April 9, 2025 • 22 mins
In our more and more AI driven world meaningful relationships are harder to come by and maintain over time. We’re getting more and more disconnected from our social and professional circles. We’re using AI tools because we think they will make everything better. We think they will make doing business easier, which is true in some cases. They look fancy, they have cool reporting, so we think we’ll get more leads and then maybe we’ll get more clients.
Unfortunately, often they’re putting layers of separation between us and our prospects and clients. When that happens, we don’t really understand what’s going on with our business outreach. We start to make up scenarios because we don’t have all the personal information to go alongside the data. We can end up not knowing much personal information about many of our prospects, instead we could primarily know what AI tells us about them.
I discuss how to create meaningful relationships in this AI driven world with my guest, Casey Cheshire. Casey is a seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience and the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed,” a guide to leveraging marketing technology for business growth. As the founder and CEO of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a B2B podcasting agency, he helps businesses build authentic connections with their audiences.
The Unfortunate Trend of Weakening Ties
Prospect and client relationships are weakening. We no longer remember many of their names off the top of our heads, we certainly don’t know what’s keeping them up at night, so we just make up what we think is keeping them up at night. Then our products and our services start to morph in that direction. No wonder that email campaign you just sent out only got crickets back. Or maybe you had a webinar, and nobody showed up or just a few people did. AI is one of the big reasons.
You wanted an in-person or virtual room full of people; why were those marketing messages falling flat? Because you’re disconnected, you didn’t know what your prospects wanted because you put apps in the way. The crazy thing is that AI isn’t making those scenarios easier.
AI isn’t getting us more connected; it’s adding more noise to our world. Let me get this straight, it’s always been noisy but now it’s getting noisier. AI is behind tons of content, tons of marketing strategies, and at times it’s having fake conversations with people. Overall, it’s just going to be a noisier world for everyone.
We’re not going to be able to do more of the same or do better than the status quo unless something changes. The old ways of doing business just aren’t working anymore. We must pivot hard to avoid getting wrapped up in all that disconnected noise.
Getting Started on the Journey of Cutting Through the Noise
How can you reconnect with your existing network or connect with new prospects or potential referral sources? It’s a revolutionary thought: By making calls. Having one-on-one calls whether you’re the founder or the marketer and so on. In the case of sales roles, they’ll reach out, but that’s a different kind of outreach.
We need to be reaching out to learn, to ask personal questions, not just to make a sale. It means you’re asking things like what are your goals this year? What are you trying to achieve? What are your responsibilities? What are the things that are really bothering you?
Get to know their real wants and needs.
We’re not really inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the phone with people, we’re just pitching them. We’re soft pitching and we’re not really listening to them. We’re just looking for an opportunity to talk about our product or service. We’ve got to take a step back and have a conversation where we’re trying to learn about the other person.
Things change all the time. It makes it harder for you because you think you know everything. For example, when you think you understand the customer because you are marketers selling to marketers or manufactu...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Idea Climbing podcast. In our
more and more AI driven world, meaningful relationships
are harder to come by and then build.
Today, we're discussing how to create meaningful relationships
as well as ways to meaningfully embrace AI
and not get lost in the shuffle.
My guest is Casey Cheshire. Casey is a
seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience
(00:22):
and the author of Marketing Automation
Unleashed, a guide to leveraging marketing technology for
business growth.
He's the founder and CEO of Ringmaster conversational
marketing, a b to b podcasting agency.
He helps businesses build authentic connections with their
audiences.
We dive into topics such as how to
grow your business with integrity without pitch slapping
(00:42):
everyone you meet, examples of AI prompts to
create authentic content true to your voice, the
one thing above all else you need to
do to create and build meaningful relationships in
our AI driven world and more golden nuggets
of advice. You're gonna love this show.
(01:05):
Thank you for making time to be a
guest on the idea of climbing podcast. Casey,
I really appreciate you.
Hey, man. Thanks. I'm stoked to be here.
I'm ready for an adventure.
Well, we're gonna have one. We're gonna talk
about strategies, tips, and tricks about how to
build meaningful
relationships in a con constantly more,
AI driven world.
(01:25):
Before we get into some of the strategies,
as far
as cutting through the noise and the AI
driven world and
people losing some meaningful
relationships,
Why is that important to you? What's your
story with, you know, AI relationships?
Man, we are just getting so disconnected.
You know, if I were to ask you,
hey. Can you name seven customers
(01:47):
by company name? You could probably do it.
Might pull it off. But if I were
to say, hey. Give me first and last
name of seven customers.
What's that delay? What's that you know, it's
like, oh, there's a little gap there where
you're like, do what can I name seven?
Can we and and what that is, we're
disconnected. We're getting more and more disconnected. We're
throwing these tools in the way because the
tools promise to make everything better. Right? And
(02:09):
and they look fancy, and they have cool
reporting. And so we think maybe this will
solve my customer problem. Maybe they'll get more
leads this way, or maybe I'll get more
customers. But all it's doing is putting layers
and layers and layers in between us
and our buyer, in between us and our
customer. And then we start not really knowing
what's going on. And then you know what?
Like AI, we start to hallucinate when we
(02:30):
don't have all that data. We don't actually
know anything about our customer. You know, we
we don't know their name. We certainly don't
know what's keeping them up at night. And
so then we just make up what we
think is keeping them up at night. And,
and then our products and our services start
to morph in that direction. And then it's
like, no wonder that campaign you just sent
out, you know, beautiful email, you thought it
was gonna be awesome. And you got crickets
(02:52):
back, or you had a webinar, no one
showed up or a few people did. I
once had a breakfast lunch and learn,
ordered this whole breakfast for everyone giant vat
of bacon, and I love bacon. But guess
what, like two people showed up.
