Lindsay Tjepkema, Founder & CEO of Casted | Harnessing the Power of Podcasting

Thanks again for sitting down with me today on the success story podcast. I have Lindsey Chepkema, who is the founder and CEO of Casted, one of the most disruptive enterprise B2B podcasting platforms. That's why I'm so excited to sit with her, chat with their unpack, what Casted does for enterprise for B2B podcast, but this conversation is definitely not just about B2B podcast. We go into the concept of podcasting, how to create podcast, who should create a podcast, how you should start, how you should grow your podcast. Everything you've ever wanted to know about podcasting, we cover in this chat. We also have two incredible sponsors for today's episode. We have Gusto, which is an incredible payroll solution for entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners, and then we have Mint Mobile, which is again, in terms of telco companies, cell phone companies, they are really leading the way and building their business model in a very beneficial way for the consumer, very disruptive way for the industry, and they both Gusto and Mint Mobile have incredible offers. So you're definitely going to want to stick around if one you're a business owner that's trying to scale a business and you want less headache or two, you want a much better, much cheaper and probably higher quality cell phone plan. So stick around to around halfway in the show, you're going to get two incredible offers exclusive for listeners of the success story podcast. All right, let's get into this podcasting masterclass, masterclass, excuse me, with Lindsay Chebkema. Thanks again for joining me. Today I am sitting down with Lindsay Chebkema, who is the CEO and co-founder of Casted. Now I'm going to let Lindsay speak about what Casted is and what problem it's solving, but Lindsay has an incredibly impressive background. She has over 15 years of marketing experience, of marketing leadership experience. I was looking on her LinkedIn and it was like director of marketing, director of marketing, director of marketing, owned your own agency for a bit, and then now this is like, I'm assuming your first SaaS, your first company that's a product-driven company versus just like a service driven company. So let's jump right into it. What are you solving with Casted? Obviously a little bit, you know, something that's important for me to figure out as well. I'm going to do a podcast, but I'm also going to try and get some advice and some insight out of you how to build a podcast and how I can sort of improve my show as well. So yeah, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, we got just something to be here. Yeah, so thanks for that entrance, very kind of you. You're right, I've been 15 years in enterprise B2B marketing. So I've been on the agency side, I've been on the corporate side where yes, I have marketed and have been part of marketing teams or marketing leader of companies that sold products and have also been agencies that sell services, marketing everything in between, and prior to starting Casted and jumping into CEO and Founder's seat, I was leading content and brand for a global enterprise task. And as I was brought in to do that, I said, okay, we're this company that needs to grow like any other and establish a brand that people really know and love and trust. The best way to do that is to make it more human. And so what I did there and built the team there to do was to do that to make this brand's will brand more human and said, okay, what better place to start than with what you and I are doing right now, just having conversations with people who know a lot about that space, people that our audience was going to be really excited to hear from. So had great conversations, turned that into content, started to realize, hey, we're having a great conversation. So why don't we turn those into podcasts or videos, which we did, and then we turn that into other contents. We like, we use those conversations to turn into blog content, social media content in the hands of our sales team. And we was working really well, except we were like, wow, this is a really manual. I'm really cumbersome. I can't believe that there isn't a platform to help us do this and to use conversations really as the center of our integrated sales and marketing strategy. So fast forward, that's that's what I set up to do. I left that role, left my role as a marketing leader, kind of everything I had been doing over the last 15 years and set up to serve people like me by starting casted and set up to be the change I wanted to see. And so that was those two years ago, and here we are, where what I like to call, you know, casted really as a first amplified marketing platform, taking conversations and with thought leaders and helping marketing teams amplify those conversations, ring them out across other marketing channels. So there's a few, that's a good story. I understand the progression now. I also want to just take it back and understand where your head was at when you decided to even attempt bringing a podcast into the B2B space, because now it seems a little bit more commonplace, but you still see people that say, well, how do we measure it? Is it, you know, is it worth the time? The hours invested? Where were you thinking or why did you think to do this? Why did you think that that authenticity was important in B2B marketing and podcasting was the way to capture that? Well, authenticity has always been, you know, the way forward. The companies that are more authentic with their brands are the ones that win the loyal audiences, right? It's always been that way. Tim Kopp, a legendary CMO who's on CEO of Terminus, said, I think he was the first one I've ever said anyway, you know, B2B, B2C, it's all, it's all HD, just all human to human, right? And so before podcasts and before video content was being used the way that it is now, still, I mean, even in written content, the way that we were doing our websites, the brands were embracing social media, those that were more authentic and less robotic win, right? Those are the ones that we like to consume the content from. And so specifically, how did I, how did podcasts come into play for me and to my strategies? I was a consumer of podcast content. I became the proud owner of a commute back in, I think 2014, 2015, a longer