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Ep #128: Tom Schwab: How to Stand Out as a Podcast Guest

• Beate Chelette • Episode 128

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Unlock the power of podcasting to skyrocket your business growth! Join us as Tom Schwab reveals proven strategies to enhance your brand presence, attract your ideal customers, and build lasting relationships through podcasting!

In this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, I connect with Tom Schwab about one of my favorite topics: podcasting. Tom is the founder of Interview Valet and a pioneer in podcast marketing. Tom brings his extensive experience and passion for podcast guesting to the table, offering clear steps on how you can leverage podcast appearances to elevate your expert status and reach your ideal audience.

Tom begins by sharing his core philosophy on the importance of authentic introductions over traditional pitches. He makes it crystal clear that the term "pitch" feels impersonal and transactional, whereas an introduction to a conversation fosters a genuine connection. According to Tom, understanding both the host and the audience of the podcast are essential in crafting an outreach message that resonates and adds value. 

We discuss the pitfalls of mass outreach, such as sending generic emails to hundreds of podcasts, which often end up in spam folders. Instead, Tom advises focusing on a select few podcasts that align with your message and audience. He suggests a methodical approach: listen to the podcast, engage with its content, leave reviews, and interact on social media before reaching out.

A key theme in our episode is the idea of giving before asking. Tom references Gary Vaynerchuk's philosophy of "jab, jab, jab, right hook," which translates to offering value multiple times before making a pitch. He provides practical examples of how to do this, such as sharing valuable insights, promoting the podcast on your platforms, and suggesting specific topics for discussion. 

Tom also touches on the importance of creating a lasting impression during your podcast appearance. He shares stories of guests who treated podcast interviews as mere transactions, failing to engage with the host or promote the episode afterward, which ultimately damaged their reputation. 

The conversation moves to the mission of Interview Valet, which aims to introduce inspiring thought leaders to millions of people for the betterment of all. Tom shares his criteria for selecting clients, focusing on those who have a positive and impactful message.

We also explore the spiritual and strategic aspects of podcast guesting. We discuss how meaningful conversations can spark new ideas and change perspectives, contributing to personal and professional growth. 

If you’re ready to take your expert status to the next level, don’t miss this insightful conversation with Tom Schwab. Visit https://interviewvalet.com/ to access valuable resources and explore how you can use targeted podcast interviews to reach your ideal customers. 


Resources Mentioned: Linkedin | Twitte

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Tom Schwab:

Hi. This is Tom Schwab, and I'm the founder of Interview Valet and the author of Podcast Guest Profits: How to Grow Your Business with the Targeted Interview Strategy. And on this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, I'm going to share with you how to use targeted podcast interviews to talk directly to your ideal customers, how to grow your brand and grow your business by using podcast guesting. You see, I believe you're not just one funnel away, but rather you're one conversation away. Check out the episode and see if you agree.

BEATE CHELETTE:

And hello, fabulous person! Beate Chelette here. I am the host of the Business Growth Architect Show and I want to welcome you to today's episode where we discuss how to navigate strategy and spirituality to achieve time and financial freedom. Truly successful people have learned how to master both a clear intention and a strategy to execute that in a spiritual practice that will help them to stay in alignment and on purpose, please enjoy the show and listen to what our guest today has to say about this very topic. Welcome back. This is your host, Beate Chelette from the Business Growth Architect Show, and today we're going to talk about podcasting. And is podcasting an option for you to get your authority, your expert status build. How do you figure out guesting and hosting? And there is no better man on the call than Tom Schwab, who is the CEO, founder of Interview Valet, who is going to talk about everything podcasting. Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom Schwab:

It is awesome to be here. It's such a timely and timeless topic. I'm excited to dive into this.

BEATE CHELETTE:

host their own podcast show? Why?

Tom Schwab:

To me, the goal is not podcasting, right? The goal is not to be a host or a guest. It's what comes from it. And today, I think more and more It's we're not all one funnel away. We're one conversation away. And, you know, we're one conversation away from our great next great team member, from our great partner or our great client. And I think this idea of breaking through the noise has almost gotten laughable, right? Everybody's yelling, nobody's getting heard. And I think podcasting gives you the opportunity to get heard by your ideal customers, to get that know, like and trust. And really they start to turn you up or turn you off. And even if you look at some of the new things that Google is doing right with their algorithms and everything, everything they're saying that's important, experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. You prove all of those on a podcast.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Do you think podcasting is a long game, or is it like helping people with their instant gratifications? To say, I've been on 20 interviews, I've been on 50. Is it long term, or is it short term?

