Lois Sonstegard:

Hello everyone, this is Lois Sonstegard and today I’m here with Tom Schwab. I am so excited to introduce him to you. He is Chief Evangelist Officer of Interview Valet.

Lois Sonstegard:

He has a fascinating background. He was in the Navy and managed nuclear plants at that time and also looked at the voice of consumers, as they were responding to what it was that was going on, and has now today gotten very involved in digital marketing and the use of podcasting to get your message out. So Tom, if you would just share a little bit about your background? I gave a very fast overview and I’ll let you take it from there.

Tom Schwab:

Well Lois, thank you so much. It’s an amazing story that only makes sense in the rear view mirror. So here I was a Midwestern kid that had never been more than 100 miles from my house. I was blessed enough to get into the United States Naval Academy. And then, once I graduated from there, started to run nuclear power plants on the USS Abraham Lincoln. At that time it was the newest and finest aircraft carrier. Now it’s just the finest.

Tom Schwab:

But what really struck me on that is that you can teach anything. You can build systems, you can build cultures that live on long after you. The average age of somebody that’s running a nuclear power plant today is 21 years old and they’re high school educated. Now they’re very motivated, they’re very trained, they’re very smart people, but the people would say, “That was amazing that you did that.” And I said, “No. What was amazing is that somebody was smart enough to come up with that system to teach it to people,” and really the legacy of Admiral Rickover went on decades and decades after he left us.

Tom Schwab:

So I took those skills and then I went into corporate America, worked for a Fortune 500 medical device company in the engineering side, operations, sales and marketing, and had a very successful career there and they bought back a distributor ship. That left me with the opportunity. About 2008, we had a sideline business that was direct to patient durable medical equipment. At a conference, a HubSpot conference, we were voted the number two unsexiest product to sell on the internet.

Lois Sonstegard:

That’s a dubious distinction.

Tom Schwab:

Yes, I wish we would’ve gotten number one. My wife and I, we were selling this product in Michigan and we knew we were doing good with it because half of the units would come back, a lot of them were rentals, they’d come back with thank you notes in it. And we said, “Well, how can we scale this up?” This was 2008, the great recession. We didn’t want to build an entire brick and mortar.

Tom Schwab:

So, had read a book by two smart guys out of MIT, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, they went on to form a company called HubSpot. They talked about using the Internet to attract, engage, and delight people. Nobody goes to the internet to be sold, but they go there to get their answers or to get questions answered, and that those people that can answer those questions can build that trust that they’ll get the lifetime value out of that customer.

Tom Schwab:

So, initially we did that for our eCommerce cost company. We built that up from a regional player to a national leader, sold that off. And then in 2014, I started to hypothesize that you could use podcast interviews that same way to get your message out, not to sell anybody, but just to earn the respect, awareness, and trust of those people that might buy. So, we started to test that. It worked 25 times better than blogs. At first I thought, “No.”

Lois Sonstegard:

Interesting.

Tom Schwab:

Now, being an engineer, I said, “Oh, this is too good to be true. It’s got to be a personality or a niche.” We kept testing it and it proved itself out, so I wrote a book. It was, at that time, just a small PDF book, did a little online course. But Lois, I never took it out of beta because the people that were taking it, those ones that were honest with me, said, “You’ve given me the cookbook. They’ve given me the videos on how to be the chef. I don’t want to make this, right? Let me be the guest, you take care of the rest.”

Tom Schwab:

So in 2015 we started to beta test a done-for-you service and in 2016 that became Interview Valet. Today we have a team of 18 throughout United States and Europe, our team is geographically diverse. We serve over a hundred clients, a lot of coaches and consultants, non-fiction authors, and a lot of brands and companies out there, really with the idea of, “Today you can’t break through the noise.” Breaking through the noise is really just everybody’s yelling and nobody’s getting heard, that the best way to get your message out there to make an impact, to build a legacy, is really to get in on the conversation that’s going on. And that’s what we do, helping our clients get on podcast interviews that their ideal customers are listening to.

Lois Sonstegard:

Oh Tom, part of that, in my experience is, it’s getting that voice out there but then there’s also the connecting of those voices. Right?

