Drive Your Podcast Media Career Forward With Energy And Talent With Adam Posner, Host Of The Pozcast

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have a podcaster who is really burning things up and kind of an interesting area in their sort of recruiting space which doesn't seem like it would be super, super hot for podcasting. You know, you think maybe this belongs on LinkedIn or maybe as a live stream, but he's actually done both and it's done really well. So I've got Adam Posner on and his nickname is Paz. So he has the paws cast and he is the founder and president NHP Talent Group, which is a boutique New York based talent consultancy specializing in talent access for senior level roles in digital marketing, media, e commerce, product and content creation at startups, creative agencies and brands. He's also the host of the top global career podcast, the Pause Cast, showcasing experts to help you harness your inner tenacity to drive your life and career forward. He has produced and aired over almost 200 episodes. I think it's like 178 or something at the time that this is airing that we were recording this, so probably 200 by the time it airs with top guests like Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, Cara golden and Tucker Max, to name just a few. Prior to pivoting in the world of recruiting, Adam spent 15 years working with the New York City advertising and marketing industry. He's led account management, digital strategy and American Express, Sirius XM and digital ad agencies in New York City like Banner Media and EP Co for major clients like Verizon, Pepsi and British Airways. This is instilled in him a unique perspective when working with candidates to truly understand their career DNA and ensure a good fit on both sides of the recruiting equation. In addition, he brings expert advisory around the talent acquisition process, employer branding and recruitment operations. He has built a strong reputation by always putting relationships first and that's exactly what he does with his podcast. So his podcast is a business to business podcast, meaning that he's using that sort of guesting strategy as a way to build rapport, build clients, maybe build referral partners like all of those things in the process. So we're going to talk to him about that. This is a really good case of how to make a podcast work for your business. So let's take a listen to Adam Posner from the Pause cast.

Adam, thanks so much for joining us. Let's talk. The Pause cast. I love that. So, career and life journeys. How has the career and life journey of podcasting been for you?

Oh, man, it's been a. First and foremost, Tracy, thank you so much for having me on the show. Hello to your audience, folks that may not know me. Pleasure to meet you. Hopefully, you want to stay connected with me after we're done with this one. But my. My journey's been awesome when it comes to podcasting, and I'll kind of go reverse here. It's interesting. I had a conversation with a friend about a year ago, and my show's been out since February 2019, and we're hanging out in a buddy's backyard, and he's playing guitar. And I look over, I'm like, dude, you're awesome. You're just such a good guitar player. You're. I mean, maybe I had a couple of drinks at this point, but I was like, kind of like, you're great. You're awesome. I'm like, I have no talent. I can't sing, I can't draw, I can't act, I can't dance. And he turns to me, he's like. It's like, dude. He's like, I've listened to your show. I can never imagine doing what you do week in and week out. And that was like a big aha moment for me where I was like, damn, Like, I found my art, I found my craft. And it's really a passion for me where it brings out. I call it my sixth gear, Tracy, where I go into this mode and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

When these lights come on, I'm nodding away here.

Yeah, I go into this mode where I am on. This is my zone. This is my element. This is my race car. This is my baseball field, this is my basketball court, my gridiron, whatever you want to call it. This is where my best. This is my arena, but my journey started. It's kind of interesting. My first show I did, February, mid February 2019, I had an itch that needed to be scratched in two ways. One, I was listening to a bunch of podcasts in, like, the marketing, entrepreneurial kind of world. And honestly, Tracy, I'm like, they weren't that good. They really Weren't that great. The host wasn't carrying the show. Wasn't a great conversation. And I grew up in the world of Howard Stern. And for me, Howard Stern, we're not talking about the porn stars and the dwarves and all the other crap that he used to do and all that kind of stuff that's not politically correct anymore. We're talking about the modern since he's gone to Sirius XM, who I actually worked at 2006-11. The last 15 years of Howard being able to have a long form interview show and in my opinion, the best interviewer on the planet.

His interviews process is so good and most people don't realize it at all.

So yes, that's exactly like my inspiration for it. And there's two podcasts, two shows that he did that really kind of got me going. One, he did an interview a couple of years back with Hillary Clinton. I don't know if you caught this one, and I'm not talking politics here, but. But for the first time, she did two things. One, she said if I came on your show during the election, there's a good chance that I probably would have won because I would have been able to open up to your audience. And he had a huge, massive following and show the real Hillary. And the second part about that interview he got out of her, Tracey, the billing, Hillary, Love story, how they met. I've never, never, ever, ever heard that story before. And he went all the way back. Who does? Like, no one does that.

Well, I also thought she was funny there. Like, and I was like, wow, she's kind of a funny grandmother. Like, like, you know, you could see how like, people would like her, but you didn't like her on the road. So you're right. He really think.

Yeah, humanizes.