We were eating bacon for days at that
point. Like but you want a whole room
full of people. Well, what happened? Why were
those messages just falling flat? Because we're disconnected.
(03:14):
We didn't know what the heck our buyer
wanted,
and we would just put all these apps
in the way.
And the crazy thing is AI is not
making this easier. AI is not getting us
more connected.
It's actually adding even more noise to the
thing. The idea it's like it's noisy. It's
always been noisy, but now it's getting really
noisy because AI is just gonna make tons
(03:35):
of content, tons of marketing, might even have
conversations with people, like fake conversations.
So it's just gonna get noisier. And one
of the things is we're not gonna be
able to just do more of the same
or, like, do better of the status quo.
It's just not gonna work. We have to
pivot hard on this thing to avoid just
getting wrapped up in all this disconnected noise.
(03:55):
So if someone's listening, watching right now, it's
like, okay. Totally get it. It makes sense.
Where do you start?
You realize
what you just said. There's noise, and there's
a lot of it here. There's disconnect.
Where do you start
to break through the noise? How can you
get started on the journey of cutting through
the noise and either reconnecting with or connecting
with existing or connecting with new potential clients,
(04:19):
referral sources? Where does where do you start
with getting the noise getting through the noise?
Yeah. It's a revolutionary
thought, having a call,
having
a little little conversation. And you know what's
crazy?
Myself,
marketing, it you name it. Whether you're the
founder, whether you're the marketer,
you know, sales, they'll they'll reach out, but
it's a different kind of reach out. We
(04:40):
need to be reaching out to learn.
Right? To ask those questions.
Hey. You know, what are your goals this
year? What are you trying to achieve?
Do you see any kind of things like
this helping you with that? What are your
responsibilities? What do you get hired in raises
for? What do you get fired for? What
are the things that are really bothering you?
What are the challenges, right? We're not really
(05:01):
inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the
phone with folks, we're just sort of pitching
them, or like soft pitching, we're not really
listening to them. And we're just waiting for
an opportunity to say our thing. But we
got to just take a step back
and just get on a conversation where we're
trying to learn. And maybe you think you
know, and that's the worst case. When you
think you're the customer because maybe your marketer
is selling to marketers or your manufacturer is
(05:23):
selling to manufacturers. Hey. You were an engineer.
You're selling engineers.
But you know what?
Times change all the time. You gotta put
that it makes it harder for you because
you think you know everything. You gotta put
that aside and say, pretend like I've never
been in this industry. Let me ask some
questions of these people. And so you just
gotta start with just asking questions.
Well, once you cut through the noise, how
(05:44):
do you keep it out from coming back
in? How do you keep a conversation going
over multiple touch points
with all the noise out there that's getting
in the way? Yeah. No. A %. And
this is the thing. Like, this is not
this is not getting better. Right? This is
accelerating. So it's not going to get a
little bit it's gonna continually
get more and more noisy. And so I've
(06:05):
I've got a friend who is like the
AI expert, not the one spouting things on
YouTube and social media. He's not telling anyone
anything. He's in his room. He is coding.
Things are happening. And he's saying, hey. In
five years, this is gonna get weird.
It's cool now. It's gonna be really cool
for the next couple of years. But at
some point, there's some inflection points gonna hit.
And it's just gonna be a complete flurry
(06:27):
of things, and no one's gonna even believe
anyone or trust anyone. So what you do
now to prepare yourself in this is a
good habit anyways, is to build an audience
of people who trust you. And a lot
of that's gonna come from the one to
one and some of the one to many.
So, like, podcasts are great for this. Communities
are great for this. Build the audience now
(06:47):
with individual connections and then multiple connections
and and and getting your audience to talk
to each other even. Build those trusted communities
of actual real people. So as things start
getting more and more fake, everyone knows who
to look at. They're looking at you, and
they can trust you.
What are some ways to build trust in
(07:07):
communities? Because I can imagine getting a lot
of different people's attention is one thing. But
when you use the word community, that's a
different animal. How do you build a trusted
community?
You know, number one rule,
stop trying to sell everyone things. Right? So
first of all, put the sit put the
hold on the sale. The sale will happen
much more organic if you're not trying to
like, if you make a quote community
(07:29):
and you immediately start to pitch something, you
are done. You might you just wasted it.
So stop. It's not about pitching your thing.
That will come. It's like a delayed gratification.
I know the cupcake looks yummy, but put
it down. Okay? Wait a little bit. Grow
the community. So first and foremost, you gotta
you gotta kill that sales script. You're trying
(07:50):
to think that you're gonna get, like, a
instant ROI out of it. You might get
some deals closing right away because people have
that pain, and they want your stuff. But
don't get tricked into thinking that this is
going to be just like
a funnel, you're going to squeeze people into
community and outcomes revenue, it will happen. But
it's a it's a different thing. Remember, we're
not doing more of the same, we got
to pivot and be different.
(08:11):
The other thing that we got to think
about here is
helping people out. We gotta help them with
information
and solve their problems, solve their pain. Right?
And maybe you're the one to do it.
Maybe you're bringing someone in to do it.
But you wanna feed the community knowledge and
information.
Breakout sessions, one of the best things I
see about communities is not, hey. Look at
(08:32):
me chit chatting. I'm just saying, hey. Welcome.
I'm glad you're all here. You know, you
matter. Let's let's get into this thing. Let's
lead some discussions. But it's the breakout sessions.
Three or four
peers, they're chatting, they're having a good time,
they're learning from each other, they're networking, they're
connecting afterward.
That really starts making a community. But finally,
(08:52):
we talk about trust. Right?
Classic lesson in trust.
Say what you're gonna do and actually do
it in small and large degrees. Right? So
before you even get in a deal cycle,
any of those things, the way you can
start building trust on a pod or in
a community
is saying what you're gonna do. Hey. On
this podcast interview, I'm gonna ask you this
(09:12):
question and then this question.
