Casey Cheshire is the CEO and Founder of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing. He is also the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed” and the host of the “Hard Corps Marketing Show”. He has found a unique way to turn the world of marketing upside down; podcasting! His time in the Marines has brought him laser sharp focus on his goals, and he is ready to spread the word about how podcasting can be the perfect way to get to know your ideal customer. Casey sits down with host Valerie Cobb to talk about ways that you can successfully find your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and grow your business.

Takeaways

• 90% of what we think we know about our customers isn’t even accurate and you don’t know why they are buying your product.
• Talking to your customers isn’t the same as a sales conversation, but a lot of people get that mixed up. You can have a normal conversation and get to know them as a person.
• Starting a podcast and having your ideal customer on as a guest and just listening to them is the best way to get to know their needs and them as a person
• You want to listen to your client to really understand them better. You can’t truly be listening if you are talking.
• Make sure that you are highlighting the clients. They are the ones that are paying for your services so you want to make sure that you make them feel special.
• Everyone plays the same game of trying to get your clients attention and then trying to get them on the phone, so you need to stand out to be different from the rest.
• Casey used to perform magic tricks at birthday parties, which led to the name of his company, Ringmaster Conversational Marketing.

Quote of the Show:

2:35 “All we need to do to fix this is actually talk to our prospects, talk to our customers and we’re just doing it wrong. We think that talking to them is like a sales conversation. That’s a different kind of conversation. We’re not actually asking and giving them attention and this drives me bonkers”

Links

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/caseychesh?lang=en
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseycheshire/
• Website: https://ringmaster.com/
• Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Automation-Unleashed-Strategic-Growth/dp/1599327384
• Podcast: https://www.hardcorpsmarketing.com/

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The Ringmaster Of Marketing – Casey Cheshire – The Revenue Maze

It’s so exciting to be on the revenue maze. Our guest is a strategic marketing expert, host of the Hard Corps Marketing Show, author of Marketing Automation Unleashed: The Strategic Path for B2B Growth, US Marine Corps Veteran, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for several growth-oriented companies, Founder and Podcaster Architect at Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, Casey Cheshire. Welcome, Casey.

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be on this. I am honored to be here and talking to you.

I am so excited about this show because you and I have a lot in common, growth-oriented companies. That’s what it’s all about. Before we get into all of that, you know the title of the show is the Revenue Maze and because of that, I need to ask you. I need you to be honest with the group and the readers, what is one thing that you can help assist small businesses in getting out of the revenue maze?

One of the main reasons we are stuck in the maze is that 90% of what we think we know about how and why our customers and prospects buy from us is complete and utter crap. We are just stringing along sale to sale one unlucky moment from collapse. You don’t know why they are buying it all. I have been guilty of this, I’m in there. It’s my own biases. I used to see a commercial and if it sucked, I thought, “That was a crappy investment,” but I might not have been the audience.

We are full of all these biases. Why would you buy that software? Why would you make that purchase decision? You are not them. Even if you are a marketer selling to marketers, buying marketing software, you still may not be in the same seat that they are. Maybe you used to be there but not anymore. We have all these biases, all these errant thinking, and all these thoughts that we make up in our minds. All these crazy thoughts that say, “This is why they are buying,” and it’s not the case.

We have no idea. Maybe you have 10% of an idea. It might be something completely different and all we need to do to fix this is talk to our prospects and talk to our customers and we are doing it wrong. We think that talking to them is like a sales conversation. That’s a different conversation. We are not asking and giving them attention and this drives me bonkers and I can’t stand it.

Do you mean our biases caused?

It’s so aggravating. I understand, I have been there. I have been in that seat and I have been immature too and thought that I knew what was best for my buyer, even if they were in a completely different industry. What do I know about a CIO’s job or whatever software I’m selling? Even if you were a CIO, you are probably out of the loop. You may be better informed but if you haven’t been that buyer, you are out of it and you got to take a step back and have a conversation.

We are all guilty of that a little bit. Preconceived notions and biases. I’m laughing because my daughter wants me to buy a Subaru and I can’t bring myself to do it because of a commercial that they have.

What happened? Was it a crappy commercial?