Tom Schwab:

It's a long term game. And I would say business is a long term game, right? There's, you have people out there that are chasing transactions, but that's not growing a business. And if you're all just looking for a silver bullet to get you through this week, that's not business. Business is a long term game. It's based on relationships. It's based on your authority, your trust, your brand out there. Podcasts are timely and timeless, and you may do a podcast interview that you do it today, it doesn't air for, say, 42 days. That's the average or the mean, and you know, somebody's not going to hear it that first day. But I've gotten leads. I've gotten customers from podcasts five years old, and to them, it was totally new. So it's really that idea, are you just going for a quick win, or you want to grow your business and grow it for the long term?

BEATE CHELETTE:

So the strategy for me to go on podcasts, or to have my own podcast, is it the same strategy, or is it a slightly different strategy? How would you explain that?

Tom Schwab:

it's the same platform, but a different strategy? And often I'll hear people say, Should I be a guest or a host? Well, it's the same platform, but different goals. It's think about Uber, right? Should I be a driver or a passenger? Well, what are your goals? So if you're a host, it's a great way to nurture your current leads, to nurture your current customers, but when you're a guest, that's the way to go out there and get new backlinks, get new exposure, get new leads, especially today in you know, 2024 this idea of, if I build it, they will come, right? If I start a brand new podcast, everybody's gonna come and listen to it. It doesn't work that way. Discoverability is still such a the Achilles heel in podcasting. So I really think it depends what you want to do with the podcast. Are you nurturing your current audience or trying to get a new one? And that's the difference between hosting and guesting.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Thank you for that explanation. I really like that. So your company, the Interview Valet. So you help, you help people who want to expand their expert status to get their message out. So tell us a little bit about how did you, how did you kind of get into that, and what's the purpose of you actually doing the deliberate placement of your guests in particular shows.

Tom Schwab:

So first of all, I don't think there's anything in life that is radically new, right? There's not a revolution, it's an evolution. And this really started from my experience with inbound marketing. My last company was hubspots first e commerce case study, and we built up the entire business with guest blogging. And that was the way to tap into other people's audience, to get that know, like and trust. And about 2014 as I was selling that business, I was in a mastermind, and people said, Well, what strategy did you use to grow your business? I said, Well, guest blogging, but it doesn't work anymore, and so I hypothesized that you could use podcast interviews much like we used to use guest blogs. We tested it. It worked. Well, actually, even had a client that bought us the domain interviewvalet.com, and that's what started it. And the first few years, it was funny. We I do my elevator pitch, and people would go, what's a podcast? But it gave us the opportunity to build those structures and really figure it out. And from the very beginning, one of the things I looked at was that we're going to use this platform to amplify the good messages out there, right? There's tools, you know, a knife can be used for good or for bad. Podcasts can be used for good or for bad. Our business can be used to amplify the best in the world or the worst in the world, right? So we only work with inspiring thought leaders that are looking for win, wins for everyone. And really, it's the idea of I always pushed back when marketers are saying, Oh, you're just one funnel away. Nothing good in my life has ever come through a funnel, right? I didn't, I didn't meet my bride because I had the perfect funnel. And then put out Facebook ads, right? Or you look at your best clients, did they really swim through a funnel? And one of the things I always look at is like, who am I aspiring to? Is it the loudest person on the internet or the best business to business companies, professional services companies? And I think about that. And if all of these funnels and three day challenges and everything else worked so well, how come you don't see the big professional services using those you know, you don't see Ernst and Young McKinsey, any respected consultant doing that. So that's one of the things that I realized, that it's, you know, we're all just one conversation away, and at Interview Valet, we help arrange those conversations and make them powerful. It's almost