And then actually do that. Right? Don't, hey.
Surprise. I'm actually gonna ask you, what's your
biggest failure? Like, what? You're, like, freak people
out. No. No. No. No. No. You want
to say what you're going to do and
actually deliver on it. And what people understand
is those little tiny things
actually start building the foundation of
a giant million dollar trust, right? And you
(09:33):
got to start with the small things. If
I can even just tell you, hey, we're
gonna do this, this is gonna happen, or
you're gonna get on this community. You know,
you show up in this meeting, and we're
gonna we're gonna chat about a strategy, and
they're gonna do some breakouts, you're gonna learn
and meet each other. If I say that's
what's gonna happen, you join, and that's what
happens.
Okay. Well, I didn't get tricked. You know,
we're all expecting that. We're all so cynical.
(09:54):
We expect to be tricked on these things.
So
have a promise, deliver on it in just
small ways, and that will build a mountain.
Well, you mentioned not shoving people into a
sales funnel. But at the end of the
day, let's say for entrepreneurs, salespeople,
at the end of the day, you have
to have revenue.
So what do you do to bridge that
gap with integrity between
(10:16):
between having conversations, you know, you're building trust,
everything you just said,
to building your business? What does that bridge
look like to and building it with integrity
and not just pitch slapping everyone you meet?
Yeah. You can't you can't do that. You're
so right, man. People will see that, They
will just immediately run for the hills,
and you're done. So, you know, the first
(10:36):
thing that comes to mind with that is
that you have to really set it up,
with the targeting first. I found that with
podcast, with community, if you're targeting a spot
on, if you're getting people on the show
or you're connecting with people and they
have the immediate problem that you know you
can solve, then it's it's almost inevitable. Right?
(10:56):
If the targeting is hardcore, you don't have
to be hardcore on the sale.
But if the targeting is weak,
the sale has to be strong. Right? So
I would much rather have a strong targeting
and a and a nice, relaxed sale process
versus the other. Right? So I know, for
instance, like, hey, I know this person has
this particular app. They have HubSpot, they have
(11:17):
Pardot, they have some kind of tool. I
know they have that tool. And I know
it can help them with that. And we
all know that those tools generally don't fix
themselves. So people probably have issues. Alright. I'm
gonna search and find those people, get them
as guests in my community or my show
that I know I can help out. And
I'm not again, I'm not gonna pitch slap
them. I'm just gonna say, hey. Here's what
we do. Here's the kind of people that
(11:38):
are listening in the audience. Let's talk about
you. Right? We planted the seed. We're not
going further into that. We're not doing a
sales pitch. It's, it's a prep call, or
it's a podcast or community. So we're planting
the seed. So it's okay to let people
know what you do in case they need
some answers, but we're not gonna jump out
of the gate and just throw it at
them right away.
The second thing we need to do on
(12:00):
that is just be mindful of what happens
after
the podcast. That's really where community comes in.
Right? Podcast
times community
equals a million, right, or a million billion
or doctor evil, million billion billion.
Is and so
there's the short term. There's a podcast where
you have a deep connection you created, and
then there's a community where it's a little
(12:20):
bit lighter connection. I'll say shallow, but, like,
lighter, like, lighter touch, but it can be
a long term light touch. So you need
to balance, like, those deep connections. Hey. We
had an experience together. And then also have
those lighter touches of and we're in a
community together. And I and I've seen you
four or five times on those meetings.
When you're building the community and you have
touch points, sometimes it could be if you're
(12:41):
talking about sales, there's longer sales cycle.
What suggestions do you have for people that
I mean, for lack of a better term,
to keep on keeping on? It's like I'm
not getting a hit today. I'm not getting
hit. How do you keep on building relationships
and not slip into pushy sales mode?
Tough. Not gonna say it's not tough. It
is tough. I was just having a podcast
chat with someone else who dropped a stat
(13:02):
on me saying that, you know, at any
given point, maybe 3% of people are in
in market and peep 3% of the people
who could buy from you are like in
the market to buy from you. That is
a terrible number, right? Unless you've got, you
know, 1,000,000
people and then 3% of that sounds pretty
good. But the idea that just being a
small fraction of the folks who are actively
(13:24):
shopping, it doesn't necessarily have to mean that
that's the only people gonna that are gonna
buy. Some people don't know there's a problem.
And so that number gets actually a little
bit larger if you're helping educate the people
you encounter,
but some of the challenges they have.
And so and they may just not know
who to shop for or there or they
may be just like, hey, you know what?
(13:44):
This is not good. But status quo is
not as painful.
But man, if someone came along and could
just remove that from us, we might actually
be in the market. So there are certain
things that can happen to tweak that you
don't have to be just totally negative about
it. But yeah, it it can be a
lengthy sales cycle, we have to, you know,
batten down the hatches for the longer sales
(14:05):
cycle and be prepared for that. And a
lot of this is gonna be internal
communication to really just share with people like,
hey, we can't just be looking at old
school metrics. ROI is such a lagging indicator
plus the sales cycle. It may be a
year and a half before we get feedback
on if it's working or not. So we
have to be not relying on those metrics
(14:26):
but really thinking about the connections we're making
upfront.
Well, to build community the right way and
do everything that we're talking about right now,
how do you see AI being a positive?
How can you use leverage AI to actually
build help build your community?
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because we some
marketer somewhere called it AI.
(14:46):
Really? What is it? It's it's like an
algorithm, right? It's it's an algorithm or matching
things or doing some calculus between the distance
of numbers. So in the end, it's not
like it's inventing it from scratch. It's it's
really
it's it's sort
of feeding us back something that it ate
somewhere else with a little bit of change
here and there. And so one of the
things is
(15:08):
AI by itself terrible
for just making content. We're we can see
it. Right? You can see it in comments.
