Inspiring People & Places: Highlighting the Human Side of Engineering, with BJ Kraemer
Some people just have a charismatic personality; a magnetic aura about them that attracts attention and creates conversations. For BJ Kraemer, a West Point graduate, former NCAA Division 1 Athlete, and CEO of MCFA Global, hosting the Inspiring People & Places podcast was a way to let his personality shine through while marketing his firm. Recently, I interviewed BJ to hear about his experience hosting a podcast that has published 150 episodes.
About MCFA Global
As a CVE-Verified SDVOSB, MCFA Global specializes in providing strategy & planning, program & construction management services for clients in real estate, defense, federal, healthcare, higher ed, and infrastructure sectors. Their team supports clients throughout the project life cycle to gather requirements, analyze and weigh courses of action and help them make the best decisions for their programs.
Friendly Strife Foundation
BJ explained that this quote embodies what his Friendly Strife Foundation is all about; “Every cadet needs to be an athlete because athletics is a place that you learn a lot about leadership,”
“One project we are working on is a pilot leadership character and resiliency program with a high school athletic department to basically give coaches a curriculum,” said BJ. “What I'm trying to do is to make it easy for them to care about the character development of the kids using the sports field or the pool.”
Inspiring People & Places: An Early Voyage on a Blue Ocean
Sales and charisma come naturally to BJ. Early in his career, the people he tried to sell to wanted to recruit him. “When I was young, everywhere I went to sell would try to hire me [on] day one. They'd be like, ‘I don't need your company. Why don't you just come work for us?’”
Learning this about himself, a podcast was a natural way to let his charisma and personality shine through. “A podcast felt like the most natural platform to slowly build rapport with people over time without having to be an in-your-face, self promoting Instagram model,” said BJ.
The decision to launch a podcast was a big one, because BJ committed to doing it for four years. “I told my team,” BJ said, “I'm treating this like I'm going to high school and then we're going to figure out if I'm going to college.”
He continued, “You have four years to become ‘big man on campus.’ So I looked at it and I said, I don't want to judge whether this is a good idea or not for four years. I want us to look at the data and I want us to try and continue and improve. It's like give ourselves a report card, but I'm committed for four years to doing this because [otherwise] I think it would be too easy to walk away.”
The Impact After Junior Year at Podcasting High School
Today, Inspiring People & Places has published more than 150 episodes. Following his analogy, BJ and his team are moving up from Junior to Senior year at podcasting high.
At first, the podcast was a means to change the business development game. Instead of competing for competitive bids, clients would already know they wanted to work with MCFA before sending out an RFP. While it didn’t quite turn out as expected, the podcast did have a significant business impact.
The show has allowed BJ and his team to build stronger relationships in the marketplace. “I've had our clients on, which allows me to have a stronger relationship with them,” said BJ. “They appreciate being highlighted as a public servant doing really good work. I’ve had clients say, ‘I heard you talk about this on the podcast and I saw it in your people in this interaction or that interaction and MCFA is not just talking about it, they are doing it.”
That kind of feedback has validated the existence of the podcast, letting BJ know that what he and his team are doing is working. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, though. “I'll be honest,” said BJ, “there are weeks where I'm ready to throw in the towel and I'm like, the ROI on this is not worth it. And then there's weeks where I'm having a blast doing it.”
It’s this sense of joy and excitement that has BJ coming back behind the mic. “I think as long as I'm having fun on it, I don't even care about the ROI. I care about it because I think it's becoming the platform by which I can think out loud with people. I can have good conversations with people. I might be able to plant a seed in a young professional about how they're going to build their career.”
Podcasting: A Process of Continuous Improvement
The way Inspiring People & Places is set up, BJ and his team are committed to a weekly publishing cadence. However, there are no rules to podcasting. It’s a process of experimentation and continuous improvement.
For example, after hearing feedback from his listeners, BJ is now experimenting with different episode types so his audience can hear more from him, directly. “I've been told that people want to hear from me,” said BJ. “So we're going to try and get to a 50:50 solo episode to interview cadence.” A recent example of a different episode type was when MCFA’s CFO, Jon Nehlson interviewed BJ in an episode titled, “A Building Leader on Building Leaders.”
Take the Next Step on Your Podcasting Journey
Like BJ Kraemer, you can launch and grow a successful business podcast for your firm. There is a blue ocean of opportunity for professional services firms to use this format to accelerate their networks, humanize their brand, and create endless content. Here are a few resources to help you take the next step:
Learn more about my business podcast production and podcast marketing services
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter
Connect with me on LinkedIn
