Cassie Petrey - Taking the Leap and Living Your Dreams

All right, before we get started here, you all know I talk a lot about AI and the pros and cons of AI and what we need to do to stay relevant in today's world. And it's all about leveraging this. Look, we have two options here. We either jump in and start figuring this stuff out or we get replaced. And I want to jump in and start figuring out, which is why I'm so excited to talk about HubSpot's new AI power tools. They have a content assistant and a chat spot that they've actually integrated into their CRM. And it talks about being a conversational virtual assistant baked into the CRM experience. And it's run on OpenAI's ChatCPT model. So it really gives you that conversational coaching that you need at every stage and wherever you are.

So both are designed to help us get way more done and grow better and faster. You got to check out because it talks about brainstorming blog ideas, creating blog outlines, drafting copy. ChatSpot is a conversational bot and CRM whiz that's going to help you automate all the manual tasks inside of HubSpot to help you engage more customers, close more deals, and scale your business faster. I highly recommend checking it out. And you can find out more about their AI tool at hubspot.com slash artificial dash intelligence. Let's make it happen. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

And today's guest is Cassie Petrie. Now, Cassie is the owner and CEO of CrowdServe, who actually works with talent. And when I say talent, I mean talent. Well, I guess it's subjective, but people like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and she's got a really unique perspective of effectively starting with nothing and getting to where she is. She talks about going from being a fan to a CEO who manages all these people she used to be fans with. And it was a pretty fun conversation because we talked about the music industry itself. I'm very curious and still am, but she helped answer a lot of these questions about how AI is really going to impact brands and music and strategies. And so we got into that, and I think a lot of it is very parallel to the sales industry itself.

And then we talked about her journey, right? How she went from really a very humble background with not a lot of money and how that mentality really helped her stay lean as she grew her own business. And so we talked about her why, of why she got into this industry. And then we ran into risk tolerance and how an entrepreneur, you know, you can be a total risk taker or a calculated risk taker, which is what we both are, in my opinion. Then we got into how she landed her first big client, the, again, the impact of AI and also imposter syndrome and how she looks at imposter syndrome as a good thing. And these days I do as well. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen.

Casey Petrie, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. It's, uh, I will say that if there is some rattling in the background, I have, uh, I'm the lucky person to apparently the entire water main that feeds, uh, all of Boston from the reservoirs up north comes directly in front of my house. And they were replacing that entire 10 foot water pipe in front of my house for the past week and for the next three weeks. So my entire house right now is rattling. Uh, so if you hear any of that in the background, but other than that, I'm doing fantastic. So, oh, I was trying to like envision a 10 foot water pipe and like things, I see it on an episode of like nine one one or something.

It scares me. That's pretty much what I'm looking at right now. I'm like, oh, okay, good. I can't even get it out of my driveway, but thankfully I work from home. So it doesn't matter too much, but because I've been looking forward to this one as we do in the prep, uh, cause, uh, you know, you've taken a very interesting track in your career and you're doing some cool stuff with some, uh, some artists out there that I think many people know, but why don't you give the audience a little bit of background? Cause we're going to talk about entrepreneurship. We're going to talk about, you know, um, you know, getting, taking that leap of being kind of a, somebody who's, who's, who's actively looking at, uh, things, but then doing things and making it happen.

But why don't we give you a little background on where you're coming from and what you're up to these days? So the audience has some context here. Yeah, absolutely. So I own a company called CrowdSurf. It is a digital marketing company. We've been doing that for 16 years. And in the past several years, we've also really been focused on getting into artist management and have several clients in that space as well. But on both sides, most of my clients are artists, musicians, um, and other companies that are entertainment focused or some, we have some comedians, some other people that work in entertainment as well, but all really centered around music or, you know, adjacent entertainment business at some point or in some way.

And we, for the digital marketing projects, we're hired to be, I guess everyone has a quote unquote digital person these days. We're the digital person. We're helping them with social media, their website, their URLs, their email list. If their address leaks on the internet, we are helping them get it off. But anything that's sort of in the internet or consumer facing via the internet, that is our world. And that's the things that we help a lot of our clients within that space. Love it. Um, I want to start with, I want to get into who you represent, right? You got some cool names, you got the Britney Spears of the world, the Backstreet Boys, which is all fun. Um, but I want to start with what I'm seeing right now happen in my industry in sales and also just in general with AI and make the analogy to music and specifically music and artists when, and, and help educate me here.

It's my understanding that, that artists these days, they do not really get paid very much for the album, for instance, right? Because they get paid a fraction of a fraction of a penny and they have to go out now on site, uh, you know, to do that where they make their money as the tour, right? Where they do, they do their concert. And I'm, uh, I'm looking at what's happening with AI in our, in, in, in general, right? Artificial intelligence. And I'm wondering how much that from a business standpoint, people really, you know, the human factor, like where are people going to make money? So could you help me understand from a music standpoint, let's use musicians here instead of comedians and everything else for, for a moment, how do musicians make money in today's market?

