How a 2×4 Will Get Your Guests to Share Anything

Adam Vazquez 0:06
All right, welcome back to Content Is for Closers. I’ve got another great episode today with Andrew Warner, the author of Stop Asking Questions. He’s also the founder Mixergy. He is the pretty well-known guy in and around the internet. And I gotta tell you, Carlton, this one was a little bit intimidating for me talking to the guy who wrote the book on podcast hosting.

Carlton Riffel 0:28
Did you stop asking questions partway through?

Adam Vazquez 0:32
I know, I pretty much asked questions. But I tried to ask good questions at least, or prompt in a way the audience wants to tell me, I think I think I think it was an eye interview. But just the headspace beforehand was tough, knowing that this is what he does.

Carlton Riffel 0:50
I thought you did great, man. And I think he thought so as well, just from the sound of it. But I do think that he Well, first of all, he impressed me for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is that he’s run marathons on every continent now. So I was right off the bat, I was like, man, this guy’s a level up.

Adam Vazquez 1:17
Yeah, tells the story of how he made that happen. I think it permeates a lot of his career, which is kind of stepping out, taking action, creating energy, and then figuring out a way, and he’s done that to create a very successful business and Mixergy if you’re not familiar with it, mixergy.com, where he interviews some of the most famous entrepreneurs and investors in the world.

Carlton Riffel 1:44
Yeah, the other thing that I think was awesome is that, like me, it seems like he sometimes struggles with needing accountability for things. And so he’s actually like, developed some systems to just kind of use the podcast interview or use other things in his life, to have like this idea of accountability and, and finding that person being there, or that person expecting something, gives him a little bit more of an incentive to finish it or to keep going. So he touches on that a little bit. But I thought that was something at his level. A lot of times you just think, oh, no, they don’t struggle with that. Like, they Yeah, this just comes naturally. But that’s encouraging to hear that even he uses that to leverage productivity.

Adam Vazquez 2:27
Yeah. And I thought it was cool how he leans into that, I think I’m like you. I have a lot of self-guilt around the fact that I don’t love sitting by myself for 90 minutes everyday writing or something, you know what I mean? That’s what it feels like you’re supposed to do if you want to be successful. And he kind of has the opposite approach. He’s like, Listen, I don’t like doing that. So I’ve created systems where I have to co-create with other people. And that’s how it that is my creation, which is similar to us in a lot of ways. So I think there’s a ton to take away from this episode. And I think I think people are really going to enjoy it. He’s obviously a very gifted speaker and guest so really thankful to have Andrew Warner on for this episode.

Intro 3:14
Put that content down. Content. The close is over. What’s your name? Content. That’s my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That’s my name. Content Is for Closers.

Adam Vazquez 3:37
Alright, we were there very excited to have Andrew Warner here on Content Is for Closers. Andrew, I’m so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you for spending time with us. It’s a little intimidating having the guy who wrote the book, Stop Asking Questions to come on your podcast. So I tried to outsource some questions, crowdsourcing questions and your publisher, Ben Putana gave me a great one. Shout out Ben. He’s been a guest on our show and I’m obsessed with it, so I can’t even get into the interview until you tell us about running across Antarctica or something about the experience of that.