Tom Schwab:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lois Sonstegard:

So that it really gets heard because otherwise you can be… One of the comments I hear is, “Aren’t I just talking to myself?” And so there’s that piece and that’s part of I think what it is that you are involved in as well. Am I correct or no?

Tom Schwab:

Correct. From that standpoint, it’s when I first started writing a blog years ago, it was read by three people, one of them was my mom. One of the hacks we used to use a dozen years ago was to guest blog. Instead of writing a something on your own site, well write it and put it up on Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, wherever your people are. It was called guest blogging and it really tapped into an audience, and really that’s what we’re doing with podcast interviews.

Tom Schwab:

The other thing I think with that too is that sometimes we can get focused on bigger is better: “How many millions of people am I talking to?” It becomes a vanity metric in there. I don’t think bigger is better. I think better is better. And some people, I’ll say, “Would you rather talk at the Super Bowl for 30 seconds or would you rather talk to a conference room of your ideal people?” And if you go on the Super Bowl for 30 seconds, nobody’s going to listen to you because that’s not what they’re there for. If you go to a room full of people that are your ideal customers, well those people are there for a reason, they come there for a reason, they’re listening to every word. I think that impact is much greater on that.

Lois Sonstegard:

So Tom, as I’m listening to you, maybe if our audience are leaders, CEOs, people looking at that next chapter in their life, what is their legacy? Some of them are young leaders who are already looking at, “How do I build that?” Looking at not for profits or whatever in terms of leaving something.

Lois Sonstegard:

As I’m hearing you, there’s a process with podcasts that can be useful in getting that message out. Because whether you’re at that end of life, or at the beginning of a development of a business, podcasts or a method of getting your voice heard is important either way.

Tom Schwab:

I agree with you and I’d have to say that it’s not a new thing either. Podcast is just a new name we put on it, it’s the new technology, and it’s easier than ever to do it. But my niece, who has got into real estate and she was studying for real estate, I was talking with her and she was so excited. She was listening to this guy, Zig Ziglar, and he was so [crosstalk 00:08:42] entertaining. She kept telling me about it and that she just found out that he had a podcast and she couldn’t wait to listen to it.

Tom Schwab:

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Zig had died years ago and those audios that she was listening on, her mom and dad probably listened to on cassette tapes of those. Those were probably recorded before she was even born. But that content, that legacy went on and on. Back then you had to get a studio, you had to by the tapes, you had to remember not to leave them in the sun in your car so they didn’t get destroyed whereas today, podcasting is so easy. If you can talk on a Zoom call, if you can talk on a phone, you can get your content out there, and it stays forever too.

Tom Schwab:

The other thing that I really like about the content in podcasting is that we can produce in the way that’s easiest for us and repurpose in the way this easiest for other people. I’ve written a lot of blogs in my life and every one of them felt like a homework assignment. I’m not a natural writer, but I love talking. I love having conversations with people. So you can take a podcast interview like this, transcribe it for 10 cents a minute, have somebody clean that up and make it into blogs. You can take the video and put it out there for people that like to watch videos or small clips of that. Somebody asked me one time, “Right now, 51% of the US population listens to podcasts,” and they said, “When do you think that’ll…?”-

Lois Sonstegard:

It’s amazing.

Tom Schwab:

Yeah it is, but they said, “When do you think it’ll get to 100%?” I had to think for a second. I’m like, “I’m not sure that newspaper, radio, and television ever got to 100%.” Still 10% of the US population is hearing-impaired, they’re not going to listen to my podcast interview, but if it was transcribed, maybe they’ll read it. So to me, it’s a very powerful medium and scalable medium throughout time.

Lois Sonstegard:

Tom, with the work that you’ve done and with the business that you’ve created with podcasting, is there a process that you take people through when they want to get their voice out there and to really be heard?

Tom Schwab:

Yeah. And I’m all about process. So you-

Lois Sonstegard:

Yeah. I can tell you are. Your military background comes through.