You can see it in blog posts. It
has that same feel. It just it just
looks like and so we we're good at
it. People are they can smell ads. They
can smell when it's spam. And we're gonna
be really good. We're gonna get really good
at smelling
AI generated content if we aren't already. Like,
(15:29):
we're gonna get so much better at it.
It. So we're just gonna spot it. It's
gonna be like the lame thing. My kids
would say, dad, that's cringe. Right? Like, like,
you, you wrote that with with AI, you
know?
Oh, well, you couldn't write it yourself, you
know?
And and then people are just gonna disengage
from you. So you can do it wrong.
But to your point, the positive side is
(15:51):
if you what you feed it often indicates
what you're gonna get out in return. And
if you rely on it just to search
the web and look at everyone's
terrible blog posts, who knows what you're gonna
get? But if you feed it things like
an organic conversation that happened between two wizards,
like what's happening right now Mhmm. And you
and you feed this conversation to AI and
(16:13):
you say, hey. Let's repurpose this content for
people who like short form for people who
like long form. Let's let's write some blog
posts. Let's write an ebook. Let's write also
let's, like, repurpose the content here. And then
you give it some instructions, like, don't go
try to grab stuff from elsewhere. Just use
the words that Casey and Mark were were
chatting about today. Right? Don't go reinvent the
(16:35):
wheel. Like, these guys know what's going on.
Just use their words alone,
and let's let's recalculate. Let's kinda, like, make
some cool combinations.
Expand a little bit if you want, but,
like, stay true to the nature of this
conversation.
That's where you can skip a lot of
that hard work of the the writing. Right?
Because writing can be a long process.
(16:56):
And go ahead and use that, and now
we've got some great content for people who
prefer to read it. Or if you wanna,
you know, stuff it into something else or
an ebook. Now we now we can generate
some things. I'll probably write a book later
on this year. I'll I'll definitely use AI
this time around. I didn't last time. I
actually used webinars last time to help me
write a book. But this time, I'd probably
use AI. But I'm gonna use it in
(17:18):
a way where I I I can't get
that fake content. Right? Someone opens up that
book, and if they spot that fake content,
then then I'm toast. So I gotta be
responsible, the use of it.
So, I mean, for an overarching theme, it
sounds like if I hear you right, you're
saying AI is all about the prompts and
you using the prompts the right way. Would
that be correct?
(17:39):
You know, right now, it is.
My super secret
AI friend was was actually explaining to me
that, there will come a time and day
when you don't even need to be good
at writing prompts because,
AI will understand that you're an idiotic human
and you can only prompt so well.
And to go ahead and use your goofy
words to write its own prompts. Right?
(18:01):
So there will become a day and a
time where you just kinda, you know, do
your caveman ug ug, and then it'll go,
oh, you wanted SaaS software for telephone repair.
Got it.
Here you go.
But for now, yeah, the prompts are going
to be important. The prompts and the and
the data, right, the sample data for it
to work with, that's going to be key.
(18:22):
What are we looking for?
And then and then where where do I
get the information from? We don't we don't
wanna just let it get information from wherever.
Let's give it the experts
that have the audience.
So is that mentioning the experts in the
prompts? Talk a little bit more about that
as far as what are you asking for
as far as cleaner data, not just anywhere.
(18:44):
Yeah. And this and this ties into, like,
you know, one podcast episode, multiple podcast episodes,
these conversations,
taking these words. Like,
imagine me me having interviews on a couple
different podcasts. Take the words,
put it together. Hey. What were the best
ways I say it? What were the worst
ways? How can we combine that into, like,
the ultimate guesting experience?
(19:05):
But we're not saying
go over here and just totally invent a
whole new talk track for me. I I
wanna talk about this stuff.
So we're kinda giving it blinders. You know?
It's almost like it's a it's a horse
with a little things on. Like, no. No.
No. Don't go look over there with a
bunch of carrots and apples. You can go
eat. No. No. No. No. Face forward. Stay
on the road. Look forward. I want you
to go this way. And then but help
(19:25):
me navigate that and help me refine that.
So it's almost like you're adding a
yeah. It's almost like you're adding it. If
I hear you at a human touch to
AI
by letting it know, which I didn't know
you could do, stay within the well, I
mean, if I'm right, stay within the confines
of just this conversation. That's an actual prompt
to make it not go ba jing out
(19:47):
into the web and talk about marketing. And
everyone that talked about marketing, you can actually
tell it to stay within the confines somehow
to stay within the confines of a conversation?
Yeah. You say, hey. Don't go out there
and gobble up Seth Godin.
You know? Let's gobble up Casey Cheshire. Let's
go. Right? And and then and then you
know, hey. Maybe you need to correct for
(20:07):
for grammar, maybe a little APA formatting, but,
like, let let's just make sure that we
stay within the the reins here. And and
that could be fantastic. So you oftentimes, I've
heard, like, restriction can be the expression. So
to restrict
can actually create that much better content because
you're not opening up to just the floodgates.
(20:30):
We have covered a lot of ground in
a short period of time. When it comes
to building meaningful
relationships in an I AI driven world, someone
listening or watching is like you made a
lot of sense. As far as doing it,
if you were to say, you know what?
At least do this.
At least do this one thing to have
meaningful build and
(20:50):
more consistently
AI driven world. What would you tell people
to do? What's so what's the most important
thing at the top of mind for you
with doing that the right way? Definitely pick
up pickleball, you know, and get and join
a league.
Actually, I have no idea. I've never played
pickleball yet, but, one day I hope to,
to do that. No. I it really goes
back to that. Just the idea
(21:10):
of having that organic conversation,
and you you don't have some sort of
ulterior motives other than just learning more about
these people.