Andrew Warner 4:12
Dude, I had this goal of running a marathon on every continent for years. And then I, I just decided I was gonna start doing it. And because of a friend, I said, I was gonna get it all done in one year at Marathon, every continent, all in a year. And when I decided that, and I announced it, I didn’t realize that getting to Antarctica was really problematic. I mean, we’re talking about restrictions because of international treaties. They’re all these countries that don’t want any one country to take over. They’re also environmental concerns. You don’t want people traipsing through us Antarctica, which is just beautiful, pristine, and untouched. And I worked so hard to find a way to get there and I couldn’t. So what I would do is I just ran on every continent and as I ran, I posted on Twitter. We’re in Instagram and emailed my list and said, I made another continent. And I’m down one more, and I’m working to get to another one. Can somebody out there help me get to Antarctica? And people just kept finding ways for me to do it. And one person said, habit if you just get on a cruise ship, and so I called up a cruise company and said, Can I run on a cruise ship? Like on your trip? Well, first of all, can I land? And they said, No, we can’t let you land. And we definitely can’t let you run 26.2 miles, I said, Okay, can I run on your cruise ship? I said, Well, if you do that, it’s kind of slippery. That’s not going to work out. How about on a treadmill on a cruise ship inside of Antarctic waters. I said, Now that doesn’t feel right. Finally, this guy, Eric said, I think I can get you on there. There’s a company called and Arctic logistics that gets people to Antarctica, when they want to do things like go from one side of the continent to the other. They could do it. And sure enough, they had a seat on their plane, that this old Soviet plane that lands on the snow and ice over there. And they let me get on. And I did it. It was a solo marathon. There was not another marathon going on. There was just me running and their team making sure I was safe. And I did it and it feels great.

Adam Vazquez 6:10
Wow, as unbelievable. So that there was they had you had some support, I guess, like they had water for you and things like that.

Andrew Warner 6:18
They did. They had water support, there was also a guy who had just kind of drive around on this vehicle to hit that worked on the snow and ice and he would just check up on me. And they also wanted to make sure it’s a little weird to say but you’re not allowed to pee on Antarctica and not when you go deep in it, because it’s actually a desert there. So you don’t get a lot of snow or rain and whatever does stay there just stays there. And when you need water, you’re basically melting snow. And so they don’t want people peeing out there. So that it just stays there forever. And people potentially drink it. So they made sure that I had a bottle with me, they made sure that I didn’t pollute the continent. This is a little too much information, but that’s what you have to do.

Adam Vazquez 7:03
No, no, that’s incredible. Yeah, what an accomplishment. Congratulations. Besides Antarctica, what was your favorite other marathon that you ran?

Andrew Warner 7:16
There are so many of them that were good. I had no idea how cool is Estonia would be my most challenging one was Africa. And in Africa, I said, I’m just gonna go out for a run. My wife and I, my wife came down with me. We went on safari, we had this beautiful experience. And then when I was there, I said to the people who ran the hotel, or the set of tents that we were in, which were very posh, I said, Can I just run they said, Well, if you run here, they’re gonna be animals. It’s just not right. But if you go outside this gate over here and just run down that one road, it’s a protected place, you can go do it. So I did. I didn’t realize that even though I got up before the sun, the sun was going to come out and there was no shade. It was so painful, so hot. And it was the toughest by far of all the marathons, including Antarctica really hard. But on every continent, I met entrepreneurs, I interviewed them, I got to know what the country was like through their experiences. And that’s one of the beauties of being a podcaster that there’s an audience of people who could support you and help you achieve your goals, even if it’s a personal goal for me of being on every continent and running. But also, once you’re there, help you understand what the environment is like help you find people to meet, it was phenomenal because of the podcast, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without it. And I definitely wouldn’t have had this kind of fun without it.

Adam Vazquez 8:37
Incredible. I’ve run a couple of marathons. I ran 30 miles when I turned 30 years old a couple of year ago. And now I feel soft. So he challenged me already five minutes into the show. Aside from being a prolific runner, obviously you kind of alluded there to the fact that you’re, you’re obviously also a master interviewer we talked about your book already mentioned your book, and your publisher, Ben Putana, who’s been on this show. And that book is Stop Asking Questions. I kind of want to jump to the punch line there and just ask you over the course of your career over the course of obviously, hosting your show, how did you begin to codify the things that make you a great interviewer. I think that’s what struck me is that obviously, you have all this experience, you give all these great stories in the show, but there’s such a clear system. And as a creator myself, I think sometimes it can be easy to just do things by feel or whatever. And you have this codified systematic. How did you come up with that?

