What a B2B Podcasting Platform Founder Taught Us About Podcasting
On episode 1 of the Founders Forward podcast, we are joined by Lindsay Tjepkema, Founder and CEO of Casted. Casted is the first and only podcasting platform built for B2B companies. Being our very first episode of the Founders Forward we could not think of a better guest than Lindsay. If there is one thing we know about Lindsay — it is that she knows podcasting.
About Lindsay
Lindsay shared all sorts of interesting tidbits for founders and startups looking to explore podcast and new media types. We had the chance to dive into her life as a founder as well — we chat board meetings, fundraising, leadership, and more. Mike Preuss, CEO of Visible, had the pleasure of interviewing Lindsay for our very first episode. The full episode is below (and transcript further down). You can also listen on any of your favorite podcast apps.
What You Can Expect to Learn from Lindsay
- Why invest in a podcast at your company?
- How to measure podcast success, find the right guest, and create great content.
- Leverage podcasting for board meetings and product launches.
- How Lindsay approached fundraising and why she actually liked it.
- How to set boundaries and balance with work.
- The importance of conversation and connection.
Some related content
We created the Founders Forward Podcast to learn from people like Lindsay. For the founders out there debating a podcast (or alternative media type), Lindsay is a great guide to lean on and listen to. As you scale your business, having the right guides at your side can make all of the difference. Each episode we’ll talk to fellow founders, investors and experts. We’ll dive into their zone of genius as well as hear about their past mistakes to give you a better chance of success.
Podcast Transcript
Learn more about our favorite podcasting tips here, or give the full episode a read below.
Mike: Welcome everyone to season one, episode one of the Founders Forward podcast. Today I’m joined by the founder and CEO of Casted, Lindsay Tjepkema. And I thought this was just super fitting because this is our foray into podcasting, and we need someone to guide us through the treacherous waters.
Maybe not treacherous, but the world of podcasts. And this is what Lindsay and Casted do for a living. Lindsay, you probably do a better job of explaining Casted than I can. I’m gonna turn it over you, but essentially, from what I understand, you are like the only branded podcast experience there is on the web right now.
Lindsay: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor to be your first guest. Basically, you’re right. I mean, what I do for a living is podcasts about podcasts. So I am here for it. Casted in a nutshell, you got it just about right. We are the first and right now the only podcast solution around B2B podcasting. It’s a content marketing platform that enables content marketing teams for B2B brands to use their podcasts, to really fuel their sales and marketing strategies as a whole.
Mike: I love it. When did you start this business? When did you start Casted?
Lindsay: My day one was April 29th, 2019. So as we record this, we’re, you know, about a year and a half into it.
Why invest in a podcast?
Mike: I love it. And so podcasting has clearly exploded. It feels like there’s a podcast for just about every single topic. Visible, we’re a team of 10, we’re small, I’m the founder of the company. We’ve known each other for a couple of years now, but you mentioned like everyone should have our podcasts. Like why should I care and have a podcast for Visible what’s your take on it?
Lindsay: Right. Well, I have a couple of answers on that. Podcasts do something that no other form of content can, you know, everyone that’s listening to this podcast right now, your very first episode, is connecting with you and with me and with both of our brands in a way that all of the other great content that we’re producing just.
I told you this, I think first time we met, I love the content that you guys put out there because as a founder of a company, I’m looking for that information that you’re providing about how to work with my board and when to be thinking about different stages of the process and how to be approaching new things that I as a founder haven’t run into before.
So you all are creating really, really exceptional content. But, this content that your audience is consuming right now helps them to connect and build a relationship and trust. And really that human to human level that no other content does. So to me, that should be the basis of every single content strategy is how can we capture the insights of experts in whatever topic or area of interest that we have?
Capture their insights, capture their unique perspectives and use that as a show to create real human level connections with our audience and then spin more content out from that across other channels.
Finding Podcast Listeners
Mike: That was an amazing answer. And so one of the things that I’m trying to wrap my head around though as a founder is back in 2010, it was all about content, content, content, and particularly blogs building my SEO strategy. To me, this kind of feels the same, right? Everyone knows it’s a strategy or playbook you should probably be running but there’s a ton of options out there. How, how do I get people to listen to the founders forward? I can create it but it doesn’t mean they will come. So how do I get people to listen to this podcast?
