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My Weekly Marketing
Join conversations about marketing, business, and life-in-between with marketing strategist Janice Hostager and a variety of world-class entrepreneurs! We will fill you with step-by-step training, marketing strategy, and life experiences from where life and business intersect. We'd love to have you join the fun!
My Weekly Marketing
Growing Your Business Through Podcasting with Casey Cheshire
What if your next big client came from a genuine conversation instead of a cold pitch? In this episode, I’m joined by Casey Cheshire—marketing expert and host of over 1,000 podcast interviews—to talk about how podcasting can open surprising doors for connection, credibility, and content creation.
We unpack how podcasting helps business owners build real relationships with potential clients, all while generating authentic, useful content. Casey shares why podcasting isn’t about having a huge audience—it’s about having the right conversations.
If you’ve ever wondered whether starting a podcast is worth the effort, this episode will give you a fresh perspective and practical starting points that don’t require perfection.
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I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing.
Janice Hostager:Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of My Weekly Marketing. This week, we're going to go like a little meta on this podcast and share a podcast about podcasting. If you have a podcast and want to grow it, or if you've ever thought about starting a podcast and are wondering, wait, do I really need one for my business, well then this episode's for you. Seriously, podcasting is one of the best decisions I've made for my business. Not only does it create my weekly crowned content and drive traffic to my site and my promotions, but it's allowed me to meet so many amazing guests and those guests have taught me so much. So do I recommend podcasting? Definitely.
Janice Hostager:That's why this week, I wanted to chat with Casey Cheshire. Casey is a podcasting powerhouse, a B2B marketing strategist and a former US Marine who's helped hundreds of businesses turn their podcast into a legit marketing machine. He's the founder of Ringmaster, host of the Hardcore Marketing Show and someone who seriously knows his stuff when it comes to building relationships through podcasts. Today, we're talking about why podcasting is a powerful tool for B2B businesses and the unique way that Casey uses podcasting to grow his business. So here's my conversation with Casey. Well, hey, Casey, welcome to My Weekly Marketing.
Casey Cheshire:Thanks, super happy to be here.
Janice Hostager:Great. So you have built and hosted multiple podcasts, including your current one, the Hardcore Marketing Show, and now you help others do the same thing. What sparked your interest in podcasting in the first place, and when did you realize it could be a business?
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, I was running a company, it was an agency and it was the kind where when we teach our customers things, we win deals.
Casey Cheshire:We needed thought leadership, we needed content, and I remember sitting at my desk writing a LinkedIn article for an hour plus, and the problem with those type of activities is sometimes 1,200 people would see that article. Sometimes 12 people would see that article and you never knew the difference. Maybe it was a cool helicopter photo on the front right. It was really. It felt like a waste of time, especially when you're running a company and you don't have time to do really anything anyways to spend it writing. And so I needed some other way to do thought leadership, to create content that would teach our prospects, teach our customers, so we would win more deals. And I looked around and I saw podcasting and there weren't any companies like what I have now that would help guide me along. So I just started ugly. I just sort of researched things and looked around and found a microphone and got started and broke a lot of the rules that I now teach people not to do. But you know, just started and what was amazing to me is I instantly solved that content problem. I instantly, within several episodes, had more content and thought leadership than I knew what to do. It was coming out of my ears. In fact, I had so much content that at the end of a year, I was able to actually publish a book based on all the conversations I had with all the guests that I had, and they were all like, happy to promote the book too. So content was solved.
Casey Cheshire:But one of the things that happened in this process, other than realizing I loved podcasting, was I loved connecting with people, and I had this great interview with an absolute amazing CMO at a company, and at the interview she mentioned that their team was actually migrating software platforms. They were migrating from one platform to exactly the platform that my team specialized in, right, so I didn't realize this at the time. She didn't either. I was like, well, holy heck, that's what we do. And she's like, really, I'm like, yeah, in fact, that's the only thing we do. And she was like great, we've been looking for a partner, we've had this show together. I trust you. Now let's get our teams together.
Casey Cheshire:We got our teams together and they scoped out and this is like more of a friends and family deal where you just you tell your team hey, this is my friend, scope things out, let's get them a good deal. And she said hey, this is my friend, his team's going to scope things out, make it happen. They got together, scoped out an $80,000 deal that signed within days, no sales cycle, no haggling back and forth. It's like a deal with a friend where we just got it done and I thought, damn, that was great and that was on accident. What if I made it on purpose? Right?