commute than I had had in a while where I was driving and I just kind of woke up to a idea of podcasts, like instead of just in the radio, I'm listening to podcasts and for me, I really enjoyed, you know, kind of the business podcast, one's about marketing and leadership and got a lot out of those and I found that I would have this 45 minute commute or park my car, I'd walk in the office and then I would take some notes down and I would start to apply those things that I just learned. I wouldn't be like, hey, I'm going to use this with my team today or here's this cool idea that I'm going to talk to my head of demand gen about see if we can work that in the strategy. And so being somebody who had really, really benefited from podcasts for a while, I was like, this is something that we should do. Our audience would really benefit from this. And like I said, we had been having conversations already. We were just recording them on our phones or, you know, just taking notes with internal and external thought leaders. It was like, this is a no brainer. Why don't we capture these conversations in a slightly more sophisticated way and share them directly with our audience and then also see how else we can use them. And a follow up to that, because I actually think this is, as I researched past it, I think this is actually the problem you're solving for. But what would you say to marketing leaders who are saying, well, how do we measure it? How do we, how do we, how do we, you know, show the impact on revenue on, you know, on our funnel and our lead? So what's your point to that? Been there. So in doing that, once we got rolling with our podcast and we were doing some video work too, and I was lucky enough that our CEO, so I rolled up to the CMO, but even our CEO would come and talk to me like, this is so great. I love that you're doing this. He was a big fan and he would listen every week. So I had his buy-in as a fan, but then as the CEO, he was like, what's it doing through the business? Like, I can't, you know, anticipating that I was going to say, well, drove this lead, we brought in this customer, and I was like, I don't know, friend awareness, and hey, we achieved 10,000 downloads, and he was like, yeah, what does that mean? I was like, I don't know. And so that was really frustrating to me. So as we set out to build Cassid, that's something that's been really important from day one, and that we've been working on all along, same, okay? Really, all of the tools, you know, tools and point solutions and little one-off things here and there that exist around podcasting today are made for podcasters, somebody who is creating a show to build an audience that they can quantify and monetize by selling ads. That's great. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not why a B2B and enterprise marketing team would do a show. They, you know, Salesforce, I'm assuming they're customer bars, but I'm assuming that they're not doing a podcast to make more money. That's not a need that they have. They need to, we want to engage their audience and be seen as the thought leaders in the space and to generate raving fans and build out nice funnels, right? So you can't measure that with number of downloads, that just the two don't, they don't line up. So really what you need to be looking at is engagement, just like you do with the rest of your content. How are people consuming your podcast and audio content and all related content that comes out of that? How are they consuming it? How are they engaging with it? Is your audience growing over time? Are people coming back? What are people doing after they listen? What parts of the conversations that you're sharing? Are they listening to? Are they going on and engaging with some of your additional content? Are they requesting a demo down the line? Probably not as a direct result of listening to that one episode, but like, are they starting to build a relationship? And so as we were building cast, we said, how can we start to track that? How can we show the marketer what breadcrumbs are being dropped by people in their audience as they start to raise their hand? How can we, how can we bridge the gap between sales and marketing and something that you know a lot about? How can we not create content? How can we help marketers go beyond creating content for content sake or be viewed as being, is creating content for content sake to say, no, the content that we're creating is not only building our audience and engineering engagement, but it's also impacting revenue, influencing pipeline. Hey, salespeople, when you use this content, when you use this clip, it will help your conversation in this way. And so that's the information that we try to pass back in the platform. And then by integrating with CRM, we also like append the information's already there that salespeople are adding to those customer contacts and the timelines and the information you have about your contacts by saying, hey, these Google are also engaging with the content in this way. Might be a good opportunity to reach out or might be a good opportunity to see how that's impacting those relationships over time. And that's what cast it is doing. And I don't, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that anything like this focused on B2B podcasting exists before cast it. Yeah, at least not before we got started, that's why we created it is that I looked, I tried to find it and then said, okay, yes, we're going to have to go build it. So that's an entrepreneurial lesson in it of itself, right? Like you're solving that need that you found in your own industry and your own life. Okay, so for businesses who say, okay, it makes sense to have a podcast if I have the bandwidth to do it. What businesses would you say should start down this path? Is there a certain revenue threshold that you should be probably, you know, we're 10 million ARR or annual current revenue, like are we 15 million or is something you just start right away as a founder CEO? Yeah, and now I'm going to zoom out from that a little bit to answer your question. So the short answer is, I think everybody should be doing it because if you are doing what I'll quote, doing content, right? Which most companies are, there's this very, very small, small number of companies that might not really be focused on content for one reason or another, especially