Yeah, it does. So if you can do that in your show, then, yeah, that, I mean, that's something you want to bring to it.

And that's a big takeaway. There is the relatability as a host. That's why I model myself after as a host very, very much from a Howard Stern perspective. There's. I push it when I need to. I do a ton of research preparation and really get to know my guests to make it a good show. Course of my prep, I have my outline, my notes, and when I started the show, I had like fully formatted questions that I would fully write out and read. And then about 15 episodes in, I realized that one of my, one of my good friends, she's actually a professional media coach. This is what she does for a living. And she's like, adam, let's. Let's talk. I listened to a couple of your shows.

I'm so glad she stopped you.

Yeah, she stopped me right there, 15 episodes in. And the biggest lesson I learned from her is to listen to the guests instead of. I asked Tracy a question, and as Tracy's answering the question, I'm already thinking about the next question I'm listening to here. If there's a piece of gold, a golden nugget in that, that I want to go off on a tangent on something interesting and be able to riff on that. And now, 200 episodes later, I could do that automatically, like muscle memory. But if I didn't make that course correction 15 episodes in and actually listen and stop talking the show, I don't think the show would ever be what it is now. So it's been quite a journey. And it started, you know, as a show really focused on recruiting HR people, careers, because that's what I do for a living as a recruiter. But then the show morphed into more interesting life stories and journeys, all with that kind of common thread about the career. And it's always kind of staying centered on it. But the idea is, let's talk about your early career. Let's talk about when you fell on your face, when you were at your lowest, when you made these huge mistakes, where you could look back on it now and say, damn, if I didn't have that situation, if I didn't go through that, if I didn't have those lessons learned, I would never be where I am now. And that's what the show's all about. And just really bringing that to life and unpacking folks, career journeys.

You know, there's a big difference in the show from the beginning. You've got over at the time of this recording over 177 episodes. So you've got quite the distance that you've run in that. And so when I check out everyone's show, what I do is I go to the first, the last, and then something in the middle. I pick because it. It attracts my attention. Right. Cause, you know, I gotta listen to one that's enjoyable.

Right?

But the first ones are always rough. So, like, I do it so I could see that journey through your show and how. How far you've really come. And the difference in it is just this high, high comfort level in the most recent shows where, you know, you have. You really are just, you know, in total conversation with someone. And we're getting to have that, you know, preview into it where the. Yeah, you're right. It was very formal in the beginning.

It was, it was very formal. But it's interesting too. And I, and I love, I, I probably do it like once every six months. I'll go back and I listen to like a couple of like the first 10 to see how far I've, I've come. But. But there's also still a sense of confidence in those first few episodes that I still have now. There's still a cadence, there's still a personality, but there's so many subtle nuances that I, that I wouldn't realize then, that I do now.

Right, exactly.

I've started.

Yeah, exactly. But you're also doing lives now and you weren't in the very beginning. So how has that changed how you do things?

Well, it's interesting. So I don't really edit my shows too much. I only edit my shows for two reasons. One, if there's a technical error, like if you lose Internet, the guest loses some technical error there. I'll cut that out. And I've only had, I've recorded about 195 episodes, not counting the live streams that I've done. And there's only been a couple of episodes where a guest has asked me afterwards to cut something out. And I'm not even gonna go into the details. Cause that's between the guest and I. But the guest has said, hey, listen, I thought about it, maybe I shouldn't have said this for some reason. And there's usually, you know, I usually have four to five weeks in between recording and airing in the can. And I go, no problem, your show. I have no agenda to, to put you on blast or anything. So that, that certainly has changed the show a lot. But when you go into the live shows, that is the ultimate. When I talked about being in the zone, there's no greater zone than being live. And I love doing that. That's like literally me doing stand up comedy.

Yeah. There's an energy about doing the lives that actually changes your podcast. If you utilize, if you do them separate, you'll still see that difference in a podcast.

So what's interesting about that is I did about 100 live streams in the two years during the pandemic. And I front loaded a lot of them very early on. I was doing almost four or five a week from my den. I literally set up on a coffee table. This before I had this office and studio and everything. I had my YETI and then my little Samsung mic and my Headphones and the camera was on top of my computer, but I had the nice mantel and TV behind me. And it was fun. But there's something about being live and you keep on doing the live, that's. That's keeping you much more locked in. Cause you have that live audience and it keeps you much more on your toes. Like, I think I'm on my toes when I'm doing a proper recording, but it doesn't compare. And I also, I. Honestly, it's almost like a game for me, Tracy. I. I'm not gonna say I prepare less, but I write less for a live show.

Right.

I still do the same amount of prep. Cause that never changes. You don't. You don't wanna be off your game when a guest comes in. I mean, I. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been a guest on a show and it's so blatantly clear that the host did not do any prep and you almost wanna hang up on them?

