How to Turn Customer Conversations Into Your Most Powerful Marketing Asset

What if your brand story isn’t wrong… it’s just not in your customer’s language?

In this episode, I sit down with Jonathan Castner to unpack why most businesses are projecting instead of listening — and how that’s costing them. We talk about turning real client conversations into powerful brand stories, why scripted testimonials fall flat, and how to find your “unfair advantage” hiding in plain sight.

If you’ve ever wondered why your messaging isn’t landing the way it should, this one might change how you think about storytelling forever.

👥 ABOUT THE GUEST

About Jonathan Castner:

Jonathan Castner is the founder of Castner Creative. They tell the human story of your business. Castner Creative helps businesses grow by better understanding what their customers think, feel and say about them. 

They do in-person research of your best customers to find out what truly matters to them, what they say and importantly, what they feel about working with you. Using their circle of understanding method, they "unpeel the onion and then reconstruct it".

Using a combination of psychology, behavioral economics and journalism, Castner Creative turns their insight into a unified language for sales and marketing, as well as for internal communications and recruiting. Then they use cinéma vérité film making to create a set of video stories which validate and connect you to a client base of true believers.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

• Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Jonathan’s work and methodology HERE!

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Transcript

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Natasha (00:00)

Hello everyone and welcome to the show. Two episodes ago, I teased this guest with a bit of instruction on actually some tips on how to capture more organic testimonials. And I'm so excited to have Jonathan here today because he has a lot of tips on creating the real human story of your business. And I think this is such a pain point for so many customers. We're trying to deliver what we think people want without actually understanding what they really want.

So without any further ado, welcome to the show, Jonathan. I am so good. I was, yes, and we had coffee about a month ago and I just really enjoyed the conversation and the insights that you had and you're truly a creative, which is fun. Why don't you give the audience a little background? What is it that you do for people?

Jonathan Castner (00:34)

Hello, how are you?

Thank you so much for having me.

Well, fundamentally, I help my clients better understand their customer base by learning their language, their perspectives, what they really want, what they want to be told, what they don't want, and then figure out from that point, OK, this is how we explain it to them. And my premise is that you're really good at what you do, but you're not speaking the language of the people who need you.

And because you're not speaking their language, they are not seeing both the power of the relationship, the power of the transformation, and most likely that you are doing anything different than what they were negatively expecting. Well, we can fix that because most of the time we're spending our efforts projecting. We're not spending as much time listening and being reflective. So I help fill that gap. So

My work is research based. I learn about my customers, but I really learn about them by doing one-on-one, on location, on camera interviews. Conversation. Tell me about this. Tell me about that. Why did you decide that? How did that make you feel? Why did you leave those guys and use my people? okay. And then we can start figuring out what they want to know. In aggregate.

and what they want to say or be told. And then we can say, here is our language base. Now, I take those interviews and I turn them into user experience stories. Because if I'm going to have somebody on camera for 35 or 45 minutes, not only do we learn a lot, but we also get to hear from an emotive standpoint how they feel about my client.

And then we can use that to say, parenthetically, if you want to this experience, now you know where to go. And then once I've done all of that, I then come back to my client and say, okay, here's what we've learned. Now we understand how to explain your brand, not from terms that you think makes you sound cool, but how it makes you come across as being personal, real, connective. And that therefore either makes the person who is looking for whatever it is that you offer.

say, now that's what we're looking for. Or, oh, that's cool, but not for me. Look at all of the unnecessary consultations we just saved everybody. So then that becomes what I refer to as my circle of information. We serve the client, go to the customers, come back to the client, and then we go back to the customers. And we keep doing this cycle, learning and learning and learning. And

through that process honing down that language. So my customers, my clients, learn what they really need to say, what they really do. Because in many cases, what they think they're doing isn't exactly the way that it lands with the people who've used them. And very, very often, something which their client base really, really likes, the person who's hired me had no clue, because it's just what they do.

Natasha (04:12)

And do you have an example of that that you can share?

Jonathan Castner (04:14)

Mm-hmm. Every project that I do is like this, where I do my funky thing, and my client ends up saying, I had no idea. That's really what it's about? Yes, totally. So a good example of this is a project that I did a while ago for a law firm. And they actually did a fair amount of introspection, which you normally don't get. They started the process. And then...