BEATE CHELETTE:

like a field relief when you say that Tom because I have have talked about this on the show excessively. I do believe that the entire internet marketing, especially whatever the top 20 it's it's a club, and they built this whole thing via affiliate marketing, and they only take in new people in this group of the top circle if they have an affiliate offer that doesn't compete with anybody else, so that everybody gets handed from one to the other to the other. Once you have the funnel, you're going to need the online course. Once you have the online course, you need the lead generation. When you have the lead generation, you need to figure out or convert better. Then you need the sales training, and then you need to speak from stage. But then you need another funnel. Then you need then you need a coaching program, then you need a high ticket program. Then you need a mastermind. And for all of these pieces, there's one person on this, on this round, that is making money two years later,$250,000 later, you still don't have a business. So you say, Don't do that. I

Tom Schwab:

say don't do that. Right? If you follow what everybody else's does, you're going to get the same results as them, right? And how are you going to stand out? It's funny. I remember years ago, my my wife, got an email from somebody and from a company, and she's like, wow, this is weird. It doesn't sound like them. And sure enough, I looked at the email, and then I looked up a book that I had bought, and I bet her, I said dinner on Friday night, I bet you. I can tell you the subject line of the next email that you will get from them. And she said, No way. So he made the bet. And you know what? The next day, I won the bet, because all they were doing was following Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula, right? And while it may have worked for Jeff, you know, a day

BEATE CHELETTE:

20 years, 20 years ago, 20, 20, 20, not 10, not 5, 20.

Tom Schwab:

20 years ago. So the market, you assume that the market has not changed in 20 years, and that everybody else is going to do the same thing, right? I often think about it, it's like if, if you went to the grocery store and you told me, Oh, Tom, you have to go to aisle two, right? Because aisle two goes fast, the fastest. Well, you're trying to be helpful, right? Maybe you've even got a course on it, right? But the problem is, it's a different market at a different time, so I don't want to just follow what you did blindly. Maybe I can ask you, well, why do you think that worked so well for you? Oh, because one of the aisles was, you know, had a mother with lots of children, and I knew that was going to be slow. The other one had a bunch of elderly people with as much gray hair as me, and I knew that line was going to be slow. So you can look back at those things and say, Why did they work? But I think just blindly copying, copying them is is a recipe, a strategy for failure. And so I'd rather, rather say, What do I know that works? Can trust has always worked. Being seen on other people's stages has always worked right? My grandfather built his business talking at the Chamber of Commerce, at the Rotary Club, there used to be as seen on TV, as seen on radio. There was guest blogs. And it keeps evolving. And I think really now one of the great, easy ways for business to grow it is to be seen on other people's podcasts. And to me, that big picture strategy of what am I trying to do here is so much more important than the tactic of what's the heck? What's the magic subject line that I've got to do?

BEATE CHELETTE:

You know, open rates. Click through, rates, point 2% yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And it gives me anxiety, Tom, if you really want to know, because you feel so inadequate, because you see the big internet marketers doing it, but you don't understand the size of the machine that they have and how long they've perfected it, and how much they pay for all of this. It's really not a business for most people. One of the big challenges I think people have to understand is the size of the audience for a podcast. Needless to say, everybody would like to be on a top 100 podcast all the time, but there are a lot of specific podcasts that are very industry specific that rank in the top 10% but those are not 1000s of downloads. Those are hundreds of downloads. What would you say to somebody that says, Yeah, well, the audience is not big enough. Or can you promise that I'm going to get on the top top shows? How do you handle that objection?

Tom Schwab:

I My great thing, and I, I've got it on a coffee cup. It's called, better is better. You know, bigger is not better. More is not better. Better is better. So if you think, Oh, I just want to be on a big podcast? Well, if you were on a Super Bowl ad, do you think that would help your business? Probably not, because most of the clients aren't your ideal clients. So why would you want to be on that show? Or maybe you would be ideal for that, but your business isn't ready, right? You've only got one shot at the Oprah show, right? You don't want to be on Oprah six months before your book launches or your product launches, because you're not coming back there. And the other thing too is that it's an ego thing, and I dealt with this early on, and I remember being on a podcast. It was a big name podcast. They get about 35,000 downloads per episode in the first 30 days. So that means that they're in the top 1% of all podcasts I went on there. It was an ego thing. I knew it wasn't my audience. I got probably a handful of leads. I don't think any of them ever turned out to customers. Now fast forward, I was on a podcast about a month later, and the host told me that she got 250 downloads per episode. Okay, you know, it was an ideal audience. From that, I signed up 20 customers, right? And it's this idea that there's more fish in the ocean than there are in a barrel. But if you find a barrel of fish, go there every time. And, you know, I, I think it's an ego thing often, right? We see these big internet marketers that are saying, Oh, we're doing this. We're doing that more and bigger, and