It's like 99% of the time. I hate to say that. Cause I guessed a lot. So, yeah, it's. When I have someone who's prepared, I'm excited.

So I'm not going to name names, but I was on a show last year, and one of the big cornerstones of my career story is the fact that I work for Gary Vee. Gary Vaynerchuk. Almost everybody knows him at this point. And I got fired and I pivoted into the world of recruiting. That's my story in three seconds. And I start telling my story, my career journey. And I'm like, yep. And I worked for Gary Vee. And he goes, wait a minute. You worked for Gary Vee? Bye, see you later. Right. Like, I was like, how did you not. That's like everywhere in my social media.

It's everywhere. Yeah.

I'm like, come. I think it's a top.

It's up. It's up at the kind of top corner of your bio on your page, too. Yeah.

I'm gonna milk that for all it's worth. Come on.

Yeah, the firing part, maybe not so much. She might not touch on that, but I do.

But that's. But I do speak about that. If anybody does their research on me, they know that's the pivotal inflection point of my career. The lowest point pivoting into my highest point. If you don't do your research as a host, you're failing. You're failing your audience, you're failing your guests.

Well, and now my guess. Now. Now my audience Is all going okay. So what got you fired?

Brutal honesty. I wasn't. Two reasons. One, self awareness, and I'm able to look in the mirror. I didn't do what they hired me for. Honestly, I was a different person back then. I didn't do. What they hired me for was to lead digital marketing for my clients that they brought me on to do. I didn't do a great job. B. I was not set up for success. It was early stages of vayner. They were not the mature organization that they are now. They didn't have certain things in place for proper onboarding, and it was a perfect storm. But at the end of the day, that was what I needed to push me in this trajectory of life, of going into recruiting, eventually starting my own recruiting business, eventually starting the podcast. And at 42 years old, I could finally say that I'm confident, I'm happy, I'm successful, I'm living a life and a career of purpose, and I just like what I do every single day and who I am when I look in the mirror.

That's wonderful. I love that. Now, you mentioned before that you started the show because you kind of felt like there was, like, really bad stuff out there and you thought you had a place for that, but you also really have turned it into a business model. Talk a little bit about what that looks like.

Yeah, absolutely. So when I started the show, the idea of it being a core primary business development tool never even crossed my mind. And it happened organically. And I think that's really what's the greatest part about this. So it was like 15, 25, 30 episodes in. The show started to pick up some speed. It started to get noticed. And then I finally had some social proof where I could start to reach out to decision makers and marketing companies, ad agencies that, guess what, these are potential clients. These are decision makers of clients that I want to do business with as a recruiter. The next thing you know, I'm reaching out to them. I'm saying, hey, Tracy, I love the agency you built over at feed your Brand. I'd love to have you on my podcast. We start to have a conversation over email. You take a look. You see, I've had a podcast that's growing. And honestly, who, in this day and age, most people want to go on podcasts, they want to get their name out there, and especially if there's somebody that doesn't typically get asked to be on a podcast, and people are shocked. There are extremely successful entrepreneurs, business owners out there who would love to Chat who have a wealth of information that never get asked to be on shows.

Especially in bigger companies. Right. Because they're buried in there.

They're buried. No one thinks. They're not household names, they're not the Mark Cubans of the world, they're not the Zuckerbergs. So I started to reach out to these folks and I would have them on my show and I would not introduce or talk about my recruiting business at all. And then I'd air the show and I'd have my follow up email, my follow up conversation. And it was at that point where a bunch of them said to me, oh, what's nhp? I see that in your email. I was like, holy crap. The light bulb went off in my head and I started to talk about business. And slowly these guests started to convert into clients. That's when the big light bulb went off and said, hey, this is better than cold calls, better than cold emails. And I built out a proper process to utilize my podcast as a business development driver tool. So I would say 50 to 70% of the guests that I reach out to to book on my show are decision makers of companies that I want to do business with. And I built out an entire process, an entire flow. In fact, I put all the IP down over the summer and I'm creating the pause course, which is going to be teaching people not how to turn on your mic and the lights and record it and edit and all that kind of stuff and how to, you know, RSS feeds and all that kind of fun stuff, but really. Or even how to ads and anything but how to monetize in a completely different way. I monetize my guest, not my audience.

Yeah. So let's talk about that. Let's do our three things because we're going to get to more details.

You like how a good host could lead you into the transition.

This is a segue, right? So yeah. So when you're getting that great guests, what do you do in that vetting process to get the great guests to be sure that they're sort of fit your profile?

This is a tough one too, because a decision maker at a company may be a great business prospect, but they may not be a great guest. So there's a little bit of a balance there too. So you want to research their story, right? Because sometimes the CEO may not be the best guest, but the CMO has a better story. So you have to do a little bit of prep before you do your outreach.

That's really cool.

