“The leader with the most empathy wins.”
Lindsay Tjepkema is the CEO and co-founder of Casted, which is a content marketing strategy platform that delivers amplified profits marketing system through audio and video content. Before founding Casted, Lindsay was a B2B marketing leader of a SAAS company where she accumulated 15 years of experience in the industry.
“I set out to be the change that I wanted to see.”
Lindsay believes that there is power in conversation and in sharing and telling stories. In Casted, she leads teams and helps companies sell their stories and connect with other brands on a human level. Listen to her journey and her insights on amplified marketing.
Find more about Lindsay here:
Website: https://www.casted.us/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaytjepkema/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CastedLindsay
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/castedlindsay/?hl=en
John: Thank you for listening to the business sphere, don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode, my guest today is Lindsay Tjepkema the CEO and co-founder of Casted. Casted helps marketers and brands see the value of and amplify their audio and video content like podcast and video. Thanks again for joining me today, Lindsay.
Lindsay: Thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be fun, we’re gonna have a good time.
John: Yeah, like I, I wanna really dig deep on this journey of yours because I’ve been producing quite a lot of content. I’ve been working on podcasts for the last 3 years, I just have a recent YouTube video channel and I’ve been writing tons of blogs and contributing and not just thought leadership positioning myself as a leader but like internal content as well. So, I have a lot of questions for you but before we get into those questions why not share with the listeners a little about yourself how you became who you are today so maybe share with the audience a little bit about your your journey.
Lindsay: Sounds good. Well, you said I could go back as far as I want and I feel like I always give this you know I try to make it genuine and authentic but it’s the same story over and over you know. I tell I tell the same story, 15 years as B2B marketer before starting Casted I was leading branded content for a company but, and that’s all true but I guess going back a little bit further and making a little more fun and interesting for your listeners. I, you know ever since I was a kid I’ve always been excited about being on stage and talking a lot you can ask my family and sharing stories, telling stories and so it was really natural to me to get into marketing and it was really natural to me to be a storyteller on behalf of brands so I made a career out of it and ended up you know leading teams and helping companies tell their stories and connect with other brands on a really human level and so that brought me to a global enterprise B2B company where I was leading brand and content and helping them just to do that and started telling stories and sharing other people’s stories really through audio and video exactly like what we’re doing right now and there wasn’t I was dumbfounded because there was no software platform for me, for my team, for my B2B global marketing team to harness the power of those stories, those audio and video stories, be them podcasts, webinars you know really highly produced brand videos whatever it was and to use them across multiple channels and get more value out of them and really measure the impact they’re making on the business.
So, I set out to be the change I wanted to see and started casted 2 and a half years ago.
John: That’s amazing and I know there’s always that shift that happens and maybe I’m gonna take a step back even. Did you study business or marketing back in college university?
Lindsay: Sure, so I I’m a nerd, I love school I know a lot of a lot of people don’t, I was one of the nerds that did. So yeah, I went to college for originally for graphic design and music quickly changed my mind and got into marketing and yep followed that path ever since but my path was always more the brand content creative customer experience side of marketing and not as much of the business side so that’s really been more kinda on the job in the seat learning so, yeah.
John: It’s great to get your perspective because you seeing customer service end of things which a lot of businesses don’t start with, right? Because by listening to your clients and getting feedback and understanding the problems, painful, and questions that people are having then you can actually service them better. Change what’s going on systems, processes so you seeing it from a larger brands, how pivotal of those roles did you play in those 15 years that you mentioned to make an instrumental change in their business model like? Because you know you coming from wherever that the college and graphic design to then leading teams to then making change in some of the brands, how did that work? Like, I would love to dissect that a little bit because corporate environment is a little bit different than starting your own business, I would say.
Lindsay: Yeah, yeah man I haven’t thought about it that way. I, I love creating things, I love building things and that’s the common thread right? Whether it’s you know creating art and design, and music in my earliest days or creating strategy for businesses you know over the last 15 years and implementing them and literally creating a blog post, creating a podcast or creating a team, and creating workplace culture. That’s one of the reasons that I took this leap was I was talking to my friend who’s now my business coach she was like you know you, we were working on kind of what was next for me and what I really, truly wanted to do and I thought you know naturally the next step would be getting further into marketing and taking the next steps there and this opportunity came along to start Casted and it was like, well I’m not a CEO, I’m not I’m not a founder and she was like well, we’ve been talking a lot over the last few months about how you love creating, how you love building and I had this realization that absolutely carries over with creating a workplace, creating a work environment, creating culture, creating a team a team.