Casey Cheshire:And so then I sought out to interview people who I know would be fantastic customers. They had the software that we use, they had the problems that we know we can solve, and I would invite all of their CMOs in this case, because those were the people that would buy from us. I would invite them to be a guest on my podcast, create a relationship, create some great content. But in the end, many of them were like oh well, you do x, y, z, man, we've been struggling with this, we'd love to get some work from your team. So it became the most amazing foundation of marketing for my company and I was just passionate about it. So when I had a chance to sell that company, I thought you know what I need to go all in on this podcasting thing. And people kept asking me hey, great story, can you help me with that? And it's like, yes, yes, we can.
Janice Hostager:I love that. I, too, think that I was really surprised by the number of relationships that I've been able to form with people that have been guests, and it's just been, I think, something I wasn't expecting.
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, same.
Casey Cheshire:I think it definitely sneaks up on you, but it starts the relationship off with a give, right? We've just met. You've invited me on your podcast and I'm grateful for that, and you didn't start out by saying let me steal your time, this happens all the time, right? Marketing and sales, and let me play these games and trick you into paying attention. And giving me your information and sales is going to trick you to get on a sales call. You don't want to be on that call. You're not paying attention. I've been on these calls and not paid attention, right? It's messy, it's such a waste of time and money. So to skip all that and say you know what, let me start this relationship off right, you've never met me. You're an ideal customer. Hey, come be featured on my podcast. Let me make this podcast about you, not me. It's not me just talking about me the whole time. This is me asking questions about you, putting you in the spotlight, and what a great way to start a relationship.
Janice Hostager:Absolutely. Now I think that that probably won't work for everybody, right? So you were able to pull on potential customers. I would probably have a little more trouble with that because I have industry experts depending on your podcast, right? So for listeners who are like solopreneurs or running their small service-based business, how does podcasting fit into their marketing strategy, for example?
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, it works when you design the show to be about your guests, not about you, the idea being like I could certainly get on a show, and I bet you there's a bunch of other business owners out there. I could get on a show and you could ask me about P and L statements. Well, uh, you know I don't really want to talk about them and the amount of depth I could talk about them is kind of shallow, right? So if you were to invite me on that pod, I probably wouldn't join. But instead, a good example is we created a podcast for one of our clients, Cal. He's an accountant and he does marketing just for marketing agencies, right? How cool is that? An accountant that just works with marketing agencies. I love the niche, by the way. Every marketer is going. Oh, that's great. Good job, Cal. We made a show for him called the Marketing Agency Power Hour.
Casey Cheshire:This is not the accounting show with Cal. Why? Because his customers aren't going to join that. The reason they work with him is because they need him for that stuff. If they were experts enough to be on that show, they don't probably need him, right? And so you make it about your customer. Now, of course, you absolutely sprinkle in experts that are interesting. I've had this one researcher who's an expert on creativity. How do you make creativity programmatic? That's something maybe all of your customers need to hear. So you certainly put different people on. That might intrigue you personally as a host. But you make the show about the wins and the challenges and the struggles and the stories of your customer, so they feel confident, like they could get on the show, talk about what they do and you know what what's really fun is about.
Casey Cheshire:Midway through not the beginning, but midway through you might ask them hey, what's your take on accounting? And Cal does this, right? Midway through. Hey, what's your take on accounting? And they go oh man, you know that P&L statement or I can never get in front of cash. Payroll's kicking my ass, right, and guess what? That's how you follow up afterward. Hey, I heard you mention payroll's kicking your butt.
Casey Cheshire:I've got a program, I've got a guy, I've got someone on my team who's really good at that. Let me have them sit down with you know your person for half an hour. See if they can't make a plan real quick. On me because we're friends, right, that's a great way to continue the relationship with a give. But I have had so many people say, no, that sounds great, but I want to pay you, I want to sign up with you. Like I trust you. Finally I meet someone who I can work with, right, so this, just this whole thing, works really well.
Casey Cheshire:So for your listeners, it doesn't matter what business right, hey, a boring accountant, right? Can have the power hour and if you listen, he kind of makes it like a he's not that boring, by the way, he makes it like a wrestling theme. He's like welcome to the power hour, right, and it's just fun. And he talks to marketing agency owners and has a great time. So, any, this works very much in a business to business setting where your guests and the business they could bring in is valuable, because when your guest is valuable, you don't actually care about your audience like you do, but the first priority is my guest. I want them to feel special. I want them to feel like they hit it out of the park, so that they're going to be sharing the episode, which is a natural promotion for you, having your future customers and these dream customers sharing an episode, your brand with other people, right, it's magic.