It's hard. And I feel like music, you have several years of investment generally before you make money. Um, you know, I will say that in terms of, we'll start with, you know, the traditional product of music, whether it's, you know, on old school, like on a CD or record or streaming, you know, that's one income stream. Um, you know, there's a lot of arguments over that right now, because it is really hard to make a decent amount of money on streaming. And I think, and this is probably being overly generous, but let's say an artist gets a million streams on Spotify. If they wrote that whole song themselves and don't have to share the master with anybody and don't have to pay back a record label or pay a percentage out, they're going to make $5,000 on a million streams roughly.

And it's really hard without the help of all those other entities, without like a producer who would be taking and cut a record label, who'd be taking and cut or a distributor or paying out a marketing company like myself. There's going to be a manager that likely is in the mix. It takes 15 to 20%. So they're all going to be taking a cut of that money. And it's, it's really hard. It's hard to get a million streams on Spotify, like without momentum, your new artists, it's really hard to get that number. So it's really hard to make $5,000. And I one time did, I forget the exact number, but I remember I was looking at the average pay at Spotify. I remember I was looking that up one time and I remember calculating, and it might've changed a little bit because this was a couple of years ago, but I remember calculating in order for an artist to make the average salary at Spotify, they would, with no help, with no cuts, have to get 25 million streams on a song.

And that's not easy to do. So it's hard to make a standard like Spotify level, middle of the road salary. You know, I would say, you know, no discredit to the people at Spotify and the people that work, there's a lot of really great people that work there, but I would say it's a lot harder job to get 25 million streams than it would be to be a mid-level employee at Spotify. Like you would have to be a freaking genius to be able to do that without people taking cuts of that. So it's really hard for artists to make money. And then we go into the touring side, you know, outside of the, you know, complications of streaming and how hard it is to like get even $5,000 in streaming and touring. I'm putting together a bunch of mid-level tours right now.

So I have an artist who, you know, is playing 300 to 500 person venues. It's her first headline tour and she's doing 15 dates in the United States. And I did the whole budget for it. And she will lose, she will lose $30,000 on that tour. She will not make money. She will lose $30,000 because it's going to cost right now running a, and this is not, they're not in a bus, they're doing, trust me, we're doing it as cheap as possible. But for an artist, let's say they have two band members, a van, a tour manager. So a van is going to cost that can carry drums and a full band is going to cost anywhere between five to $7,000 to rent for the month. And then you're going to have to put a couple of grand behind that on gas.

You're going to have to pay a band member anywhere from $250 to $400 a day, even on the days that they're off, you're going to have to pay a tour manager, probably at least three to $500 a day at that level. The expenses really add up. And then you have to put all these people in rooms and you have to pay them a per DM. So they get a daily rate for being out on the road. And by the time all that stuff adds up, you're not making money because for transparency venues at that level are paying artists anywhere from like $1,000 to $3,000 a night, roughly. So you're going to spend more than you're going to make. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV Sales membership.

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It's a flat fee these days. Um, so that's, they're different venue structure, different ways. Sometimes you get no guarantee. So no like guaranteed amount of money and it's just a cut of ticket sales. But generally the way most venues work is they give you a guarantee and the guarantee is going to be anywhere between like at that level, 300 to 500 person venue. It's going to be anywhere between like, I see the low end 1200, the high end 3000 for guarantee if you're selling tickets anywhere between like 18 to $25. Um, but what happens is if you hit 85% sold the, the formula switches. Okay. So, so they'll give you, you, so basically you get, you can make more if you sell over 85%. That's not guaranteed.

And right now with the ticket market, a lot of stuff is walk-up. So you don't know until like the last 48 hours, if you're even close to that number, a lot of times. So it's, it's very stressful even at that level, even if you're selling a couple hundred tickets a night, which is also hard to get to and a really hard place to be in. Um, you're still not making money at that point. You're not, you're not, you, you, a lot of times I feel like you're not making the big money till you're getting into rooms that are over 5,000 people a room. It's, it's, it's hard. It's hard to make money on the road. And I think a lot of times people see these smaller venues and see, you know, several hundred adoring fans at night and think that these people must be rolling in the dough.

But there are a lot of times they're not, they're, they're breaking even on that tour if, if they're really lucky. So this is, I mean, this is obviously why brand matters, but how do people make money in this industry then? Right. I mean, and this is, I think from what you do is, is getting exposure in all these other areas, but there's something about brand reputation. That's going to drive ticket sales. That's going to drive downloads for your Spotify. But where is, I mean, if you're going to diversify, right? You have the tour stuff, you have the Spotify track. If you're not, if we're not really making money in those areas, how does a musician or in, in the translation I'm going to make to this is kind of a quote unquote influencer, if you will.

