For Headliner Highlight 21, we hear from Adrian Brady-Cesana of The CXChronicles Podcast.
Tell us about your podcast.
The podcast’s name is The CXChronicles Podcast. Each week we bring on all kinds of incredible business leaders from all sorts of amazing companies worldwide, and we talk about the four CX pillars: team, tools, process, and feedback.
We get into the weeds with these different business owners around all of the different things they’re working on at the given time. We’ve had phenomenal people from fuboTV, Comcast, Microsoft, eBay, Vimeo, Thumbtack, Greenhouse. We’ve had best selling authors like Shep Hyken and Jeff Gothelf on the show. We’ve had business leaders from Betterment and Grindr and all of these incredible startups in New York City and San Francisco.
Each week, we bring these folks on, talking to the CX Nation, which is my audience name, and we get people thinking about how you can grow your audience through customer experience. How can you take care of your customers? [How can you] take care of your customers and employees? What do you need to do to make your business be set up for success?
Why did you start podcasting?
I’ve been a podcast nerd for years now. I have been listening to business podcasts, I’ve been listening to storytelling podcasts. I lived in New York City for almost 10 years and podcasts became an easy way for me to substitute my morning and my evening music listening with learning. So I’d be sitting on the New York City subway, and I’ll be listening to 30 minutes or 45 minute podcasts, and that’s how I get my daily education dose.
After listening to several of the shows though, I realized, “you know what?” I can do that. I can do it better than most people and I’ve been told my entire life that I have a voice that’s built for recording and for podcasting and for sharing things like this.
What do you do to share & promote your episodes?
I focus on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I’ve got my email list with all of the people that have subscribed to my podcast, and I’m constantly trying to put blasts on Google. I’m on all of the other social media platforms to track listeners and attract people interested in the space.
What has been most effective? Least effective?
Most effective, hands down, has been Instagram, Facebook, and the email list. Those three things are where I generate almost all of my content and pick up all of my new listeners.
The least effective has been doing more of the traditional types of things, like showing up at places and talking about it at Chamber of Commerce events or even within your own network, showing up at different network events, and talking about it.
I find that people get uncomfortable about it. Not everybody’s into podcasts, and when you start talking about asking folks to come onto a show, people get squirrelish right away. They get scared, and they don’t want to do it. So it’s been interesting.
It’s been more effective to kind of blast people through social channels and warm them up before flipping them over to the phone or flipping them over to an in-person meeting.
Why do you make Headliners?
So I started using Headliner, very simply, for one reason.
To start making cooler Instagram ads for The CXChronicles Podcast.
I wanted something different than just a stagnant, stationary image, and I wanted to play around with cool things that I could do with Headliner videos, and it’s worked pretty well for me.
Current podcasting setup?
I use a Blue Yeti microphone, which you’re listening to right now, that’s going directly into Garageband. I try to keep things simple so that I don’t focus on engineering, but rather I focus on banging out content that’s my number one thing that I’m trying to remain focused on.
What is something you think is overrated or underrated in podcasting?
Number One: Super-duper high-quality podcasts. It doesn’t matter. If you’ve got really great podcast hosts and guests, if you’ve got awesome content, you can learn from it, and it’s audible, and it’s clear. It’s good enough to where you can listen in the car for thirty minutes when you’re going to the grocery store to pick up stuff and head home. That is the most important thing I think people constantly misstep when starting a podcast.
I’ve talked to way too many people who over-engineer, take too much time [making episodes]; you know, six or seven months into their thing, they’ve got six or seven shows. That’s not good enough. You should have 40 or 50 shows at that point. That’s what my goal was. I didn’t hit it, but that’s where I aimed to, and now I’m sitting in the range of 70 or 80 podcast episodes in just over a year.
If someone was to only listen to one episode of yours, which one would you send?
That’s a tough question because I feel like I’ve gotten better and better and better at not only producing these podcast shows and episodes but getting better guests.
So when I started, I would get anybody I could to get on the show. Now, different ball game. I’ve got these incredible business leaders from all across the country and all across the world frankly, or I’ve got these incredible authors that have New York Times best-selling books reaching out to me saying, “Hey, we wanna come on your show and talk.”
So I think it’s important for people to know these things will evolve. If I had to pick one, I would want people to listen to the Mario Grindr episode of The CXChronicles Podcast, or I’d want them to listen to the Kyle McSlarrow, Head of CX and Comcast episode.
Both of those episodes have gotten a ton of incredible feedback from my regular listeners and from brand new listeners that just reached out, letting me know the show was super helpful, and they learned a ton from it.
Do you have a favorite podcast?
The Mike Dillard Podcast
Bigger Pockets Podcast
BrandBuilders
The Tony Robbins Podcast
The Gary Vee Audio Experience
The Tim Ferriss Show
Afford Anything
Win By Design