speaking of B2B, right? But if you are, if you are at all concerned about or prioritizing thought leadership and content marketing at all, having a podcast and a show, having audio and video content is a really, really great place to start. And yes, there are some companies that can and do or could or should do really, really high end high production, high cost, large bandwidth content. And then there's others that are that are finding scrapier ways to do it. And what matters most is that you're putting your audience first, right? And that you're saying, how can we really serve them? And again, that starts with a conversation with somebody that they're going to want to hear from that has insights and expertise and perspectives that are going to be interesting to the audience. So when you know your audience, go find people that are going to be great resources to them and great speakers to them and talk to them, have a good conversation and then share it. And so what I would also say is that if you're thinking about, hey, should we do a podcast as its own stand-alone thing? You're kind of thinking about it the wrong way. And a lot of people are, and I think that's the way that a lot of people are seeing it today. The ones that are really succeeding, though, and what I really advocate for is looking at it, not as just doing a podcast over here on the side, but having conversations, putting those at the very center of your entire marketing strategy, and saying, okay, I'm going to go have some conversations. I'm going to create some audio and or video content around that. And then from there, I'm going to pull all the other stuff that I'm going to argue and I'm going to pull blog posts out of that. I'm going to take some of those unique insights from people that I've talked to and turn those insights into a really engaging blog post and some really cool and interesting posts for social media. I'm going to get it to the hands of my sales team so that they can use the clips and clips and insights and fun anecdotes and metrics that are shared on my show so that they can have better conversations and move things on their process faster. So when you look at it, not as one more thing to do, but pulling something into the center and making everything much more efficient, it really works for a team that's already doing content camp retool their approach. And I'll ask you something else because you probably come up with this or you probably have to deal with this with working with different founders as well as larger organizations. Does it make more sense for the podcast to be positioned as something from an executive or a founder or from the brand? Gosh, I think really it depends, you know, and I think then there's also, I don't want to see there's this one. I know it's not an easy answer, but I just, you know, I see like, I see both, I see both sides and I'm just not sure which one works better for a B to B context. Yeah, I mean, I think I think something that comes that's very clear that is from the brand, right? Now you can leverage the personal brand of the host, the individuals that face the voice of the show, but when it's really clear that this is like your blog, right? I mean, do that make more sense to have a blog that's, you know, Scott's blog or that really represents the brand. I mean, if you want it to come back to the brand, you want people to identify with the company and the product services that you provide. That just makes sense to make sure that it's closely related. And it's not always necessarily about an executive, like sometimes we've seen, we've seen this absolutely that it's a marketing manager or it's a engineer or it's a salesperson. One of our companies, um, uh, led their podcast started with two salespeople, two count executives that he, we think this would be really helpful to help with our sales processes because we work with you. Can we can we work together on this? And um, it, it worked out really well. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've seen, I've seen both and that's, I didn't know that example, but I've seen some brands do it, but then I see, I look at, for example, the opposite side where you, you have all these brands and then you have like a Neil Patel type podcast where it's, he, he drives leads for his own business, but it's like mostly, mostly him. But I guess to rate, it does, it does depend on, on, you know, a lot of circumstances. Um, okay, you're starting a B2B podcast. Um, what would be your checklist of, you mentioned this a few times, like you want to interview people that are having relevant discussions that could be tailored for your target audience, but just like some things to think about when you're launching a podcast from somebody who has done probably quite a few with them. And then follow up, I'll, I don't like doing two questions at once, but I'll let you know where I want to go. So I want people to listen to this. I want to understand how to start a podcast if they haven't started it yet. But then I also want people who have a podcast where it's not successful in a B2B space or even otherwise, um, how they can grow a podcast after they've made sure that they have like those, uh, those benchmarks or those, you know, those core components down. Hey, I just want to pause for a second and thank the sponsor of today's show mint mobile. Now, if you've ever signed up for a cell phone with a pretty sure 100 percent of the people listening to this have, you know, there's always gotchas in the contract, you know, there's always extra fees or there's just a lot of fees and you're paying through the nose. When mint reached out to me, I was skeptical at first because I'm originally from Canada. Uh, now I'm in the state, but I know in Canada, we have the worst telco rates in the world. Yeah, you're paying like a hundred plus dollars for a cell phone in the state. It's expensive. It's not as bad as Canada, but it's pretty damn expensive. So another telco looked into it a little bit more. Mint is by far the cheapest telco service, most inexpensive telco service I've ever seen in my life. Barn on, uh, they, their plans start up roughly $15 a month and they, they shipped me a SIM card to say, like, Scott, if you're going to talk about this, you better be the answer that the quality is good because for 15 bucks, people are going to be a little bit