Casey Cheshire:In fact, on my marketing pod, my number one episode is not one of those cool marketing authors or the famous people or the CMO of that big fortune company, right, it's the sales leader, head of sales at this company in Texas, and he felt so, so well represented on that pod I did with him, where he talked about his approach to sales but also about how he really is passionate about serving his customers. He felt so represented. When he's selling a deal, he says go listen to my interview on this podcast. If you like what you hear, let's do business together. If you don't, no harm, no foul. Hundreds and thousands of people listen to my podcast that one episode because he's promoting it, right? So I created marketing collateral for him and in turn, he's introduced me to thousands of people by my brand, right? So this is this really cool ecosystem of just helping other people out and then growing at the same time.
Janice Hostager:That's really interesting because I think in marketing, what I do and with my clients is that I have what I call the Trail to the Sale, which really aligns with the customer journey map right. So awareness, consider, compare, evaluate, buy and so on, until they refer and kind of go down the entire map but what you're doing is kind of, like you know, leapfrogging ahead a little bit, right?
Janice Hostager:So you're just saying you're going right through that nurture process straight away almost to the sale, and you can do that because you're taking an hour or half hour or whatever to really develop that relationship early on, right?
Casey Cheshire:Totally totally.
Casey Cheshire:And what's interesting too is you know they still need you. Right, we work best together because, guess what, not everyone is in market the very moment you interview them. Right, they may have just signed a year long agreement, but guess what, when that year's over, they're probably chewing their arm off to get out of that vendor and they would love to work with you. So you do need that marketing, you do need to nurture them long term after that. You do need to supply them with some good content. But, man, an interview is a great foundation. You can repurpose the hell out of it into some great marketing collateral and that's like the marketing agency coming alongside the podcast is really important.
Janice Hostager:Why do you think so many businesses kind of overlook podcasting?
Casey Cheshire:Well, I, I think it's a little bit of that evolution, right? It's still kind of new, kind of here's a fun question. Um, any guesses how many podcasts there are in the world?
Janice Hostager:Yes, um, I actually just...
Casey Cheshire:Know this?
Janice Hostager:Uh, it's like a oh gosh. I know there were like 50, 500 000 active podcasts.
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, it was something like you know stats, you know plus or minus a million, but, like, I saw something about like four and a half million podcasts in the world, but only about 240 of them have been updated. 240,000 have been updated in the last 30 days or so. So, 240,000 sounds like a lot, but not when there's billions of people right. In tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of companies, so there really aren't that many. And it just like blogs and just like blogging content. And man, I remember when not everyone had a website. You know, people had brochures and someone had to come along and say, hey, knucklehead, you need a website. If you don't have a website, you're dead. Right, just like if you were in the yellow pages, you're dead. Well, you had to be a website and you're dead. Now you have to email you're dead. Well, guess what? You're going to need a podcast, or you're dead because AI is coming along. There's going to be a lot of noise and you got to cut through that noise. You got to see.
Casey Cheshire:My thing is like put down the gap and get connected to your customer, get reconnected to them. You may, and I was this. I'm guilty of this. Like I had all these illusions of what my customer was thinking and feeling. Some of them are outdated, right, and a lot of people listening especially if they've been running businesses for a while, you probably are really clear on how your customer was 10 years ago, maybe five years ago. Things are still changing all the time. If you listen to Gen Z, they have crazy language, right, things are changing all the time. So we got to stay connected to our buyer. So my whole soapbox is just like reconnect with your buyer.
Casey Cheshire:I call it connect to market. Like the skip. Go to market. All these different phrases you hear from marketers. I call it connect to market Like the skip. Get a one-on-one conversation with your buyer and that's what's going to happen. Maybe you haven't heard of this, maybe you didn't think it was possible to do this. Well, guess what, it is.
Casey Cheshire:And I think the other thing is we get a little shy, marketers get shy, business owners get busy and and we're like do I really want to talk to a customer? What if they say bad things? Right? No, you do. Even if they say bad things, all the better to know the data right. We just didn't have a mechanism to get on a call with a customer and I know the marketer's listening.
