sometimes I have absolutely no idea where an answer is going.

The host asks me something about the book, business, relationships, getting older, starting over, my kids, or one of the many questionable decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

I start answering.

Then somewhere in the middle, I hear myself say something I have never actually said before.

And I think:

Well, apparently that's how I feel about that.

Which is a fascinating way to learn things about yourself.

Therapy probably has a more sophisticated process.

I have a microphone.

There is also something wonderfully strange about being the guest.

I have spent much of my life being the person responsible for what happens next.

Running companies will do that to you.

People bring you problems. Decisions eventually find their way to your desk. Even when you don't know the answer, you are generally expected to create the appearance that one will be arriving shortly.

Preferably before payroll.

Being a podcast guest is the opposite.

Someone else is driving.

I just get in the car.

They decide where we are going.

And occasionally they make a turn I wasn't expecting.

Those are usually the best conversations.

I expect questions about writing a book.

Instead, someone asks why I wrote it.

I expect questions about building companies.

Instead, someone asks what failure taught me.

I expect a conversation about starting over after 50.

Suddenly we are talking about my father.

Well. That escalated quickly.

But there is something freeing about it.

I don't have to construct the conversation or decide what the lesson is.

I just have to answer honestly.

And honesty without editing is very different from honesty on a page.

On a page, honesty gets several opportunities to reconsider its position.

At a microphone, honesty has already left the building.

There is also a lot more laughter than I expected.

Some of the things I have written about are not particularly funny when you put them in a list.

Divorce.

Relationships ending.

Losing companies.

Starting over.

Getting older.

Family.

Fear.

Failure.

That sounds less like a podcast and more like someone should probably take away my shoelaces.

But life becomes funny when you get far enough away from some of it.

Things that once felt catastrophic become stories.

You start noticing the ridiculous parts.

The ego. The certainty. The decisions you made while absolutely convinced you knew what you were doing.

And then comes the slightly uncomfortable realization that you still occasionally make decisions while absolutely convinced you know what you are doing.

Growth apparently has limits.

Maybe that is what I like most about these conversations.

For an hour, I don't know what the next question is.

I don't know where the conversation will go.

Occasionally I don't even know what I think until I hear myself say it.

Then the microphone turns off and, surprisingly often, I walk away knowing something about myself that I didn't know an hour earlier.

I have a couple of these conversations coming out next week.

I have no idea which parts they kept.

This should concern me considerably more than it does.

But I am looking forward to watching them.

Although after last night, perhaps with the brightness turned all the way up.

Paul Harkins