Tom Schwab:

Well, to me, I was taught this, that if you can’t explain the process, how can you reproduce it? If it’s a magic trick every time, you don’t know what results you’re going to get. So our process is very, very thought out and tested and refined.

Tom Schwab:

The first thing we look at is, will people have results? And we’ve broken that down into three things. It’s your message, your market, and your machine, and those three things multiply on each other. So if one of them is weak, your whole result’s going to be weak. And so the message is, “Do you have stories to tell and not just a product to sell?” Podcast interviews are an awful place for infomercials, but they’re a great place to share knowledge. They’re a great place to get that know, like, and trust and to earn the respect, awareness, and trust of those who might become a customer so that’s message.

Tom Schwab:

The second one is market. Do you know who you want to talk to and to have something that can help them? The people early on that came to us and said that, “I want to talk to everybody.” Well, not all 7 billion people on the world want to hear you. Find your audience there.” The other one is people would say, “I just want to build my personal brand.” Well, how does that help the audience? So we really look at what are you doing? Do you have a book that you’re promoting? Do you have a company? Do you have keynote speeches that you’re doing? Do you have a non-profit that you want to get exposure out there? Exposure brings opportunity. So we’ve got message, we’ve got market. The final one is the machine. If somebody hears you on a podcast, they are going to go back to the website and look for you. And if your website looks like it was built in Y2K or your social media makes it look like you’re in the witness protection plan, you won’t sound like an expert.

Tom Schwab:

So that’s really what we look at. Before we even talk to anybody, we’ll say we’ll given an evaluation of their message, their market, their machine. If it looks like they could have great success or if there’s anything that’s lacking, we’ll suggest that they tune that up before they work with us. But then once they start working with us, our business model is, “You’re the guest and we take care of the rest.” We want to get you the maximum return on investment, both of your time invested and your money invested. So we’re going to get together the marketing materials. We’re going to find the right podcast. We’re going to do practice podcast interviews. We’re going to make sure that you’re all set and before you ever get on your first interview, so that that first one is great.

Tom Schwab:

And then after that it’s very methodical. It’s wash, rinse and repeat. Every interview should only take you about an hour. We help prep you for every interview. The only thing you can’t outsource is the interview itself, but we’ll help you with best practices, and gives you feedback, and it really makes for an enjoyable process.

Lois Sonstegard:

Tom, do you have a story of a great success of someone you’ve helped develop their podcasting channel, getting their message out, so that they could really be heard?

Tom Schwab:

Yeah. There’s so many different ones I could point out-

Lois Sonstegard:

I’m sure.

Tom Schwab:

I could point to authors that we’ve worked with. Just this last year, Chris Tuff wrote a book called The Millennial Whisper and it turned to be a USA Today bestselling book and he just wanted to get his ideas out there on how he could work with millennials. Well, it became a bestselling book. The company that he was working for in Atlanta started to spin off a division based on that.

Lois Sonstegard:

Wow.

Tom Schwab:

And he was in charge of that to help other companies work with the millennial generation. Another one would be Steve Anderson wrote a book last year that hit the New York Times… Oh, excuse me, Wall Street Journal bestseller called The Bezos Letters and that book has now been translated into 14 languages. He’s going around the country just talking about the observations that he’s made on Amazon. That whole idea of exposure brings opportunities.

Tom Schwab:

There’s coaches that we’ve worked with that have gone from just being regionally known to being internationally known, getting booked deals, getting clients are from all over. And then there’s a lot of companies that are great companies, they’re just unknown, so that they’ve got something that could help thousands or millions of people. They don’t need to change anything, they just need to get in front of those right people. They’re not trying to do just a transaction, they’re trying to build a relationship with their customer and really a lifetime value with them. It’s been so great to see companies that will start doing this, and after a couple of months they come back and say, “Can we have other people on our team do this?”

Tom Schwab:

I can think of one company, a publicly traded company, that’s got four different people on their executive team that does podcast interviews talking about different things in their industry. It’s just a great way for them to get their message out because, here, time is such an important factor for them. For them to fly across countries to give a keynote for 1,000 people, that’s going to probably take them two days to do or they can jump on a podcast interview and talk to thousands or tens of thousands of people and it takes them 45 minutes. So, we’ve worked with-

Lois Sonstegard:

Very interesting.