Yes, creating a project, a product, yes creating a category and so that’s, that’s been a common thread for me and my kind of north star. So yeah, I don’t know if I really answered your question but.
John: Yeah! It’s great, thank you! No, because you know those, those years that you’ve learned, harvest all those skill sets from working with so many people, individuals, you know management teams, c-suites, going to those boardroom meetings or meeting even engaging with customers right?
Lindsay: Yes.
John: Giving you feedback from the customer standpoint, customer service like, you’re dealing with so many people and you’re communicating and getting different perspectives all the time but when you’re pushing it through to management like, was there always that struggle because you know people can’t see the real value of why change needs to occur they’re kinda pro, they’re not you know proactive, they’re reactive most of the time.
Lindsay: Yeah, I don’t think a whole lot of people wake up in the morning and say I can’t wait for somebody to bring me something that’s going to change the way that’s gonna change the way that I want you know that I do my life right like nobody’s like I can’t wait for what change is gonna happen today and I think that you know to your point how does that work and how does that show up at various points throughout my career that’s been that’s also been a common thread I mean whether you are a designer or a an early in your career marketer, or you’re a content marketer, or you’re working on strategy, or you’re a marketer leader, or you’re a consultant, or you’re leading an agency all of which I’ve done you’re introducing change and so, and truly I think that that prepared me for this seat because that’s sitting in the CEO role too it’s working with different parties and having people come to you with ideas for change going to the world to investors and to customers and saying hey here’s change, so I think how does that work? It’s a lot of listening, it’s a lot of you know connecting, you mentioned connecting with customers and working with customers that always has to be the touchstone right?
So if you are again, whether you’re a designer, you’re a marketer, you’re in any area of business, you’re a leader it always has to come back to what’s gonna be best for the market, for the customer and for the market which will then be best for the business and sometimes the customer, quite often the customer is our internal employees right? Like, what’s gonna best for our customers, the team, the employees that work here, how can we best take care of them. And so, it’s always having that it’s empathy right? That’s the leader with the most empathy wins.
John: That’s, that’s amazing. So, tell me I know two and a half years ago you left corporate to then start this new journey. Between that and maybe you reached out to coaches or you had for a lot of discussions with multiple individuals but what triggered you to start this. Did you have this grand oasis idea? Did you have network or people pitching you different ideas? Like, what triggered you to start this new SAS business versus just continue on with your, your current role?
Lindsay: Yeah so, that there’s kind of like a an upper story and the lower story. The upper story is the simpler one which is I was working as a you know marketing leader this VP of marketing at this enterprise, SAS company trying to like I mentioned it’s podcast with all this content I was leading content and I was frustrated that we couldn’t do with it that we all knew we could it was very manual we weren’t getting, we had all these marketing problems, marketing leader problems and Scott Dorsey who is the, was the founder we had all these marketing problems, marketing leader problems and Scott Dorsey who is the, was the founder and founders of exact target which was acquired by salesforce, he’s now a VC at a venture venture fund and adventure studio here in Indianapolis called high alpha and he reached out to me, we didn’t know each other before but he knew I was, I was running this content team and we had podcast and reached out to me and said “Hey! You know we’re kind of we’re interested in B2B podcasting and you know through the grapevine I heard that you’re doing podcast at this company I’d love to talk with you.”
And so, we talked and the more we got into it, I was like “Look you know here’s the opportunity, here’s what needs to happen in the world of B2B marketing just based on my 15 years of experience.” and that turned into “Hey! What if we started this company? What if, what if I took this leap?” and he and the high alpha were there to say “Come do it here you know we can support you, we can help you transition from marketing leader to CEO. We’ll you know we have all these resources around you to help make it happen and I brought in 2 co-founders who are incredible, Adam and Zachary.” and we did the thing. The lower story, so that’s the upper story right? That was, that was the literally how did that happen, the lower story is yes you said did I have a coach, people talking to me.
I was doing a lot of work myself, I’m really interested in you know leadership and management and personal growth and I’m obsessed with Brené Brown who just released a new book two days ago which I love so much and so I think I was ready, I have a coach I mentioned who’s one of my good friends who’s not my executive coach and I’ve kinda been doing the work to be ready to even respond to that opportunity which I think if I hadn’t then it would have been just like well, this isn’t for me you know this is for someone else, I’m on this path I’m on path A and this is path Q. So yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both, you have to be ready for whatever life could throw your way because it is not linear.