Sometimes it feels so far out there, the Subaru ads. It resonates with certain audiences and you are not going to get everybody. You are not. That’s how it is but I can’t envision myself in a Subaru due to that ad. Isn’t that the funniest thing? You and I have talked about this in the past, people buy for their reasons. That’s it. Give us a couple of pointers on how you have helped some of these growth companies that you are working for get out of that. That’s what you are doing. Tell us about it.

It started with my own. I started a show very much like this one and I started talking to them. Lo and behold, when I shut up and listened for a second. I heard this and I think it was Jordan Peterson who said, “You can listen or you can think but you can’t do both at the same time.” How telling is that? Sometimes and I have been guilty of this even on a show or in a business meeting or having coffee with a customer and they are talking. I’m thinking while they are talking about either how I can leverage what they are talking about or what I’m going to say next or how my family’s doing after the thing we just did.

You can listen or think, but you cannot do both at the same time.

If I’m thinking, I’m not listening and if I’m listening, I can do my thinking later. It’s not a matter of talking to the customer. If I led with that, first of all, in this show, people would be like, “Cool trait stuff. What a wimpy show. What a wimpy guest because he’s saying talk to your customer. Everyone knows that.” Everyone knows that but we don’t do it.

I think we don’t do it for two reasons. One, we don’t know how to get them in a situation where we can have this conversation. Again, it’s not a sales call where we are trying to get something from them or some action. We are trying to learn from them. We are trying to discover their thinking, their words, and their process. All the good marketing comes from that but how do you get them to sit down with you?

In some cases, it’s enough to ask them and they will do it. Sometimes for us, that feels weird. It’s going to be weird or are they going to say no to my request? We don’t know how to get them in a situation. The second thing is, once we get them and get their attention, either coffee, on a show, or in a Zoom call, we don’t know what to ask them. We don’t know what to say. We don’t want to be staring at them like a first date wondering if maybe they will tell us something without us having to ask them that.

These are the two problems that I experienced myself. As of that, there are so many of us hiding behind technology. I did it in marketing. I know even in sales at least is having conversations but sometimes they have got so many checkboxes to address on that sales call. Did I qualify this person? Did I do this or that? Also, sales can very be focused at the moment. You need some either sales leadership or marketing leadership or someone to take a step back and say, “I get it. All these deals are happening now but from a big picture, let’s talk to a customer. Find out what are their problems and what are their challenges.”

Not that they have a dog and three cats and they don’t like Subarus but what was the thing that triggered the search in the first place? Why did you start looking for different vendors in this regard? That’s a great question to start with. Take me back in time to when this first came up and you are like, “We need to look for something.” What happened? Even fighting that out is amazing.

It’s interesting, listening to understand. If I were going to summarize what you are saying right there, it’s key because I’m a big fan of Daniel Pink and To Sell Is Human. People put a bad rap on sales because we don’t listen or we have got an ulterior motive. Yet, if you are doing a sales job properly, your ultimate goal is to provide somebody with some value that takes some pain away. That’s when the kid runs out to the street and you stop them from running out to the street. When you do what you said, it creates a great moment of showing why I got into sales to begin with. It’s to help people with something.

It’s a great vocation for a lot of reasons but sales team members get a lot of head trash over the product because they feel that feeling of, “I’m not helping somebody. It’s not true to me. It’s not this, not and the other.” If they shut up and listen instead of having the goal of doing like you are saying. If they would just shut up and listen and listen to understand, then they do get at the root of what a person is looking for and they become true to themselves, the salesman. The same as marketing. If you listen, that’s the whole point to position any product or anything. You have got to be able to listen to the audience that you are selling to.

I love that you mentioned the pain. You didn’t get into sales to trick people into buying software but I know some SaaS apps that are almost a core value at this point but that’s not why you got into it. You wanted to help people. Maybe you wanted to make a lot of money or maybe do both at the same time. Either way, it was like you can’t all be in the piece corps but at least you can try to help somebody out who’s experiencing pain.

The question is, what is the pain? When you brought that up, I was thinking, what is the pain? That’s one of the things we are trying to find out. That’s where a bias has come into place too. We are making this software, here’s this cool feature and we are guessing at the pain. This reminds me of that old movie, Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams. That voice is like, “Ease his pain.” He’s like, “Who’s pain? What pain?” Stupid freaking cornfield. Give me a little bit more than ease his pain. “Who? Where? Why? What do I have to do?” Somehow, he ends up going to Boston.

