How To Confirm An Interview Appointment (Via Email)

Let's take a quick detour from my current project and talk about a skill: Firming up an appointment:

This post is an excerpt from my upcoming guide/book on how to start a small business project in your local community. I recently completed a similar project that involved me interviewing small business owners in my local town, Austin, Texas. Over 21 days, I interviewed 10 small business owners, profiling them: their stories, starting challenges, their passions, and their counsel for other would be owners.

This post details how I confirmed one of my interview appointments with one of the owners. Small business owners have a lot on their plate, so understanding how to make things easy on them goes a long way in making it easy to work with them, more so if they don't have a prior relationship with you.


It could help you in your own personal projects. You can use the idea and template in your own way to similar effect. The principles I stress here are these: respect, thoughtfulness, clarity, and ease of response.

First, I start with the assumption that you have an agreement in word ( verbal) to do an interview ( or meeting, in your case), and would like to firm it up.

With the appointment set, it's not over. This is life, and things can come up at anytime, or memory could fail people, by forgetting about the appointment. So I call or email the day before to confirm. At other times, I again call the day before as a final confirmation. I do this as a back up.

Below is an example of an email I sent out during the project to confirm an interview. Names and personal information deleted for privacy.

Hello [Sir],

This is Kingston. As part of my 21-day project of profiling small business owners in Austin, we set tomorrow, Tuesday, the 9th, at 11am for a 30 minute interview. [Thanks for taking the time.]

We will make the audio of high quality by recording in a quiet area, unless you would prefer your restaurant's sounds in the background. Some interviews are livelier that way, with the background sounds, like the one I did with Steve Riad of Tomodachi Sushi in his restaurant. Please let me know what works for you.

You can also take a look at my blog here: Myblog.

Also, please let me know if we can confirm before I head out tomorrow. Again, I have added the interview format below to help you gather your thoughts and help make the session useful to all.

Thanks again, and see you in the morning.

Kingston Temanu
A Couple Things for Owners
The 21-Day Project

The Structure

30---35 minutes overall:

30 seconds: Introduce myself, the project, the owner, and how I came to know the owner.

3-4 minutes:

1. Please share a little about your restaurant---what you guys do, where you are based, and what makes you unique in the marketplace.

3-4 minutes: 

 
2. What is the essence of your story---How did you get started? What got you into the restaurant business? What are your thoughts overall of your journey as a business owner.

3-4 minutes:

3. What did you do to grow from the beginning? What were some of the early challenges, and how did you handle them?

3-4 minutes:

4. Share your cookbook---What has been the principles, personal skills, and collaborations that you use in your business.

3-4 minutes:

5. What are your current goals, why, and how will they be useful to folks interested in Thai Cuisine, both current and potential?

3-4 minutes

6. Do you have any new deals/announcements, opinions to correct, and dishes to release?

3-4 minutes:

7. What has been the most challenging part of running your own business? What has been the most rewarding?

Wrap up:

 

What would you tell folks who are looking to start their own thing?

Is there anything else you would like to share that we didn't cover? Close and thanks.

….........................................................

So you notice how it talks about my project in the beginning sentence, and in the next sentence it offers an example of an interview I did previously. This is important as it gives the owner a chance to see an example of what this is all about.

The owner does not know much about you, so it's important to give him as much information to assure him he has nothing to worry about.

This is my approach, yet there are many others. What are yours? Share in the comments below, anonymous is fine too---the value is in the lesson.