Andrew Warner 9:41
I host events. The short answer is I’m a systems person. I host events. I just had people come over here invited my whole my son’s hold third grade class over and the last time I had an event like that, I realized that we have this beautiful set of seats around a fire pit beautiful area people grab it A to it. And it’s shady, which means that you don’t have to deal with the harsh Austin, Texas sun. And unfortunately, the last time people went there, there was bird poop on there. And I just didn’t think to clean it up because it’s a whole other section of the outdoors. So I went and I wrote a list of things that I needed to do for next time. And one of them was make sure to wipe down the chairs. So this time I wiped down the chairs. And sure enough, people sat there and enjoyed it. And that’s the way that I operate: I do something. And then whenever there’s a problem with it, I go back to a checklist and I say, next time, make sure to improve by doing this extra checklist item, or eliminating a checklist item. Well, if that’s how I operate day to day, if that’s how I run my business, if that’s how I run the events that I have over at my house, I thought it would make sense to do the same thing for interviewing.

Now with interviewing, there isn’t a checklist I couldn’t say to guest I have this question. Then once I check it off, I’m gonna have another one. Another one. That’s just too stilted. And it’s more like listening to a form get filled out than a real conversation. But what I could realize is, there are times when I want to understand something about a guest. And I could try asking a question in one way and suddenly hit pay dirt. And I could walk away and say, “Oh, you know what? I got it! the person was open about how they first started their business, but in a real way. How lucky I am.” Or I could say, “Why did that happen?” And what I decided to do was ask, “Why did that happen? How could I repeat it?” And the solution to the answer to that was to have each interview transcribed, and then go over it and see what happens. Because normally, in a conversation, when something goes, well, you’re too involved in the conversation to realize why. But if you have a transcript, you can see why it happens. You can see what led to it. And then you can start to make a checklist, a little set of techniques that works with examples of why they work. And that’s what I started putting together.

And so for example, if I asked somebody about a difficult part of her life, and she was open, I went back with someone else. And we both read the transcript. And we realize the reason she said it was about 20 minutes before I talked about a problem with my family. I talked about something like how we didn’t have insurance and my dad, every time we got hurt would say you got to recover because we don’t have insurance. Or if we took a risk, you would say, well, we don’t have insurance. So you better not take a big risk. We can’t pay for your medical care. And so I said that. And then 20 minutes later, when it was time for her to share, she got open, I wrote it down. I said, You know what? Here’s an observation. If I could share, I may not get a quick, immediate response of somebody being equally open, but it’ll trigger something often. And so I added that to the list, and then add another thing. And another thing. And before long, I had this long list of techniques that worked in conversations, especially within interviews on a podcast, but also broadly in any conversation. And that’s what became the book Stop Asking Questions.

Adam Vazquez 12:56
Yeah, super helpful resource. It reminds me a little bit of Harry Stebbings from 2020 vc just yesterday or two days ago, came out with his biggest lessons learned he’s now doing a million downloads every month on his show. And that was his number one tip was unveil something about yourself early in the conversation or even before the conversation that allows your guests to unveil themselves. In the course of conversation. I think that’s super powerful. I think it alludes to something else that you are pretty well known for which is getting guests and maybe explain something or unveil something that they maybe wouldn’t in another context or on another show. Specifically, when that comes to uncomfortable topics, whether that be how much money somebody’s made or a trauma that they’ve encountered somebody that was that? Did it like, are you just naturally curious and able to work through some of those things? Or did that take some training for you to like, get over that tension? You know what I’m asking?

Andrew Warner 13:59
Yeah, I’ll tell you it’s a hard question to ask anybody. But one way that I was able to do it was by explaining why I would talk to a guest and I would say, what’s your revenue? How much did you make last year? And they just stiffen up because it’s an awkward thing to be asked. And so I say, let me tell you why I’m trying to understand this. I see a lot of companies that are making a lot of noise and seem to be growing, but there’s not much revenue and there’s not much profit, and I’m worried about building a business that does the same thing and doesn’t have much profit. I’m trying to understand. Are you in that position? How much profit is there? How big is it? I don’t want to pry. I’m not trying to get your tax returns. But I’m trying to understand how big is this? Once you say that the person realizes Okay, Andrew doesn’t need the exact number. What can I feel comfortable sharing and sometimes they would say something like 10 to 20 million, that would that’d be all I need. That’s not enough for them to feel like they’ve been invaded, but enough for me to understand what’s going on. But there’s another technique.