BEATE CHELETTE:

four hours a week overnight, I'm ranking in the money watts of cash Ferraris outside,

Tom Schwab:

and it's funny that they're there, but then you look at the best, you know, like you said, high ticket offers. Well, if high ticket offers work so well off of Facebook ads and funnels, why doesn't Airbus and Boeing sell from that right? If Professional Consulting works so well off of, you know, Facebook and funnels and challenges. How come you don't see, you know, McKenzie doing that? And it's funny. It's, I think we're getting to see the point right now where people are realizing the emperor has no clothes. I agree with

BEATE CHELETTE:

you think people are looking for intimacy and is as an intimate connection. Yes, I think people look for intimacy as an intimate conversations. I think people look for the no BS stuff. I think people are looking for more than just money. Think people are looking for that human so we're going to talk next about sort of how this ties into spirituality, how you help your client to find that sweet spot. And we'll be right back Tom. We talk now about the strategy behind podcasting, that better is better, that more is not necessarily more. So one of the critical parts about going on a show and being on a show like mine or me, podcasting a podcast, guesting on other shows, is the pitch. How do I find this positioning with my message that resonates with the show host. Is it a one size fits all? Is it a it has to be tweaked every time. Tell us a little bit about how that works. And

Tom Schwab:

first of all, I hate. You shouldn't hate. I despise the word pitch. Pitch. I know where it comes from. You pitch an idea, you pitch a story, but where did it come in that we are now pitching people right pitching you should pitch an inanimate object. So we always look at it as introducing and I think that makes a big difference. How can I introduce myself or my client to this host? Well, first of all, you have to know who both parties are, and then find that common connection between them. So it can't be just boilerplate, you know, I hope this day finds you well. I want to be a podcast guest on your show. Those go to the spam folder, right? I was getting before I even had a podcast, I would get five of those a day. Everybody wanted to be on my podcast. I didn't have one, right? So spend some time. Once again, more is not better. Better is better. So don't just focus on, oh, I'm gonna pitch this list of 1000 shows that I just bought. No find, find five or six that you're like. I believe that my audience is listening to these, listen to the show. Figure out what you can give them. You know, Gary Vaynerchuk says, What? Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and I probably missed a couple jabs in there as give, give, give, give, ask, right. Give it the time to listen to the podcast. Give it a rating and review podcasters look at that, make a comment on their social media, then reach out and say, I think I could provide this value to your audience. Be specific, connect the dots. Don't make them do it all. Even give them to the point of this could be a great topic or discussion for it, right? Here's the title of the podcast interview. If you keep giving they'll ask you to be on the show, and I'll hear people say, well, it's not scalable, right? That takes too much time. Well, what are you trying for? Are you trying for efficiency or effectiveness? Because you can spam 1000 different people to ask to be on the podcast. And guess what? Get nothing. Oh no, you'll get some podcasts. You'll get some you'll get some invitations, but they're not shows that you would want to be on or that you would be proud to be on, so you've actually just hurt yourself, right? So why not focus on effectiveness? Because say, you find one great podcast and you do a good job on there podcast hosts, no podcast hosts. So at the end of that, you say, thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed this. Do you know any other podcast where I would bring value now if they introduce you personally to two other hosts, wow, now you just have three podcasts, and then ask them again. You build your repertoire, your body of work there by doing great work, not just spamming people. And I see people that do harm to them themselves. A couple years ago, we had someone that came to us and they wanted us to represent them. And we went back and looked, and the previous summer, I think, they had done 100 podcast interviews, and some of the podcasts we knew the host very well, and we just said, Hey, what do you think of this guest? And they said, Oh, I would never have them on again. It was like a transaction, right? They came on, they never responded to emails. They never promoted the episode afterwards. They had they had hurt themselves in that previous year, and we had to tell them, we can't represent you. I said, the best that you can do is probably write a personal thank you note to our excuse me, a personal apology note to all those hosts, and you may be able to get on again, but I said, You did so much harm there. And they said, well, the agency I hired just said me, they could get me on 100 shows, and I'm like, and they did right, and they did do a lot of harm. What were you trying to do? Maximize? Were you up? Were you optimizing for? Appearances, or we are optimizing for results. And like you said, I think often we are optimizing it for the wrong things, right? Business should be optimized for profits, and profits means that people value what you're doing, right. Should value it so much that they give you the money, right, and you only get that from ideal clients, this idea of, oh, I just want more leads, I've got to buy more Facebook leads, all the rest of that. Well, it's almost like optimizing for leads is like optimizing for Facebook likes. It doesn't mean anything. Ultimately, it's got to be the value you bring to the market.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I'm so glad you said that. I'm both. I'm a guest and obviously I'm a host. So there's nothing worse than when I have these over exaggerated introductions. We have, and they're all AI generated. We have a wonderful, fabulous guest who will have an enlightened conversation with you where you delve into spirituality and strategy. And here are the bullet points of what he's talking about. He's an accountant. He's a CPA. He's well known in his area. He can give financial advice. I mean, how does this even relate to strategy and and spirituality? I think, has absolutely zero relevance. So we ended up doing a Google form now where people have to actually outline what is the spiritual part that you want to talk about, and what is the strategy that you can share? And that's shut down our podcast response rates for guests, probably by 90% because most people don't want to do that.