He goes there and maybe that’s where the quote happens. Either way, it’s like, “Can you get me a little more than that?” We got to listen. We got to find out what is the actual pain that’s causing that. That’s why, going back to the very beginning and saying, “Tell me about.” You are just minding your own business and doing your job. Then it’s like, “Something’s happening,” and you are like, “We got to look for this tool.” Were you winging it when something happened? I had this great conversation with a brilliant woman named Adele Revella. She is the author of the book, Buyer Personas. On my show, I was an idiot. I was an idiot live on video thinking that a buyer persona was like what HubSpot had told me it was.

It’s like, “This is Marketing Mary. She has cats, likes puppies, and she’s probably in her mid-30s.” That’s more of a buyer profile and you can’t do too much with that. If we are talking about a buyer persona, we want to know what made Mary buy, what made her search for it in the first place, and then how she buys it. If you can answer those questions alone and beautiful Adele Revella and her book, you should check that out but she schooled me on this. I realized, if you do it wrong, you have zero actionable info.

The idea of, “I know Mary likes cats.” Who cares? What do I do? Offer kitty litter as a part of the deal? What do I do with that? If you know the trigger for Marketing Mary was that her boss was like, “I need you to get your leads increased by 1,000% or you are going to get fired or something.” Now, what happened before that? In the organization, we had a downturn.”

We know that this happened and now we can seek other companies out there having the same situation and proactively be there for them when they are ready. A thousand ideas come from that and all we had to do was ask Marketing Mary and all of her cohorts and friends, “Tell me about that time when that need first came to mind.” That’s just one question but you can see there’s so much action that could come from that to ease their pain.

You bring up something interesting to me and that is the subject of even AI being able to do that in a marketing situation. A lot of us are big on what we would call account-based marketing, especially in business-to-business. We are not selling business to consumers. We are selling to other businesses. When we talk about trying to map that journey because that’s what you said, “This is why they are buying this way.” All the stuff behind it. It’s mind-boggling even the workflows and everything to pull that up and have a small business become profitable at identifying that.

It’s much easier to take a demographic. They are from this age to this age. This revenue to this revenue, but trying to map how somebody behaves. It’s part of the reason I am a trek fan. I am a tech fan. I am everything. I struggle with how machine learning or AI is going to bridge that gap. That may be for a whole other episode but I’m curious about your thoughts on something like that.

We are both going to come across as troglodytes in this episode. I like to say connect before tech. You got to connect with your prospects and customers. Ask them these questions long before you do tech. Otherwise, what does tech do? It makes whatever bad crappy marketing sales service you were doing ten times worse because now it’s in front of that many more people in their face and knowing them, getting spam. People now know ten times more clearly that you don’t know anything about them thanks to these tools. These are like effectively silver bullet distractions from us. You got to connect before tech. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about connecting. Can we do that?

You need to connect with your prospects and customers before doing the technical side of your business.

Yeah. Let’s talk about connecting because obviously, your podcast has helped with that and sifted through what I call the digital minutia. They get to know a little bit more about your personality and things like that, so let’s talk about connecting. Go ahead.

Here’s the thought, how do we get them to have a conversation with us? You mentioned ABM and I have been doing marketing for so long. ABM now is like the emperor’s new clothes. It’s like a shell game. It’s another thing and it disguises the game that’s being played. The game that the marketing is playing is the Notice Me Game.

All this decoration aside, we are trying to say, “Notice me.” Even with ABM, it all still comes down to a game called Get On The Phone With Me. Notice me, that can be such a challenge. I had a friend come to me who was potentially going to do some sales for the SaaS startup. He was saying that they’re looking for CIOs and this is how they proceed. He was like, “What do you think? What would a good marketing 1-year or 2-year look like to you? How do you get their attention and all that? How do you play the Notice Me Game?” Was this question essential?

I had to think, “Traditionally speaking, a lot of events, we are going to spend heavily to be at these events, all the right places. Notice me. Notice my big booth. Notice my fleece blanket giveaway.” We are going to try to harass them to notice me. We are going to send them the socks of their alma mater and aided ABM terms. We are going to spend a lot of money over two years. Hopefully, the CIO whom he was going after will notice them or at least have heard of them.