Lindsay: Right. Well, I mean, it’s just like any other form of content or any other approach to anything marketing related is I always say first, think about who’s it for. Who’s my audience? Who are they? What are they interested in? What do they want to know? And then why am I doing it? Who’s it for and why am I doing it?
What are the goals that you have for the show? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to build relationships? Are you trying to help people dive deeper? What’s your why? Because without those two pieces of information, you’re going to one, try to appeal to everyone, which when you try to please everyone you end up mildly entertaining at best. Then if you don’t know why you’re doing it, it’s really hard to measure success. So, then to answer your specific question around, like how do I get people to listen, if you can really hone in on who’s it for that’s when you can provide those unique insights and dig deep.
With the guests that you have in your show in areas that your audience would probably want to ask them questions on too, you can ask different questions than other podcasts or other content providers would not get into and really get into unique, original content that will be all the more engaging for your audience.
So that’s how you create the good content. But then what you do with it from there is what, one of the reasons that Casted exists. It’s something that I see so often is people leaving behind, so much value because they publish their show and then they go on to the next thing, which yes, sometimes it’s the next episode, but then quite often as the 8 billion other things on your to-do list, which as founders we know is there’s a lot.
But if you’re going to put the effort into capturing an interview. Definitely, definitely take another beat and take the time to bring it out. So publish the show and then think, okay, what’s the related content I could pull from this? What are the clips that I could pull to share on social media?
What areas could I dive into to create some supplemental written blog content? is there a white paper here? Is there a way to equip my sales team? Give them the insights and the perspectives and the quotes and the quips that I captured in this interview. Because then you’ll be reaching people across other channels and giving them the opportunity to dig in across different formats to really engage in what you’re saying.
Defining Podcast Success
Mike: Yeah, that makes so much sense. So knowing that let’s say we have this beautiful, why, which I think we do. We know it’s founders, right? And we want to get close to founders and starting a startup is hard and it’s a journey and so we want to find experts to help our community of founders with a problem they’re facing. I think we have a way to measure that and we plan on investing in this podcast, right? We’ve found someone to do some editing for us. We have an awesome intro song ready to go.
We have eight people lined up for the first season. How long should we give it? Is there a way we know like we should pivot this? Or maybe this isn’t the right strategy for us? Is there a timeframe? Is it a gut feeling? Is it a metric?
Lindsay: Yeah, definitely give it time. Quite often we see in the space in general, across all of marketing, all of podcasting, people will, we’ll give it a few episodes and then say, “Oh, you know, it’s not where I want it to be,” whatever that means, and give up and kind of throw in the towel and say, “well, that didn’t work.”
Give it a couple of seasons. Really watch it. See what kind of feedback you get. And keyword there being seasons. I do really like to advise people to look at it one season at a time, not necessarily one show at a time. Start with your first season. You said you have like eight, let’s go with that.
So do the first eight, take a minute, take a pause and then come back in and dive into another topic that’s within, you know, this Founder’s Forward area of interest. Or find a different subset of guests that you could have on or toy with the length or format of the show and do little minor tweaks based on the kind of feedback that you get. That will help with success.
You will impact the lives in some way of some group that’s listening. And so listen to what they have to say. And if you give yourself chunks to do one season at a time that gives yourself the opportunity to take a pause to maybe not quite pivot but to make those changes without it feeling really jarring to your audience, right?
You can make those little changes and they’ll grow to expect those tweaks along the way.
Measuring Podcast Success
Mike: Okay. And how do you guys measure your success? Is it top of the funnel for you or is it bottom? How is Casted measuring the success of Casted?
Lindsay: Good question. Actually in a lot of ways. And I think that’s, something that anyone that gets into podcasting should also think about. There is no one metric it’s certainly not, you know, some magical number of downloads. If that was the case, then we would all be trying to achieve that number and then be like, “Oh, there we go.”
Success is going to fuel revenue. Now, it’s a little different for everybody, but that’s why, again, while you have to know who’s it for and why are you doing it so that you can look at all the indicators that contribute to, “am I getting to my why?” So for us, we look at overall listenership. Is a show growing?
Do we have new listeners coming all the time? And do we have returning listeners? Did they listen before? And do they keep coming back? Are they listening to the whole show or most of it? We also pull clips from the shows, like how successful are those clips? Or the things that we’re sharing on social media, leading to people to come and listen to the show, and then engagement?