hesitant, you know, is the service good? Do I get, you know, data everywhere to get, you know, a good call quality? Can I google whatever I want? Can I stream? If I want to, um, the answer is yes. Uh, so you are getting as good if not better than any mainstream brand name telco provider. Um, there are no dead spots. I'm using, I'm using the service myself now and it's incredible. Uh, call quality is crystal clear. I get, I get incredibly fast data speeds. So, you know, 5G data speeds everywhere I go. I've never had an outage or a dead zone or anything like that. Um, how do they keep the cost low? It's the way they built their business. They've built their business with no storefronts, no brick and mortar. So every, everything that you do with mint mobile is online. It's an incredible service. So if you're looking into them, all plans include unlimited text, talk and high speed data, again, competing. If not better than any of the major providers that you're currently using to have 100% money back guarantee within seven days, you can bring your own phone, use your own phone. And like I said, it's starting at 15 bucks a month. So if you want to take advantage of a special offer, they put together for listeners of the success story podcast, go to mintmobile.com slash success story. Go to mintmobile.com slash success story. You will cut your wireless bill to 15 dollars a month without sacrificing anything. All right. Let's get back to the interview. For sure. I think it's really easy. And this is, this is an any strategy. This is an any marketing campaign. This isn't any content. It's, it's easy to overlook some of the fundamentals. Right. So any whether you're starting out or you're taking your kind of zooming up from a show you already had or looking at another show. Remember to check every once in a while. Who are you doing it for? Who is your audience? Is it all marketers in the whole entire world? That seems like a pretty large audience, but okay, maybe or is it, is it some subset? Is it, you know, content marketers at high growth B to B SaaS companies? Like that's very different than all marketers in the entire planet. So be really, make sure it's really front of mind like who you're doing it for. Because that and then why you're doing it, right? So are you generating leads? Are you generating data? And when I start brand awareness, are you trying to raise the profile of one of your executives in your company for one reason or another? Are you trying to raise funds? Knowing who it's for and why are you doing it? That that paves the path for everything else that gets into who are you going to have on the show? It's not hard typically to find people who want to be on the show, right? Anyone, I mean, anyone could start a podcast today and get 15 guests tomorrow. Now, would they be the right guests for your audience? Probably not. They'd be all over the place. You have an author, you'd have a, you know, small business owner, you'd have, you know, an investor in your company, you'd have all kinds of people. It gets a little bit harder, more challenging when you know really who it's for and why you're doing it to really narrow in. Okay, then therefore who are we going to have the show? What are we going to talk about? Then you get into show format. So is the show format for designed to appeal to who it's for? You know, executives, just stereotypically speaking, and this is where you want to do some, some check-ins and see how things are going, but executives probably have less time to listen to a really long show. So might want to keep it shorter and sweeter, whereas somebody who's a developer, perhaps, and being very stereotypical, but like maybe the type of show that you're doing is for someone who's going to be listening while they're working, therefore wants to go deeper and listen longer, right? So there is no one-size-fits-all format. There is no, you know, one-size-fits-all approach. You really, really need to get in and understand who you're doing the show for, why you're doing it, and therefore tailored the rest of it around it. Well, that makes sense. A good advice. Now, if you're trying to grow a show, like you said, you want raving fans, but I'm assuming a lot of businesses, when they launch a show, they're just pushing it out against their existing customer, you know, their customer base. How do you purposefully grow a show so that it can add more customers and not just give the existing customers more content? Sure. So, again, that all those into why you're doing it, right? So that's assuming that you want to, you're trying to grow your audience. So that's where it's really important to start with the conversation and ring it out. That whole amplified marketing approach that I'm talking about. So if you, if you and I just have this conversation, you're turned into a new show and just put it on a shelf and that's it, some people would see it, some people would listen to it and tune in, but if you pull clips from that and you use that and social media, then you have your, and there truly are rich. It's not just like, hey, listen to our show, but like you're pulling up clips that are really engaging and you're, you're using audio, you know, so you're appealing to like the visual senses of people as they're scrolling through social media, then you're going to attract more from your social network and those people social networks and those people social networks to come in and listen to your content. And then when they're there, give them more to dig into, right? So give them ways to listen and consume it without having to sit through the whole thing, give them clips to listen to, give them ways to share. Also, you know, leverage your blog and as you're publishing your blog, if you have clips embedded in the blog, then people are going to come from that and as you're sharing your blog, then you're also an advert and you're sharing your, your podcast. So you can see how this all connects and it all works together where when you share one thing with one network or one audience, it kind of opens up an entire sphere of more. Also, as you bring people on to your show, if you're bringing people that really are going to be valuable, they can be internal, they can be external, we have experts like go talk to an expert that doesn't have to be somebody who wrote the best online book, you know, it could be