Casey Cheshire:Or if you're a business owner, your marketer might suggest, oh, let's do a case study. But guess what, that's a take. Hey, Mr. Customer, you're great. We're thankful for you. Can we I don't know send you a sticker or maybe a hoodie, but then we need your time to do this paper for us. That'll help us. Nothing really helps you here and they're like they're happy to do that, maybe, but we know we're kind of taking up their time or being annoying. But instead you flip the script and you say, hey, I'm going to feature you on this show about leaders in this industry. Love to pick your brain on this podcast and feature you. They're like, hell, yeah, get me on there. And now you have a mechanism for programmatically regularly chatting with your customers and learning ins and outs and also getting to know them as a person, not just their business and who they are.
Casey Cheshire:On the nine to five. Here's a question I love to ask people too. I like to say, okay, you're in a business and listen. I failed this early on, so again, I'm out there just trying to raise awareness here. If I were to ask you, can you name five customers by company name? What do you think? Could you do it?
Janice Hostager:By company name?
Casey Cheshire:Company name.
Janice Hostager:Yeah yeah.
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, right.
Casey Cheshire:And your logos really help with that. You go, oh, yeah, those guys. Oh, that was a terrible logo. Or that oh, that was a big company and it's kind of a braggy logo. I'm excited about that one.
Casey Cheshire:So it's pretty straightforward to name customers that way. The challenge is if I go, okay, now can you name five of your customers by first and last name, right? Some of our more connected business owners will be like, hell, yeah, I can. Well, that's good, but some people might pause a little bit. But almost everyone, including myself. You pause a little bit and you go, huh, can I? And the difference between your first answer, where you're like, hell, yeah, those logos, and your second answer was like, uh, I think I could scrape together some names. That for me, that's disconnected marketing. That's, that's you being disconnected with your customer. It was crazy is when you're disconnected like that, you hallucinate. People say AI hallucinates yeah, humans do too. We think our customers want x, y, z. Maybe they did 10 years ago and so we hallucinate and we wonder why our best campaigns do just a little bit worse every year. It's because we're just disconnected.
Janice Hostager:I mean, I do a lot of fractional CMO work for clients, so I definitely could probably come up with their names before I could do business names because I talk to them so frequently. But you're absolutely right, if it's a different type of business, that would for sure be an issue.
Casey Cheshire:And we're connected too. Right, you have a podcast, you're regularly connecting with people, and so that's the difference too. You can name them and you probably have, like you said, you've talked to them recently. A lot of us, we got behind the apps, whether it's Constant Contact or whatever kind of app you got. Hey, I got the HubSpot, I got the this and the that, and now there's one step removed.
Casey Cheshire:I got a survey recently from a company with a product that I actually really like. I was excited to buy it and I'm happy with it. And it said, and I actually was like oh, because I love you guys. And the survey, the first question was like what was the primary reason you bought this product? Right, and it had four options and that's it. And none of them were the reason I wanted to buy this product and they had no like other. Fill in the blank, tell us if we're hallucinating. No, so automatically, that survey is bogus. It's bogus, bad data instantly. And it's like drinking poison water. It's like the poison water. Well, you drink that water. Now, your campaigns are really in trouble and you're really going to start wasting money because you're asking a question and you're trying to force the answer when you could just do a podcast with someone and then ask those questions in the podcast and get real answers.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, yeah, in fact, just by forcing that question, you've just thrown the whole campaign or whatever, off track. That's really interesting. So walk us through some of the key, like ingredients. Especially for someone who hasn't done entertainment or really hasn't done a podcast before, it's like what is it that they need to be thinking about, to be investing in themselves, with? What is it that, if I'm going to start a podcast next week, what would I need?
Casey Cheshire:Totally. We have a two month launch process, right? So when we launch podcasts with a company, there's all sorts of strategies. That goes into things like the name and the script and when to ask questions, microphones, things like that. So I'm just going to tell you all two months, with as much time as we have, and if we have to cut it off, we have to cut it up. No, so here's a couple of highlights.
Casey Cheshire:Right, the name is really important and our particular kind of podcasting, we call it connection casting, because it's all about the connection with the guests. They're number one, and so for that kind of podcasting, right, you could have a podcast where they're just eating potato chips with a good microphone, right, and it'd be funny if it got more views than my regular show. But I digress, right? So this kind of connection casting, it's all about the guest. Well, the number one purpose of the name of the show is to get the guest to come on the show, right? So there's a lot of strategy that goes into it and there's a spectrum of, like, really creative names and then there's really boring names, but it's very obvious who should listen.