What they wanted me to do initially is just focus upon a brand story. But I said, we don't know what we're really talking about yet. We don't have a language base. And I said, OK, well, they had a limited budget and they didn't want me to go and do the on location interview stuff. So I ended up doing Zoom interviews with some of their clientele, short ones. And it came back and I said, my god, they love you.

gush about you, but none of them talked about the stuff that normally you hear from people about law firms. They didn't talk about how tough you are. They weren't talking about how much money they made you. They all talked about how wonderful they were, it was to work with you, how personal you are. And the one person who said, she came to my house to hand me the settlement check.

I said, we need to talk about this personal thing that you do. Because you all, they got the results that they needed, but they all talked about the personality, the culture of your firm, which then turned into finding the money and putting them all on camera.

And it was really wild ⁓ because ⁓ I had my, and this never normally happens, but in this case we kind of did it. ⁓ We found a location and had all these people come and be on camera. But I had my client down the hall sitting in a room watching all of the interviews because I had a wireless feed to them. And

After every one of these ⁓ interviews that I did, the client came out and said, my God, that was amazing. That's what they think about you. That's what they say. That's why we need to understand how to attract people who want that experience to you. If they want the tough guy, they'll go someplace else. If they want somebody who's a law firm who truly has a heart, these are the stories.

Now you know what you need to use as touch points so that that becomes not just your differentiator, this becomes your point of distinction. Nobody else does this. And even if they do, no one's talking about it. So therefore, you're the only one. And that makes everything that you say clearer. You know what to avoid. You know the subtleties of what words to use so that even in your billboard, your bus rap,

your leave behinds everything, you now have a framework to attract the people who want that thing which is distinctively yours.

Natasha (07:36)

I love this. so as we're thinking about this and the audience is listening, I just want to make sure they understand kind of the process of what you do in the simple form. And it's basically that you go into companies and you interview both them and their clients and you do several rounds of this. So you're gathering data and then you take this and you condense it down into the actual brand story, right? You're clipping the gold nuggets from these conversations. And then maybe the output is like a three minute brand story video about the company. that kind of

Jonathan Castner (07:57)

Mm-hmm.

I try

to keep it under three minutes. And my framework for that is ⁓ radio and television commercials are 30 seconds for a reason, one, time constraints. But two, if you do not know what you're trying to say convincingly in 30 or 60 seconds, then you are just kind of talking. You're not explaining. And so boiling it down as tight as we can where

Natasha (08:06)

A summary.

Jonathan Castner (08:34)

almost every word matters, enables the clarity of that message.

So, tight and simple. Five minutes is like a movie in my world. If we get someone to your website, they know what you do. They don't need to be instructed. They don't care about your patented technique. They want to know, are you going to be better to work with than the last guys we worked with? Well, explain the thing they need to know. What is it to be in the relationship? How do you communicate? What kind of vibe do they have?

And if we can unlock those little subtle things, which I refer to as your unfair advantage in the workplace, the thing that like with a law firm, other people do that, but no one talks like it. therefore in the eyes of the people who need us, we're the only ones. Ta-da. Okay. Then we can hit it short and fast. So when I'm working with a client, usually I want about a half dozen of their, ⁓ their solid ⁓

clients and not the biggest ones, the ones they have the closest connection to, because those are the ones are going to have an emotive drive to talk about the experience. And then we have a number of voices for a singular user experience. And then we have individual user experiences because each one is a little different, but they have an overarching.

framework. Then of course we can clip out all these little things for lead generation in a variety of forms. And that the main brand piece, two minutes, bam. And we figure out also through this process, when they get to your website, what do they want to see first? Do they want to see people talking about the experience or do they want to have you explaining the drive?

behind what you do. And a term that I came up with is, what is your future legacy? Because many people are trying to figure out, many businesses are trying to figure out, how do we grow? How do we make money? How do we get more customers? How can we attract them? But my thing is, OK, let's get in the time machine. Let's go forward five or 10 years. And when you could look back, this is what we did.

This is the legacy that we've left behind with the work that we've done. OK, cool. Let's talk about that so that people can then project themselves into something more than a transaction.