you're an engineer in on your team, you can be an intern, depending on what your, who your audience is and why you're doing the show, somebody who could be interesting to your audience could be, could be anyone. And when you bring them in and you make it really, really easy for them to share the show and to share clips of the show and to make it super easy, then you're going to obviously tap into their network as well. So yeah, it's just about repurposing, making it like you're just, you know, everything you said, I don't want to reiterate, but yeah, you nailed it, like you just have to make sure you know your audience and this has sort of been like a theme throughout the whole thing, like, and I guess it's funny because as a marketer, it seems like the like, like how could you put something into the world and not consider that? But I guess if this is a new medium and you're just trying to hop on board and you don't quite understand the power of what this can actually do for your brand, you're just putting things out into the world and you're just hoping it sticks and you're not thinking of the things that you do for the 99% of the other marketing activities in your organization, which is like that constant reminder that there's ways to tailor this the same way that you would with everything else you're doing with, you know, your social posts with your blog post, like you know, the keywords you're targeting, like if it's not targeted, why are you doing it? And I think that's something that people actually fall into quite often. Yeah. Okay, so, oh go ahead, sorry. I was just saying, you know, it's one thing that I have a lot about is serving your audiences over algorithms. Not, I mean, that doesn't mean instead of algorithms, it just means like, remember, again, who is it for? Why are you doing? How can you serve your audience? But then, how can you leverage what you're doing to make sure that it's optimized so that the right people can find it? So for example, one of the things that we do in Casted is that everything that's uploaded in the platform, whether it's a podcast or video content, you know, webinar or, you know, something from a virtual event that can all be uploaded in the Casted, it's all transcribed. And then we make a show page for it. And on that show page, that transcription, which is done by humans, it's accurate, goes live. And that helps with SEO, right? That helps it be findable by search engines. And so it's it's prioritizing humans and your audience first, but then also saying, okay, now, now that we've done, we've created this content that truly is aiming to serve a human over a robot. How can we make sure that the robots can actually also find it to serve it up to the humans? And so going back into that mindset and finding the platforms like Casted that help teams make that possible are going to open up your audience because they're going to make that great content that you're creating much more valuable. Yeah. And I think that also as you're speaking through some of the features, and actually I wouldn't mind. I don't like making these podcasts like to product focus, but I do believe that some of the stuff that Casted does is also best practices for what you should do with your podcast, like one you just mentioned there. So can you can you quickly run through some of the items that Casted does and maybe just help people understand, does this make sense for a personal podcast versus a B2B podcast, or is there a way to implement it for either or? Hey, Scott here. We're just going to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, Gusto. This is a one-stop shop. One place you can go to take care of all the payroll issues, all the payroll stresses that you have to deal with as a business owner. Look, 2020 has been a rough year. We can all agree on that and 2021 is pretty rough too. But if there's one thing that small business owners don't need is more headed, one thing that you've learned in the past year is that you have to focus on your business, because Gusto isn't just built with businesses in mind is built with the people who run businesses in mind. Their payroll system is the easiest to use. And I've used a lot over my career. Gusto automatically calculates paychecks. It files all of your payroll taxes. It also helps with time tracking, health insurance, and a ton of other HR nightmares that you just don't want to deal with. It also gives you access to HR experts who can help you. It's super easy to get started and set up. The switching pains are new. Why? Because they will move over all of your data for you. 94% of customers who switched to Gusto recommend Gusto as the best payroll solution they've ever used. And this is the offer you're waiting for. Anybody who's listening right now on the success story podcast, you get three months free. This means you can try it without any stress. Go to gusto.com slash Scott. That's gusto.com slash Scott. And that will give you three months free to try it out for yourself. Play around with it. See if it works for your business. I'm almost positive it will. All right, let's get back to the show. Yeah, so I think like so off the bat, we are redesigned for and whole companies can have built for you to serve enterprise marketing teams, right? So we're like mid-marked enterprise, typically B2B companies that have content strategy that leverages audio or at least once celebrity audio and video content is a main part of their content strategy. So that's what castes me for. However, and to answer your question kind of going through some of these features, the reason that we exist and what we're prioritizing as we build up product are things that even if we're not the right fit for you or something that you might want to consider trying to pull together. So things that are important as you harness audio and video content as a key part of your strategy. So you need something that's going to post since end to eight. So not only take your content and give it a place to live. So we give you pages, like listening pages for your whole show and for all of your episodes, but then also syndicate it. So we send off to Apple Spotify, Google, we're looking on an integration with YouTube since we had a video. So there you go. You start with, you know, once you have your show, where is it going to live and how are we going to get that to other people so