That’s all show level and that’s fine and good, but you know, if I’m a marketer, that’s not enough. Like what else? Right. Are people going through? And from my episode page, are they engaging in the other content that we have? Are they going on and reading the related blog posts?
Are they clicking into the information that we’ve shared along with that episode? Because that indicates engagement and that really indicates somebody who’s really interested in learning more about who we are, what we do, what we’re sharing as far as our content is concerned.
We also have different integrations. We have a Drift bot that allows us to actually engage with our listeners while they’re listening. As long as they’re on our show page, we can recommend other related content, see if there’s any questions that we can answer. So it’s that kind of real-time engagement that helps us to understand how we’re doing.
And then also through our integration with HubSpot. Just beyond like metrics and how many, but actually who? Did Mike come and listen to our show? Yes, he did. He listened to 97% of the show. And then, you know what somebody else from Visible listened too, even just like any other activity that you can see in your CRM really helps to fuel. One, are we successful? Two, what can we do now?
Think about the big picture
Mike: That’s why I love what Casted is doing and why we’re starting the Founders Forward podcast. It feels like it kind of lifts and elevates everything we’re doing across all of our different experiences on our site. From a concept we’re writing to how we engage with people that are on a trial. It feels like for me, downloads is really not a metric. I care about it’s going to be like, how do we create really unique and differentiating nuggets of wisdom from people that we can use from the podcast and in different parts of our marketing site. Am I thinking about that the right way?
Lindsay: I was literally going to say, “you’re thinking about that exactly the right way.” Because there is no one size fits all downloads are one indicator and if that’s all you have, cool. Are they going up? But when you have the opportunity to look at the bigger picture, and especially those of us who are founders, you have the opportunity to lead from the top.
Even if the top is just a couple of people to say, “We’re going to look at this show as a big picture thing. We’re not going to look at any one metric and decide whether it’s succeeding or failing. We’re going to say, okay, what kind of anecdotal feedback are we getting? When we do talk to someone and they say, Oh yeah, I listened to your podcast.”
What does that conversation turn into? Are they a little bit more engaged with, is there a little bit more trust there? That’s an indicator of success. And then also, what else are we doing? Are we more effective and efficient as a team? Because we have this starter content that we’re pulling more out of and we’re able to do more with less, which again, as a founder is something that we’re looking to do all the time.
So, yeah. It’s you gotta think big picture, you got to think, from these conversations, think about it less as I’m recording a podcast episode and more as I’m recording a conversation that I’m going to make a podcast out of it, but I’m also going to do a lot of other things too.
Distributing Your Podcast
Mike: Yeah, for me, it’s like a forcing function for me not to be lazy. It’s like, okay, I have an hour with Lindsay today. We’re going to record this. And then there’s a ton of other things that are going to happen, because of that forcing function of us having an hour to sit down and chat with one another.
Lindsay: Okay.
Mike: Okay. And last thing, as it relates to our journey, as we launch this podcast is there like one thing or gotcha that you think we’re going to run into?
Lindsay: Yeah, I hate to sound like a broken record but kind of what we just talked about. I think a lot of people think all I need to do is just, you know, hit record and that’s my show. Well, it’s not that simple. it’s also not that hard, right?
So you just, you find great people that your audience wants to hear from. You interview them it turned into a show, but it is a lot of work, there’s time involved. There is a lot of effort, which is kind of what we just talked about. All the more reason to make sure you’re getting a lot of value out of every single interview you do.
How are you making sure you’re just wringing it out and that you are not just for a moment but ongoing, constantly coming back and saying, “what else can I do with this show? What else can I do with this interview?” I think that’s honestly, the biggest thing is looking for immediate success with minimal effort.
And I also don’t want to make it seem like it’s really hard because if you do look at it holistically, like everything we were just talking about, what else can you get out of every show?
Every time I record a podcast it’s on top of my blog on top of my social media strategy. On top of all these other things, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s what if you just think about your podcast first and all of those other things that are on your to-do list flow from it. So it’s going back to the exact question you asked is what is a mistake that we see quite often.
I think the flip side of that is where do we see the greatest success it’s with the companies that think about their podcast and in those interviews first as fuel for everything else and how they can, as a result, be more efficient, be more effective, be a little bit more lazy and saying, okay, everything’s going to feel out of this one resource of content, which is going to make everyone’s lives easier.