That doesn’t mean they even have a problem to solve for themselves. They will notice them. Very expensive like the status quo marketing is sales and playing the Notice Me Game. Either way, you got to play the Get On The Phone With Me Game, which we will get to in a second. I then thought, “I have been experimenting with podcasting. I have had so many amazing conversations.” With my last agency, I was looking for CMOs that had particular technology tools that I had a part in.

I would interview them. I asked them, “Would you be on the show?” Sometimes we make a great connection on that show. We’d learn a lot from each other. We build some trust with each other and then some deals accidentally started happening. I made this podcast to have conversations and learn from people and make content and that all happened of course. I got off the call with this CMO super cool leader and she’s brilliant. She’s schooling me the whole time. I loved it.

After the call, we are not recording anymore and she mentioned, “My team is moving from Marketo to Pardot.” That is what my agency did. That was what we specialized in. It was like, “That’s what we do. We can help you out. We can do this.” She’s like, “You saved me from trying to find someone I can trust. I trust you. Let’s get our teams talking.” We got our teams talking barely was even a sales cycle because we got our teams connected and an $80,000 migration deal came of that.

I wasn’t seeking that out and just happened. I thought, “What happens if I seek that out? What happens if I make my audience my ideal customer profile? If I make my audience the ideal person I want to talk to?” Playing the old school game, getting those CIOs would be that Notice Me Game for two years of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, I realized, “We could get a little podcast going and we could get those CIOs on a call within weeks.”

It’s like, “Why would I ever go back and do that old-school method when I can have a podcast conversation with someone.” That second game, which is Get On The Phone With Me, which no one wants to get on the phone with you so we have to trick and control them or even force them to get on the phone with me then they resent it.

In the second game, even if you are doing ABM, it doesn’t matter. You still are stuck doing the Get On The Phone With Me Game. Socks don’t magically make people want to get on the phone, but what does make people magically get on the phone is a podcast. The difference is we are giving them attention and we are not trying to take their time. We are not trying to take time out of their calendar. We are trying to give them time out of our calendar.

There’s this brilliant guy, Dan Sullivan. He has this quote, “Everyone’s competing to get your attention but no one’s competing to give you attention.” That’s what a podcast does. It says, “It’s not about me. I want to learn from you. I want to give you my attention. Come and be featured on this show.” Who says no to that? It’s like, “I will get on the phone with you.” That’s why that CEO, CIO, CMO, or whomever you are trying to get. It’s like, “I’d love to have a marketing strategy conversation with you. Let’s do it. That’s why I’m here. I’d love to have a conversation about this topic. I’m here. Let’s go.” That’s how you skip those games of notice me and call me by simply inviting someone to be on a podcast.

I love that because that has been the sift through the minutia thing. If you are trying to help people, giving them attention is helping and highlighting them. When I invite guests to my show, I’m like, “This is all about you. This is not about me.” This is all about you and helping you. I had somebody who came to me for my services and I said, “Honestly, you need a lot of PR now. What I can do is have you on my show and that will help you but I can’t help you now with what you are doing. I don’t want to end up selling you something that’s not going to work.” It’s also why I do a sales audit for people first. It’s like, “If we don’t fit and I can’t help you, I will make sure that I direct you in the right direction if nothing else.”

When you are saying that you are putting them on there, on your show to have it be about them, at the base level of the mantra of, “There are certain products and services that help people out and this can help you.” That checks all the boxes of being what we call Catherine Brown being a good human. You are being a good human.

When they come on the show and you have done a little prep in advance and you have got them ready to rock that thing. They come out swinging. You ask them that first question and they are nailing it. They look like a rockstar. It’s so good. They are going to want to share it with their tribe and with their network on LinkedIn. It’s not like you are pulling a fast one over them because you are featuring them and you are being a good human.

You are putting someone in the spotlight and that feels good too. That feels good to be able to help people that way. To your point, in sales, you are trying to provide a little value to help them, give them information however you can help them attack this pain. This comes into the next point of how we discover that pain. That first question isn’t about pain. You don’t lead in with, “Nice to meet you. What ails you?” We are not in that position.

Inviting people as podcast guests means putting them into the spotlight. At the same time, you are also providing value to your audience to help them address their pain.