Right. Cause there's so many people out there right now that see these people making millions of dollars on YouTube and all this other stuff. And it's like, wait a minute, they're only the top 1% of the 1% of the 1% is actually at that level. So what are some other ways that these artists are driving revenue so they can actually just pay their bills at the end of the day? Yeah, it's hard. A lot of times when you see an artist who's like kind of on the upswing, they're not making money. They have an investor. They're not making enough money to live the lifestyle that they're portraying or to, to do the, the ventures. That's why we're so beholden to the record label because you can't do all these things without their money, but then they make it hard for you to make money because they take, you know, you have to recoup.

So basically pay back everything they spend back and they spend on you. And then once you get to the point where they've been paid back, they're taking 80%. So, you know, so it's like you have to find this funding to do a lot of these tasks in order to become a successful artist, to be at the point where you're making money. But then, you know, at least on the recording side, you're still, you know, you're still not seeing the big money because they're taking, you know, the, a significantly larger percent than you are. And that's why we are seeing the rise of a lot of different types of, you know, new, you know, independent distribution companies that, that have different splits and different funding models.

Or some people have no funding models, but they're only taking like 10 to 20% of what you make. So there's a lot of different things out there, which I think will be a good thing. But in terms of, you know, how people actually make money, brand deals are nice because brand deals, you can, brand deals are a lot of times they're straightforward. You have certain things you have to post on your social media. There's certain deliverables and it isn't, you don't have to do, you don't have to do something as high cost as like go out on the road to make that money. You just have to make some content and post to your audience. So that's one way that a lot of people in the music business make money is, is on branding.

Another way is merchandise can be impactful and you see a little bit of that on the road, but I see a lot of people doing, you know, merchandising initiatives online that I think are really successful in making them a lot of money. And if you do it right on the road, you can make a lot of money, especially as you start getting into the bigger rooms. And when you're doing arenas and stadiums, you're making boatloads of money, you know, cause that's kind of the thing, like you struggle and struggle and struggle. And then you finally get to the point where you're in the big rooms and the big rooms are where you can make really big money on merchandise, on your guarantee, um, on selling, you know, VIP, uh, tickets and, and, you know, kind of, you know, upgrading people to, to spend more money at the show, you know, that's when you start really making money.

So I feel like there's kind of not a lot of middle ground. You go from like really, really struggling to all of a sudden you're going to be, you're finally like comfortable and then, then the, the checks are really good. So it's, it's hard. So people, I think take, you know, struggle for a long time with the hopes of they will get that bigger payoff down the road. Funny. I do a lot of analogies in sales too, right? Because the first few years of the sales reps career is absolutely disastrous. You know what I mean? They get told, you know, they got to make cold calls. They get the shit kicked out of them. Right. And most sales reps don't not make it past the second or third year because it is that much of a grind and they've not getting paid that much money.

And it is a brutal job, but there is a point where you cross that chasm and all of a sudden you're making money. Right. And, but it takes a while to get there. And most people drop out before that. And, and you did something similar. I mean, you jumped into this industry and you had no connections and, and, you know, quite frankly, being a woman in, in the, um, in the industry. So talk to me a little bit about how you were able to build your career in a, in a tough industry with no connections and, and go from that. I mean, I love the line that you have. It's, you know, I went from fangirl to CEO here. So fangirl of all these, these people that you used to probably idolize, love listening to, and now you're the CEO working with a lot of these, but you, you started with not with, with very little.

So walk us through how you did that. Yeah. So I think something that was really helpful in my journey from becoming a fangirl to CEO is that I, one, I didn't come from a financially wealthy family at all. Um, and I think that actually really benefited me long-term because if I had a certain standard or level of living that I expected to have right out of school, I don't think I would have been able to tough out the finances of starting my own business, I guess is, you know, sort of the most direct way to put it. Yeah. You know, when I started CrowdSurf with my business partner, I was 20. I lived in a house in Nashville. Nashville is much cheaper at this point. Lived in a house. My rent was $300.

I'd had a, a car that I'd bought in college that, you know, I, so I didn't have a car payment. I didn't have any living expenses. So I was in a position to be able to tough it out for a while. And I, I don't think I realized at that time how advantageous that was for me, but I had a really low cost of living and I didn't have startup costs. I just needed a computer because I was working in, in social media marketing. So I was able to do, I was able to be comfortable in my life with just a couple of clients. And that was, I think that was, you know, set me up for success long-term to, to be honest, because it was a grind in the beginning. You know, people still were unsure of social media. They didn't know if it was going to matter or not.