they can experience it? Obviously very important whether you're with casted or anybody else. Then from there, what's your, what is your audience's experience going to be like as they consume this content? How is that page where they're listening going to get them an experience for your brand? And so one thing that again, whether casted is right for you or not, one thing that I think is really important for people to often overlook and just kind of jump to a conclusion is they're like, oh, we're going to, we're really going to push people to the Apple page or we're really going to push people to Spotify. That's great and that they really do help amplify your voice, but it's a missed opportunity to bring people to your own page. To bring people back to your own real estate and think about blogs, right? We all have blogs and they're really effective. You wouldn't publish all of your content on a medium. Medium's great. It helps you find other people. It helps you grow your audience, but you're missing an opportunity to bring people back to your site so that they can, like what we talked about earlier in our conversation, they can engage with you and they can engage not just in that piece of content, but in your other content and your brand as a whole and maybe request a demo or if you're a B2C company, add something to their cart. Sign up for your newsletter and that happens if they're on your site. It doesn't happen if they're on Apple. If they're on Apple, they might subscribe, but that's the thing that happens in Apple when they could be building that relationship with you. That's something that we do in CASID that we try to really educate our customers around and also make it really easy for them to do. Again, even in CASID, it's not right for you. Really think about that and how you are building your audience, how you're bringing people back to your home and really owning their experience when they're there. Then we have all kinds of fun things. I mentioned the transcripts, clipping, sharing, audio grams, video grams, things like that. Again, whether CASID is right for you or not, the frame of mind is like, don't just create a show. What else can you do with it? How can you pull it apart and whatever your process looks like, whether you're by yourself, we have a huge team, production, whatever it is, how are you pulling that apart and using that content in other ways? How are you amplifying it across other channels? And then lastly, measurement. In CASID, we kind of talked through that. We're really trying to serve enterprise marketing teams with metrics that are around engagement and that really feel look at how it's cooling revenue and impacting the bottom line. So for you, regardless of who you are and what your podcast or your show is for, really think about how you're going to measure it and don't settle for just like number of downloads. If that's not what works for you, really really look around and ask the tough questions with whoever you're working with about how we're going to measure this in a way that matters for why we're doing it. Right? Yeah, no, very good. And I appreciate that you say if CASID is for you or not because these are just really, really good best practices. Okay, so we did as much for podcasts as probably most people want to hear about podcasts. So that was a lot of really good stuff. I wanted to ask just some more entrepreneurial things that you've probably learned over your journey. Is there anything else that we didn't touch on about pod CASID? That was a lot of podcasts for people that are like good. Yeah, you were good. Like you like nailed that. Yes, no, that's good. Okay, that was good. So, um, so first time first time founder and and you're you're killing it. So that you're, you know, in this you're in a small percentile of people that last and people that are doing well as a first time founder. So, um, what are some lessons learned? What are what are some things that, you know, have worked out, haven't worked out? How did you stay in business when most people go under after a year of trying to do their own thing? Yeah, man. Well, thank you. First and foremost, not just me, it's been, it's been the team that I have just been so, so lucky to to be a part of and to lead. So I think that's huge. First surround yourself with really smart people that make you better and that are as passionate about what you're doing as you are. I think trying to do it yourself. I think there's, there's a lot of, you know, glamourization of like being an entrepreneur in like, even if it's not in so many words, like making it seem like it's all just by yourself. And so some truly are a clear team of one, you're by yourself, you're literally building a thing on your own. I think the sooner you get people in whatever way that means for your business, I mean, for me, it was bringing out two co-founders that have truly been partners in all of it, from day one, and then building out a team. That's it. That has been it. The success has been in people. And the sooner you can do that better and just making sure that it's you're doing it quickly, but really carefully because it's hard. Sorry, it's hard. It's like, not unlike parenting. It is like the hardest thing and the best thing that I've ever done. So that, and then I think from, from me, personally, just being obsessed with learning and being really, really comfortable with being uncomfortable. I spent 15 years in marketing, you know, progressively, you know, this step and the next step in the ladder. I'm in the next job and kind of doing the career progression that made sense and then I made this jump. And in many ways, using all the experience of a caddo throughout my career, but also doing something that I've never done before. And so you have to get really comfortable asking questions that you feel like you should know the answer to and going to people that know more than you do and ask, you have to really teach me. And you have to learn about this thing that comes so second-year to you that's new to me. So I think, yeah, being an entrepreneur, being first-time founder, first-time CEO is just being really, really comfortable with being uncomfortable and being kind of obsessed with learning and just not assuming that you have all the answers, but then also being willing to trust your gut and you just know it's time to do something