Finding Your Guests
Mike: Okay. Now you mentioned something in there that does not in the outline I sent you and put you on the spot. so you mentioned great guests. Is there any truth to like the guests list, like, should I shoot high? Should I try to get Mark Zuckerberg on the podcast because that kind of anchors my future guest list versus, having my brother, Matt, who’s in the background right now as our production
Lindsay: He’s like what kids? What’s wrong with me?
Mike: I could do that cause he’s my brother. Let’s talk about guests. Is there any truth to that? How do you recommend, I think about the guest list for the podcast? I’m sure some of it’s the why and why we’re doing it, but is there truth to like trying to aim high and get like a list type person right away?
Lindsay: Absolutely. Which is why I’m here. I’m just kidding. I would say yes, but also no. So yes, in that when you have, you know, you said Mark Zuckerberg find if you got him, if you got Oprah to come on your show, would that spike your listenership? Of course, because it’s a big name.
If you can get Oprah on your show and get her to Tweet, like, Hey, just did a great recording with Mike and Visible, check out their new show. What would you have a spike in listenership? Sure. But what if your audience doesn’t want to listen to Oprah? Right. I always say go find a great expert, capture their perspective.
So on and so forth expert does not necessarily mean famous influencer in this space. It could, sure. I was actually just talking to someone yesterday, who was just asking for podcast advice and stuff and not a great fit for Casted, but has had the most ridiculously amazing people on their show because that’s what makes sense for them.
Find the experts for your audience
But that’s not what expert always means. If your audience needs to hear about what it’s like to be new to the career force and just graduated from school and what it’s like to be a newcomer to the career world. They’re going to want to listen to people who just finished their first two or three years of school, which, you know, many of us would not think of as experts by the definition of famous people.
So again, it’s all about who is your audience and what are, who are the experts you’d want to hear from? They could be interns, they could be engineers, they could be product leaders, or CMOs, or your customers. Your customers are really great guests, your partners. It comes in all shapes and sizes, which again is why it’s so, so, so important to know who it’s for and why you’re doing it.
Because if Oprah did come along to a show where she was not going to be a great fit, you’d have to say no, probably say, how else can we use Oprah because she’s amazing. Maybe we spin up another show, but yeah. You know what I mean?
The other danger of having just quote unquote, the expected experts is that you’re going to get the same exact interview that everyone else has done with the name your person and it really is a mix because yes, it could be the big names because they’re big names for a reason. People like to hear from them. But don’t discount the people that haven’t really been heard from before, because they have really, really exceptional insights to your audience too.
Starting an Internal Podcast
Mike: Great to know. And so we’re going to shift gears just a little bit. So I got wind that you had a board meeting this week so one, How did it go? Then it sounds like you also use Casted or create a podcast for your board. How does that work?
Podcast for Board Meetings
Lindsay: Yeah. Board meeting went great, thanks for asking. Part of why it went so well is that we do use Casted for ourselves for an internal podcast. And I say that facetiously, but also truthfully, one thing that we do is, you have founders listening, so I’m sure that they can relate.
When you have your board you send pre reads ahead of your meeting, right? So you send your agenda and all the things you’re going to vote on and things you’re going to talk about and things that, you know, all of the data that you want them to ingest before you spend a couple hours with them.
So we were no exception. I put that together as well. But then along with that, I send a podcast that is myself and anyone else is going to be in the meeting. This time around, it was myself, my two co-founders and our marketing director, talking through, “Hey board, this is what we’re going to go through.”
Q3 was really great for all these reasons. Pass it on over to the revenue update. Here’s what we’re going to go through. And here’s some of the highs and lows from revenue this month. And it’s nice because our board gets to hear literally from us, our voices talking about how things are going and what to expect.
And then the feedback I’ve gotten has been this is really great because literally I’m gonna drop the name of Scott Dorsey, he is on my board. He’s fantastic. He’s like I was preparing for the meeting and he was like, “I got up and walked around and could have your voice in my ears while I was making my lunch.” It gives them more flexibility.
All of our board members are really busy but we want them to engage in what we’re providing them.
Mike: Do you go off the cuff or is there a script you’re sticking to you when you’re doing that board reading?