I read recognized also, if I did a little bit of research, I would find that some people reveal their revenue somewhere online in old blog posts in some dashboard somewhere that they made public. And they weren’t super protective of it. So knowing that they were open, I would ask them, what’s your revenue, and they would just reveal it. Now, the audience doesn’t know that I did my research and found out that this guest naturally tells it all the audience knows as Andrew asked the question and the guest answers. And the audience often becomes the interviewees. And people who never heard me who are about to be interviewed might go and listen to an interview. And then they see that and they say, this is the expectation here. Andrew is going to be asking about that kind of like when I grew up, I used to listen to Howard Stern and Howard Stern would if he had a woman on or a man on, he would ask them when you lose your virginity, or how often do you have sex or something, eventually, all his future guests understood, you don’t go there if you don’t want to be asked about it. And if you do go there, you’re going to be asked about it. So either answer or have a playful response to move on, and keep the conversation going. So that’s what helped me being sincere and explaining why I’m asking and the guests sometimes, having said it publicly, and if I do my research, I could find it.

Adam Vazquez 16:18
Yeah, such a powerful technique. I did a little bit of research on you. And obviously read the Mixergy site. Read it read all of your background. And I think one of the most interesting tidbits This isn’t necessary about interviewing, but just about you, is you had this previous company with your brother. And I think there was a line in your about that basically said, you thought that was going to be your company for the rest of your life. And it wasn’t. But now you’ve been doing— How long have you been doing Mixergy for?

Andrew Warner 16:47
15 years.

Adam Vazquez 16:48
15 years. So this one has become the one that has carried along a long period of time, what were you able to carry from that first experience that was successful but ended, that has allowed you to be so successful and have so much longevity at Mixergy?

Andrew Warner 17:08
I think that I kept planning for consistency. So one of the things that I heard was anybody can be great when they’re inspired on their best day. But to be able to be great on a regular basis takes a lot of work and it takes some structure. And so I started to build a structure, a structure that allowed me to do interviews, even on days and weeks when I don’t feel like doing interviews, even on days and weeks when I don’t feel like having a conversation, I wanted a structure that would allow me to both have one and have a great conversation. And so that meant that my calendar is always booked. I could look at my calendar right now. And I could see that there’s going to be an interview, whether I’m in Antarctica, and I’m about to land back after in America, and I might be tired and maybe feeling like, oh, this is back to life. What do I do now? Nope, there’s an interview scheduled. I know I can do other things. But I’m also going to do an interview. I’m looking at my calendar. Sure enough, tomorrow 2:30 Central time, I’ve got an interview. Next week, I’ll have an interview. And by filling up the calendar and making sure that there’s somebody else who is holding me accountable to keep my work going, I can keep it going even on days when I don’t feel like it. The other thing is, I keep thinking about how do I do this well. So when I capture something that helps me do it. Well, I make sure to include it and you use it with me because you read my book before we got started. You said Andrew, what’s a win for you? And so you asked me what’s a win for me, I was able to tell you, I love to talk about my book, and you mentioned it and you put me at ease and you made me feel great. I do that with my guests too. And so little techniques like that start to build up. And pretty soon you have a recipe for greatness.

Adam Vazquez 18:48
And so when you say that the kind of the social accountability, it’s the fact that there’s someone else on the mic. Do you think that’s let me put it this way. If it was a solo creation, do you think you’d have the same amount of motivation?

Andrew Warner 19:03
No, no, no, no way. I don’t know how bloggers used to get up every day and write though I guess having an audience be there expecting them to write helps. I talked to TikTok errs last night who had amazing TikTok followings. And I don’t know how they could sit down and write sometimes these 32nd clips will take them three hours to write because they have to have it punchy and they have to have it just right. And the thing about that is that they have to do it on their own. It’s really challenging. It’s really challenging to find a way to get up every day and do it on your own as interviewers at pod as podcasters, there’s somebody else there who’s helping to not just show up and keep us accountable, but help carry the weight. It’s an incredible for the incredibly fortunate place to be.