And it was just almost like begging for a chance. Please pay me $500 a month and I will show you why it was worth that $500 a month. Please give me a chance to show you, you know, it's kind of asking for that. And people not caring about it at that time did have pros and cons people, you know, not caring. Um, you know, I think the pro to that was that I kind of got to do whatever I wanted once I got in there. Cause they didn't care what you posted on their MySpace page. Cause they didn't look at it. They didn't care. They didn't, they didn't have any insight. Now it's very different. Like artists are super involved and they're going to see everything before it goes out. They post a lot of the stuff themselves and where they're more as like a reminder and a strategist versus like handling the posting.

But in that era, I did, nobody was logging into their MySpace pages. Like I was, me or a team member was doing all that kind of stuff, um, for them. So it was kind of, you know, so the pro was being able to do what we wanted and the con was trying to like make them understand why it was valuable. So there was, it was interesting for sure. Yeah. I think that's, you know, start, it's good to start with low, uh, low needs, if you will. Right. Because that's anytime somebody starts with their, you know, if they ask me, Hey, John, I'm thinking about going off on my own, whatever. I'm like, eh, give yourself about a six month runway at least. Right. From a financial standpoint, give yourself six months.

So you don't have to pay the bills for, well, you have enough money to pay the bills for six months and you can go without a paycheck for, for six months. Right. And then if you have that comfort level, then dive in. But if you don't, you're probably going to do some unnatural things to try to make money. That's not going to be core to what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. That's a really good point. Cause when you start having fear or getting stressed and one of the worst stresses in the world is not feeling financially secure, you're going to start making bad decisions for yourself, your family, your company, you're going to sort of, you're not going to have the clarity in your mind to stay focused on why you wanted to do this in the first place.

And that's a really rough position to be in. You have to, it's, it's like that, um, is it the Maslow hierarchy pyramid? Yeah. Like you have to feel physically safe in order to be able to do all the things on top of that. And, you know, and finances is a really big part of feeling safe. Yeah. Unfortunately, but it is probably one of the bigger ones, right? Yeah. So, so when you, I mean, when you started off, how did you start out? Like, like, first of all, you just mentioned your why were you, why did you choose this? And, and, and to, to dive into this with the risk, with the not knowing being, you know, outside the industry type of stuff, like what was your why getting into this? And then let's talk about how, how you've been able to live that.

And then how do you got the customers that fit that why and go from there? Yeah. So since I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to work in music. I think once I, you know, I loved concerts and when I had the realization that there were jobs that weren't the people on stage, I was obsessed with that from that point on. I, I, I felt like it was my life's mission to help people who create art and people who entertain and people who help contribute to pop culture. That, that felt really important to me. And I read a bunch of books about working in music and all I read was it's really hard. Only this percentage of people make it. It's, it's really, really tough. And I, you know, I got really sort of freaked out by that.

So I think I kind of overcompensated on getting experience. I got worked at like every, I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. I worked at, found local bands to work with. I worked at local record labels. I found a local manager. I found everything local and music that I could get experience on as a high schooler. I did it. And I built a resume and that got me, when I moved to Nashville to go to school to study music business, that got me a job at Warner Music, Warner Music Group. And I kind of stayed in their system for a little bit and, you know, sort of became like the social media person. They didn't have anybody doing that. And I'm like, I see all these cool bands at my college using MySpace. Why don't big bands, why don't big artists use it?

And they were like, we don't really know what that is, but go for it. So I went for it and I showed my value. I was like, look, I got this artist number one on the MySpace charts. And they're like, oh, interesting. And, and, you know, they started giving me more and more artists and I started working in their building. And I really liked what I was doing. I never really had the dream of becoming an entrepreneur or starting my own business. But what was kind of happening is I'd worked at Warner for three years and my business partner was in a similar situation. We were working there and there wasn't, there weren't social media manager jobs at the time. There wasn't a place to grow. I was a temp there, you know, making between 12 to $15 an hour or whatever it was at the time.

And they're offering me full-time jobs. Don't get me wrong. They're like, you can move into this and be the AOL partner manager, or you can go move to the marketing department. They're offering me jobs, but I actually, I found what I liked what I was doing, which I feel like so many people struggle with doing. I didn't want to not do what I was doing, but I wanted to figure out how I could keep doing it and grow up. You know, I was working this job at Warner while I was in college and I was going to graduate and I'm like, okay, it's time to, you know, how do I move up to the next level? And there wasn't a place to move up to the next level. There weren't jobs in social media that were elevated beyond being a temp at a record label at that time.

So I was like, I like this. I don't think it's going to stop growing. Let's, it looks like the only way we can keep doing this and grow is to start our own business. So we started the business kind of because of that reason, not because we had a dream of owning a business. It was just the only way to have the job that we wanted. Nice. Love that. And I think that's, you know, that that's the best why is like when you're doing something you love and you're not, you're not allowed to then going off and doing it yourself. Right. I think that's a, that's a really good kind of like, uh, it's a lot of people have their side hustle, right? And their side hustle, they're so much more passionate about than their actual job.