Lindsay: For those, we all script it out because it’s pretty specific to the information that we want to share in that. In each of our one little clips it ends up being like a 15 minute episode when you put all of our different voices together. I think otherwise, as you can tell I’m a little bit long-winded I think it would very quickly turn into a 40 minute episode.
Mike: I love that idea, especially since board members are busy. So if they’re traveling or walking around and they can pop you in and listen it’s almost like an earnings call for a startup really in a way, where like it’s you or your executive team talking to the board.
Podcasts for Team and Customers
So that’s cool. And then do you use it internally as well for team communication? Not just your investors and your board, but are you doing like an internal podcast for the team?
Lindsay: Well, we do. It’s actually not me though. At least not yet. When we get bigger it might be. One of my co-founders, Adam Padrino, who heads up the product side of the business. Every time we have a release he does a release notes podcast. And if I’m not mistaken, I think that started out as like an internal podcast that we actually ended up changing to be for our customers and more public facing as well.
But that started out to be like, Hey, this is the release. This is what’s happening. The related resources were a little video clips about what it looked like and how it worked. And the show notes were more information about the release and it was him literally talking through what the release is and how it changes things and where it fits in.
Mike: So cool. That’d be like, if you wrote an investor update for every single one of our customers every time we changed the product. But yeah, I love that. That’s cool.
Lindsay: Well, and if you go back to just to tie it all together it sounds funny, but it’s true — it’s a way to be a little bit more lazy. Or you could say more effective or more efficient is that if Adam, our head of product goes through and talks about why we built this, how it works, what it is, the rest of our team can then speak more eloquently about it can pull content you can write about, it can create the webpage update about it, it enables everyone else to do their job so much easier because they already heard straight from the product leaders from the founder’s mouth.
Our Founders Forward Questions
Mike: I love it. Okay. This is the part of the episode where we shift gears and focus you, Lindsay, the founder. I know you had a marketing agency. Is this your first startup though? Where you’ve raised money?
Lindsay: Yeah. I did my own thing. I consulted on my own for awhile but this is my first foray into founder life.
Mike: Do you find board meetings? Stressful? I always stress myself out before the board meeting.
Lindsay: You know,I’ve only had a few. Stressful? There’s good stress and there’s bad stress. So I think it’s definitely a forcing function to get everything together, which I think is good. I don’t get nervous, stressful. Like I actually really, really love that time with my board because they’re your biggest cheerleaders and also your biggest challenges to make sure that they’re cheering for you, which is why sometimes the redirection or identification of blind spots is hard to hear. We all want this to succeed. But I don’t know, stressful feels like a strong word.It’s a lot of work, but then I always try to not make it a lot of work because there’s so much other stuff to do, so.
Mike: I’m assuming you did this one virtual, given COVID, was this your first one virtual or have you been doing the remote since you started?
Lindsay: Actually we’ve never had one in person. Heah, because we got started right when I think my first board meeting first official board meeting was March 18th.
The Fundraising Journey
Mike: Okay. Awesome. And earlier this year, I think at least publicly announced you guys raise some capital in February. one, congratulations. I know it’s hard to do. What was that journey like? Any takeaways? For our audience that are just getting started, maybe pre-seed type company seed founders. What was that journey like for you as a first time founder and anything you’re like, Oh man, that was like a mistake I made or I love that I did that? And that really worked well?
Lindsay: Sure. I’m trying to figure out how to sum it all up. It’s interesting because right when you find your stride, it’s all over. Like then you find your stride because you bring in the money and everything before that, it’s like, “well, was that good? Did I Bumble it? I don’t know.” I guess we’ll find out, you know, if they invest or not.
I enjoyed it. There’s nothing better than being able to talk to person, after person, after person about your company. This entire thing that you’re building. That’s a great feeling and it’s exhilarating and it’s exciting to be able to share your passion with somebody else and actually to invite them to be a part of it.
Like that’s really cool and that’s very fun. That’s also the hardest part because it’s your baby. And when you share something with so many people, and you get so many nos, that’s hard. I mean, that is the hard part, but and in all, I think that if you, if you maintain that stature of this is my thing, I’m really, really proud of it and I am so convicted that what I believe is going to happen is going to happen, share that passion and that you really, really, truly are. You’re not asking for money, you’re inviting someone to be a part of it.