It's so weird. It's so counterintuitive.
I don't know. There's something about it, but
you just gotta do it. And and do
it over coffee. Do it over beers. Have
a blast. I just had,
beers in a marketing conversation just last week,
(21:32):
and it was the coolest experience.
I learned a ton about my customer,
and I had some great IPAs at the
same time. So it doesn't have to be
some cold,
dark interrogation. This can be a fun experiment,
but just
the one thing the one thing is have
some conversations. Send an email. Say, hey. I'd
love to just grab a few moments of
your time. I love to understand, you know,
(21:53):
the the challenges you're you're facing and just
and how we can and this is not
to a prospect, by the way. Don't don't
start you.
Go to someone who already is working with
you, and and it could give you a
few minutes of time,
and just start picking their brain and learning
more about them and suspend whatever you think
you know about them.
That is awesome. Thank you so much, Casey.
And if people wanna find you online, where's
(22:14):
the best place or places to go?
Yeah. Hit me up on LinkedIn, Casey Cheshire,
or ringmaster.com.
Thank you again. This has been excellent. I
appreciate the time. Heck, yeah, man. This is
cool. I love this show.
And seen.
And
seen.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. I also hope that
(22:36):
you'll subscribe to the Idea Climbing podcast and
rate us on iTunes.
Visit ideaclimbing.com
to learn more about Idea Climbing and hear
more episodes about mentoring,
marketing, and big ideas.
Welcome to the Idea Climbing podcast. In our
more and more AI driven world, meaningful relationships
are harder to come by and then build.
Today, we're discussing how to create meaningful relationships
as well as ways to meaningfully embrace AI
and not get lost in the shuffle.
My guest is Casey Cheshire. Casey is a
seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience
(00:22):
and the author of Marketing Automation
Unleashed, a guide to leveraging marketing technology for
business growth.
He's the founder and CEO of Ringmaster conversational
marketing, a b to b podcasting agency.
He helps businesses build authentic connections with their
audiences.
We dive into topics such as how to
grow your business with integrity without pitch slapping
(00:42):
everyone you meet, examples of AI prompts to
create authentic content true to your voice, the
one thing above all else you need to
do to create and build meaningful relationships in
our AI driven world and more golden nuggets
of advice. You're gonna love this show.
(01:05):
Thank you for making time to be a
guest on the idea of climbing podcast. Casey,
I really appreciate you.
Hey, man. Thanks. I'm stoked to be here.
I'm ready for an adventure.
Well, we're gonna have one. We're gonna talk
about strategies, tips, and tricks about how to
build meaningful
relationships in a con constantly more,
AI driven world.
(01:25):
Before we get into some of the strategies,
as far
as cutting through the noise and the AI
driven world and
people losing some meaningful
relationships,
Why is that important to you? What's your
story with, you know, AI relationships?
Man, we are just getting so disconnected.
You know, if I were to ask you,
hey. Can you name seven customers
(01:47):
by company name? You could probably do it.
Might pull it off. But if I were
to say, hey. Give me first and last
name of seven customers.
What's that delay? What's that you know, it's
like, oh, there's a little gap there where
you're like, do what can I name seven?
Can we and and what that is, we're
disconnected. We're getting more and more disconnected. We're
throwing these tools in the way because the
tools promise to make everything better. Right? And
(02:09):
and they look fancy, and they have cool
reporting. And so we think maybe this will
solve my customer problem. Maybe they'll get more
leads this way, or maybe I'll get more
customers. But all it's doing is putting layers
and layers and layers in between us
and our buyer, in between us and our
customer. And then we start not really knowing
what's going on. And then you know what?
Like AI, we start to hallucinate when we
(02:30):
don't have all that data. We don't actually
know anything about our customer. You know, we
we don't know their name. We certainly don't
know what's keeping them up at night. And
so then we just make up what we
think is keeping them up at night. And,
and then our products and our services start
to morph in that direction. And then it's
like, no wonder that campaign you just sent
out, you know, beautiful email, you thought it
was gonna be awesome. And you got crickets
(02:52):
back, or you had a webinar, no one
showed up or a few people did. I
once had a breakfast lunch and learn,
ordered this whole breakfast for everyone giant vat
of bacon, and I love bacon. But guess
what, like two people showed up.
We were eating bacon for days at that
point. Like but you want a whole room
full of people. Well, what happened? Why were
those messages just falling flat? Because we're disconnected.
(03:14):
We didn't know what the heck our buyer
wanted,
and we would just put all these apps
in the way.
And the crazy thing is AI is not
making this easier. AI is not getting us
more connected.
It's actually adding even more noise to the
thing. The idea it's like it's noisy. It's
always been noisy, but now it's getting really
noisy because AI is just gonna make tons
(03:35):
of content, tons of marketing, might even have
conversations with people, like fake conversations.
So it's just gonna get noisier. And one
of the things is we're not gonna be
able to just do more of the same
or, like, do better of the status quo.
It's just not gonna work. We have to
pivot hard on this thing to avoid just
getting wrapped up in all this disconnected noise.
(03:55):
So if someone's listening, watching right now, it's
like, okay. Totally get it. It makes sense.
Where do you start?
You realize
what you just said. There's noise, and there's
a lot of it here. There's disconnect.
Where do you start
to break through the noise? How can you
get started on the journey of cutting through
the noise and either reconnecting with or connecting
with existing or connecting with new potential clients,
(04:19):
referral sources? Where does where do you start
with getting the noise getting through the noise?
Yeah. It's a revolutionary
thought, having a call,
having
a little little conversation. And you know what's
crazy?
Myself,
marketing, it you name it. Whether you're the
founder, whether you're the marketer,
you know, sales, they'll they'll reach out, but
it's a different kind of reach out. We
(04:40):
need to be reaching out to learn.