John: So, how that journey been for the last couple years from you know working with a brand that’s established, with a team that’s already built, with skill set and they’ve already hired people to be on your team, now you have to do everything yourself right? I know there’s a difference I bootstrapped my business in agency so it’s a little bit different in that sense but you come from vc and there’s resources access and I know a lot like people in this world that’s always looking for funding right? To get the ball rolling but you got that covered starting this agency. So, how did that last couple years been for you and has it been, has it been easy? Has it like? If you don’t mind sharing that would be.
Lindsay: Yeah! Oh my gosh! I wish I could say it’s been so easy, it’s been a breeze, it’s just been you know one transition after another, just smooth all the time no, It’s been hard I mean it’s, it is the quintessential startup roller coaster right? I mean there are times where just when you think you’re, you’re going up the hill and you’re like surely, surely we must be near the top right? Like this scary time is gonna be over and it just keeps going and then the floor drops out from under you and it’s exciting, it’s an exciting drop down the other side of the hill and then up and turns and curves and sometimes your upside down, you know we’ve grown like crazy being venture-backed from the start, you know we’ve we got our you know startup capital in studio and we raised series our seed ground and then series A earlier this year, series B will be you know sometimes next year, so yeah you kind of always raising you can have these a couple of different audiences, you have your customers and you have investors and of course you always have your team, you’ve been growing like great pandemic in there just for fun. So, it’s been, it’s been wild but I wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s one of the most rewarding certainly the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done professionally and scary, and terrifying, and exhilarating, and fun, and it’s, it’s pretty incredible.
John: And I think moving from working in a corporate environment whatever level you are to that in that mindset shift to now you are in charge and now you’re responsible for other people’s livelihood right? Your staff, employees, investors and you’re now it.
Lindsay: Yep!
John: Do you, is it scary? Like, I know for myself like my full agency is all about taking care of my people right?
Lindsay: Yeah!
John: Which is my staffing clients and all the vendor suppliers and everyone else that I touch but now you’re, you’re it. You are fully responsible for their livelihood.
Lindsay: Yep!
John: How has that changed you?
Lindsay: Yeah, no pressure right? You know it’s funny because there’s a certain amount of freedom and in that where you know I’ve, I think the middle management like being a manager at a company a people leader whether that’s you know lower level, upper level, c-suite, whatever it is. When you are in that role you’re in between, you’re sandwich and you are you know you’re accountable to leadership and to it to have to fit within the culture that already exists especially through the pandemic. I mean you had managers that were trying to balance the needs of their people with the demands of their leadership and you know can my team work from home versus you know the leaders are saying they need to be in the office and any other example you know out there we’ve all seen it whereas where you’re in this position you get to you get a lot more freedom to write the script as you see fit and you are exactly spot on it’s about the first, I mean that 100% it’s about your people, it’s about the team, it’s about your customers, it’s about your audience first and when you have that in mind you’re gonna, you’re gonna be set up, setting them up for the most healthy version of success possible but with that freedom comes a whole lot of responsibility and a whole lot of pressure to do right.
You know and to create that atmosphere in that workplace that people want to be a part of and that people feel good about and feel healthy and feel supported and feel valued, because when they do and when you, you’re talking about pressure any leadership position whether it’s starting your own business I’m sure you feel this too or you’re on a team, it’s the more you can surround yourself by great people the better you’re gonna be and then it doesn’t all fall on you. You know you can delegate, you can ask for guidance, you can seek wisdom, you can set people free to go do what needs to be done and yeah.
John: Well, that’s a great answer. So I’m gonna take a pivot here from the journey part to actually your business right? So, I know you spotted an opportunity and you had this “aha moment” speaking to the VC to start something, why podcast, audio and video and how is it different from some of the other SAS software right now, out there or are you creating a new niche in the category all together?
Lindsay: Sure! Yeah, so let’s see, why I think that that’ll tie together, I as I mentioned lot’s and lot’s of years in B2B marketing I’ve seen it from every angle and what I’ve seen happen over the last decade or two is you know digital marketing was a thing, let me go back away, go back a very long time, digital marketing was a thing we finally as a world had you know businesses had the opportunity to communicate with their audiences in real time, I mean you think about it before digital marketing it was print something and ship it to people and now it was like blogs and websites and that was a beautiful thing and then it turned into okay well maybe google can help me get in front of those people and then well, okay now we need to start measuring it and then social media came on the scene and all of these things happen to say okay more communication and more measurement right? And that was great until it wasn’t and I’ve experienced this like obsession, obsession with data and with metrics and with measurement and therefore, with serving algorithms over audiences, animating over authenticity, conversions over connections and right? All of those things are important but they aren’t the most important thing like those human connections are the most important thing, so why audio and video? Well, I mean we’re doing this right now because it’s the best way to connect with each other and when people can listen into our conversation they innately, they just do feel more connected with you and me and connection breeds trust and trust builds relationships and relationships are what lead to those conversion and to sales and to long-term relationships that we all want and need as businesses right?