Also, people are very reticent to talk about that thing on a podcast, at least right out of the gate. Right out of the gate, the first question is like, “Tell me something you are passionate about and you kick ass at that everyone else that listens to this show can learn from you.” Later on, during the show, you can ask questions like, “What is your biggest challenge or what keeps you up at night?”

I often like to ask a question for my agency where I would say, “Tell me about marketing automation.” I know the speaker I’m talking to has part up. I don’t need to get weird with them. Keep it at a level. “Tell me what’s your take on marketing automation?” People would tell me. People will tell you, “I love it. I hate it. I have never quite gotten to work. Our team is so frustrated with it. We are looking at migrating. We are looking to do this and that.” Now I know their pain.

There’s plenty more pain and you can have offline conversations. Maybe you are leaving too sensitive for recordings but you have got a sense of when you are done with the conversation. I would often follow up and say, “I heard you have a challenge with this terrible thing. I know they keep changing the tech on you. Someone on my team is an expert on it, let’s connect it with your person. Let’s get them chatting and let’s see if we can get all this.”

That’s what happens when I have people even on this show. I learned wonderful things about each one of them then I think, “This person could use this,” and you have, all of a sudden, connected with them and said, “Maybe I can’t help you but I can connect you with three people who can help you.” Maybe the readers are going, “I could help this person,” and doing the same thing. I love that. How did you get here? You didn’t arrive overnight in discovery.

Can I throw a wrench in your machine really quick and maybe embarrass you for a second? One of the things you mentioned about doing the audit or having these conversations. If you can’t help people, then you are not going to force-feed them your service or you are not going to try to trap people. The sign of anyone who does that should be a marker for all of us like, “This is someone you can trust and you should find a way to work with them.”

The number of people you can trust vendor-wise is very limited. At least really trust them. A podcast is a great start but nothing like a podcast and then having someone tell you, “You are not ready for my services yet, or you need this other thing first.” Did that cost me $100,000? Maybe but I don’t want your money. I want to see you do better. A shout-out to you. I have worked with you a few times in the past and you are an amazing sales leader. If anyone needs fractional sales leadership, you are the one to go with. I know this is your show, so I’m going to shut up and tell you about me.

I was going to say, “This is about you, Casey.”

It is about me. I can’t help myself.

I know. There are such great things going on and you got to shout it out. I agree. I feel like there’s so much out there that is helping organizations and those things. Sometimes, they have not highlighted enough that people see them, especially with like Jeb Blount. I will give him a shout-out. He doesn’t even know who I am. Anyway, the law of familiarity, fanatical prospecting. Part of the minutia of the familiarity is the digital deluge of information that’s out there then trying to narrow down whom you can trust. You can’t tell somebody, “Trust me,” because that’s the red flag that says, “Don’t trust this person.”

Trust me. You will be fine. The car is perfect.

I love it. There’s your theater coming out in it.

I can’t help myself. We are going to start breaking out into Joseph, later on, you’ll see.

That’s amazing. Donny Osmond. I digress. I had a friend. We lived in the Cayman Islands and I was coming back to the United States and she had a record and it was Donny Osmond. She’s like, “Could you get it signed for me?” I opened it up to my network back in the day. It was 2000. There was no LinkedIn. No anything. I opened it up to my network and I got that signed by Donny Osmond for her.

You are amazing. That’s incredible. That is so crazy.

I don’t even know Donny Osmond.

You should. Donny, reach out. You need folks to connect.

You need some love.

You folks need to connect for sure. Anyway, I digress. You were saying tell me your story and all these things.

How did you get here? I’m curious.

I have always been a little bit one of those, I don’t say rule breaker but like, “Is there an easier way to do this? Is there a more efficient way to do this?” Also, what’s fun? It is this combination of passions. I was always a little bit technical and a little bit of a communicator. I loved computers and I loved communicating and connecting with people. I was a magician when I was a kid. I did magic shows.

Trust me but slight of the hand.

Make cards appear out of nowhere. I loved reading and learning and learning secrets like magic tricks. Also, the fact that it would delight people. I always loved doing that but then I was also a bit of a business person as well because I would perform magic shows for birthday parties. I would charge for that and parents pays for it. I thought $50 was a lot of money.

It probably was.