Adam Vazquez 19:53
That alludes to something I’ve seen you talk about on Twitter recently and I’d love for you to talk a little bit about here. It’s this idea that The people that you surround yourself with are greater than the why I think a lot of us are looking for a why. And I mean, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I may be misframing that. But can you talk a little bit about that concept or explain that to the audience?

Andrew Warner 20:16
Yeah, the person who I’m doing an interview with has a reason for being on and if that reason is just self-promotion, then it’s going to be painful to listen to. But if that reason is, “I love entrepreneurship. My teachers didn’t let me sell candy as a kid. Now I get to be an entrepreneur, and I love it. And I wish I knew that this was an option in life earlier on so I could have done it sooner.” Well, what Andrew is gonna let me do an interview and tell other people who are like me that they could be fully themselves. I mean, when you have that, why it’s a completely different experience. And then it feeds me too, because their story is my story. And their reason is my reason. And now I’m like, fighting. And so I remember reading Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And I loved it so much that I went, and I knocked on the door of Dale Carnegie and Associates. And I said, I want to be here and volunteer to work with you doing anything, just so I could be around you. And one of the things they would do is, first of all, they said, no one’s done this before. Yeah, come on in and do this. And so I went in, and I volunteered, and I work with them. And I got to see them teach not just how to win friends and influence people, but how to communicate. And one of the things that Dale Carnegie had said was, he said, “Even the most ignorant man will become fully articulate and alive if you smack him in the shins with a 2×4. Meaning like you get somebody riled up and they will be articulate, they don’t even need a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking. And so the question is, where is the 2×4 to the shin for me, whereas a 2×4 to the shin for the guest, if you could find that they will be fully articulate fully alive and exciting. And it’s got to be one that you care about.

Adam Vazquez 21:59
Okay, so can you give an example of that? I love that metaphor. I don’t think I’ve heard that metaphor before. But what is an example of a 2×4? Because it sounds kind of rough. It sounds like maybe you’re surprising the guest, or it could lead to some “gotcha” mechanics, but I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to. What does it look like as a host to invite your guests into that type of conversation?

Andrew Warner 22:21
A 2×4 to the shin might be a talking about my failure, I failed with the first version of my site of Mixergy. And it was really painful. I thought I knew everything about business, I studied it my whole life. And then I threw hundreds of 1,000s of dollars into this event invitation site, and it failed. And that was super painful. And for me, that is a topic that I wanted to explore and undo and fix. And if somebody else had had a failure, they wanted to talk about why they failed, and get back into talking about how to get past it, and how to make sure that their next business is not equally bad. And so that’s a 2×4 for them. For other people. I’ll tell you today, one, 2×4 is crypto. If there’s someone in the crypto world and you challenge them on the validity of crypto, they will come to life, they will tell you why they think that crypto is the future why the blockchain matters. That’s, that’s another 2×4 and you want to look for those passion points for people. For some people used to be remote work, if I would talk to them about where their team was, they were so gung ho about how that was the future of work at a time before COVID When no one worked from home that they would come alive.

Adam Vazquez 23:33
Yeah, and now recently, you’re seeing the opposite to write as writers, because Malcolm Gladwell crying last week about being needed to be back in office. So it’s perhaps things that tap into the human emotion. So you’ve talked about how important it is for you to be socially connected in your work. I’m curious, typically, the stereotype is if you go away to write a book, you go to a cabin, preferably like with snow, probably around, and you’re by yourself for like 90 days and you dump everything that you know onto a sheet and when you come out the other side, you have a book. How did that work for you knowing that that’s not how you’re motivated to create do that way?