So, why audio and video connection? Which is good for everyone, it’s good for humanity and it’s good for business and then you go back to the state of digital marketing and state of media, what existed and what does exist all throughout the world is a whole lot of point solutions and tools that help measure that chaos and help measure all of those you know algorithmic you know conversion optimization things as opposed to saying “How do we holistically help an entire world of B2B marketers actually connect their brands, the human of their brands to the humans of their audiences, nothing has existed to do that, nothing has existed to harness audio and video to do that.” And so yeah, to answer another part of your question, we’re creating a whole category we’re creating a whole new way of approaching marketing to say “What if you started with a conversation?” “What if you started exactly where you and I are right now?” and record a conversation make it into audio and video content and then wring it out use that to fuel all of those connections across many other channels and then measure in ways that not only matter to marketing but matter to the business as a whole and we call that amplified marketing. So, how are you amplifying those voices of the experts that you have in those audio and video content pieces across other channels and measuring in ways that matter.
John: That’s very interesting and great explanation. So, in terms of the data points and maybe you can give a snapshot on your business, on who would most of you know satisfy the persona that would want to purchase your software? And what kind of value do you have internally and externally to amplify you know the bond, relationships internally so that messaging is consistent and free-flowing and easy to extract versus the external and trying to cultivate and have metrics on conversions like you mentioned but more so on real relationships like you mentioned.
Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, so let’s see. Amplified marketing is for everyone right? So, whether you are an ideal customer, casted or not, anyone can take audio and video content that you record on your phone and say “Okay, how else am I gonna use this?” “I’m going to post this on Spotify and I’m also going to take it you know and you know use parts of it for social media and I’m going to write a blog post about it right?” and that’s the most basic version of amplified marketing right? Is how can I a conversation at the core wring it out, amplify it, get more value out of it, give more value from it right? But for Casted, our software software platform and we are most ideally made for B2B marketers at mid-market to enterprise size companies so our customers are salesforce, PayPal, Caterpillar, HubSpot, Drift, Gong, things like that and how do we work? So, really you know we’re recording this show now you’re gonna go have it produced somehow you’re gonna edit it a little bit so, it’s right where you want it to be and then in theory you would upload it into Casted, you’d get a transcription that you could use across other channels you’d be able to pull clips and key takeaways that you could share on social media, you could equip your sales team with it and get it out into the market that way embed pieces of it on your website into your blog posts we also give you a page where all of that content lives on your site. So, it’s easy for your team to access or for your audience to access and get really a brand experience as they do it and then we give you ways to go back and search through content that you already have so you can repurpose it and reuse it later and continue to amplify the value of it and then measure it in ways that matter so we give you you talked about how do you measure those engagements. How do you measure those engagements, how do you measure those relationships.
We try to meet everybody where they are and say okay, if downloads matter to you now, if impressions matters to you now we’re gonna give you that information, we’re also gonna show you not just how many people are viewing your content and number of downloads we’re also gonna show you who. Like, who is consuming your content, what companies, what accounts are touching your content, how can that connect in CRM to say, here’s the value that is it could potentially bring into your to your business and when you know who, again it goes it all comes back to humanity and into being human when you know the who not just the how many you can start to connect on a more human level and say “Well, you know John was listening to our podcast, let’s reach out and say what did you say? And how can we provide more value?”
That’s where you can start to break down the barriers of this, I’m a brand sending you new content and instead say I’m human trying to connect with you.
John: And the great thing about the software that I found very unique is the ability to scrape index and then search, audio and video and then pull together you know topical relevant keywords and then put together some sort of marketing campaign right? Where you can then do drip campaigns or some sort of funnels and even paid ad campaign sequences right? Where it allows you to really focus and another thing you just mentioned was to then dissect having your CRM indicate who actually open follow through and absorb the content. So, when you then reach out you can already have a further discussion knowing what they kinda absorb in the earlier days, weeks before you reach out to them right? So, it’s all about the relationship but it’s also scary right? Like because people wanna know that you know but they don’t because it’s like kinda creepy sometimes that they know more than you think right? Just like how all big major search engines and every every tool out there they know lot.