And that's where I think there's that cool transition where you can use your job to help prep for your side hustle transition. So you can generate the revenue for six months or whatever it might be, you know, as long as you're still executing at your job, so you don't get fired. Um, but making that leap, are you, would you consider yourself a, like a risk taker as far as, cause a lot of times like going off on your own as an entrepreneur, there's a certain level, obviously of risk tolerance that you need to have, but how would you, how would you define your, your tolerance, if you will, or your approach to risk? I think I, I wouldn't call it risk, but I like trying new things. I like experimentation.

I like doing things that I haven't seen other people do before. So I'd say I'm a risk taker in that sense, but I'm also fairly, I guess a conservative risk taker in the sense of when we started CrowdSurf, I did not leave my job at Warner until I had enough clients secured to, you know, pay my basic living expenses. And I didn't need much at that time because again, I was 20, I rent was $300 a month. I just needed a couple of clients. I didn't need a lot, but I did make sure that I had those secured before I left because I, you know, as I said earlier, I, I don't come from money. I don't, I did, I wouldn't have anything to, I don't want to be homeless. I don't want to put myself in a situation where I don't have a place to go and a way to take care of myself.

So I made sure I had that plan in place before I went. And in general, I, I think that's kind of how, like, you know, I like to try new things, but I like to be as smart about trying those new things as possible. Yeah. I think the, the experimentation, I'm, I'm similar. Like, uh, I'm, I call it a, I'm a calculated risk taker, right? I'm not the like, let me just, you know, dump everything, live on, you know, my parents' basement and eat ramen noodles, you know, for a living and see what happens here. Like there has to be a few pieces in place for me to make that leap. But then once they're there, I'm usually a pretty opportunistic when it comes to taking that leap and, and going for it where maybe some people overanalyze it and never take that leap.

And I think if you have that entrepreneurial gene in you, that's kind of where you're, you're either a massive risk taker or you're more of a calculated risk taker where you're like, okay, I see opportunity and you pair that with opportunistic. And I think that's where you get people who can do some special things. Yeah. I think that's a good way to describe it. And I would say I definitely am in the calculated risk taker category for sure. So, so let's talk, you know, you went off on your own, you got some clients that you could pay your bills with, but when did you start to land those big ones and like the names that you were fangirls of, right? I mean, I named a few of them, the Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys.

Um, so you have some, you have some pretty cool, well-known names. Um, how did you get to them, um, without having the reputation yourself? Right. Uh, and, and what was your approach to that? So about a year in is when we got the offer to work on Britney Spears and that, that project strangely, you never know what project is going to lead to another project. And I'm sure you see this in sales too. You don't ever know like what person you have a relationship with is going to turn over and have a connection to something insane. And that's kind of what happened to me here. I was, um, we were, me and my business partner were consulting on the reality TV show, Nashville Star. It's kind of like country American Idol.

And there was another digital consultant based out of Los Angeles that worked on that project with us. And she had just observed us doing a really good job. We were kind of hired in to be her assistants basically. And we never met her before. She was a little intense, but really smart and a legend in the digital marketing space. I'd heard of her before. So I was really excited to work with her. And I guess she, you know, respected the work that we were doing and had never really seen anybody kind of perform at a level that she was satisfied with because she was super picky. And she reached out to me after the season and she said, Hey, do you know anybody in LA that would want to work on Brittany?

And I was like, I don't live in LA. I lived in Nashville at the time. I don't live in LA, but I would move there to work on that. And, you know, we talked about it. She, you know, she, you know, had me interview with Brittany's managers at the time to work on, you know, to see if I was a good fit or not. I guess I passed the test. Um, and they said that, you know, I didn't have to move to LA because she actually already had a bunch of team members in Nashville. So I was able to stay there, but that's how I, I landed that project. And once you have a project like that, you, it's easy to get other, you know, pop projects, I guess, cause that was my first sort of big pop project. And I'm really grateful that, um, that woman gave me the chance and that, uh, that I was allowed to be a part of Brittany and Brittany's world because that.

That really opened up a lot of opportunities for me. And I'm, I'm very, very grateful for that, but I never would have thought that being, you know, digital assistant on the Nashville star would equate to that. Like you just never know where that big break is going to come from. So no matter how big or small, I think it's always important to perform really well on whatever you're working on, because you may not know it, but like your performance is your interview for the big gig that you didn't even know you're interviewing for. How do you balance that with taking maybe the right opportunity that, that is a good fit versus the wrong opportunity that can pay you bills. So for, you know, and I bring that up because a lot of entrepreneurs, what they'll do is because they need money, because they're not, they don't have traction.