Casey Cheshire:Over time, I've gone from creating a creative just over 50, 57 podcasts at this point for companies, and it started out. We're very creative over time, though, more and more direct, more and more clear. This is what this podcast is, this is who it's for, this is who you listen to it. I love the name of your show. It's very clear, right, it the the sort of the coy, tongue-in-cheek kind of names, and I've done those too. They're fun. You look, oh, this is amazing. But sometimes not even your audience knows what they mean, right, and that misses the point. And the whole point is to get your guest to see the name and go huh, that show. One, would I listen to it and two, would I be honored to come on that show, right, and so typically it might be like hey, this show is for, hey, marketing agencies, it could be the marketing agency leadership show, or you know what.
Casey Cheshire:For the business owners listening, if I was like badass business owners, right, maybe it's a weird word, but at least you know the show is for business owners and that all the people on the show are badass, right, okay, if that's your brand, if that's your feel, or maybe just a business owner leadership, or business owners who care, or whatever. But that might then go oh, I could get a bunch of business owners on there, right, and if, or if your customers were chiropractors, you'd be like leadership and modern or the modern chiropractor, right, and you would get, they would. They would join up on the show. We've created a show for optometrists called Optometrists Building Empires. It's so fun and optometrists are like whoa, building an empire, yeah, I'm building an empire. Yeah, you're building an empire. You're opening branches, you're opening ops, you're doing this right. So the name can really have an impact on getting people to say yes or be like eh.
Casey Cheshire:I don't know if I would join that.
Casey Cheshire:So the name is really important.
Casey Cheshire:And then the script is important too, the way you ask questions. This show is fantastic for this. I've seen some shows where, like a bad date, the show starts out saying, hey, first question, I just met you. What's your biggest failure in life? Hold on, we just met and maybe I'll tell you. But here's the thing when you ask negative questions like that, they may tell you but they're certainly not going to share it.
Casey Cheshire:I was once on a podcast and I shared this learning lesson where I accidentally checked my email on vacation with my family. It was a stupid email from a stupid vendor and it triggered me and I kind of like I was like out of the vacation mode for a whole day, right, so I kind of shared this. They gave it a name. Like you know, CEO grows his business by working less. They just kind of made it I don't know, it wasn't really a name I was really proud of and it kind of made me look, I don't sound lazy or something. I was like, well, I've never promoted that episode. I've talked about it here. I'm not going to tell you what it's, you know who did it because I'm sort of not really proud of it. But like a show like this. I feel like we're really gelling. Hell yeah, I can't wait to share this when it goes live, right?
Casey Cheshire:So the kind of questions you ask at different points in time really matters. Asking a story as your very first question? Terrible idea. What happens? People aren't usually good at telling stories unless you do a Ted talk. A man Ted talks are like you prepare for hours and days to really get that nailed. Most people haven't done that. So if you ask him a story, you're going to get this 10 minute ramble fest. Like where are we going? And I know your audience comes second, but even they're gonna be like damn, what are we listening to, right? So the focus of the script matters, and I guess the final thing I would throw out there is the microphone.
Casey Cheshire:You and I have these microphones. We sound great, we're being nice to the listener's ears, you're being nice to my ears with your microphone and vice versa. The microphone, the sound, is very important. It's not enough to do the laptop sound anymore. People are used to NPR, they're used to Joe Rogan. You don't need a $300,000 microphone, but a $50, $60, $80 one that plugs right in your laptop is the way to go, right. So you got to take care of ears. Most people are going to hear this, even if we do capture video. Most people are like in their car, they're doing their lawn or something, and they're going to be listening to this while on a walk or something like that. So we got to take care of their ears with some good sound.
Casey Cheshire:And those are some of the real key fundamentals.
Janice Hostager:So I'm going to ask you, because there have been. So I've kind of experimented with a lot of different like intros. Sometimes I think, oh, what, you know, a story can really pull people in. But you're right, a lot of people are not good at telling that story. So I'm glad you mentioned that. I've really kind of played with different ideas on how to start it. What do you think is the best way to start podcasts? I'm just curious for my own, my own podcast.
Casey Cheshire:Let's geek out on it.
Casey Cheshire:I call it the Q1 question. So my opinion, just a podcaster doing his thing, uh. The more your guest talks, uh to. To an extent, right, we'll start at the end. The more they talk, the the more energy that answer has, right? Short, quick questions? Now, if you ask them in quick succession, it can be interesting. But typically if you ask me a question and I'm like blue and then I stopped right, the energy just says it took it a little step down. You asked me another and I and I pause, apples, that is like, it can, it can really slow things down. So you want your guests to rant and rave as their first question. So what I recommend? They call it the Q1 questions, the first question you ask. It's always the same one and you prepare them in advance, either with a prep call or an email saying look, you can screw the rest of this thing up, but come thinking about what this Q1 is going to be.