else. Yeah, no, it's good advice. Being, being comfortable, being uncomfortable, asking a ton of questions. Are these, I'm just curious, this is, you know, are these things that you just learned or did you already have some sort of mindset going in that it was okay to ask for help? It was okay to find other people, bring them in quickly because that's something that that in and of itself is not like something that people just feel comfortable understanding if that's how they're going to have to succeed. Yeah, it's almost like an ego thing mixed with an awareness thing. So where did that come from for you? That's a good question. I think just being in such a new role, I mean, it, I would imagine, I thought about this before, but I would imagine, I, I'm in the health disposition kind of choice early on where it's like, okay, here's the thing I don't know how to do, like, am I going to fake it and cover up now and look like yeah, struggle and maybe maybe even come out successful, but the really hard way by like going and trying to learn about my own and or I'm just gonna put myself out there and be like, I've never done this before. What do I do, you know, and what I have found is that the times, I was actually talking to somebody else about this, the times that I rose my hand and went either to my board or an investor or my co-founders or anyone and just said, I don't know how to do this. What do I do? I had never raised capital before. We just raised our series A, it was our second round. When I went to our seed round, there were, there were some really basic questions about like pitching and like what should a pitch check look like that I could have, and a couple things I did, I don't remember specific examples, but there were some times I spun my wheels because I was like, I should know how to do this. I just, I do some part of my brain knows how to do this thing. I'm just gonna push through and do it and you know what you find is that a day goes by, week goes by, it's not done, you have a tiny percentage done or whatever it is you need to do, you don't feel good about it, and then finally the minute you raise your hand, say, I need some help. Hey, can somebody, can you guys join me and on this project, or can we sit and talk about this, or here's this really seemingly dumb question that I have about this, can we talk about it? By the end of that conversation, whatever it is you're working on is half done, you have a vision for the rest of it, and you crank it out. It's just when you get through that, and I think you start to have, everything is data, right? Everything is data. When you start to have some data of like, hey, when I don't ask questions, and I try to do things on my own, equals unsuccessful. When I go ask questions, the people around me, first of all, more successful, and the people around me typically want to help. I mean, I don't think, I can't remember a time where I asked questions, and it was like, oh my gosh, once you should know this, I have people say, oh my gosh, I'm so happy to help. Like, I would love to. Yeah, we'll schedule some time. Um, people want help, and people want also, people want to be a part of growing things, and you know, when you're an entrepreneur and you're growing something, people usually want in on it, and people are happy to share their expertise. So, um, yeah, I think it's, it's important. No, that's a good advice. It's very good advice. Um, and like, these are not easy questions. These are more personal questions, but I know that I like asking these to first-time founders and entrepreneurs. Yes, you had an agency before, but I guess this is a venture back, so it's a little bit more aggressive and scaling out with the quicker. Yeah, exactly. So, there's a lot of stresses and a lot of things that people don't take into consideration, and actually, feel free answering this to whatever extent you want to, but I was going to ask about mental health, maintaining positivity. You seem like a positive person, but I know that there's been a lot of shit that you've had to go through building this company where it's not so easy to be positive all the time. Um, so what, what's some advice for first-time entrepreneurs on, on how to get through that? Well, thank you. And, uh, man, if anything has tested that has been, you know, raising capital in the midst of a pandemic with my kids home and my team's vote. That's, that's been a lot. It's not easy. It's pretty much, and you have to ask those around me how positive I was, but, um, or, or how, what my demeanor was. Um, it definitely made me that much more of mental health, so I'm glad you're bringing it up because it's not something to be taken for granted. It's not something to, you know, to assume it is there for anyone, everyone, especially, I think that this, and one thing that I think before this last year is that, um, it's really brought that to light, and I think we're talking about more. Like, you know, um, to me, something that was not natural to me throughout basically my whole life until, like, the last couple of years, um, was connection and people. I've just always kind of been not on purpose, but just kind of like, oh, just, you want, you want to go do something, just go do it, just on your own, and you don't, don't look at anybody else, just go do the thing. And, fine, that's been fine and good, but I, I, how much did I miss out on, right? I looked, I just finished talking about, like, asking for help, and how much easier things can be, and how much better things can be, and, um, you know, through this, and over the last couple of years, finding those connections, those other people who have gone through what I've gone through, or that I can connect with, um, as peers, and really go to, to celebrate successes, and to just go to when I'm really low, um, that get me, and that, you know, can, can call me on my bullshit, and it can also, you know, raise me up on, uh, celebrate with me when things are going well, that is something that I saw, I don't know what it came from, but it, I saw for so, for so long as a luxury, and something that was frivolous, um, not intentionally, but just like, oh, you know, some people have that and some people don't, I guess I just don't. And then once I finally got those connections, it changed everything, and you're talking about mental health, like, having people to, to go to, and to