Natasha (11:12)

This is so exciting and interesting. And I know you work with larger companies. A lot of my audience, they're smaller companies, solo printers, handful of people. How do you think it translates? And what can they take away or self-implement kind of in line with creating more connection and gathering this word bank and story for their brand?

Jonathan Castner (11:35)

It's easier when you are solo or only a few employees because you're now talking about personality rather than culture. If we're dealing with a company with 75 employees, we have a culture. And yes, there are individual people you're going to be interfacing with if you're going to work with that company. But that ⁓ consultant, that designer, it's just Tom. So you can very easily say, hi, I'm Tom.

This is not what I do, this is how I do it. And this is what you can expect in the relationship of working with me. Much clearer, much easier. ⁓ As I tend to say, there aren't a lot of people who decide to buy a Mercedes Benz because they have seen all the stuff in social media which produces a deep sense of connection to the chairman of the board.

Natasha (12:25)

Totally true. That's not why you buy a Mercedes.

Jonathan Castner (12:28)

But...

But you go to the farmers market and you meet that amazing lady and her incredible muffins. Now you've got a face in the conversation to connect you to that streusel top thing, which you're still craving. And it's that emotive connection that makes you want to do the extra effort to go to the farmers market to get the muffins.

Natasha (12:55)

Yeah. And I really love this distinction. I've never really thought about it like that, but from the solopreneur to the company that, and I think some people struggle with this as they grow their business, cause they're still maybe defining the business by themselves. And when there's that, that gap to the jump to a larger business, it's an actual culture. It's how you guys do things together and how that comes out, you know, as your whole brand, right? How people perceive you. So I really think that's interesting and I appreciate that. The next question I wanted to ask,

because we had talked a bit about a lot of people bring you in when they're doing their exit planning for their company. But this type of service is so beneficial earlier on in the roadmap. I would just love to hear a little bit about your experience with that. Why do people wait so long? And it's probably because they go to sell their business and realize that they need to make it more valuable before they can sell it. But I think this is for anyone who's starting a business, whether a solopreneur or not, thinking about this earlier in the game is important.

So many businesses aren't thinking about that eventual sale date and they haven't put all these foundational pieces in there

Jonathan Castner (14:00)

It's just as simple as the fact that we rarely think about the end game of anything. ⁓ You buy a house and you don't immediately start thinking about when and how you're going to sell the house because you just bought the house and now you've to put your furniture in it and all of this and then you live in the house and then you just live there until something happens where you say, we have to sell.

guess we better tidy this thing up. That's just how humans are. This is where life insurance people have a heck of a time because no one wants to talk about when I get old, when I get sick, when I'm going to get hit by a bus and now what am I going to leave my family? But it happens. So the problem I think is compounded by the fact that most people are just used to working all the time. Building, building, building, building, building, building, shoulder to the wheel.

And they don't end up saying, OK, and then what? Where do we go from here? So the problem with all of that in a nutshell is the fact that a half million businesses go up for sale every year and less than 20 % actually sell. Let's do the math. 400,000 businesses every year just close their doors and walk away.

And that's because they never considered that eventually they're going to want to move on or their hand was forced. know, found a zip by a bus, founder finds out he's got stage four cancer. You got six months. Now what do you do? There's all these lots of books written about you find out you have a finite amount of time to live. And what does the character do? Well, that's not really fiction. That's real life.

So if you're building, building, building, then what do do?

figure it out. And so when you get to the end of that, or you get close to the end of that, how do you figure out how to package that up in a way that someone wants to carry all the burden and all the relationships? Because a business is not just a set of assets. It's people, and relationships, and expectations, history.

So if someone is going to take on that thing that you have spent the last 20, 30, 40 years building, they have to project themselves into being you.

that's for my whole research storytelling thing happens to fix that, to bridge that emotional gap where they can project themselves. And there's a lot of terms of projection in my world because I'm trying to make somebody who doesn't know, doesn't care, be able to see themselves in a different reality. That's good reality. So with the same process that I use with a company that's in just a standard growth mode, we're trying to, you know,

get big enough so we can have a third location, okay cool. Then how do we say, okay, we've got a couple of years to get all of this in action, nice and smooth and attractive to somebody who wants to come up with good money to take over the business where you left off so you can go on to the next phase of whatever it is that you are.