Right? To ask those questions.
Hey. You know, what are your goals this
year? What are you trying to achieve?
Do you see any kind of things like
this helping you with that? What are your
responsibilities? What do you get hired in raises
for? What do you get fired for? What
are the things that are really bothering you?
What are the challenges, right? We're not really
(05:01):
inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the
phone with folks, we're just sort of pitching
them, or like soft pitching, we're not really
listening to them. And we're just waiting for
an opportunity to say our thing. But we
got to just take a step back
and just get on a conversation where we're
trying to learn. And maybe you think you
know, and that's the worst case. When you
think you're the customer because maybe your marketer
is selling to marketers or your manufacturer is
(05:23):
selling to manufacturers. Hey. You were an engineer.
You're selling engineers.
But you know what?
Times change all the time. You gotta put
that it makes it harder for you because
you think you know everything. You gotta put
that aside and say, pretend like I've never
been in this industry. Let me ask some
questions of these people. And so you just
gotta start with just asking questions.
Well, once you cut through the noise, how
(05:44):
do you keep it out from coming back
in? How do you keep a conversation going
over multiple touch points
with all the noise out there that's getting
in the way? Yeah. No. A %. And
this is the thing. Like, this is not
this is not getting better. Right? This is
accelerating. So it's not going to get a
little bit it's gonna continually
get more and more noisy. And so I've
(06:05):
I've got a friend who is like the
AI expert, not the one spouting things on
YouTube and social media. He's not telling anyone
anything. He's in his room. He is coding.
Things are happening. And he's saying, hey. In
five years, this is gonna get weird.
It's cool now. It's gonna be really cool
for the next couple of years. But at
some point, there's some inflection points gonna hit.
And it's just gonna be a complete flurry
(06:27):
of things, and no one's gonna even believe
anyone or trust anyone. So what you do
now to prepare yourself in this is a
good habit anyways, is to build an audience
of people who trust you. And a lot
of that's gonna come from the one to
one and some of the one to many.
So, like, podcasts are great for this. Communities
are great for this. Build the audience now
(06:47):
with individual connections and then multiple connections
and and and getting your audience to talk
to each other even. Build those trusted communities
of actual real people. So as things start
getting more and more fake, everyone knows who
to look at. They're looking at you, and
they can trust you.
What are some ways to build trust in
(07:07):
communities? Because I can imagine getting a lot
of different people's attention is one thing. But
when you use the word community, that's a
different animal. How do you build a trusted
community?
You know, number one rule,
stop trying to sell everyone things. Right? So
first of all, put the sit put the
hold on the sale. The sale will happen
much more organic if you're not trying to
like, if you make a quote community
(07:29):
and you immediately start to pitch something, you
are done. You might you just wasted it.
So stop. It's not about pitching your thing.
That will come. It's like a delayed gratification.
I know the cupcake looks yummy, but put
it down. Okay? Wait a little bit. Grow
the community. So first and foremost, you gotta
you gotta kill that sales script. You're trying
(07:50):
to think that you're gonna get, like, a
instant ROI out of it. You might get
some deals closing right away because people have
that pain, and they want your stuff. But
don't get tricked into thinking that this is
going to be just like
a funnel, you're going to squeeze people into
community and outcomes revenue, it will happen. But
it's a it's a different thing. Remember, we're
not doing more of the same, we got
to pivot and be different.
(08:11):
The other thing that we got to think
about here is
helping people out. We gotta help them with
information
and solve their problems, solve their pain. Right?
And maybe you're the one to do it.
Maybe you're bringing someone in to do it.
But you wanna feed the community knowledge and
information.
Breakout sessions, one of the best things I
see about communities is not, hey. Look at
(08:32):
me chit chatting. I'm just saying, hey. Welcome.
I'm glad you're all here. You know, you
matter. Let's let's get into this thing. Let's
lead some discussions. But it's the breakout sessions.
Three or four
peers, they're chatting, they're having a good time,
they're learning from each other, they're networking, they're
connecting afterward.
That really starts making a community. But finally,
(08:52):
we talk about trust. Right?
Classic lesson in trust.
Say what you're gonna do and actually do
it in small and large degrees. Right? So
before you even get in a deal cycle,
any of those things, the way you can
start building trust on a pod or in
a community
is saying what you're gonna do. Hey. On
this podcast interview, I'm gonna ask you this
(09:12):
question and then this question.
And then actually do that. Right? Don't, hey.
Surprise. I'm actually gonna ask you, what's your
biggest failure? Like, what? You're, like, freak people
out. No. No. No. No. No. You want
to say what you're going to do and
actually deliver on it. And what people understand
is those little tiny things
actually start building the foundation of
a giant million dollar trust, right? And you
(09:33):
got to start with the small things. If
I can even just tell you, hey, we're
gonna do this, this is gonna happen, or
you're gonna get on this community. You know,
you show up in this meeting, and we're
gonna we're gonna chat about a strategy, and
they're gonna do some breakouts, you're gonna learn
and meet each other. If I say that's
what's gonna happen, you join, and that's what
happens.
Okay. Well, I didn't get tricked. You know,
we're all expecting that. We're all so cynical.
(09:54):
We expect to be tricked on these things.
So
have a promise, deliver on it in just
small ways, and that will build a mountain.
Well, you mentioned not shoving people into a
sales funnel. But at the end of the
day, let's say for entrepreneurs, salespeople,
at the end of the day, you have
to have revenue.
So what do you do to bridge that
gap with integrity between
(10:16):
between having conversations, you know, you're building trust,
everything you just said,
to building your business? What does that bridge
look like to and building it with integrity
and not just pitch slapping everyone you meet?