They'll chase bad money, right? They'll get revenue from anybody who will give it to them. And a lot of times that distracts them from doing the work that they're really good at for the people that they should be doing it for. So I guess what's your threshold? Cause I'm, I'm a hundred percent agree with you as far as look, treat, you know, one of my core philosophies is, you know, you're no better than anybody else and, but nobody's better than you. Right. And you can learn something from anybody and everybody out there. And so I'll do small favors for, I'll take on small clients because, and a lot of that has benefited me over my career, but it's also in a lot of ways slowed me down because I've done work that distracted me from the bigger work.

And I still do it to this day, quite frankly, you know what I mean? I still do small stuff and I'm like, ah, that's distracting me from what I know I'm good at. So how do you look at opportunities that you'll say, this is worth me doing, even though this isn't, you know, my core or whatever, cause there's a potential bigger picture play here. Like I'm, you know, all of a sudden I got introduced to Britney Spears by doing this versus like, that's not worth my time. Yeah, that's tough. And I still think I, as well as you make some errors in this category, because, because I have seen the weirdest projects turn into something amazing that I wouldn't thought, you know, think it would be in terms of introductions.

I think sometimes I have an issue with turning anything down, um, because I'm like, gosh, this, I don't know where this could go. Like I know that they know this person and I think about all the, you know, all the possibilities. Um, but you know, something I think I have to look at now is a lot of times I almost let my staff make the decision for me. Now I have a project come in that I think could have potential, but you know, I know I, I'm, I don't really work on day-to-day projects anymore at this point. So sometimes if I'm kind of on the fence about that and don't know if it's the right decision or don't know if I have the right person to work on it or not. And we're kind of tight on capacity at the moment.

I just toss it out on the staff email. Does anybody like this or not? Um, and I've been surprised sometimes there's been stuff I thought a lot of people would want and nobody was interested in it. And I thought, and then there's been stuff where I was like, I don't think anybody's going to like this, but I'm not going to make an assumption. And like several people wanted that project. So I, a lot of times I take the decision making out of my hands in those moments because I feel like I can see an opportunity in almost anything to a fault. And sometimes at that point, it's better to take it out of my hands and give it to somebody else because I almost think I can see too many ways of how that something could be good.

And if I, but if I don't have anybody to do the work, it I'm, it's not going to be good for the client or good for me. It just can give me a bad reputation. So I, I toss that decision to other people a lot of the times now. All right, quick break to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts on the HubSpot podcast Network, which is the surf and sales podcast hosted by my good friends, Richard Harris and Scott Lease. First of all, these two are personal friends of mine, and they are two of the most authentic, smart, intelligent, knowledgeable people that I've ever come across as it relates to sales. And their podcast is fantastic. There's no fluff in this podcast. If you like my podcast, you're going to love theirs because they get right down to it.

Real world stuff. And it's not just about sales. It's about mental health. It's about being an entrepreneur, growing your business, all sorts of different things that round out the business professional and the person. So I highly recommend checking out their podcast and listening to some of their new episodes. They got one with Anthony Natoli, who talks about getting off the sidelines and engaging and building your own personal brands and the right mindset for starting to build your brand. So if you're all talking about internal personal brands and thinking about that journey, you're going to want to check out that episode. And there's a whole bunch of others that I recommend as well. So check them out.

Let me know what you think. Let's make it happen. Yeah. And I think that's actually one of the things that I've had to learn too over the years of, you know, leadership and entrepreneurship. It's like, yeah, I think, you know, there's an inherent trait of being able to see opportunity and everything. But if it then creates chaos for the people that have to then deliver it and it distracts them from doing what they're great at, it's actually a net negative, right? So like, there's one thing about me personally. Oh, I can do that. Yeah. Let me figure this out. And that distracts from some of the things. But when you make a decision as a, as the entrepreneur, as the leader of the group and, and it's like, oh, whatever.

Like, I know this is our core over here, but man, this is a gnarly ass, but awesome potential, huge project. But it's going to take all of our resources and I'm going to have to be dynamic with where people, you know, usually the further down away from entrepreneurship, the more structure they need. Right. Um, and if we throw chaos into that structure and it's a blowing it up and then to your point, your reputation starts to fall apart. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's a, that's a really good point because there's a lot of, I feel like I can do anything like, right. And at least in marketing, I, I, I'm not going to say I can go into, you know, a hospital and operate on somebody, but in terms of like marketing business work, I feel like if I have to figure out how to do something, I will, and I can, and you know, I feel confident in that, but you know, I can't, I can't do everything myself and you have to lean on other people and you have to, when you have to lean on other people, you sometimes have to get their input on what they're working on.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the tough part I think about building a business is, is that there's your way and then there's, okay, there's the way that it kind of should be done. It's so that everybody else has some sanity. Yes, absolutely. Because if they were all like you, then it would be chaos. And I mean, that's why I've had to come to the conclusion or for a while in my career, I was used to be frustrated about why isn't, you know, I just want to hire a players. You know, I just want everybody to be in. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. The world needs B players. The world needs people who just do the job and aren't always trying to innovate, always trying to break things, always trying to do things differently because they'd just be straight up chaos if that was the case.