Lindsay: Yeah.
John: And this is good and bad right? Or for the world really because you know you even our device right now, our phone everyone knows that people are crawling and knowing exactly where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re searching, who are you making phone calls to. Like, it’s kinda scary.
Lindsay: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true and I mean it’s what we provide and what we advocate is again connection and anyone whether it’s literally people, humans right? So, you can you can walk into a party and you can aim to connect and meet people, and network, and build relationships and you know start to establish some trust or you can go and you can be super creepy and walk around the room asking everybody if they want to buy from you right? Like, you can do that as a person in a room with other people and it’s not any different online. It’s not any different with websites or with you know podcasts or with content you can be, you can say hey you know you came to our website like that’s that’s a common thing now we you you did, how can we be helpful? How can we give you more information? You know I want to, I’ll step away slowly if you’re not interested or you’ll be super creepy and be like, hey I know you were here do you want to buy something? And you know we also don’t provide like any personal informations that makes it creepy but I mean it’s all in how you collect it either but it’s all in how you approach it, how you how you connect as a human right? When you seek first to connect and provide value as a human being regardless of the context or format that’s always what’s going to lead to the greatest outcome right?
John: So the question, do you find that the software valuable for internal? More so or more external for pushing out content to their audience through marketing.
Lindsay: Yeah. So, we actually, we’re made for and most commonly used for external so for content marketing. So, you know what we’re doing now like in this show. However, there are lots of internal use cases too including our own. So, I actually do, we do what we call the podcast the board of directors podcast where before every quarterly board meeting, I record a little podcast just saying okay here’s what we’re going to talk about, here’s some high level numbers, my VP finance, my 2 co-founders talk about products and revenue and we kind of a 10-minute update of what we’re going to get into in the board meeting and then as all the related resources that are provided in Casted, that’s the pre-reads and the deck and everything we need to vote on and the meetings from the last board meeting and that gives our board you know not only a chance for them to experience our products every every quarter but they have everything they need in one place just like you want your audience and your customers to. So yeah, lots of different ways it can be used.
John: Yeah, that’s very interesting. So, where do you see yourself in the next couple years 5, 10 years down the road because as you know things change. Evolution happens in the life span right? As you know being a founder even this past year as a covid hit you probably had to pivot and change the direction many times over. Where do you see yourself in the company?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean you’re right lots of change the only thing constant about startups is change. However, the north star has never changed and my vision from that first conversation about like hey what if we did this thing has never changed, I truly believe you know we’re gonna change the world or at least the B2B marketing world. I think we already are with saying hey it doesn’t have to be this way, it doesn’t have to be all about algorithms and optimization, that’s part of it the priority is people and as marketers we’re all here to connect our brands and the people of our brands with the people of our customers and I truly believe that amplified marketing is gonna do that it’s the next, it is the next way to do marketing and Casted is the platform to support it. So, that said you know we’ve got so much growth ahead, we’ve got so much expansion to do and so many people to reach and that what I think ahead, it’s just growing the platform continuing to really truly innovate and reach more people, and really introduce the whole world to amplified marketing.
John: Thank you! And I know you mentioned mid-level to larger brands that you’re focused on the most of our audience is more SMB’s. Will you kinda introduce that lower tier or some sort of service offering for the content creators, the business owners are producing a lot of content either through YouTube or audio like podcasting maybe
Lindsay: Possibly you know if there’s enough demand I mean reach out, tell us that’s what you want and let me know find me, find us on, come to our website tell our little podcast chatbot if that’s what you want. We’ve thought about it and you know with a with a startup you have to build it, you have to build even if you’re building a more simplified model of something it takes, it takes actual time and actual effort, and actual investment so if there is a demand absolutely.
John: Yeah, definitely. Well, thanks a lot Lindsay, this has been a lot of fun. How can some of the audience members get a hold of you, touch base with you or reach out to you if you don’t mind sharing some of your social handles or contact info?
Lindsay: I don’t mind at all, I am very active on LinkedIn if you can spell my last name you can find me and twitter, I’m Casted Lindsay and our website is casted.us and we’re on twitter @gocasted and also I’m pretty active on Instagram too, so.
John: Amazing! Well, all that will be in the show notes. I really wanna thank you again, Lindsay for being on the show, hopefully you had fun, I definitely did. I learned a lot and we’ll stay in contact and be in touch if you’re ever up North in Toronto, reach out to me and we can catch up but thanks again for being on the show today, Lindsay.
Lindsay: Thanks for having me, this was a lot of fun.