Yeah. You can't you can't do that. You're
so right, man. People will see that, They
will just immediately run for the hills,
and you're done. So, you know, the first
(10:36):
thing that comes to mind with that is
that you have to really set it up,
with the targeting first. I found that with
podcast, with community, if you're targeting a spot
on, if you're getting people on the show
or you're connecting with people and they
have the immediate problem that you know you
can solve, then it's it's almost inevitable. Right?
(10:56):
If the targeting is hardcore, you don't have
to be hardcore on the sale.
But if the targeting is weak,
the sale has to be strong. Right? So
I would much rather have a strong targeting
and a and a nice, relaxed sale process
versus the other. Right? So I know, for
instance, like, hey, I know this person has
this particular app. They have HubSpot, they have
(11:17):
Pardot, they have some kind of tool. I
know they have that tool. And I know
it can help them with that. And we
all know that those tools generally don't fix
themselves. So people probably have issues. Alright. I'm
gonna search and find those people, get them
as guests in my community or my show
that I know I can help out. And
I'm not again, I'm not gonna pitch slap
them. I'm just gonna say, hey. Here's what
we do. Here's the kind of people that
(11:38):
are listening in the audience. Let's talk about
you. Right? We planted the seed. We're not
going further into that. We're not doing a
sales pitch. It's, it's a prep call, or
it's a podcast or community. So we're planting
the seed. So it's okay to let people
know what you do in case they need
some answers, but we're not gonna jump out
of the gate and just throw it at
them right away.
The second thing we need to do on
(12:00):
that is just be mindful of what happens
after
the podcast. That's really where community comes in.
Right? Podcast
times community
equals a million, right, or a million billion
or doctor evil, million billion billion.
Is and so
there's the short term. There's a podcast where
you have a deep connection you created, and
then there's a community where it's a little
(12:20):
bit lighter connection. I'll say shallow, but, like,
lighter, like, lighter touch, but it can be
a long term light touch. So you need
to balance, like, those deep connections. Hey. We
had an experience together. And then also have
those lighter touches of and we're in a
community together. And I and I've seen you
four or five times on those meetings.
When you're building the community and you have
touch points, sometimes it could be if you're
(12:41):
talking about sales, there's longer sales cycle.
What suggestions do you have for people that
I mean, for lack of a better term,
to keep on keeping on? It's like I'm
not getting a hit today. I'm not getting
hit. How do you keep on building relationships
and not slip into pushy sales mode?
Tough. Not gonna say it's not tough. It
is tough. I was just having a podcast
chat with someone else who dropped a stat
(13:02):
on me saying that, you know, at any
given point, maybe 3% of people are in
in market and peep 3% of the people
who could buy from you are like in
the market to buy from you. That is
a terrible number, right? Unless you've got, you
know, 1,000,000
people and then 3% of that sounds pretty
good. But the idea that just being a
small fraction of the folks who are actively
(13:24):
shopping, it doesn't necessarily have to mean that
that's the only people gonna that are gonna
buy. Some people don't know there's a problem.
And so that number gets actually a little
bit larger if you're helping educate the people
you encounter,
but some of the challenges they have.
And so and they may just not know
who to shop for or there or they
may be just like, hey, you know what?
(13:44):
This is not good. But status quo is
not as painful.
But man, if someone came along and could
just remove that from us, we might actually
be in the market. So there are certain
things that can happen to tweak that you
don't have to be just totally negative about
it. But yeah, it it can be a
lengthy sales cycle, we have to, you know,
batten down the hatches for the longer sales
(14:05):
cycle and be prepared for that. And a
lot of this is gonna be internal
communication to really just share with people like,
hey, we can't just be looking at old
school metrics. ROI is such a lagging indicator
plus the sales cycle. It may be a
year and a half before we get feedback
on if it's working or not. So we
have to be not relying on those metrics
(14:26):
but really thinking about the connections we're making
upfront.
Well, to build community the right way and
do everything that we're talking about right now,
how do you see AI being a positive?
How can you use leverage AI to actually
build help build your community?
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because we some
marketer somewhere called it AI.
(14:46):
Really? What is it? It's it's like an
algorithm, right? It's it's an algorithm or matching
things or doing some calculus between the distance
of numbers. So in the end, it's not
like it's inventing it from scratch. It's it's
really
it's it's sort
of feeding us back something that it ate
somewhere else with a little bit of change
here and there. And so one of the
things is
(15:08):
AI by itself terrible
for just making content. We're we can see
it. Right? You can see it in comments.
You can see it in blog posts. It
has that same feel. It just it just
looks like and so we we're good at
it. People are they can smell ads. They
can smell when it's spam. And we're gonna
be really good. We're gonna get really good
at smelling
AI generated content if we aren't already. Like,
(15:29):
we're gonna get so much better at it.
It. So we're just gonna spot it. It's
gonna be like the lame thing. My kids
would say, dad, that's cringe. Right? Like, like,
you, you wrote that with with AI, you
know?
Oh, well, you couldn't write it yourself, you
know?
And and then people are just gonna disengage
from you. So you can do it wrong.
But to your point, the positive side is
(15:51):
if you what you feed it often indicates
what you're gonna get out in return. And
if you rely on it just to search
the web and look at everyone's
terrible blog posts, who knows what you're gonna
get? But if you feed it things like
an organic conversation that happened between two wizards,
like what's happening right now Mhmm. And you
and you feed this conversation to AI and
(16:13):
you say, hey. Let's repurpose this content for
people who like short form for people who
like long form. Let's let's write some blog
posts. Let's write an ebook. Let's write also
let's, like, repurpose the content here. And then
you give it some instructions, like, don't go
try to grab stuff from elsewhere. Just use
the words that Casey and Mark were were
chatting about today. Right? Don't go reinvent the
(16:35):
wheel. Like, these guys know what's going on.