talk to, and to connect with, changed everything, and then going into this, this last year of pandemic, um, I realized when I was completely, you know, subconsciously pulling away from those connections, and I wasn't as good, I wasn't in a good place, and I was alone, I kind of went into a cave and had my head down, I was just working, whereas when I came up out of that, and would go to those connections and, and, um, intentionally focus on relationships, even just, I'm just trying like a text message or like a phone conversation, it just would make all the difference, and so, I think that's, that's it to me is how, how are you intentionally connecting with people, and as a leader, how are you doing that with your team, and encouraging that amongst your team, and, um, it's, it's easy to overlook or assume is happening, um, but when you actually lean into it, you really see what a difference it makes. Good, I'm glad you had some advice for that, because I think that that's, um, on the range of entrepreneurial topics, um, we do speak about scaling, growth, venture capital, bootstrapping, but like the mental health piece is something that I try and bring out from founders who have built their own thing, or are managing a team, and even more so encoded, because it's something that's, um, not really discussed enough to be quite honest, either have a, a leader who gets it, and they have a healthy team, or you have, unfortunately, if a leader doesn't, I can't say with 100% certain, even I'm sure some people on their team are not doing that great, and they're pretty damn depressed over the past year and a half, or two years or whatnot. So, you know, the more, the more can be brought out, I think the better. Um, it's so sure, and it's so true to accidentally, because there is a lot going on, and especially with a startup, I mean, things are moving quickly, everybody's really busy, and I think we're hard, yeah, we're really hard, and especially now we're not physically seeing it, seeing people, or like noticing that somebody's not coming into the office as much, or not going out with people as much, like it's easy, it's easy to overlook, and I think for, for Cassidy, it's something that's really important to me, and it's really, really important to my co-founders, and we kind of check each other, like, hey, I don't think the team's okay, or I think we should probably mention this, um, and so that's, yeah, connection, and actually caring about humans is something that's so, so easy to talk about, but we're really important to actually follow through that. Do something about it, yeah. Okay, um, one last, uh, entrepreneurial question, then some rapid fire, um, uh, so first, you can defend a tiny bit of time on this one, uh, some advice for somebody who's looking to start their own company. Okay. Would you recommend it? Would you say go keep working your job? How should you do it? Okay, so the, the way I was like to phrase this question is the way to make the decision is if you can imagine somebody else doing it instead. So if, if you're like, I don't know whether to do this, I have this lifestyle, I don't, I'm afraid, whatever, the big, the thing that I could not get away from when I was trying to make the decision was like, it would kill me if I saw someone out start this company instead. And it was like, I can't, therefore, I can't not do this. And so I think we can all imagine doing a thing or not doing a thing, but when you, when you put it in that perspective, I think that's an easier way to see if it's something else. I like that advice. It's simple. It's very simple. I like that a lot. Um, okay. So, uh, a few, a few rapid fire questions, and then I'll, I'll get some contact information from you. Um, okay. Uh, one, one common myth, like a very common myth about entrepreneurship that you'd want to debunk. Oh, that it's all about hustle and grind. Um, and that it's, it's only for a certain type of person. It's sort of whatever serotype that is there. It's anyone can be an entrepreneur if you have passion and does not have to mean hustle and grind. Good. And I think that's also hustle and grind is a whole other function. Why I think that's problematic, but, um, no, it's a good point. Okay. Uh, a resource is helped you along the way. Could be, uh, person, could be podcast, could be a book, something that you'd recommend people check out. Um, all things Brunei Brown. Okay. That's the second time I've heard her name on this podcast. And I guess I gotta go, and now I've got a really list. I've got a really good, because she has a good place to start. Yeah. Yeah. Um, a lesson that you tell your younger self. Oh, man. Um, so I have a mantra that I did not go find on my own. It found me. I don't know how, but just the thing that started to be a part of my life, just boldly be yourself. I think I spent way too much time. I know I spent way too much time trying to be this, for this situation and this, for this person and take this feedback and therefore I need to show up as this at one point that just broke. And I said, no, I'm going to just boldly be me. And sometimes that'll be a win. Sometimes it'll be a loss, but at least I don't know that it's me. And that sounds really cliche, but when you actually can get to that point, and I wish I'd gotten there sooner, um, it's kind of huge. I love that. And I actually think that's one of the most attractive reasons, um, why people should go into entrepreneurship, because sometimes there's a lot, there's a lot of pressure to not be yourself when you have to answer to somebody else. It's difficult. Okay. And then last question, what does success mean for you? To me, it's that I'm using all that's been given to me to make the difference I'm supposed to make and the way that it shows up and kind of like the brometer on that as the people around me. So, um, whether it's my family or friends or this company, um, am I showing up for, and am I using what I have to show up for them so that we can all collectively do what we need to do, um, that kind of shows up in the success of the people around me. I love that. Okay. And then most important, where do people, uh, go find you online, cast it online, what are the socials and websites? Sure. So casted is casted.us. Um, you can find us on Twitter at, go casted. Uh, if I'm me on Twitter at casted, Lindsay with me. Um, and I'm on LinkedIn.