Tom Schwab:

… Hall of Fame athletes, authors, companies. It’s amazing the impact it can have.

Lois Sonstegard:

Tom, one of the things I keep getting asked is, “For podcasts to do any good, you have to have an audience; how do you develop that audience?”

Tom Schwab:

Well, it’s like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? If you’ve got an audience already, you can build your podcasts and they’ll follow you along. If you don’t have an audience, you have to figure out a way to build that. You think about it, the best place to find podcast listeners is listening to podcasts.

Tom Schwab:

So you could go onto Facebook and advertise, but the data shows if 51% of the people listen to podcasts, that means 49% of those people that you advertise to don’t even listen to podcasts. It’s like trying to sell printed books to blind people, could be a great book, but they’re not going to buy it. So from that standpoint, if you want to grow a podcast, a great way to do that is go on other podcasts and promote it. I would say people say, “Should I have a podcast or should I be a podcast guest?” I used to say both. Now I say it’s almost like Uber: “Should I drive Uber or should I ride an Uber?” Same platform, but different goals.

Tom Schwab:

If your goal is to nurture your current leads, nurture your current based, nurture your current customers, having your own podcast is a great way to do that. If you’re looking to get new exposure, if you’re looking to get new leads, get new opportunities, than being a guest is the way to do that. I think when you do both of those, it can be very, very powerful.

Lois Sonstegard:

Tom, what are the biggest challenges people have in getting started and getting off the ground?

Tom Schwab:

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge that we all have is that person we see in the mirror. There’s that doubt of, “Am I good enough to do this? Do I have something to offer? Do I have something to say?” Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “Everybody should have a podcast.” I don’t disagree with him, but I think everybody should figure out why they need a podcast before starting it.

Tom Schwab:

So, figure out why you want to do this. What’s the goal? What do I have to offer the world? That will get you through the hard times because starting a podcast has never been easier, but keeping a podcast going I think has never been harder. The dirty secret in podcasting is that most podcasts that die, die within the first 10 episodes. It’s called podfade in the industry.

Lois Sonstegard:

Really?

Tom Schwab:

Because at the-

Lois Sonstegard:

Why? Why’d you think?

Tom Schwab:

At the beginning it’s fun, right? Those first five or six episodes are fun. And then, something happens, either of a guest of cancels on you at the last minute, you get sick, you have to travel for business, and all of a sudden life gets in the way. At that point you have to have that why in your head of, “Why am I doing this? How can I push through this? How can I have other people help me?”

Tom Schwab:

And so, with that, I know a lot of people start a podcast and then two months or two quarters later, it almost becomes an embarrassment. And that’s why a lot of times I’ll tell people, “Why don’t you try being a guest first? If you like that, then you can start a podcast.” Because if you’re a host and you don’t show up every week, people will notice. If you’re a guest, people won’t notice. Think about it in television. Like, what was it? Thursday night was Seinfeld Must See TV. If he didn’t show up on Thursday, everybody would know. But if you were just a guest on The Tonight Show, you weren’t expected to be there every week. So with that, it gives you a lot more flexibility being a guest and I think it’s a lot more fun too. There’s less work that you have to do.

Lois Sonstegard:

Okay, so that’s interesting. That’s the other question that people will ask me is, “What’s the work that’s actually involved and what do you need to block out or plan for if you’re going to be successful?”

Tom Schwab:

Yeah. I think with anything you need to make the commitment to it. So Dan Miller, from 48 Days To The Work You Love, I love how he says, “If you’re going to do anything, do it for a year.” So if you’re going to write a blog, commit to doing it for a year. If you’re going to do a podcast, commit to doing it for a year.