Andrew Warner 24:13
Dude, that is the way I wanted to do it! That is the way I wanted it to happen! I thought if a world just leaves me alone, and I don’t have distractions, like food, that there’s snack in the house, and I want to get up and do it that I don’t have distractions, like phone calls on my calendar that I don’t have all of that I could get it done. And it was so disappointing to see that if I didn’t have anything, I would find something online or I would just stare at the screen or I would be in such pain and couldn’t move. So and I was especially shocked because I had this stuff written out. I already had the main points. So then what I did was I instead of complaining and feeling bad about myself, I said who can I work with who’s going to help me get past this? And I found an editor, this woman, Mary’s son who works for penguin publishing, and I said, Can I hire you to write with me my initial plan was, I’ll share my screen, I’ll just keep writing. If you see me getting distracted, you can jump back in and poke me. And if I get stuck, we could talk about where I’m stuck. And she said, No, I can’t do that. That’s just, it feels awkward, I guess. So she said, No, she said, what we could do is we could do weekly calls, where I’ll give you an assignment for the week, or I’ll hear what you want to do for the week, I’ll troubleshoot with you what could come up, and then you go off and do it. And then the following week, we’ll look at what you did, and talk about what you should do for the following week. And that was good. That helped a lot, then I knew that someone was looking, I knew that someone was waiting on me to get work done. And so I did it. But more importantly, if I didn’t get anything done, she was very good about not making me feel worse about it. But saying, “You know, Andrew, sometimes that happens to all writers. And so what we need to do is find ways to get you thinking again. What are you thinking here? What are you trying to say? Oh, you don’t know what to say? You don’t know what the problem is? Maybe you’re not connected to the problem. Why don’t you find people who have this problem that you’re trying to write the solution for and talk to them because then that’ll fired you up.” And so I would go on Twitter and say I have time this week, because I wasn’t writing that week, because I didn’t know what to write about. I have time this week. Here’s my Calendly link, if you’re an interviewer and you have any questions about this one topic, and the topic would be something like how to get a guest to open up or how to promote it or any promote an interview once you’ve done it and get anyone to listen, whatever it was, I would go on. And I would say if you have a question about this topic, let’s get on, they would ask me their question I would answer and I would pay attention to what I said and how excited I got. And then I would use that to fire up my writing. And then there’s one other thing that I did that I actually did before you and I got on the call today, there’s a program called Focus mate, where to site where you can go and find somebody else who’s looking to do work and stay focused with you, I found you just hit a button and you say I’m ready to do it. Usually within a few minutes, almost always within 15 minutes, you’ll find somebody, someone who will schedule with you to get on a call for whatever time works for you. And you could either just stare each other via webcam while you work to make sure that you’re not eating or getting distracted. Or you could do what I did, which is I told the guy I have 25 minutes right? Before my next recording. I’m going to share my screen. And I’ll just keep writing and I shared my screen and there were times that I wanted to check to see, should I buy a better stand from my iPad from Amazon. Now he’s looking so I kept going. I’m just not feeling this today. I don’t like what I’m saying. And I said, Well, you have to keep going. He’s looking at it’s kind of awkward if he’s not. And so I did that today. And I did that to write the book. And the combination of having Mary on a weekly basis check in on me and having focus made people look at me as I do my work got me to work.

Adam Vazquez 27:54
Oh, man. That’s powerful. Focusmate, you said?

Andrew Warner 27:57
Focusmate. They help you.

Adam Vazquez 27:59
We’ll have to link that. Another thing that you said that connected with me because I think it’s so important for creators is your editor told you, I don’t think you’re connected to this problem. Go find more people who are connected. That’s something that I think gets skipped so often.

Andrew Warner 28:14
Dude, that help so much.

Adam Vazquez 28:16
Yeah, that’s so powerful.

Andrew Warner 28:19
You know what it is? That helps even for the interviews. I was out last night with other entrepreneurs just talking to them seeing where their head is, I would have people come over to the office for Scotch night on a weekly basis, I do as much as I can to be in the world of my listener to understand what they’re going through so that I can then remember the problems that I’m there to address, see them from a different perspective than mine, and then use those, use those insights to have better conversations and better interviews.