And I think that if you keep that stature, it’s felt by the other party. And even if it’s a no, if you can come away, having allowed them to see that passion and that fire that you have for what you’re building, that will only do good things for the company long-term.
Mike: Did you treat it as a numbers game? Did you talk to a lot of investors or did you take a more pointed approach?
Lindsay: Hmm. Somewhere in the middle. Definitely talked to a lot of people and even those that I didn’t feel like we’re going to be a great fit. One thing that happens once the word gets out that you’re raising money, all kinds of entities, all kinds of different funds, pop up, which is great.
And I looked at it as practice. Like no matter what,it’s always good to know more people. It’s always good to get in front of more people. You never know what’s gonna come to fruition. You never know who they’re going to know.
So that said, I did not say yes to every single outreach. I was also very careful about what I shared. But every at-bat is practice. And so I talked to a lot of people, probably a total of gosh, 75 pitches or so if that’s the number that’s out there, and a lot of them, it was just, it was really great.
Practice if nothing else. And then there were the ones that were like, okay, this one is what I’ve been practicing for. I think this one is a great fit. I really liked them to come in. I’d really like them to think really, really highly of me. And therefore, all of the other practices, all the other at bats, come to a head for that, you know, hope for a home run.
Mike: Yeah. Okay. So 75 it’s a lot. I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of time it takes to raise capital. And I think we also probably underestimate how many conversations we need to have. 75 is probably the median, if not like on the low side, maybe for a seed round.
We’re going to try to figure that out as we continue to talk to guests, but okay. So this is your baby, you have been doing this since April, 2019. It’s stressful. Right? I’ve been, I’ve been doing this now for six years. How do you stay sane as a founder? Like how do you unplug in, is it a TV working out family time?
How do you separate work and starting a company? What do you like to do to keep yourself sane?
How do you separate work and starting a company? What do you like to do to keep yourself sane?
Lindsay: it’s interesting. You didn’t say the words, but people talk a lot about work-life balance, or you know, how do you unplug or how do you turn off work? It’s just that, I don’t ever take off. Like I have three kids I don’t ever take off my mom hat. I’m never like, well, I’m not your mom right now. I lean in and I lean back. I love my kids. I love Casted. I love everything.
That is a huge part of my life. It is there for a reason. So the goal is not to turn it on and turn it off, it’s to set up boundaries along the way so that it all fits and so that you can be everything all the time. And so that means that I have to put up healthy barriers with work. We’re fully remote right now, who knows how much longer we will be.
I can’t work all the time. I shouldn’t all the time be like, “Nope, I’m going to skip dinner.” I’m just going to eat dinner in my office, you know, “Hey honey, kiss the kids goodnight for me.” Like it has to be a constant daily decision to lean in and lean back on every part of life so that you have energy for everything.So that tomorrow I sit down at my desk strong, healthy, ready to go and I close up the day at the end of the day and go kiss my kids strong, healthy, and ready to go.
And so it’s boundaries and balance. And then yeah, taking care of myself, I try to get good sleep. Some nights are better than others.
I spend time with the kids. I’m a health nut. So I think that actually physically taking care of yourself is super, super, super important. What you put into your body and how you take care of comes back to you when you ask it to work hard for you.
How have you stayed healthy during COVID?
Mike: Health nut. What have you done in COVID? Has it been a diet? Has it been working out? What tips or tricks do you have?
Lindsay: I try to work out every day, even if it’s like, “Oh, today was crazy. I’m just going to do a five minute quick workout, or go for a walk.” But yeah I try to work out, as much as I can and then just being healthy. Like if you fuel your body with quarantine treats all the time, you’re gonna feel it and you’re going to be sluggish the next day and that pitch isn’t going to go as well.
I eat really healthy and I drink a lot of water. Just all the typical things, eat healthy, get sleep. workout, drink a lot of water. There is a Michael Polen, I think quote that’s like eat food, not too much. Mostly plants. Like just do that and you’ll feel better.
Mike: I knew you were coming on. I needed to have higher energy today for our first podcast ever. So I only ate sweet potatoes yesterday.
Lindsay: Just sweet potatoes. Little worried about you.
When do you feel like you’re not working?
Mike: Just boiled chicken and sweet potatoes and super clean. Okay. Last few questions, three questions, that were planning on asking everyone that joins the podcast.