Same thing, how do we raise revenue? How do we ⁓ hire the right people? And then how do we make it attractive to the person who is going to make a significant transaction to take over your thing? And that's application of my work.

Natasha (17:52)

Yes, I love all of this. And it's funny that you were talking about, know, we don't, we don't move until something's like painful or interface. Cause that was literally my last podcast was just what would change if we were actually projecting out a bit and, know, being a little bit more thoughtful of what the ending looks like. Because I think you're right. We jump into these things and we don't do something until our hand is forced and we're not being as strategic and leveraging as much of the value that we might have in the business because.

This brand storytelling that you do, it's so funny because it's so essential to business, but so many people either get it wrong or just don't know how to get there. And I do think some of the things are simpler than we're making it.

Jonathan Castner (18:35)

We do complicate everything. ⁓ One of the things I find interesting is that the term storytelling has popped up as a buzzword in both business development as well as marketing. And it's not new. It's been around for, what, 60,000 years, whatever the archaeologists have figured out. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ It's just that we've come to understand that

Natasha (18:55)

the dawn of time. That's our oral traditions, right?

Jonathan Castner (19:03)

motivating people is not just as simple as a catchphrase.

that the industry of marketing isn't as old as we think, really. It's a slow moving process. And most industries tend to do what they have shown has worked. Nobody wants to reinvent the wheel. Cool, let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's design a better wheel.

you know, one that has less rolling resistance and less inertia, all of these things. Still a wheel. And so the, okay, well, people want to have a feeling of connection to something. Now I should probably do the research on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this push for storytelling in this world comes from social media.

So one of the trivia questions I like to throw at people when I'm giving presentations is, hey, everybody, how did the world fundamentally change on June 24, 2012?

What happened? It was the release of the iPhone 4. And the iPhone 4 was the first widely distributed consumer good that had a front-facing camera. This is where the selfie generation came from. This was the hockey stick 100 % over 100 % growth of social media because now we could film ourselves. We didn't have to have somebody else do it.

And that's when people started to want to know about other people's stories.

Natasha (20:54)

You could give a TED Talk on this.

Jonathan Castner (20:55)

And as we're trying to figure out how social media works fundamentally,

it's this guy on the other side of the world telling a story about a thing that I find interesting. That's really it. This whole thing, I really believe, is not more than about 12 years old as a concept within the marketing space, within the business development space. Because up until that time, we had to have much more

equipment and mechanisms around the ability to tell your story. And now you probably do this every other day to all of your fans. So it takes a while to kind of filter through, but it's as old a civilization.

Natasha (21:43)

So with that, I think this is a great time to ask you the question. So the iPhone came in, changed all of this dramatically, and I think that's really right, and I love the perspective on that. So with all of the AI that's coming out, what do you think that's gonna do to marketing, to our storytelling? I'd just love any thoughts around that.

Jonathan Castner (22:05)

What it is showing is that the human element is more important than ever before. That we have gone straight into an absolute wasteland of believability.

moment by moment is getting increasingly hard to figure out what is real. Now we know that if we see something that appears to be a

advertisement. We know that we're being sold something. The social media influencer, and that term kind of irritates me a little bit, because, Natasha, I don't want you to be an influencer, but you darn well are influential. We forget that those people that used to be just fun people that we saw on YouTube or Instagram, whatever, turned into shills.

Because as soon as they start making sure that they have product placement and this episode brought to you by, they are selling something else through their ⁓ celebrity. Okay. Next phase. Now, is that even a real person?

is that thing that I am looking at not created by a human being, but created entirely by an automated system which has gleaned all the information that it can from the net on what I want and specifically created this one presentation to fool me into making a decision because it can manipulate me in ways that I can't fathom.

and do it so well, I do not realize that I'm looking at a machine and not a human being or a set of human beings.

So we know that's a human being. And the trick, and I will let all of our listeners in on this, is to not be perfect. Lean into those things that make you undeniable you, like with brand story itself. Don't make you perfect. Don't put on the layers of filters that makes you look like a rubber glove.