The CMO might have A crazy good career story. The CEO is a decision maker. How do you decide which one you want to reach out to? So it's a little bit of a balancing act there. Sometimes you can kind of balance both because if you're getting good with the cmo, he's going to talk you up to the CEO, whoever the decision maker is within that company. So you have to vet it out. I always tell people, google the crap out of your guests before you reach out to them. See if there's a YouTube clip, social media podcast out there just to see if they're lively.

Yes, please.

You don't want to book a dud on your show. You don't want. The worst thing as a host is pulling. You don't want to be pulling. Pulling it out of a guest.

Yeah, never. So I think that's not airing it after this whole big promise because then it sort of blows the business model.

No, the worst thing you want to do is duck a show.

Yeah. Yep. So, well then, you know, you said to me earlier when we were prepping that you have business to business and that's obviously this model model that your podcast is, but your consumers, your business to consumer also because that's where your listeners are. So how do you increase those listeners engagement? Because you know, that's kind of a divergent effort.

No, but it's crazy because it comes together. So you know, the audience are job seekers. They're folks that are interested in entrepreneurial stories and career journeys, that want to hear the gold. I mean, I love to ask my guests and who are usually pretty seasoned executives, key decision makers in companies. So Tracy, by the time a candidate gets to you in the interview process, they've been vetted for their skill set and now they're coming to you to see if they would be, you know, a good addition to your company culture wise. How do you what are your go to questions? Tracy, to really see character in a 30, 45 minute interview, what are your kind of go to questions? That's a goal that people want to hear. What kind of questions is a senior level? I had Bracken Darrell, the CEO of Logitech, the CEO of the camera that I'm looking at you at on last week. And I asked him those questions. Who doesn't want to hear from a seasoned executive what their interview questions are?

Yeah, so that's going to get around because especially if, if your candidate is doing their homework on who the companies that they want to, you know, to at least be at or their ideal company, they should definitely Be checking that out. Right. So. Interesting. Yeah. So. So it's sort of naturally building up that listenership. And do they engage with you? Do the listeners engage with you and ask you questions?

Not as much as I would expect to want, I'll be honest. Full transparency there. My biggest mistake as a host, and I regret this, and I've been doing a lot of work on this, is not building a good community early on, not building a community in the start. I just kind of put my show out there. I didn't build too much fanfare around it. I didn't do that. Looking back on it, I wish I did. It's kind of the analogy because I have 15, 16 years of marketing media, social media experience before I went into recruiting. It's the analogy of the plumber with the broken toilet in his house.

That's the way a lot of podcasters are.

We all hear it, and I just never did a good job of it. So I'm kind of playing catch up all the time. But I have an incredible loop on LinkedIn. I do get a decent amount of DMs. I've had someone say to me, a couple of months ago, exactly to your earlier point, they were interviewing at a company of a guest that I had on, and they found it so insightful. And they found it through a Google search. They'd never listened to my show before. They were interviewing at the company, and literally my show came up third on SEO for that guest. Natural SEO. I don't put any money into SEO. And they found those insights.

Real power is that I find that people just don't understand that at the end of the day, if you're putting it on your website, which you are, you've got a core website for this, you know, there you have a lot more SEO power than you think. That's where the residual value is. Long term.

I've never spent a penny on SEO. And my show consistently ranks well that the podcast ranks. And it's not the only name of the podcast.

No, there's three of them out there. So that's what, you know, I thought. I. That's the first thing I checked, actually, Adam, because I thought, wow, when I type this in, you have your pause. Cast is like one word. So I tried separating them because sometimes it doesn't work. And somebody else's show. So yours shows up every time. It's awesome. You did a really good job getting that shown.

Thank you. But here, here. Here's kind of an interesting thing, and I really don't talk about this much. So there's another kind of slang for what pause means. And in the HIV community, in the LGBT community, pause means HIV positive. And I was about 10 episodes in, and I started to get a lot of angry emails and notes from folks in that community. And I took a moment to pause and really say, all right, listen, I'm only 10 episodes in. Let's talk about this. And it affected me because it's the last thing I want to do. I never want to offend somebody, especially someone going through AIDS and that. And I reached out to a number of my friends in the community, and they were, like, part of my friendship, like, f. That they're like this. That has nothing to do with your show. You don't have a show against aids. You're not talking about aids. You're not doing anything about aids. And it's your name. My last name is Posner. People mispronounce it as Posner. My nickname growing up was Poz. That's why the show is called the podcast. I own it. This is my show, and I haven't looked back. So I make it very clear when I still get, like, maybe one or two a year at this point, but I handle it very respectfully, and I explain my story. And they say, thank you. Thank you for addressing that.

It's not like you don't have a subtitle on there, so, I mean, it's pretty clear you have career and life journeys. Right. So you do say that there. So. No, I think. I think that you've done the right thing by keeping it and keeping it strong, and you've been winning the SEO war within the search engine that is Apple and Spotify and others, not just on Google.