Just use their words alone,
and let's let's recalculate. Let's kinda, like, make
some cool combinations.
Expand a little bit if you want, but,
like, stay true to the nature of this
conversation.
That's where you can skip a lot of
that hard work of the the writing. Right?
Because writing can be a long process.
(16:56):
And go ahead and use that, and now
we've got some great content for people who
prefer to read it. Or if you wanna,
you know, stuff it into something else or
an ebook. Now we now we can generate
some things. I'll probably write a book later
on this year. I'll I'll definitely use AI
this time around. I didn't last time. I
actually used webinars last time to help me
write a book. But this time, I'd probably
use AI. But I'm gonna use it in
(17:18):
a way where I I I can't get
that fake content. Right? Someone opens up that
book, and if they spot that fake content,
then then I'm toast. So I gotta be
responsible, the use of it.
So, I mean, for an overarching theme, it
sounds like if I hear you right, you're
saying AI is all about the prompts and
you using the prompts the right way. Would
that be correct?
(17:39):
You know, right now, it is.
My super secret
AI friend was was actually explaining to me
that, there will come a time and day
when you don't even need to be good
at writing prompts because,
AI will understand that you're an idiotic human
and you can only prompt so well.
And to go ahead and use your goofy
words to write its own prompts. Right?
(18:01):
So there will become a day and a
time where you just kinda, you know, do
your caveman ug ug, and then it'll go,
oh, you wanted SaaS software for telephone repair.
Got it.
Here you go.
But for now, yeah, the prompts are going
to be important. The prompts and the and
the data, right, the sample data for it
to work with, that's going to be key.
(18:22):
What are we looking for?
And then and then where where do I
get the information from? We don't we don't
wanna just let it get information from wherever.
Let's give it the experts
that have the audience.
So is that mentioning the experts in the
prompts? Talk a little bit more about that
as far as what are you asking for
as far as cleaner data, not just anywhere.
(18:44):
Yeah. And this and this ties into, like,
you know, one podcast episode, multiple podcast episodes,
these conversations,
taking these words. Like,
imagine me me having interviews on a couple
different podcasts. Take the words,
put it together. Hey. What were the best
ways I say it? What were the worst
ways? How can we combine that into, like,
the ultimate guesting experience?
(19:05):
But we're not saying
go over here and just totally invent a
whole new talk track for me. I I
wanna talk about this stuff.
So we're kinda giving it blinders. You know?
It's almost like it's a it's a horse
with a little things on. Like, no. No.
No. Don't go look over there with a
bunch of carrots and apples. You can go
eat. No. No. No. No. Face forward. Stay
on the road. Look forward. I want you
to go this way. And then but help
(19:25):
me navigate that and help me refine that.
So it's almost like you're adding a
yeah. It's almost like you're adding it. If
I hear you at a human touch to
AI
by letting it know, which I didn't know
you could do, stay within the well, I
mean, if I'm right, stay within the confines
of just this conversation. That's an actual prompt
to make it not go ba jing out
(19:47):
into the web and talk about marketing. And
everyone that talked about marketing, you can actually
tell it to stay within the confines somehow
to stay within the confines of a conversation?
Yeah. You say, hey. Don't go out there
and gobble up Seth Godin.
You know? Let's gobble up Casey Cheshire. Let's
go. Right? And and then and then you
know, hey. Maybe you need to correct for
(20:07):
for grammar, maybe a little APA formatting, but,
like, let let's just make sure that we
stay within the the reins here. And and
that could be fantastic. So you oftentimes, I've
heard, like, restriction can be the expression. So
to restrict
can actually create that much better content because
you're not opening up to just the floodgates.
(20:30):
We have covered a lot of ground in
a short period of time. When it comes
to building meaningful
relationships in an I AI driven world, someone
listening or watching is like you made a
lot of sense. As far as doing it,
if you were to say, you know what?
At least do this.
At least do this one thing to have
meaningful build and
(20:50):
more consistently
AI driven world. What would you tell people
to do? What's so what's the most important
thing at the top of mind for you
with doing that the right way? Definitely pick
up pickleball, you know, and get and join
a league.
Actually, I have no idea. I've never played
pickleball yet, but, one day I hope to,
to do that. No. I it really goes
back to that. Just the idea
(21:10):
of having that organic conversation,
and you you don't have some sort of
ulterior motives other than just learning more about
these people.
It's so weird. It's so counterintuitive.
I don't know. There's something about it, but
you just gotta do it. And and do
it over coffee. Do it over beers. Have
a blast. I just had,
beers in a marketing conversation just last week,
(21:32):
and it was the coolest experience.
I learned a ton about my customer,
and I had some great IPAs at the
same time. So it doesn't have to be
some cold,
dark interrogation. This can be a fun experiment,
but just
the one thing the one thing is have
some conversations. Send an email. Say, hey. I'd
love to just grab a few moments of
your time. I love to understand, you know,
(21:53):
the the challenges you're you're facing and just
and how we can and this is not
to a prospect, by the way. Don't don't
start you.
Go to someone who already is working with
you, and and it could give you a
few minutes of time,
and just start picking their brain and learning
more about them and suspend whatever you think
you know about them.
That is awesome. Thank you so much, Casey.
And if people wanna find you online, where's
(22:14):
the best place or places to go?
Yeah. Hit me up on LinkedIn, Casey Cheshire,
or ringmaster.com.
Thank you again. This has been excellent. I
appreciate the time. Heck, yeah, man. This is
cool. I love this show.
And seen.
And
seen.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. I also hope that
(22:36):
you'll subscribe to the Idea Climbing podcast and
rate us on iTunes.
Visit ideaclimbing.com
to learn more about Idea Climbing and hear
more episodes about mentoring,
marketing, and big ideas.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.