True. So I want to kind of finish up with some of your thoughts on what I'm trying to wrap my head around here and, and I think the music industry is the one I keep bringing up, which is that the impact of artificial intelligence on, on everything. But I want to get your thoughts on the impact on origination of, of art and specifically music. My fear right now is that there's no more original anything. Not that there ever was. Everybody's always, you know, there's always, you could go back and always say, okay, well, that comes from here and here's that beat and here's that baseline or whatever it might be. But there is original artistry in music. And now with AI, you can, I can say, you know what?

I want Paul McCartney, I want a song written in the tone of Paul McCartney from the Beatles about a 47 year old man who lives in Woburn, Massachusetts and likes the Celtics. And it will produce a fucking Beatles song that sounds like Paul McCartney and Paul McCartney gets no credit for that, right? Because it's, it's, it's extracting from this mass internet of information. And so I'm curious where you see this impacting the music industry. Cause I think there's a lot of analogies of how it's going to impact everybody else. But to me, the most obvious one, as far as original creation, um, and the credit that these people get or don't get, and even the, excuse me, even the voices, because it'd be like, okay, one thing this thing can write, I can go into chat GPT and I could say, write a song and Ed Sheeran's ability.

And it, and it comes out like a really cool song and then I can put it into a music and I can say, okay, drop a beat to this. And then the, like, okay, now the vocals, right now that's me as a human, but even with this AI stuff, the vocals are starting to sound pretty good. So what impact are you seeing or do you, where do you see this going for your space right now? Cause I'm really curious on the origination of content at this point for, for musicians specifically. Yeah. I, I'm hope, and I think there's going to be a lot of chaos for the next couple of years around this. I think that there's probably going to need to be some type of law legislation in terms of sort of sorting a lot of this out.

Like, you know, you brought up, and I've actually been thinking about this for years, even pre, you know, the AI boom that's been happening recently, but you brought up, you know, Paul McCartney, somebody can, you know, make a song in his voice right now. And he could, you know, there, there's probably ways that you could, you know, get that song down or that sort of thing. Let's say theoretically, someone puts a song out, Paul McCartney's vocals on it. And, you know, in theory, he's not credited for it. I think in general, whether it's, you know, an AI song or I've always thought about this, you know, think about Facebook advertising and you could advertise against Paul McCartney's audience.

Like you can say, like that can be a term like interest, Paul McCartney. I feel like the interests should get a cut of the advertising dollars. I've always believed that if you're advertising against a term like Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, whatever, I think that person should be participating in the revenue because that person's interest has identified a consumer for you. And I just think in general, like if these names are being integrated into AI, advertising, whatever technology exists, I feel like there should be some level of compensation for them at that point because it's not fair to be able to identify your audience based upon this person's brand and they just get nothing for that.

I've always just thought that was absolutely insane. So I'm hoping to see some legislation around protecting you because I think it's almost we're going to have to identify a new form of IP, right? Like in terms of, you know, how to protect people's name and likeness beyond a trademark and beyond a logo and beyond their recordings. We're going to have to figure out how to protect people more. And I hope we see, I think we're going to have to see some legislation around that with AI. So I think ultimately AI could, you know, AI could bring up some topics that, you know, go beyond AI in terms of legislation and could be a really, really strong, positive thing. But I think it's going to be chaos for a while.

And we're going to have to, you know, I think a lot of social networks are going to have to figure out what are their, they're going to probably have to create policies around what their laws are around this and what they do and don't allow. I'm hoping that we see some sort of, I would like some sort of like tag to exist the same way, like you have to flag when you make a post that it's a branded post that you have to do that, you know, per the law and per like advertising and regulations and that sort of thing. I'm hoping we see a same thing with music. Like, Hey, this was, this is not this artist or this, I think it needs to be clearly marked. So that's something else that I hope to see too, because people already don't take the time to read.

We already have like a fake news issue. I don't want there to be like a fake art issue too. So I hope we see some things happen and get ahead of that sooner rather than later. Yeah, me too. Cause I just, I feel for all the originators these days because now any kid with, you know, a couple of free tools like chat GPT can bing, bang, boom, all of a sudden create a banger album with, and they don't even have to be an artist. You know what I mean? They just have to steal from other artists to create this thing. And, you know, I think there are laws in place that, that do prevent. So if it's obvious, right. That you stole a riff from whoever it was, then obviously there's laws in place now, but that's only if things go like go big.

