Speak Less, Get More
A field guide to hosting conversations that connect.
After twenty-five years and hundreds of interviews, the pattern keeps showing up. The hosts who get the most from a conversation are usually the ones doing the least talking. This book is everything I've learned about how to do that on purpose.
Ebook $14.99 · Paperback $24.99 · Hardcover $39.99
By Matt Stagliano · Generator Podcast · Stonetree Creative
A confession
I've recorded hundreds of interviews. Some were great. Most were fine. A handful were train wrecks I still think about in the middle of the night.
The great ones had something I can only describe as presence. The guest said something so honest and unexpected that I forgot I was in front of a mic, and I'm pretty sure the listeners felt it too. The train wrecks happened when I tried too hard. I'd show up with twenty pages of notes and a determination to ask all the right questions, talk more than I listened, and treat people like content sources instead of human beings. You can hear it in the recordings.
Somewhere between those two versions of myself, I figured out what actually works. This book is everything I've learned in twenty-five years of sitting across from people and asking them to say something true.
A moment from the book
The slip you can't afford to miss.
Nicole York is one of those guests you go in over-prepared for. Author, photographer, educator, one of the most prolific creative minds I've ever met. I had my research, my questions, my plan.
About forty minutes in, I asked her about the downside of all that productivity. Something shifted in her face, and I named it on the recording: "I can tell by the expression that there may be something to talk about here." Then I asked her about imposter syndrome.
Her answer: "I have anxiety attacks. So do I get imposter syndrome? No, I do not."
I moved right past it.
We spent the next several minutes on a great story about being launched out of a trebuchet, which is genuinely funny, but it isn't the one she almost told. Anxiety attacks. That's a personal, specific disclosure, the kind of thing someone says when the mask slips and they want to see if you're paying attention. I saw the slip and even named it, and then I asked my prepared question anyway.
I've thought about that moment more than almost anything else from that episode. There was a real conversation available, and I chose the planned one instead.
That's the failure mode this book is built to fix.
What changes
What you'll be able to do after reading it.
- Use the PODS framework to structure every interview: Preparation, Orientation, Discovery, Sendoff.
- Apply the three-beat rule and the seven-second rule to get deeper answers without doing more work.
- Research a guest so well they feel seen before you hit record.
- Read vocal shifts and emotional cues, the moments when something important is just below the surface.
- Handle difficult guests, sensitive topics, and conversations that go sideways.
- Build an interview style that actually sounds like you.
The frameworks
Three things you'll take into your next recording.
Framework one
PODSPreparation, Orientation, Discovery, Sendoff. The four phases of every good interview, and the order matters. Preparation without Orientation produces a host who's well-researched but walks in without setting shared expectations, so the first fifteen minutes are a slow warm-up that often never recovers. Discovery without Preparation is wandering, and wandering without a north star is just two people talking. Sendoff is the most underrated phase in the whole book. Most interviews don't end, they just stop. PODS is what separates a host who's steering the conversation from one who's hoping for the best.
Framework two
The Three-Beat RuleAfter your guest finishes a thought, count three silent beats before responding. It's the simplest technique in the book and one of the most powerful. The pause signals that you're processing what they said rather than waiting for your turn, and it quietly invites them to keep going. The thing they add in those three seconds is almost always more valuable than what they said first. Research on conversational dynamics shows that a pause longer than 1.5 seconds increases the likelihood of deeper self-disclosure by nearly 20%. That's not intuition. It's physiology.
Framework three
Spotlight to LanternTraditional media training positions the host as the star and the guest as supporting cast. The lantern mindset flips that. Your job is to illuminate the guest's terrain, casting light on corners they haven't explored, while you stay out of the light yourself. Listeners sense this shift immediately. They respond by trusting the conversation with their attention, which is the thing every host is actually trying to earn.
Who it's for
Three readers I had in mind.
This book is for the host who has been doing it for a year or two and feels stuck somewhere between competent and good. You know the mechanics. You can run a tight episode. The conversations are fine. They're just not the ones people text you about a week later.
It's for the founder, coach, or expert running a podcast as part of a business, where every interview is a chance to build real trust with the people you most want to reach. Every guest you sit down with is a potential client, partner, or referral, and that changes what counts as a good enough conversation.
And it's for the experienced host who has plateaued and senses it. Nobody talks about that part. The competent professional doing everything technically right and still producing work that sounds produced rather than discovered. There are chapters in here for you that don't exist anywhere else.
About the author
Matt Stagliano.
Matt has been behind a microphone since the mid-1990s conducting hundreds of interviews and over twenty-five years he has figured out what actually makes a conversation worth listening to.
He's also a portrait photographer and runs Stonetree Creative, a fine art portrait studio in Bethel, Maine, while also hosting the Generator Podcast. Years before any of this, he worked in mergers and acquisitions at Cisco Systems, which taught him to think in systems and take the long view on what it costs to build something that lasts. Speak Less, Get More is his first book.
Choose your format
Three ways to read it.
Questions
Things people ask.
Do I need to be an experienced podcaster for this to be useful?
No. The book gives a starting host the roadmap most people only build through trial and error across a hundred recordings. The first two chapters are the foundation. Everything after stands on its own and you can read straight through or jump to whatever you're working on right now.
I'm a founder, coach, or consultant who interviews on a show as part of my business. Is this for me?
Yes. Every interview you do is a chance to build real trust with the people you most want to reach, and the same principles apply regardless of why you have the mic. The chapters on rapport, difficult conversations, and building a voice that's actually yours are where you'll spend the most time.
Will this work for video, live streams, and in-person interviews?
Yes. Format-specific advice is in there where it matters, but the core craft holds across audio podcasts, video shows, live streams, panels, and any other situation where you're asking people to say something honest in front of a microphone.
Will this work as well for solo content as it does for guest interviews?
Most of it does. The PODS framework applies to any structured conversation, and the listening techniques carry whether or not someone else is in the room. The chapters specifically about guest dynamics will be less directly useful if you're a solo host, but the foundational chapters carry across.
Is there an audiobook?
Not yet. It's on the list. The ebook is the fastest path if you want it on your phone or e-reader today.
Can I get bulk copies for my team or workshop?
Reach out through generatorpodcast.com or stonetreecreative.com and we'll work something out.
Go make something worth hearing.
Here's what the work is when you strip everything away: show up, listen carefully, ask what you genuinely want to know, and let the conversation go somewhere real. The preparation, the structure, the techniques are all in service of that. The book gives you the directions. The recordings are where the work happens.
Ebook $14.99 · Paperback $24.99 · Hardcover $39.99