Don't try to have perfect this, perfect that, perfect other. Let it happen. Be yourself. And we're going to be having a backlash against what I refer to as the land of ⁓ only people, no one lives, ⁓ there's no one in that land older than 26. And all they do is go to the gym and they have perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect teeth. I mean, it's, they come from a planet somewhere because it's not here.

And if you look like a human being, good. If you have a particular quirk to the way that you speak, good. Because that's really, really, really hard to script. To produce something like that means you're a darn good writer. mean, you're a Stephen King level writer. Not many Stephen Kings running around there doing this kind of thing.

That's one of the reasons why you can kind of tell because everything is just too smooth. So one of the things that I've been doing with my work is making sure that I leave in the occasional stumble mumble uh uh in those edits. Because yes, can edit, can script some of that stuff in, but no one's going to bother to figure out how to make that one little thing that he does with his hand look natural.

Be yourself. And so in the work that I do, I don't script things. Because I can't have somebody who is really good at what they do, an architect, read a script the way that a true actor would. But the bot does. The bot was trained not on real people. The bot was trained on actors.

So my user experience stories, all real people. When I have the head of the company tell the brand story, it is not scripted. I do that with the CEO the same way that I do with his customers. We sit down and we have conversation. And then I edit the things that he would want to say if it was perfectly scripted. But it comes out in his voice.

with his energy and with his peculiar personality. So it's absolutely Charles. And so I had a project that I did a number of years ago and ⁓ I had the subject of this thing that the client had me come out and do. And about two months after it went live, ⁓ he saw me at this thing that I was at and it came running.

through the crowd and he comes over and shakes my hand goes, my God, that video you shot of me, that was amazing. I had no idea that I talked like that. And I said, no, you don't. Nobody does. Not on command. But that's what you said. That's how you said it. And what I did is I removed all of the unnecessary bits and I condensed 20 minutes of conversation into 90 seconds. Because that's exactly how people think of you. Only.

Natasha (27:20)

You

Jonathan Castner (27:38)

I was able to hide all of the stumbles and mumbles and ums and little side tricks and what not ⁓ into a condensation of him.

And it's real.

Natasha (27:50)

Yes. And this is, I think, where entrepreneurs struggle because you start thinking about what you should do and how you should show up. And then you start trying to act. I liked ⁓ the example you used, we don't have acting degrees. So it's just coming across as kind of stilted and totally scripted.

That was actually the tip I gave for testimonials the other week after our conversation is, know, so many people struggle with them because they ask someone, you know, what'd you love about the business? Give me a testimonial. And they all get a bunch of canned generic things. like, it's great. Really nice to work with you. But nothing that's going to push people to buy. But when you get that actual interview and conversation, these

organic things come out that are so connective and they're real, but half the testimonials are scripted and that's why they aren't working because they're not actually saying the thing that customers are listening for and will resonate with.

Jonathan Castner (28:46)

So let me come back to where we started in all of this, because this is a good point.

It's not about what you want to say. It's about what they want to hear. Always work backwards from the result. So if you know that you don't have somebody who can show up and hit their mark and do their lines and win an Emmy, don't treat them like someone who can.

So actually in the past I've done a couple of things where I've gone in to a company and I've done a workshop on how to teach your salespeople how to do really quick and dirty interviews and testimonials on the fly. Because they go out, they close a deal and they say, hang on a second. Will you do a quick little thing in my cam so we can tell people how cool this went great? And I can coach them a bit. Now they're not going to turn into Terry Gross. They're not going to turn into Sean Evans.

but they're not going to be ham-fisted in how they do that. And since all of the work that I do has some element of interview in it, I'm pretty good at this and I can help explain that. But the most important thing is don't make them say lines. Have them talk to you. It's just you and me. Tell me about the experience. Tell me about the thing.

And you can, as you pointed out, you can always tell when someone's been given lines in the testimonial because they look like they are, what's the term, ⁓ doing a hostage video.

Natasha (30:27)

Yes.

Jonathan Castner (30:29)

⁓ And you actually see this where somebody either in the company or the marketing company said, we should have the CEO give the promo piece. And you see these and they are awful. And you think, you as a marketing person, you signed off on that? my gosh. Hello, I'm Tom. I'm the CEO and I'm inviting you to, no, Kelly cares.