So, yeah, I mean, and that's really what it's all about. It kind of. It kind of speaks for itself. And anybody out there, I handle the compassion and empathy, and even if they get nasty about it, I just handle it maturely because I need to understand where they're coming from with their message.

Well, let's head into that third thing, that monetization you mentioned that you're making money. You know, I call it alternative monetization. You're making money in an alternative way than people typically think is going to be their podcast. They're going to make money on ads, although you do have ads, too, but that's really where the money's being made. Talk about that. That sort of path to it. How do you track it? How do you monitor it?

Yeah. So there's two. There's Two things that I do. First and foremost, I monetize a guest and not the audience. Even though I do monetize, monetize the audience a bit as the show has grown. But early on, if I'm only getting 3 to 500 downloads an episode early on, there's no sponsor that's going to pay for an ad on a CPM basis. So I did two things. First of all, I went out for a sponsor. There's a CRM platform that I use called Interseller and there's a monthly cost to that. It's not cheap. And I use that for all my recruiting and I use it for my guest outreach. I use it for the podcast and that. And I broke it a barter deal with them. And I have extensive amount of resources from them that help me fuel my recruiting business and the podcast mutually beneficial. And that's money that I would have spent out of my pocket. So that's a straight up monetization play right there because that's money that I would have paid. Now I'm getting back in my pocket. And then the second part, which we talked about before, is I book guests who are decision makers at organizations that I want to do business with and I convert them into clients. I'm going to make a lot more money off of recruiting retained client than I would on my show on a CPM ad basis. The other piece that I'm doing now, now that the show is picking up in popularity, now that I'm crossing certain thresholds and downloads, is that now I'm going to be able to go back out to sponsors and start to pitch traditional CPM deals. But I do it a little bit differently where I say to them, straight up, I said, listen, every penny that you spend on this show goes right back into the show to media spend, promotion, equipment, production, because it's not the actual show itself at this age. I'm not a Joe Rogan and Jordan Harbinger out there with Toyota and Microsoft as my sponsors. That's not my core financial driver. I'd rather put it into the show and make the show better and just feed the machine. And they like that. They like to hear that.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

I really mean that not to scoff at $700,000 an episode because that's great, but I put it right back into the show.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So repurposing. Let's talk about repurposing because you've talked about doing lives, you talked about, you know, how many you've Got a lot of shows here. Do you repurpose them? How do you use it on social? What are you doing there? Because you know, your clients are marketers so you kind of have to be good at it too, right?

I learned from the best. I learned from the best. I learned from Gary Vee, Gary Vee's content pillar. I learned, you know, I was there seven years ago. Gary had, you know, we're talking what Tumblr, we're talking my, I don't even know what platform shop back then, like kind of dating myself. But the Gary Vee platform content pillar platform is how to take one piece of content and turn it into a hundred different pieces. And I take that to heart. So I could take an episode, I could chop it up into sound clips, sound bites, audiogram, social media posts. And that process has been a really kind of funny one to evolve. I don't know. You, you a fan of the Simpsons?

Yeah.

Okay, so remember season one and two, if you, if you recall, and the Simpsons been on for 35 years. You look at those first seasons and it is garbage. The animation, right? And I look at my first video clips, literally. I had an intern, a high school intern doing video clips for me and it was like so rudimentary. They were silly, they were like raw. I look like a PowerPoint version of a video. There were nothing. And then I look at my video clips that I put out now working with my video partner, Alex Sheridan, who's incredible. And they're works of art, their stories, their animations, they're like music videos. And that's the evolution of what you could do with audio content. How could you take audio content and create something completely unique? And that's what I'm doing now with Alex. We're partnering to create this eye catching, attention getting because it was an evolution, right? It went from the audio grams and people still. I still do video clips all the time because they're easy, cheap for me to promote. And if I could bang out four of them for 50 bucks, who cares? I'll get them out there because it's attention and eyeballs. I'll put the real time and money into these crafted clips that I'm doing with Alex and I'll put them all over social media. I started on, I was hesitant to do TikTok and my nine year old daughter is the queen of TikTok and she said, dad, let me, let me do your TikTok account for you.

That's what I was thinking about, hiring my 12 year old. Yeah.

And she Crushes it. I give her the video, she edits them, she posts them. We do the copy together and it's fun.

And the other, they do all these cool effects that I was like, how do you even know that? This is nuance. TikTok and I. And it just came out. How do you even know about it? Like, and they do.

Why not empower? Why not empower her? And she's part of my show. She's part of. She loves it. Like, this is her. This is my why. Right? This is what it's all about. And she's part of it. So she's on the team.

I love it. I love it. That's so great. Well, you know, recruiting in digital marketing, I just want to talk a little bit about that because I think that that's really hard nut to crack nowadays. Right. What do you find is some of the drivers, some of the things that, you know, you're talking about on the air in your episodes that is resonating both with your guest and your audience.