Tom Schwab:

The great thing today is there’s so many resources out there. You can either have time or money. If you don’t have either, maybe you shouldn’t start it. But if you’ve got lots of time, well you can do the audio editing yourself. There’s free online courses to do that. If your time is more valuable, you can find companies that will do everything, but more or less the talking. They’ll help you on the strategy, they’ll help you on the production, even posting an up there. Or you can do a hybrid. You can record the episode, send it to an audio engineer overseas, and they can master it, and put it up while you sleep. So to me it’s the commitment for being a podcast host is bigger, the commit for being a podcast guest really depends.

Tom Schwab:

So if you’re doing it all yourself, it’s going to take a lot more time. If you’re working with a partner, a PR agency, or a firm like ours that focuses on podcast interviews, then they’re going to be able to take the heavy lifting off of you and just really leave you with the fun part of going on the podcast and performing.

Lois Sonstegard:

For what you’re saying, podcasting is like just starting a business period. You don’t have results overnight. You don’t see them. Well, sometimes you’ll see them, if you’re one of those fortunate companies in the first three months, but generally it takes a period of time to really build a business so it has a backbone that I can stand on. But we get so impatient, don’t we?

Tom Schwab:

Well, and there are so many podcasters that are, like you said, like businesses, they’re overnight wonders. “Wow. I want to be like that person because they just did it overnight.” What you don’t see as they worked like a dog for years to get those skills or to build that up and then it makes it look easy. I always say it’s like watching football players on a Sunday afternoon, “I want to do that, play a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon to get paid millions of dollars.” It looks easy, but all the work that goes into that. I always say, “The great ones make it look easy,” and that you don’t see all the work that goes into it.

Lois Sonstegard:

Not only the work, but the ups and downs in the career. I had the honor of sitting next to a professional baseball player one day on a plane and he was sharing a little bit about his journey. And what I didn’t realize was how often they go back and forth to different levels of playing. They may not always be at the professional. They may be sent back to the A or the B level, get retooled, and then get bought by somebody else. And so, there’s so much that we don’t see. We see the glamor, but we don’t see the pieces.

Lois Sonstegard:

For people who are starting and they’re looking at using podcasts to build their legacy, Tom, how do they cut through the noise of corporations that are also using podcasts as a marketing vehicle? You have these big voices with big followings, how do you get heard when you’re small and you’re starting?

Tom Schwab:

I think it’s almost the same way with a business. This is the problem that we all have is obscurity and noise, so I think the answer becomes similar and I think also the answer becomes timeless. And sometimes, I often think that my grandfather is better suited for the future—God rest his soul—than my grandkids would be. Because if you ask my grandfather, “How do you do it?” he would say, “Oh, have people introduce you.” So, build your network, have people that know people introduce you.

Tom Schwab:

And now for him he ran a service station in a small town, that was being part of the rotary, that was being part of the country club and it was all small level. But I think for us it’s the same way: get introduced by people that are already trusted and respected. That could be the one-on-one at conferences that could be one-on-one networking. But I think with podcasts or with digital media, podcast is doing that also.

Tom Schwab:

All right Lois. So, none of your audience knows who I am, but because you invited me on here, there’s that transfer of authority, and you’ve got to be specific on what areas you go to. So, you want to make sure you go into the right audience, but I think the more technology comes along, the more we can use the old strategy and the new tools. My grandfather would play golf with three other people. If you were to told him that he could talk to thousands of people over a podcast interview, he probably would’ve given up the game of golf.

Lois Sonstegard:

Isn’t that interesting? We have been talking for half an hour and it seems amazing that time goes as quickly as it has. People I think may want to get in contact with you. So you are at tom@interviewvaletvalet. What would be the best way [crosstalk 00:28:07]?

Tom Schwab:

I’m going to make it even easier because I know as people are listening to podcasts, they’re doing a lot of different things. So, if you just go to interviewvalet(with a V).com/(we’ll go)BML, for building my legacy. I’ll just put a page up there and everything Lois and I talk about will be there. I’ll put all my contact information and even a free copy of the book, if anybody would like that.

Lois Sonstegard:

That’d be wonderful. If any of you have trouble getting in contact with Tom and would like to do so, just email me lois@build2morrow, and I will be glad to pass on his information to you. Thank you so much, Tom, for your time and thank you all for listening today to our podcast. Look forward to talking with you again very soon.