Right. So if, if I create a song for somebody else and it does hit the charts, well now I'm in trouble. But for the, for the vast majority of those under a million downloads on Spotify, those artists aren't even going to notice that. Right. Like, and I'm going to be able to kind of be put, put off these tracks. And so I, we're, we're, we're definitely moving into a, uh, an extremely interesting world from a talent standpoint. Um, and I worry about the, uh, the other thing I worry about with that too, is, you know, a kid can, you know, you just said a kid can go in and make a song that easily. I worry about, I guess, people putting in the work to become good artists too. If it becomes easier like that, are they going to, they're going to make a garage band and have those hours and hours of practice?

Are they going to be mastering playing guitar? Are they going to be learning how to use pro tools or Ableton and spend the time to like master those tools? You know, I worry about there being less people willing to put in those hours to be good at those things that I think are important to make good art. So that that's another concern I have as well. That's, that's the biggest problem is like, I actually feel fortunate myself, 47 years old, Gen X are here, grew up without technology. So all that foundational learning I had early days, then when I, when I, when I saw the tech to audit, to, to, to, to expand that, it was great because I had some context of the foundation that allowed me to leverage the technology.

Whereas I think now we're backing into it. We're starting with the technology and we're trying to develop the skills after that. And I think that's a dangerous position for a lot of us to do, you know, for us as a overall society to be in, because again, to your point, like putting in the work to get to that point, to be able to do that thing is, is important, uh, for origination, for creativity, for, you know, anything other than what robots are going to be able to do by themselves. Absolutely. So interesting world. So any, uh, any last things we're going to wrap up here, but any last things you wanted to share with the audience that, uh, that you thought were good as far as your growth or any, you know, tips or anything like that, that people should be paying attention to from, uh, entrepreneurship, building, grabbing companies, whatever.

That's so hard. I feel like I'm still always learning. I feel like I haven't perfected anything. Um, I think that if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should realize that you're, that you don't like, you're going to have to learn every day and you're never going to know everything. And you have to be really, really okay with that because you're going to feel like an entrepreneur every day of your life for the rest of your life. And not in the, and by entrepreneur, I mean, in the sense of like figuring out things that haven't been figured out yet. And you just have to be really comfortable with that, knowing anything or hardly anything at all. Well, actually one more question then as it relates to that, you know, cause you had mentioned or reading about, uh, in the prep about imposter syndrome.

Um, because I think it's, it's inevitable. Like I am, I face imposter syndrome all day, every day, you know, there's nothing I can do, but I, but I have crossed the chasm that that is a good thing. How do you look at imposter syndrome and why do you think it's a good thing? Well, I mean, listen, there are debilitating things about imposter syndrome in some cases. I want to be clear that I don't think that is good for, you know, intense anxiety and, you know, to the point of where it makes you freeze. I'm not condoning that by any means, but I do condone figuring out how to reframe imposter syndrome in your head. Because if you're feeling imposter syndrome in a moment, that means that you care about what's happening, you care about your performance and caring means that you probably actually should be doing that thing and that you should actually be there and you should give yourself grace in that moment.

Because the only reason you're feeling that way is because you care about something. And if you want to be there or you want to be doing the thing you're doing and you want to be in the room, then you deserve that, that opportunity. That that's the most important thing in business for me when I hire people or when I find people I want to work with. I want people that want to be there. If somebody is really talented and doesn't want to be there, it's probably not going to be working out. So if you have imposter syndrome, you want to be doing what you're doing and you want to be there. And I ultimately think that is a really positive thing. Somebody told me something that in addition to that, that I thought was really good, which is the reason that you feel imposter syndrome is because you're growing, right?

So the concept is you've reached the next level and anytime you reach the next level, you've never been there before. So inherently you feel like an imposter because you've never reached this level before. But that's a good thing because that means you're stretching. That means you're growing. That means you're improving. If you never feel imposter syndrome, that means you're comfortable. Like you're at the level that you've been at and you're comfortable at. And so you don't feel like an imposter because you know this role. Or you're a narcissist, but neither one. Oh yeah. That's a totally different time. So awesome. Well, Casey, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Where can people find out more information about what you're doing and how do you want people to connect with you? So I mostly talk to people via direct message on LinkedIn or Instagram. Just my handle, C-A-S-S-I-E-P-E-T-R-E-Y. I'm way more in the messages than I am on the feed. So if you want to talk about something or have a question, I check daily and always happy to have a conversation. Love it. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. And yeah, hopefully everybody can take you up on that and start engaging a little bit and learn a little bit more about this industry. And also, again, your journey here, because I think there's a lot of parallels to a lot of other people who are trying to figure out where is that point where I jump in and how do I get my first clients and how do I think through that journey there if I'm on it?

So I appreciate you coming in and sharing knowledge on that one. Of course. My pleasure. Very cool. And everybody out there, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, look, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or you think it's going, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough.

Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website at www.johnm.barrows.com where you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day just like you are and I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and let's make this happen together.