I think it's a frustration. I think it's in this economy, this market, it's absolutely crazy. There's such a level of frustration of job seekers out there. There's the haves and the have nots in the job hunt. There's the power shift between going from the employer to the employee to the candidate side right now, this crazy dynamic. There's one side of folks who are getting bombarded with recruiters reaching out for new jobs who have no interest in leaving their job versus people that have been out of work for a long time. They're getting ghosted, that are struggling to get calls back, that aren't getting feedback in interviews. And it's creating this great divide. And us recruiters are in the middle here and we're the punching bag. So what I'm trying to do with my show, with my content also is to put out the good word of good recruiters doing good work and try to change that perception out there of what a good recruiter can and should do and set a good example. It's wild west out there right now, Tracy. It's crazy. We've never seen a market like this.

I have to tell you. Like, so, I mean, we've been growing like crazy and our hiring is just a mess. And it's not, you know, not in the marketing area, particularly, because that's not where we hire the most. We tend to hire and more like what we call client success, which is customer service. And of course, on our production side. Right. And it's just a mess of, like, sometimes we'd make offers and then they would turn them down like an hour before they were supposed to start. Like, all the time was craziness going on that I've never seen in my 30 years of hiring people.

Right.

Like, never seen it.

You hit the nail on the head. There's things that we haven't seen before. People accepting offers and then not starting day one saying they took another offer. I've never seen that.

Yeah, never seen that.

What happened to keeping your word and loyalty and making a decision and, you know, stick it to your guns And I don't. I don't know. It's. It's weird.

Yeah, it is really weird. And then, you know, we. We are a little luckier, but we get more inundated, which is harder to like, sift through because we're. We. Everyone is remote. We've actually always been a remote company. It's not like a new pandemic thing. So we already had the systems and processes for handling that. It works really well. We have the training programs, so it's ideal for people. They want remote work. So we get really inundated. Remote and flex time. Right. Like those keywords. Right.

People always wanted. People always, always have wanted, always have wanted. I mean, I'm not gonna stand here on my soapbox and talk about it, but people have always wanted flexibility and choice. Not to feel bad that, you know, my kid has a, you know, a doctor appointment or school meeting this morning. And you know what? Instead of, you know, when that's over, going to hop on the train or driving into the city for two hours, you know what? I could go right home, continue to work and make up that time and not feel bad about it, you know, or the fact that my kid has baseball practice at 5:30, and I would never be able to do that if I was commuting. But now I could work till 5:25 and run to his baseball practice and do both and be present and be home for dinner and be with your loved ones and not be burnt out sitting on trains, planes and commuting.

Yeah. You know, flex and choice and podcasting. That's what I hear from a lot of podcasters is that, you know, this has become really. Yeah. It's become one of the reasons why they chose it.

Yeah. I mean, what's cool about podcasting is you could do it anytime, anywhere. I mean, I have my zones. Let me ask you, like. So I've done a few shows with some folks in Australia and Apac. And like the time zone's terrible for New York and Australia is literally the two worst time zones in the world.

It's gotta be the worst.

Yeah, it's either we're recording really early morning my time or really late your time or vice versa and trying to figure it out. So for me, like I record with them at 6:30, 7 o' clock at night my time here it's like 6, 7 o' clock in the morning for them and they're like, well, I'd rather get up early. And for me I'm like, I can't do a 6:30am podcast. I'm better at a 7pm podcast.

I'm a night recorder too. Like I'm much better doing the night recording.

Yeah, but I need to, I can't do a 7pm recording. Like with a long day, like I have to build a break in to detox. I can't sit here in my office studio all day waiting for that seven.

O' clock dinner and podcast. Yeah, it would be a disaster, right?

No way.

Yeah, you got to build your schedule around it. Yeah. Interesting. Well, you're starting this program how to create, you know, a business to business strategy and other things like that. But what other advice do you have for aspiring podcasters who just haven't gotten on the mic yet?

It's an interesting one. So I do not think a podcast is for everybody. I think that if you, or if it's B2B and your head of marketing is like, hey, we need a podcast, I want you to be the host. Right. Like if you do not really feel it in your heart or have a desire or an itch, it's one thing to be scared, but at least if you have like a little bit of like, you know what, I might be able to do this, you know, go for it, but it may not be for everybody. The other piece is consistency. I don't think anybody realizes till they start to show how much work it takes and the consistency. We're not talking like one show a month's not going to move the needle. People are going to be wanting more. You know, at a minimum, I say it has to be once a week. It really does have to be once a week because you want people. So push yourself, set goals.

A great podcast, especially if you're doing that business to business model, less than four conversations a month is not really going to do much for you.