Casey Cheshire:And what I recommend is that first question, put your guest in a place of passion and expertise. Right, they want to talk about it and they can talk about it, and that does not always go together. Sometimes people want to talk about things and I don't know. Like I planted a cherry tree, I'm excited to see it grow. I don't know anything about cherry trees other than what I've Googled. I can talk about it for two seconds. I want to talk about it, but I don't really have any expertise on right or asking about the p and l, yeah I could talk about it. I don't want to talk about it and I'm pretty shallow.
Casey Cheshire:But like as you as exhibit A, ask Casey about podcasting, the guy won't shut up right? Um, but at least that first question, and you want it to be a what question? We've experimented with it who, what, where, when, why, what is the question you want? A what question gets you a strategy back. Kind of like, there's a software term. Time to value. How soon from when someone hits play can they get a nugget of wisdom to take with them? Right?
Janice Hostager:Right, yeah, yeah.
Casey Cheshire:So you try to get like a strategy question right off the bat like, hey, what's the most important thing about being a modern chiropractor, right? Or like success in the dental industry? Or being a great business owner or whatever right. And if they prepared it, they can come back and they can go. The right people on the team is absolutely my goldmine. You go tell me more and you just get them ranting and raving about what they really care about and then that way you can just kind of guide them along. Like you're doing a great job, just sort of guiding me along. You're not having to pull answers out of me. Whenever you're having to pull an answer out of a guest, it means they're out of that zone of expertise and passion. Something's not aligned. Either they can't talk about it or they don't want to talk about it. You're like tell me more, tell me more, guess what? Let's talk about something else, cause clearly you don't want to talk about this, so let's get you somewhere, like. And so it's like let's find somewhere else. But if they're in their zone, man, you're just holding on for the ride, kind of keeping me in between where you know your audience wants to hear, and where I'm on track, and I'm not rambling too much. Kind of keeping me in guidelines, but that's where you want me.
Casey Cheshire:So that first question can be your longest question, you can go into levels of it, and we also recommend the guest preps like an ordered list. So you're like, okay, and you did this beautifully. You're like, okay, launching a pod, what do we got to do? And I should have actually said, hey, three things here. Yeah, three things. And you have this and you have this. We talked about the name, we talked about the script, we talked about the tech, the microphone, right. And that way, you have some substance underneath that initial answer and this builds out what actually turns into a blog post, right? So, thinking about content for your website, guess what? You don't have to go write that now. You get an awesome marketing agency. You give them the raw feed from this interview and, man, in the first 15 minutes we've got a comprehensive blog post about a problem, a challenge, a solution, where it came from, and several ordered lists about how to fix it. Hmm.
Janice Hostager:Okay, so you are spewing so much wisdom. So thank you, Casey, I do have like every everything you say, I think, oh, I should ask him this, I should ask him this. So a couple of things. One of them you had said that your guests are the most important and the audience is number two. In my mind, in my world, my audience is number one because they're my potential customers, honestly. But I see that you are interviewing your potential customers. Yes, and that's the different approach. Do you work with clients where it is flipped, like I am, or do you just recommend that? Everybody kind of jobs, the same system where you bring on potential clients as guests rather than as an audience?
Casey Cheshire:That's a really good question. I think the most important thing is that you've thought about who the most important thing is and that you didn't say the other answer, which is the host is the most important. Because I don't know if you bumped into these podcasts where the host is the most important person and even if they have a guest on, the guest gets in like 30 seconds and the host talks for an hour, right, why did you even have a guest on, right? So we definitely don't want that. You know the idea of having the audience be most important. You know what, like, it's your art form, it's your podcast. If you want the audience to be the most important, then by, absolutely. You know, like, that's what you want.
Casey Cheshire:I find, just from a business standpoint. You know there's a, there's this term pod fading. I don't know if you've bumped into this. Pod fading is what happens. People launch a podcast, they go, wouldn't this be fun? And then they realize, wow, it's a lot of work to edit, to schedule, to prep, it's so much work and then shoot initially like four people and my parents are listening, right, and so they go. Well, I'm not getting very many results and it's a pain in the butt to do. I'm gonna stop doing it. So that's pod fading is is in in usually numbers like 7 to 12 episodes. If you can pass that great chasm, you're good usually.