The parents were like, “If I take them to Fun World, it’s going to be $300. Here. Take your $50 clown.” I always enjoyed the business aspect of it but also the performance aspect. As tech grew for us then, it was around before that became a thing. As that came into play, I loved how tech could connect us with people. For me, even the idea of America Online was a matter of connecting with someone and it was fascinating. A funny secret, back in the day, anyone who was there. America Online used to charge for the internet by the hour, which is crazy to think about now.

If you need tech support, you can go to the tech support chat then they stopped your billing per hour because you were getting tech support. I would go to the tech support room and chat with people there because it was free and it didn’t count against my hours. It was a matter of connecting with people. As long as the short is I went to school wondering, “Do I like computers or communications?” I did both and I was always trying to experiment with things and trying different jobs. I once had someone tell me my resume looked like a circus clown. The jokes on them because I’m Ringmaster.com now, so what’s up? It looks like it. It’s like a full circle. At the same time, you are connecting with people and learning how to use tech to measure that connection. A little bit creative and analytical.

You are and that’s amazing. Your history is shown that, so I can’t imagine. Even when I was going down your intro and all that stuff, you were part of the Marines and you have written a book. You have this production company with Ringmaster. I think you do a great job of having people feel like they are listened to and that’s brought you here. Some of the guests would to know more about you and what makes you tick. You talked about your passions. We threw in and laced in a little bit of theater, I think I heard you say that you were or still are and part of the theater. Tell us a little bit about that.

On the theater side, I grew up doing theater and there was something about it. I always loved it. It happened by accident. This is a funny 5th grade story. I was in 5th grade and I was nobody special, at least in my mind. I was just a 5th grader. In the school, the 5th grade had a 5th grade play. Everyone in the 5th grade was going to be in it. It was this cool play with 7 or 8 main characters. There were these different scenes where all different other people of different classes would come in and sing songs and do things. The seven characters would get back together again and connect all the scenes together.

There was the cool kid part and I auditioned for that and didn’t get it. They gave me the main lead of the whole show. It was like this nerd. I was like the White Urkel. I was this nerd kid and I tried wearing glasses or whatnot. It didn’t quite work but mostly, I had my dockers nice and high, suspenders, and a collared shirt.

Was it typecast? I don’t know but I was being silly. I would rehearse with my dad and we had some ad-lib jokes that I would throw out there. We told these kids like, “I’m going to take them to help them do their school report,” that they waited too long to finish and I’d already finished mine. That’s not typecast. I would hand out blindfolds. I’m like, “I have to take you to my secret computer lab. Here are some blindfolds.” I handed out 7 blindfolds to 7 classmates.

In the end, I was like, “What do you know, it’s just enough.” It’s totally adlibbed, and then the whole gymnasium, all the parents are erupting in laughter. That was the start of like, “I can control this whole audience and make them all laugh and smile but who would have thought?” It was the nerd part but it was like the part. It wasn’t so much the attention of everyone else. The fact that it was amazing. The next year, what was I in Peter Pan? Was I Peter Pan? No. I was Indian number 27. It wasn’t like it was this grand ascent to theatrical winning. It was a first touch of like, “This is fun. I could do this throughout my life.”

I can imagine you in 5th grade doing this and making everybody laugh. When you were talking about that, my daughter was reminding me that she was in a school play. It was more 1st or 2nd grade but her class did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She was Potiphar’s wife. She ran around with these big lips like holding big lips. She told me how that embarrassed her so badly in front of all of her friends. We were like, “We all thought it was so cute.”

Boys were gross back then.

Boys are gross but also, remember, you didn’t want to draw the attention of anybody who’s going to make fun of you. She was running around with these big red lips. I wasn’t in charge of it but these dingy parents feel like, “That’s going to be perfect,” and they didn’t think about these little kids. She was darling in it and I can envision you running around in your suspenders and your pants way up and the Steve Urkel thing.

It was a lot of fun. When I think about the different parts that stood out to me. Another time I was the villain of this prohibition-era show called the Drunkard. It was a musical but at the same time, it was weird because there’d be people on the side of the stage that would hold up signs that said, “Boo, hiss, cheer, and applaud.” When the heroes came out, they would do that and the audience would play along. They cheer. Each character had a theme song, so when you came out, they’d play, “The hero, he’s here.”