Man, you're making people want to, like, throw bombs at you. Be yourself.

Natasha (31:02)

And the other thing

is it took a ton to produce that. It's not like these three minute videos. They cost thousands. They took a ton of planning and scripting and a lot, cause these creative projects for people who don't work on video sometimes don't realize that three minutes can be 20, 50 hours of work, but that same CEO could go sit down and probably do a 30 minute podcast where they just sat and showed up and you could clip some stuff out of that and it would be more effective.

Jonathan Castner (31:06)

They spent money. They spent really money on that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. But that's not what they're told. And so that's not what they do because it's easier to do what we were taught in school. It's easier to do what everybody else does because we're playing it safe. So my parents were actually actors. My parents were voiceover and on-camera actors in some of the top in the country. So I was raised in that world. So my parents were the ones that, even if they just stopped and talked to somebody,

the person would sometimes be kind of weirded out by the way that my parents carried themselves. And I did my first TV commercial at age of three. I did voiceover work in junior high school and high school. ⁓ And as a result, I was raised in the strange world of language and presentation and performance. And it's about practice.

And I recommend that all of the studio audience practice, practice, practice. It's going to be horrible. It's going to be awkward. But if you can come across as being authentic by just being yourself because you've stopped caring and you're going to try to have someone else on camera and they can see that you've got that energy, that helps them too.

lead by example. And I had a friend of mine, this is actually kind of old days, this is like 10 years ago. He was a financial advisor. And he had this idea of trying to do weekly market recaps for his clientele. And he said it was the most painful thing he ever did because it was something he talks about all the time. And he is an expert in this stuff. But just sitting in his office talking into his phone, he would

You know, you'd give a kidney to make it stop. And it took him about 60 times before it started to flow. And then he could just sit there and go, boop. Hey, everybody. It's Mike Christian, Sinner Christian Financial. Boy, things are getting really weird in the copper market right now. So here's some things I'm going to pay attention to. Well, it's Mike. Talk to you next week. Boop.

How do you make it look so easy? Because you do it a lot.

Natasha (33:54)

And I think that's important too, because a lot of my audience uses speaking in their business to promote themselves. And especially when you get on camera, this little black box, right? It's awkward. And I used to really struggle with it and I've gotten a lot better. But again, it's practice. But for me, it's also the funniest thing about it is it's like peeling back all these layers to just get back to yourself because the anxiety, all of these things, you just kind of make yourself small instead of just being yourself, your normal personality that, you know,

we can have a normal conversation at coffee and you're engaging and lovely, how do you just get that out, that same person, just when the environment changes?

Jonathan Castner (34:34)

Alright, step one. Everybody in Studio Land, raise your right hand, repeat after me. I'm fine the way that I am. I'm good at what I do. People like me. People respect me. And because there's nothing wrong with what I am, with what I look like, nobody cares. Show yourself as a human being and let them understand that you are here to help. Because one of things that I also end up doing

very often is, good afternoon everybody, thank you so much for having me at your group. Before we start, here's the audience participation part of the program. Take out your business card and look at what it says. ⁓ They're all wrong. Everybody here is in customer service. We have a business because we can do something that our clients can't do or won't do. We are here to help. That's the framework we're going to go forward.

from this point on. How can we let them know that we're here to help? We're not here to sell. We're not here to pitch. We're here to help. OK, now let's then figure out how to explain that more clearly.

It's all right. If you can figure out what I want to have the effect of my audience at and work backwards from that and learn to drop your fears, then you can have that one-on-one conversation. You can stand in front of an audience and be delightful yourself and it'll matter to them.

Just be you. You're awesome as you are.

Natasha (36:18)

couldn't agree more and I love everything about this conversation. So many of things you say are just rooted in the authentic relationship piece, which you know is such a big part of my business and what I tell others. So I would love for people to be able to check out some of your work, some of the videos we've talked about today and where they can find out more about you.

Jonathan Castner (36:34)

Mm-hmm.

