A massive THANK YOU to Cesar for a very interesting talk to the P2 community yesterday.

I rashly offered to do the notes so I’m listening back at the recording to make sure the pertinent points were captured. Some people may know Cesar because he contributed to the Podcasting for Beginner’s module on monetisation.

Cesar first got into podcasting when he worked for a small family business and one of his activities was marketing. He had been listening to podcasts for a few years and someone said to him “every business should have a podcast” and that was the spark he needed. His first podcast was to the construction industry, and he managed to get to talk to some interesting people including those involved with the Sydney Opera House. 

Cesar had started blogging about Project Management and as the Construction Industry podcast was beginning to fade, it was natural to start one on Project Management and this has been going now for 9 years – Wow!! It is Cesar’s hobby, and this helps to avoid podfade. He has had some interesting guests, including the former CEO of the DeLorean company, famed for the car in the ‘Back to the Future’ film, a Project Manager from the London Olympics and similarly for the Germany World Cup. 

Cesar said – I read a book and invite people to the podcast. Reaching out, you never know who might say yes, and very rarely does anyone say no. It is a win, win, win situation, I get a benefit, the interviewee gets benefit because they get access to my audience, and the audience gets something from the interesting discussions we have.

How do you find people now that you are established? You’ll get pitches from people, agencies in particular, 9 out of 10 are no good, but every once in a while you will get someone great. Recently an interviewee “blew my mind” although you would never have guessed she was so interesting from her website. When I have read a book, I’ll reach out to the author or other authors who have been cited in the book. There are also about ten people who I regularly work with, and my audience also gets to know those people.

After this introduction the audience participation started and there were plenty of laughs as the conversation flowed. 

Cesar was worried when changing from one podcast to another whether he would lose his audience, and he now realises that “they come for the content, but they stay for you”. It is all about your personality, Project Management is a dry subject, but now I mix it around and sometimes we don’t talk about Project Management at all. The comments he has received confirms that the audience like the variety. If you just talk about your content, it is a race to the bottom, you need to explain how you fit in with the content that is the theme behind your show.

I then dug my own hole, when I said that writing articles on technical subjects would naturally lack a bit of personality, Tanya disagreed, they absolutely should have personality and that is what we teach people on the blogging course. Cesar agreed, the articles need to have some personality as well, but the medium of a podcast is easier to achieve this. People listen to podcasts when they are travelling or mowing the lawn, or whatever, and when they are listening to you, “your voice is in their head, it is much more intimate”. Other podcasters who are in the same field as you, cannot compete with you when you are being yourself.

Cesar asked me what my podcasts were about, and he predicted that ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ would eventually have a much bigger audience than the maintenance podcast I was aiming to do. Did everyone hear the difference in energy level when Andrew was talking about each? The hardest thing about a podcast is the creation of the content, you need to write and talk about something you are passionate about. There are a few topic-based podcasts where I listen because of the person and not because of the content. 

Richard said “There is no magic system to follow for creating a podcast, if you are not emotional about it, the podcast will fade”. Cesar knows someone who did a podcast on Insurance, but this person was really into wooden boats, and someone suggested he talked about this, now he gets invited all over the world to cover boat shows. In his retirement he has made a second income from his obsession. Another friend is a firefighter, and he is fixing up a vintage fire truck and the problems he had getting it across the border to Canada would make a fascinating story for a podcast.

I had come to the conclusion that a journey is a good format for a podcast, the only downside is that there is an end, of course. Cesar said that “a story connects a series of episodes, but will they get to the end of the story, or will it morph into something else”. Georgina, “No Niche is too small for a podcast”. Richard said “The reason why Top Gear was so successful was because the team lived the brand – they were passionate about it, and this was what was so engaging”.

If you are talking about a niche subject people will find you. Cesar said that he used to go to conferences and pass out CDs with a podcast episode for the construction show. For the Project Management show I asked someone on Fiver to go and find contact information for 300 people, it didn’t cost much, and I used this for my first guests. Ask others who also have similar shows because you will grow your audience faster. Another tip was to have a name for your podcast that is descriptive even if it is boring, it will be easy to find, and SEO will rank it highly. Consistency in publishing, especially at the beginning is also important. 

Last week I did two interviews, a busy week, I do go a few weeks without anything, my last episode was January or early February. When I published a book I did a kick starter campaign, one episode every day for 20 days, it was crazy. When I was doing a weekly show, everything seemed to be oriented towards getting the show out. 

Cesar creates artwork for each podcast episode, using Canva. “I choose a size that can be used for all the social media sites, Twitter, Facebook etc, then I make it the featured image and the podcast is automatically shared to those social media sites when I publish.”

I asked whether Cesar gets sucked into engaging with comments on social media. Yes, it can be rewarding if there is a community engagement. It is mostly on LinkedIn where there is engagement, Project Management is a subject that suits LinkedIn. Richard commented that “as soon as you say anything authentic it stands out like a bright shining star on LinkedIn and people want to get involved in the conversation”. LinkedIn people are politically careful in comparison to other sites, and it is valid to be on LinkedIn during the workday “you’re building your network”. Cesar suggested I have a LinkedIn Group for the Maximo Certification – great idea.

Cesar said that “The Project Manager podcaster started out writing about how to get through the Project Management exam, and then he turned this into his podcast. He now makes a living from this”. Great – Validation that the idea for my Maximo podcast is proven.

The hour just flew by and listening back to the recording was just as much fun. Can someone add Cesar’s podcast title as a comment, I think I’ll be listening to it. Thanks Cesar.

– Andrew

PS.

I got all excited during the session when I said I had received not one notification from WordPress that my stats were booming, but two! I thought I would be heading towards breaking my views record for the day. Well, I think Richard you took your finger off that refresh button too early, because it fell short by 7 views at 1,453 and I stayed up until midnight watching.

I didn’t bother to look yesterday until going to bed – Richard you must have put that finger back on the Refresh button – it blew the record, which is now 1,784 views for the day on MaximoSecrets.com, that will be a hard high water mark to beat.

Links

Cesar Abeid Podcast – PM For The Masses https://pmforthemasses.com