Casey Cheshire:But I found that if you make the guest someone who could partner with you, who could buy from you, who could be a reference, like maybe he's an existing customer, if you can make your guests somehow associated to revenue and not directly, you don't have to like squeeze them and trick them and push them into something. But if they can be directly attributed to revenue, then it's just a little bit faster to get ROI on the podcast. Because the challenge with audience is it becomes about the numbers. Right, do we have enough numbers? And then it's that classic challenge. Because if you're trying to get ears and eyes, now you're competing with Joe Rogan. So with your focus, you're competing with Joe Rogan, with NPR, and they're going to win because they're better and they have more ears and eyes and people might want to prefer to listen to them over you or me. Right. For sure, my silly podcast. I have a hammer and stuff like so. So, oh man, now we're competing with those people. That's rough.
Casey Cheshire:But when you, when you, make it about the guest, you compete with no one, because the conversation between you and I has never happened anywhere else. It's happened here. It's entirely unique. And if we can do business together and partner together like I do, none of the marketing services you do right, maybe we can like collaborate. Wow. Now we're like the value of this conversation outweighs anything else.
Casey Cheshire:But it's tongue in cheek because, of course, the audience matters. But it's like bonus. It's like icing on the cake as opposed to being the cake. Right, eat icing, get sick, eat cake, then icing. Be sick and happy, right.
Casey Cheshire:So it's like make it about your guests so you get some more immediate ROI, and then your audience will organically grow and you'll be pleasantly surprised to see them grow. But you won't be sad if 60 people listen, or 100 or 300 or whatever the number is. It usually is never enough, right? You'd love it to be more. And then you become obsessed with trying to get people to listen to it. But maybe you don't need everyone to listen to it. Maybe you only need 40 people who are the right people to listen to it, right, as opposed to 400 of the wrong people who will never buy from you.
Casey Cheshire:So I just kind of like I focus on the guests first, but once I prepared them and once they're off to the races, the guide rails I'm trying to set up are like huh, am I getting value out of this? Would my listeners get value out of this? So I am thinking about them. I just maybe it's a bit more aggressive to say like I don't even care if everyone listens, but but it's true, like it's all about the conversation. And then I think what also happens is I'm not pandering to the audience. If you don't like it, go away, right.
Casey Cheshire:And like it's, you can be like a real mind trap to try to figure out um, is my audience going to like this? Are they going to prefer me ask this or that? It's like I don't know. So the way I have to operate is well, they're choosing me to be their filter and if I'm interested, if I'm learning something, hopefully they are too right, because I'm their filter. So I I always tell people never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to, because you're the filter. And if you don't care about the answer, it that comes through like ugh. Now you're just kind of like a talking head on a TV show being forced to interview some star you've never heard or seen before and you're like how's Hollywood going? And you don't care, and they don't care, they just it's very transactional, right, and so I only interview people I want to talk to, I want to learn from them and yeah. So there's my rant.
Janice Hostager:Oh no, that's no rant, that's all good stuff, absolutely. So you work with a lot of shows. Do you still work a lot of shows?
Casey Cheshire:Yeah.
Janice Hostager:Or do you set them up and then kind of let them loose, or how
Janice Hostager:does that work?
Casey Cheshire:We bear hug them.
Janice Hostager:Okay, so what separates the podcasts that truly move the needle for their businesses?
Janice Hostager:from the ones that do fizzle out after a while.
Janice Hostager:Is it like passion? Is it time structure, Like have you noticed any kind of patterns?
Casey Cheshire:Yeah, first and foremost, it's that whole thing about, not about making it about someone else. Like my company is called Ringmaster. First of all, I saw The Greatest Showman. Thought it was one of the coolest movies ever, right. Once you that, oh, they're randomly singing in the middle of the day, right, but like really cool show.
Casey Cheshire:But the idea of the ringmaster, if you think about the concept, it's someone and maybe they got a little flair, a little flash, they've got the red coat on or something. But they're not saying look at me. They're saying look over here at that performer, look over here, look at the high ride, look at the silly clowns right, they're promoting other people selflessly and by doing that, your attention's drawn to them because they're the one you can trust and then tell you where to look next. So, as a host of a podcast, you're a ring master, this is your circus, right? And so as long as you follow that mantra and you're pointing at other people, you're promoting other people and selfishly, not yourself then you'll continue to rise in awareness as the person that is trusted to direct the attention. So it's that selflessness, I think, is the key to what succeeds, which is counterintuitive in business today.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, well, I think people can tell when you're being authentic. I think there's enough for broader out there that we don't need to add any to it.