Well, you can find some examples of my work on my website that needs to be redone again. And I will also say this as it's a constant process that the way that we say things and how we present ourselves is very often the last thing that we worry about because we're too busy doing everything else. So ⁓ don't feel bad.

that it's not as polished as it could be. Just keep polishing. I redid my website last year. I'm going to be redoing my website here again because I've learned new things. And as a result, that adds to the clarity for people that I can make a change for. So my website is Castner Creative. That's C-A-S-T-N-E-R dash creative dot com.

And you can see some of the work that I've done and you can learn about my methodology. But most importantly, I want you to learn how I think. Because how I think is everything. How you think is everything. Yet you have your deliverables. But if I understand how you think, if I understand how you communicate, if I understand who you are as a human being, now we've got something to talk about.

So I prefer to work in B2B space. I can work in B2C space. But we all should work in the H2H space, human to human. Particularly the smaller the outfit, the more that human thing matters, which is why I tell the human story of business.

Natasha (38:15)

I love it and I know that they should definitely check out the videos. I was watching some the other day. It's just a helpful frame of reference. And for all of my guests on the show, I always end with one question, which is what's one piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Jonathan Castner (38:30)

Start

earlier. I did not know that I could be doing the thing that I do and the way that I do it until about seven and a half years ago. Prior to what I do now, I was a photojournalist. So I professionally told stories for all kinds of publications.

And then the technology change went to multimedia, technology change went into video, and that then started getting me doing video work for the businesses that I got sent in by Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or whatever. And almost always they would say, you shoot video. Can you shoot something for us? And I'd say, okay, sure. What do you want? And they say, we don't know. ⁓ let me figure it out. And so I started doing...

a baby version of what I do now, starting around 2012, maybe 2011, and worked on my technique and work and work and work work work. And then in 2019, I came to understanding, aha, this is my superpower, because this is what I can use all of my skills, all of my knowledge into in a way that's kind of hard to duplicate.

But had I known I could do that earlier, I would have because this is fun. my gosh. ⁓ and the lawyer ⁓ story I told you about ⁓ sent off the deliverables. I hate the term. And I got the email that you never expect to get from a client where the client said, I have to be honest with you. I cried.

And so did my husband. This is amazing.

I made a lawyer cry and she's not gonna sue. ⁓ That's what you hope for. You hope to have a deep positive impact upon the people.

Natasha (40:20)

You

Jonathan Castner (40:32)

And that's one of the things that fuels me for the work that I do. I can make people's worlds better. I work for good people who do good things, which means if I can make them more powerful, they can have a positive effect upon other people. Wow.

If I could have started doing this earlier, it would have great, but I'm not done yet.

Natasha (40:53)

Well, I love everything about this. Oh yeah, let's have it.

Jonathan Castner (40:55)

And one critical

thing, there are people there that can help you. There are lots of people that can help you.

Make a list, homework for everybody. Make a list of everybody that you know, that you have some kind of relationship with, that you respect both as a person and a professional. And with that, what their core specialty is, write them all down and then stand back. That are your true boosters. These are the people that you can call on at any time who will help you.

who know things and have connections that you don't have. You can get there. You just forgot, ⁓ I wonder what Barbara thinks. She's really smart. And then you call up Barbara and she says, ⁓ yeah, yeah, that really sucks. Have that happen. No problem. Here's what we're gonna do. Yes.

Natasha (41:57)

It's powerful advice that people in my network, they're everything. And that's why I'm so relationship based because I'm not good at everything. And I'm someone who does make the phone calls and gets the advice a lot of times before I make a decision, ⁓ because I, I'm a curator of information. So I really like to have those angles and those aspects. And I think a big part of me being successful is I've had a lot of great mentors who I have reached out to and built great relationships with. So I think that's a perfect place to end.

I always know it's gonna be a good conversation when I'm on the edge of my seat and just thinking about how I can apply the things in my business and I really do think you have a TED talk in here. So ⁓ I would love to have you back in the future. We've got some other things I would love to talk about too. So thank you so much for your time and expertise today.

Jonathan Castner (42:43)

I would be delighted.

and for everybody else ⁓ out in studio land, ⁓ shoot me a note. Let me what you're trying to do. Let me see how I can help. Directly, indirectly, maybe I a guy. Let me be useful.

Natasha (43:00)

Well, thank you everyone. We will see you back in the next episod