We’re huge fans of the zone of genius and that’s defined as, when do you feel like you’re not working? So I guess for you it is every day at Casted or when you are in like your flow state, where you’re like, I’m not even working?
Lindsay: So it’s going to sound super duper cliche, but it’s doing this it’s I’m doing podcasts or speaking. That is the most fun thing is just having conversations about the things that I’m passionate about, which are exactly what we’ve been talking about is, you know, podcasting and content marketing and leadership and starting a company.
That is flow. Before we know what the conversation’s over and time is up and it’s onto the next thing. Then I think the next layer out of that onion is learning. I think that’s one of the coolest things about being a founder, is all of the things you get to do for the first time, which is also a lot, but I mean, you’re just constantly learning.
If your brain was getting wiped out tomorrow, what’s one thing you would write down tonight?
Mike: Okay, next question. This one comes from Max Yoder. Max is great. And I sent him some questions and he said, well, the one I like, so I’m giving credit to this. So we’ll see how this goes.
Lindsay: Okay.
Mike: If your brain was getting wiped out tomorrow, what’s one thing you would write down tonight?
Lindsay: Yeah. I’m trying to decide whether to be like leader Lindsay, Mom Lindsay
You could be super facetious and be like, well, there’s lots of things written down already. I mean, you know, something about my kids and my family to make sure that was still intact. That’s the most important thing. Things that I would write down, actually it’s funny cause it’s Megan Brazina’s chocolate chip cookie recipe and she actually works at Lessonly with Max Yoder cause it’s the best chocolate chip cookie recipe on the planet. But as far as like, you know, Leader Lindsay. Let’s like, let’s bring it back home to this audience and what we’ve been talking about, just the importance of connection and conversation. I’m an introvert which surprises some people since I’m very chatty.
So it’s really easy for me to retract to my own cave and just go heads down and do the things. But something that I’ve been working on over the last couple of years, particularly through quarantine, is to stay connected with other people. It actually is something that I need a reminder about because it’s so natural for me to just be on my own, but then I’m not okay.
I’m a better leader, I’m a better founder, I’m a better partner, I’m a better mom, a better all the things when I invest in my community. The people that are around me to challenge me and help me grow and to love on me and to support me. So I’d write that down. Cause that’s something that I should probably write down anyway is to remind myself, like go connect with other people. Don’t try to do this alone.
Who is someone you’d like to give thanks to?
Mike: Okay. I love that. And our final question before we wrap this one, I think is going to be interesting to you in terms of what people say. On Monday morning, Visible has been fully remote since we started and on our all hands, we go around and talk about priorities for the week, but then more importantly, someone gets thanks to a team member for something that they did for them the week before.
Is there anyone you want to give thanks to right now that maybe you haven’t thanked before or someone that just really helped you out over the past year and a half since you started?
Lindsay: So many people. So like my answer that I just said is about community and how we’re stronger together. So, so many people. I think, you know, again, especially given this show and who you’re speaking to founders, I’m going to thank my co-founders. I know that’s two people, but I’m going to take it anyway. Adam Padrino, Zachary Ballenger, just full sto. They’ve been amazing.
We’ve been an incredible team. We have grown together as humans and we’ve grown this business and together done some really, really incredible things, both business-wise and culture within our team and hired some incredible people and got to work with some fantastic customers and create this incredible product.
I mean, it wouldn’t be what it is today without them. We wouldn’t be going where I know we’re going to go if it wasn’t together. So there you go. They’re going to squirm cause they hate attention.
Mike: One mistake I’ve made is that I don’t have a co-founder. So that’s one thing I will certainly change in the next go around is I wish I had that. That’s a whole nother episode
Lindsay: We could talk for a long time.
Mike: I can just talk to myself about it. It’ll be an internal monologue with myself.
Well, Lindsay, I can’t thank you enough for one taking your time out of your busy day and then to really being our guide, for the Founders Forward podcast as we get this going. So thanks so much for joining us. How do you think we did for episode one?
Lindsay: I am so excited that you’re doing this show. Obviously I’m biased because everybody on the show knows by now that I’m super biased about podcasts, but you all are doing such amazing content. This is going to be a really, really incredible show. And I’m so honored to be a part of
Mike: Thanks so much. All right, everyone, we’ll see you for episode two.
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