Casey Cheshire:I once had an early customer back when I didn't know any better, many moons ago. His stated goal of the podcast was not connection with a buyer, was not getting his brand awareness, was not competing with the big guys who had way more budgets which those are all great goals. His goal was I want to be more famous. And I got to tell you, without naming any names, this person did not meet the initial criteria for what would you consider regular famous, to be more famous, right. So that was the red flag there. He wasn't even basic famous, and so I should have realized wow, that's a weird goal, that's very, that's very self focused goal, not ringmaster focus on other people. So that's typically the kiss of death. Right, there is, and it isn't business too, honestly, if you, if you make it about yourself instead of you know, solving your customer's pain. So it's kind of a great metaphor for business and life, but yeah, that's really what drives a pod to be successful.
Janice Hostager:All right. So one more final question here. Oh, actually I've got a couple.
Casey Cheshire:I thought this was like 24-hour pod. No, we're not chatting for.
Janice Hostager:Well, you know, I'm thinking about my audience, who's just on a walk, who's commuting to the mall or to Target or whatever. So if somebody could only do one thing after listening to this episode, or take one step toward launching or improving their podcast, what would you recommend that it is?
Casey Cheshire:Really good question. And I had a friend write a book, Start Ugly and that would be my recommendation Start Ugly. What does that mean?
Janice Hostager:I know what it means.
Casey Cheshire:You know what it means. Message a customer, tell them you want to feature them on a brand new show about how awesome that particular industry is right. And then you hop on a Zoom call, hit the red record button. You throw that bad boy on YouTube. Does it have a great name? Does it have a great script? Do you have a microphone? Don't care right now, just start ugly and then circle back around.
Casey Cheshire:Maybe you give it a better name. Maybe you build out a script, maybe you get a microphone.
Janice Hostager:Love it. Yep, and that was certainly how I started. It was very oddly, but you know what I knew that I wasn't going to get a lot of listeners to that podcast. You know, or really. But you know you start somewhere right, and that's how I recommend anybody starts anything is that you're never going to. You can sit and try and polish your plan all day long, but until you, you know, jump in a pool, you don't learn to swim, no matter how many books you've read about swimming, right? So how can people find out more about you?
Casey Cheshire:100% Like true to form. I skip all the marketing games and everything. Shoot me an email, Casey C-A-S-E-Y at ringmastercom. I'm just happy to help, right, I would love for you to launch a podcast. I'd love to launch it with you. I mean, we have a program to do that and we can produce it. Really when we're let to do our own thing.
Casey Cheshire:The only thing our clients have to do is show up for a prep call and we give them a brief on their client, do some research for them, show up on a prep call, meet your future client, right. Meet your future customer on a prep and then show up for the show recording. That's it. We do all the rest. We'll actually get you guests, We'll produce it. We even do the social media afterward. So we do everything. So I would love to do that. I would love to help you out.
Casey Cheshire:But if even you're just starting ugly and you just want an advice, want a tip, hey, what microphone should I get? I have experimented with all of them and I'll tell you exactly what to get. And it's not the $300 one, right? So happy to help. Casey at ringmastercom or ringmastercom, you go there, start a chat. We have a little chat box on there. You can start a chat there, but like we can skip all the crazy marketing and all the like, will I sell something to you? I'd love to, but if I can even just help you reconnect with your customer, that's what I'm here to do. That's what I like gets me fired up
Janice Hostager:Love it.
Janice Hostager:Thank you so much, Casey. I appreciate all the wisdom that you shared today and I've learned.
Janice Hostager:I've learned a lot.
Casey Cheshire:Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor and I will say those of you listening, um, like this is an act of love to do a podcast. So if you haven't already you're on Spotify, you're in iTunes rate this show right. Give a little love to this show, give a little five stars. If you don't give a five, I'm going to find you, I will find you and I will destroy you, not really, but give it five stars, right, and it really helps out a podcast to do that. But anyways, give us some love. I'm going to do that after the show too. I can't wait to share this. Thank you so much. You've been just amazing and welcoming and just sort of focused and listening. So great job and great podcast.
Janice Hostager:Thank you. Thanks, Casey. So are you ready to shop for microphones and jump into the podcasting world? Seriously, like I said, podcasting is one of the best business decisions that I made. To learn about anything we talked about in this episode, visit myweeklymarketingcom, forward slash 112. That's one, one, two and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