No, no, it doesn't. And it's interesting because, you know, I average four to fives, I've been pushing it up. I've been, you know, because I also find I'm recording a lot of shows. So I try to move up the calendar so shows don't go stale. So guests don't go stale. But set goals for yourself. A podcaster that I deeply admire, Jordan Parish, said to me, push yourself to 50, get to 50. Not many people do it. And I forget what the stat is. Maybe you know it. How many shows really make it past three?

So seven. Yeah. 75% of shows pod fade overall. Just pod fade. And they just disappear. That's what that means. It's not like, oh, I did 100 episodes and I quit. No, they disappeared somewhere along the way. It's 3, 11 and 20. 21. For some weird reason. Those are the numbers where they fade. 90% of them fade within those numbers.

That's why I'm a top 1% podcaster. And my show is half decent.

Your show is way past half decent. So that's it. I haven't gotten to do your binge factor yet. I want to do it right now because here's the thing about. Here's the thing. I listen to a ton of shows here, a ton of shows, and I have yet to repeat myself on the binge factor, which I'm really, really proud of. And one of the things that I think is so uniquely different about your show is the pace of the conversation is not forced. And I think that's because of that conversational style that you've really embedded yourself in and done so well. So sometimes we find the pace of a conversation is like, what's next? What's next? Yours is not like that at all. The flow of it is so wonderful and energetic. I just don't think, like, we get that in that topic especially. Right. They're so dry out there, talking about recruiting and talking about careers. Right. It's just dry. And yours is the opposite of that.

That means the world to me. And I. And I really, truly take it to heart because it's hard for me. And this is going to sound like. I call this a reverse humble brag. I just made that up. I really, truly am humbled. And I appreciate that, Tracy, because it's hard for me. And I really do mean this. For anyone listening out there, you don't know me. And this is really the way I talk. It's hard for me, my entire life and career to get positive feedback. The first 15 years of my career before I went to recruiting were hard work, failure, getting fired, getting let go, disappointments. And it wasn't Until I was able to control my own destiny with recruiting, my own business, my own podcast, that I finally start to see success. And there's nothing more rewarding to me as a podcaster when I finish an interview and I hit end record and call. And these guests who are accomplished, who have been on great shows, they're like, Adam, that was one of the best shows that I've ever done. And these are people who have been on top podcasts. And nothing makes me feel better in my heart than to hear that. And they say something very similar. What you just said, Tracy, is like the way you flow the show. You just keep it going. It's a natural conversation. And I take that from my influence of Howard Stern. Howard is a conversation. It's not an interview. There's a key difference between an interview and a conversation.

There is, and that's what your show has. That's the spin factor right there.

But people don't see that in front of me. I have three pages of notes that I'm making sure I hit on. You don't see behind the scenes. You don't see what I'm going through to make sure I get to that right.

Because typically, when somebody has notes in front of them, that's when I find them the most forced. Like, I can hear it. That's how attuned to it I am. I can hear that they're scanning their notes, that they're trying to figure this out. They're doing, like, what's next? And, you know, what's going on. But your notes and the way that you flow, that. That. That's just is. It's just so dialed in. So you have got. You are in your element, as you said at the beginning. Right. That is. This is your thing, and you should keep going. Definitely keep going, because I think the show is great. One thing I want to ask everyone is. That's got to be a burning question from a recruiting standpoint, from a recruiter's perspective, is that we've heard a lot of people who may have gotten, you know, hired and then fired because of something they said on a podcast. What advice do you have for them?

Oh, man, you got to be a little worried right now. I'm a big believer in, say, how you feel, mean what you say. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. Little hodgepodge. Dr. Seuss mix up quote over there. I would just. It's kind of like anything with social media. Don't say anything that you wouldn't want other people to hear.

But you have to balance between getting some visibility and being out there so that you are a better recruitment opportunity. Right. And saying something that you might trip up on.

Yeah, it's a slippery slope, I think, when it comes to. And it's tough too, because in this day and age of cancel cultural culture and over polarization, it's a really tough one to be moderate, to be in the middle, to have a point of view where it's like, listen, I hear what the other side is saying and there are elements of that that I agree to. But let me tell you my point of view and why I'm a little bit more towards this side or in the middle. But as long as you back it up with a strong point of view, whether it be with data, facts, whatever it is, even just your own confidence and standing behind something, don't let others bring you down. If you truly believe in something, just stand by it and hold your ground. Because there's always going to be haters out there. And what I've been learning too is the louder your voice gets and the more popularity you have, the more trolls, the more haters are going to come and learning how to deal with them and just shrug them off. Listen, anyone who takes the time to troll you is going to be beneath you. No one who's ever at a point that you aspire to be or someone you look up to is ever going to troll you. Just remember where the trolls are coming from.

Yeah, I give. I actually have a whole episode.

I did.