For me, I was the villain. They play this villain music and everyone would be like, “Boo.” I’d come out and I’d scout at the audience with my top hat and cane. I loved entertaining people. I found that later on in life, marketing and all these things. Webinars had my attention but podcasts clicked for me where is a way to still be on a stage in a way. We are connected here. We are having a one-to-one conversation. This is so great about this whole methodology too.

People can be connecting with their ideal customers and no one’s on their phones. You and I can’t do it. We couldn’t manage to have a conversation. We said you are either thinking or you are listening. Nowhere in that sentence is you on your phone and you are checking your email. How many times have we done sales calls or other calls where prospects are checking their email? I have done it. I have tried to cut it short but they want to show me the stupid song. I don’t want to see it anymore. I’m on my email. When you are in a one-on-one interview like this, you are giving them your attention. There’s respect and they give it back to you.

During one-on-one interviews, you are giving your whole attention to them. They will respect that and give it back to you.

That’s awesome. This has been an amazing episode. I have been thoroughly entertained but I 100% believe getting out of the revenue maze is listening. I have loved every moment of it. Tell us a little bit about where our readers can find you, connect with you, and if nothing else, they will have a great entertaining time with it. Tell us where they can get with you.

As you mentioned that listening is the key to getting out of the maze. In my mind, I thought like you are in the revenue maze, literally someone is telling you how to get out. It’s like your customer’s saying, “This way.” It’s like, “Stop, I got this.” It’s like, “No, just listen,” then you and this show are telling people how to get out of the maze as well. It’s like, “We need to stop for a second, listen to a show like this. Listen to our customers,” and launching a show is the way to do that. The best way to get in touch with me is a couple of ways.

One is email, super direct Casey@Ringmaster.com. Shoot me an email, “This show thing sounds interesting. How does it work? How do you track the ROI?” We can get into that. That’s a whole other show but there is a hundred percent trackability with podcasting ROI. One deal closing pays for the whole thing for a year. It’s pretty impressive the way it works out like that but shoot me an email.

Ringmaster.com is the web address, check out some of the other shows we have. My shows are on there and other shows. This show which is fantastic is on there. Check out all the shows and have a conversation. That would be my suggestion. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s talk about whom you are trying to talk to. That’s the only thing you have to prepare or think about before you talk with a team like myself or my team.

It’s who’s your dream? Whom would you dream to have on a call and then let’s go get them on the show for you? That’s what the team does. That’s my email and my web address. My podcast is called The Hard Corps Marketing Show. Your episode is still one of the most popular on the show. I’d encourage people to check that out.

There’s another show I have called Leadership in Action, talking to other CEOs of different companies. LinkedIn is always a great place as well. I would encourage people, final thing, is if you like this show, you are reading this now, go and rate it and review it. Give a shout-out to Valerie. She’s doing a great job and we got to get out of the maze. The only way to do that is together.

Thank you so much for sharing that and for all the readers on the show, I loved this show, and Casey Cheshire is awesome. Thank you again.

My pleasure.

There you all have it. This is another episode of the show. As Casey said, go on and like it. If you want more content or want to reach out, you can connect with us on LinkedIn.

Important Links

• Hard Corps Marketing Show
• Marketing Automation Unleashed: The Strategic Path for B2B Growth
• Ringmaster Conversational Marketing
• Buyer Personas
• Jeb Blount
• Casey@Ringmaster.com
• Leadership in Action
• LinkedIn – Casey Cheshire
• To Sell Is Human
• LinkedIn – The Revenue Maze
• https://Twitter.com/caseychesh?lang=en

About Casey Cheshire

Casey Cheshire is the CEO and Founder of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing. He is also the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed” and the host of the “Hard Corps Marketing Show”. He has found a unique way to turn the world of marketing upside down; podcasting! His time in the Marines has brought him laser sharp focus on his goals, and he is ready to spread the word about how podcasting can be the perfect way to get to know your ideal customer. Casey sits down with host Valerie Cobb to talk about ways that you can successfully find your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and grow your business.

Here at Revenue NorthStar, we are passionate about sharing experiences and first-hand knowledge from the trenches. No fake gurus or consultants; we get into the execution of well-proven steps, strategies, and frameworks to help your business grow faster and more efficiently. Stay connected with us on social media for regular updates, tips, and insights:

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