Adam Vazquez 28:51
I love that. Well, one of the other things that you told me as we’re wrapping up here that you wanted to, would make this a success is getting to talk a little bit about your experience working with our mutual friend, Ben Putana. How did working with him to publish the book, how did that help you complete the creative process?

Andrew Warner 29:09
I remember one of the things that he did, I guess the way that he and I connected was he tweeted at me and he said, “Andrew, you should write a book. It’s going to help you with your Twitter following.” And I said, “What do you mean? How?” And he explained how it would help me write more it would help encourage people to participate in the writing process. And then the ideas that the book helped me uncover will turn into tweets that then help explain those ideas better. And Ben said that and I said, all right. I’m signing up for that. Now I’ve interviewed enough authors to know that usually the publisher will publish the book, and then expect the author to do all the work. One of the things that I liked about Ben was he said, I will help you sell this book, I’ll help promote it. And sure enough, when we were getting ready to poke to publish the book, he said, We need a cover. Let’s bring in the audience. So we took like seven different covers, and we tweeted them out. And then we saw what the feedback was. And then we kept that kind of back and forth going on other topics. And all that helped me get more excited about it. And also helped me see what people were thinking about the book and different aspects of it. And then when the book was published, he took concepts from the book, he summed them up into shorter messages and tweets, and then I tweeted them out on my account, or he would even tweet them out because we had this shared access to my account. And he showed me how many of my ideas were really useful and interesting and valuable that I didn’t value because they’re just a natural part of my day. And the tweets that did the best were often the ones that he wrote, and I didn’t think would matter, because they just seem so obvious. But they did. And he was right.

Adam Vazquez 30:52
It’s awesome. Love Ben and love to what he’s building with his company. Last question for you is we’ve talked a lot about the work, you’ve done the book that you’ve written a lot of past tense stuff, but moving ahead, looking forward, what has you excited, what are you looking forward to and what’s got you maybe not having to stare at the screen so much, but is giving you some energy right now?

Andrew Warner 31:17
I have been so online my whole life that I love the idea of going offline a little bit. We’re now in Austin where we have a few acres of land. And I get excited about the things that have nothing to do with digital, I get excited about, we have these raised flower beds that came with the place that we bought, and I want to set them up, I want to get chickens, I’ve gone out and met my neighbors and have chickens, I want to get chickens and try to raise chickens and get fresh eggs. And at the same time, I want to connect with people who, frankly, when I lived in San Francisco had left San Francisco and they came here. And so last night I got together with some people, I’m going to keep getting together with more and more people while I’m here. And it’s it’s been exciting to do that. That offline thing is What is most exciting for me.

Adam Vazquez 32:05
Awesome. Well, Andrew, thank you so much. I expressed to you before but I’m personally very grateful to you for your work for the impact that it’s had on me. Your book, Stop Asking Questions has been great for everyone who wants to follow what you’re doing your show your book, everything what’s the best place for them to catch up with you?

Andrew Warner 32:23
You can look me up, Andrew Warner. If you want to try my podcast, go to Mixergy. M-I-X-E-R-G-Y. And yeah, interviewers who want to learn how to become better interviewers, I have all these different techniques that have worked for me and other interviewers. It’s in a book called Stop Asking Questions. It’s available everywhere.

Adam Vazquez 32:39
Awesome. Thank you again, and we appreciate your time.

Andrew Warner 32:42
You know what? I’m so glad to be on here. I love how professional you are throughout. I’ve seen your site, your site is phenomenal. Your message is so well organized. I’m glad to get to know you a little bit better here through this interview. Thanks for having me on.

Adam Vazquez 32:55
Of course. Thank you.

Carlton Riffel 32:57
And that’s a wrap. Thank you for listening to this episode of Content Is for Closers. We hope you find this show really helpful as you grow your business with content. Maybe you know of other people who would find this show helpful as well. How about you send them our way? If you didn’t like this show and you want to tell us that, then you can head over to contentisforclosers.com where you can send us a message, give us some feedback, ask questions, or find detailed notes for every episode. Until next time, keep creating and keep closing.