There are many ways to describe what Case Lane does. She’s an author, a podcaster, an entrepreneur, a former diplomat, a Hollywood veteran and so much more.
Today, she adds “guest of Personal Branding exposed podcast” to her belt, all the while sharing some invaluable advice on how to build your personal brand by becoming a podcast guest yourself.
She is also an absolute delight to talk, and we had some great moments in our conversation. Here are some of the highlights.
Remember Me?
From as early as she could recall, Case always had the single purpose of having her own media company, she was infatuated by news channels and everything related.
How lucky it was for her then that her neighbor down the street from her childhood home was the owner of the local TV station, which he would later build into a big national network.
“ Our neighbour down the street ran the local television station, he ended up building it into a big national network. But, I remember asking him what were the types of things I could do for him, and he actually said to me ‘I don’t really think there is anything that you can do at the station’, and I was thinking, ‘I can’t do anything not even sweep the floor?”
Despite this initial rejection, Case would get the opportunity to get back at this neighbor of hers during a celebration related to the government of her home province in Canada.
“ Fast forward a couple of years, I’m an executive in Hollywood, and this person, well he’s past now, so I can say he was the lieutenant commander from the province I grew up in, and it was the Canada day celebration at the consulate. So I went up to him and said: “remember me?”
Few feelings are as satisfactory as being able to say these words to someone that doubted you in the past. It also serves as an example of what can happen if you don’t let people talk you out of your goals and stay true to what you want to do.
Proving You Exist
As our talk moved on, Case and I eventually got to the subject of how people will postpone starting their own project, be it a podcast, blog, or YouTube channel.
Case put it perfectly by saying “my crappy podcast is better than the one you’ve never done.” And it’s true, the important thing is to conjure that plan of yours into a real thing first, and then you can worry about making it better.
Now, granted, not every medium is going to do it for you, but it’s important that you find the one that does because at the end of the day there needs to be some evidence of your existence on the internet that people can find
“When people are scrolling, scrolling, scrolling they are looking for something right? So, if you are at least there, you have a chance, if you are not there at all, you’ve got no chance, nobody’s ever going to find you if you are not actually online”
If you’re wondering why this is so important, keep in mind that the first thing a job recruiter does after getting your resume is to look you up online. So what good would it be for you to have an impressive list of accomplishments if people have no clue of who you are?
Becoming A Podcast Guest
After a brief detour where we talk about her experiences in Hollywood, (and my short contribution to the Harry Potter Movie franchise), we got to talking about how Case uses podcasting to build her personal brand.
This is actually a subject I had touched upon with other guests, but where Andrew Allemann made his own platform where interviewers and interviewees can meet, Case shared with us her method for finding relevant shows.
She explained how after diving into the minutia of podcast services, she was able to come up with a method to selecting those that would better fit your brand and to which you can contribute the most. As she explains.
“The idea is you want to get beyond the most popular directories because when you are using a particular keyword for your subject area they are not going to show you the depth of the almost two million podcasts that are out there now.
So you need to look at the directories that have a much longer search result process, What you do first is come up with your keywords and think very broadly about where your category is.”
Case then uses the example that, if you are a specialist on tulips, the first thing you want to do is search for podcasts that talk about that subject (and according to Case, there are 42 of them.).
Then, you want to branch out into podcasts that talk about flowers in general, or gardening, or outdoor activities.
She also advises that you should look at the date of update for the latest episode as there are many inactive podcasts out there.
Once you are sure that the podcast is still running, you want to look at the description for the podcast and the description of each episode, and of course, listen to a few episodes in order to make sure it is something you want to be a part of.
Conclusion
These were some of the best insights on my talk with Case Lane, but she is such an amazing person that it was really hard to pinpoint just these few moments, and many others were left out.
Now, if her advice on personal branding and her story were enough to whet your appetite, I highly suggest giving her episode a listen as it was both hilarious and useful.
Also, if you are curious about how to build a personal brand of your own, through podcasting, or whatever other means, feel free to contact me for a full crash course on the subject.
