Today’s guest is Matt Gilhooly, host of the Life Shift Podcast, where he has “candid conversations with people about the pivotal moments that changed their lives forever.”
Matt started podcasting after choosing to take The Art of Podcasting, an elective in a degree he started during the pandemic. It became the most fulfilling project of his life and it continues to serve both him, his guests and his audience.
He chose to take a class on podcasting because it felt scary. He was taking a degree seventeen years after last going to university and wanted it to be a different experience. It felt scary because he wasn’t sure whether there was anything he had to say and whether others would trust him with what he wanted to do. The show he worked on during the course is the podcast he hosts now, The Life Shift.
When Matt was eight years old, he experienced a life shift. He found himself grieving alone because it wasn’t a conversation easy to have in his family and society in general. Matt became curious about people’s similar situations, especially those moments that shift their lives, and them, in a completely different direction.
Since doing the podcast, Matt thinks more about his own life and how people are more connected than they are different. He’s learned more about himself and humanity, and developed skills like active listening and genuine curiosity. This is the most fulfilling project he’s ever done.
10.15mins
How does Matt find guests for his show, people who are ready to have candid conversations about their life? At first, he invited people he knew onto the show. Then he started to pay attention to what people were sharing on LinkedIn and noticed that they were more likely to share more human experiences than a few years ago. When he read something that interested him, he’d interact with the person who’d posted, to ask if they would like to share a moment in their life that changed their trajectory on the podcast.
Now people are reaching out to Matt to guest on the show. Conversations in the show can go deep, and sometimes guests share stories they haven’t shared before. Even though Matt is the podcast’s host, his role is to provide the space for guests to tell the stories, and for the audience to connect with them.
Matt thinks that guests are happy to guest on the show because it’s an opportunity to be themselves and share their stories, and hopefully help others along the way. Speaking his own story out loud has helped Matt too.
17.00 mins
Due to the nature of his show, Matt finds it tricky to assess whether a guest will be suitable, because he wants to discover most of the story through the conversation as they record.
He has a form for guests to fill in, to give him an idea of the moment people want to share, eg whether it was an external or internal trigger that prompted the shift.
The guests that work best are those who’ve already had time to unpack their story and what it meant for them, rather than those who are still processing it.
Episodes tend to have a structure: how life was unfolding before the moment, the life shift event and what they’ve learned from it. Most of the conversation is about what they gained from the experience.
It’s difficult to turn down guests. They are offering a personal story and that is difficult to turn down. For a similar reason, Matt hasn’t not published any of his episodes yet, and he’s a year into his show.
Even though sometimes it’s tough emotionally on Matt to listen to his guest’s experiences, he sees the whole experience as a blessing and is happy to take the more difficult moments as well as the lighter ones.
27.30mins
The way in which Matt prepares for the interviews has changed completely since he started. It took him only two shows to realise that having a scripted set of questions didn’t work for him, as it didn’t let him be present in the conversation.
Now, he reads the statement from the guest’s form to understand the life shift moment, centres himself, chats a bit with the guest and then they record. Matt has learned to listen actively, throwing away questions that come to mind if the guest has moved on from the moment. This helps him create the space for people to be vulnerable.
Moving on to technical matters, Matt releases both an audio and video version. He edits the audio heavily, taking out filler words and other noises, but not editing the conversation, to retain the guest’s own story. Guests seem ok being in front of the camera, even if the experience is exposing.
All of Matt’s interviews take place online, because it makes the process much easier than if he were to do them in person. (Pilar agrees, as she used to do them in person before everyone was happy to go online and the audio quality is always better online.)
40.20mins
After stopping the recording, Matt asks his guests how they feel about the conversation and whether there is anything they would like to be removed from the conversation. It’s important that guests feel comfortable with what is going to be released, you never know who’s going to listen…
Matt has found his own way of preparing and of guiding the conversation, even if it’s not written down. Being very clear on who his audience is and why the show exists has been key in keeping podcasting.
Matt releases episodes weekly on Tuesdays, and hasn’t missed a week. He needs to stay ahead of his schedule – something which is harder since he launched his Patreon. At one point he was 16 weeks ahead, so he had to take a break because he felt guilty that guests had to wait so long for their episodes to be released. He now tries to be about 8 weeks ahead.
What about the future? The show is gaining momentum, so he plans on continuing in the same way, with the same structure. Regarding Patreon, he started it because some of his listeners wanted to support him. He struggled to find ways of adding value to his patrons, until he came up with an extra episode, where a returning guest talks about their experience of sharing their story on the podcast and their experience of the episode going out into the world.
Podcasting is the best creative outlet that Matt has experienced. And as a community, everyone is very collaborative – Matt and Pilar want to thank Marisa Eikenberry for introducing them. (You can listen to Matt and Marisa talk on Matt’s show , and she also appeared last year in Adventures in Podcasting, in episode 25. )
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn and on Twitter he is @thelifeshiftpod
Get in touch if you would like some coaching and advice yourself or connect on Twitter @Inpodcasting
If you want to support this show and are looking for a media host: I recommend Buzzsprout.