It happens to women a lot faster in podcasting and then it does in other places I that you get trolled really early on in your podcast. It's common. And so I do an episode that's for my clients and for anyone else out there. Yeah, it's really gross.

The trolling of women in general on social media. I've seen it on LinkedIn and podcasting is disgusting and I really huge stance against that.

Yeah. And this is the thing. So it's not really about you at the end of the day, even though it feels really like it's about you. Right. It does. It's not really about you. It's actually about them. And they're in a bad place and it's where they are. And if you can kind of keep that separation, then maybe you can make it work. But you know, it is hard not to take it personally when you first get your first one right. It's really hard.

They hurt like they went so deep. How do they know me?

I Know really well because they were listening. I was like, you don't like it, you don't have to listen.

Right. I said the same thing. I mean, early on I had. I had this dude who was in the creative space, I'm a creative recruiter. And he was basically saying, I don't know what I'm talking about. Get off the mic. You're giving people wrong information. And then I just literally confronted him offline and he really didn't have much to say.

Well, yeah, and I kind of. I mean, when I was an ink columnist, they recommended. We didn't engage and so, you know, just don't engage was. That was actually the journalist model. So that's what we've. We've sort of followed here. So good for you for at least trying.

Gotta try.

Yeah. So anyway, I am so excited that your show has, you know, hit milestone. You're on your way to 200 episodes. Do you have plans to celebrate?

Yeah, I've never.

I think you should celebrate.

Yeah, I've never, I've never. I've never been. I don't celebrate like follower count or anything, but for me, 200 episodes is going to be a huge milestone for me. And I'm doing that by attempting to book a really true, amazing a list guest for my 200th. I'm going all my contacts, I'm going deep. I'm reaching out to everybody. I'm calling in favors. I want it to be a very special guest and it has to be meaningful, has to be a good one, has to be somebody that I would never normally be able to get with a show of my size. And the feelers are out there and probably be recording it. The way it's kind of scheduling now is end of this year to be aired some point in Q1 of next year and it's just going to happen. It's going to manifest. I put all my feelers out to the universe. I'm not going to give away any of the names that I'm reaching out to, but I know one of them is going to come through well.

And right here on the Binge factor, all of you listeners out there, I'm going to make sure Adam pings me when that happens so that I can let you know so you can check out his hot guest that he's going to have for his 200th episode.

I have some backups. I'm like, I interviewed myself. Well, I had my mentor interview me for the hundredth. I was like, that's kind of a throwaway. People Are expecting that we could do better.

Really kind of unique twist on it.

So I did a reverse interview for my 100th.

Yeah, yeah, sounds like fun. Maybe I'll have to try that one for 200. We'll have to do something different. I love it. I love it. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for putting the podcast out there.

Thank you.

It's just an awesome show that there are so many people who could get so much value out of. I hope that they're going to take a listen from hearing you on this show today. I don't know why they wouldn't, because we've had such a great conversation and I appreciate you.

Oh, likewise. Thank you so much for having me, Tracy. And thank you to your audience for hanging out with us. And check out the show. I appreciate it.

Adam's quite the conversationalist, and I love how he'll go anywhere you want to take him and he just will go for you, Right? This is the sign of a good podcaster who can really be on both sides of the interview, Right? So he can easily have a great conversation no matter where he is. It's the key to his podcasting success. It's the key to why the podcast is just working, right? So really think about some of the tips that he gave you for the business development drivers and how to make that work for you. And then also think about just the styling and, like, the inspiration and how he's continually improving his podcast. Those are some things that I think that he really brings a perspective on that you can. You can really benefit of if you apply them to your show, if you apply them to what you're doing. If you're here and you already have a podcast, you're a continual improvement junkie, right. Or you wouldn't be listening to this show. You're out there looking for ways you're looking for that next thing that might add to your show might make something great in the way that it works. And you're always tweaking and pivoting your show. Adam's the same way, right? Like, that's what he's been doing. And if you listen to the shows, you do hear that transition over time because he's got enough episodes under his belt. I'm really looking forward to hearing his 200th episode and seeing who it is and just excited about being a really big win for him. So when it happens, I'm going to absolutely, like I said, shout it out on social media. But, you know, if you subscribe to his show, then you'll already be there. You'll already know exactly what it is before I even hear about it. So definitely go check out the pause cast and that's pos. Check that out. On any platform, podcast is one word if you search for it, but it does show up if you'd separate the words as well. So you should be able to find him just about anywhere. So I'm really grateful to Adam for Adam Posner for coming on the show and sharing with us the inner workings of the podcast. If you have some things that are worrying you, that are concerning you, things that you'd love to improve, and you want me to go out there and find a podcast that will cover that for you, I'm happy to do that. Send me your questions, send me your showing that you love, that you would love for me to feature. Absolutely. Happy to do that as well. Until next time, I'm Traci Hazzard on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and video casting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.