Tom Schwab:

So it shows you how much they really want to be on your podcast. Not at all. One of the, yeah, one of the things that I have used, and I love it, because sometimes I joke that English is my second language. I don't know what my first one is, but I'm better talking than I am writing, and so instead of me trying to write out this long email, right, I'll just grab the phone and record a video, right? I really love the Business Growth Architect Show. I liked this, this episode. I think I could bring this value, you know, if you think that that might be a good fit, just let me know, and we can make it happen, right? And people will say, Oh, well, that's not scalable. Well, it's effective, right? And people know that it's me and not some third world VA. And at the end of the day, I look at the podcast interview as the beginning of a relationship, not just a transaction.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I feel, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, and I think that's really important that we we really make sure this message is received by our listeners today. If you are thinking about becoming an expert or really taking your expert status to the next level, and you want to hire somebody like Tom and Interview Valet is make sure that you understand that, as you said, Better is better. I can only have 52 conversations a year because we are weekly podcasts. We don't have seasons. We just, you know, we broadcast year round. I select my 52 guests because I only need 52 guests. I don't need hundreds of them. I don't need a CPA who is very successful and a member of the Chamber of Commerce. I need somebody who's bringing something to my show that my audience hasn't heard. That is something that's going to make them think that's something that makes them have a takeaway that really moves the needle. And I want to talk to you now next time a little bit about the spiritual aspect of it, because how does something that feels, you know, strategic? What's the spiritual component of what you do and how you do it?

Tom Schwab:

A couple things there. One is that words have meaning, right? And things and ideas are so powerful, right? And you put them out there, and they're going to land in good soil or not, right? And so you go on a podcast thinking, this is the best soil, right? You do your your due diligence, you put your ideas out there, and some people will say, I believe in that, and and go along, and they'll, they'll come along other people say, No, that's wrong. I don't, I don't agree with that. Either way, that's fine, right? I don't say they're wrong or I'm wrong. But let's have a discussion here on ideas, because ideas are the only thing that have ever changed the world and not just ideas that you all we already know, right? One of our clients, Bix, bixen, I love how he says, if you haven't changed your mind lately, how do you know you still have one?

BEATE CHELETTE:

And it's true, it's not our strategy. Uh huh, well, and

Tom Schwab:

you better be open to it, because if not, like you said, if you're still using the strategy from 20 years ago, it's not going to work for you. So when we started this company, this is my second company, my last one I built up and sold, I set the mission as to personally introduce inspiring thought leaders to millions of people. They could serve for the betterment of all. And I can still remember my mom, who's now 82 she doesn't know what a podcast is, but she looked at it, she's like, what does that have to do with podcasting? And I said, Mom, it's not about podcasting, right? That's just the medium. It's the tool. The idea is, how can you how can you amplify the good in the world. How can you introduce people to new ideas that may change their mind, change their world, right? How can you do that? And so we're very important, and this is one of those litmus tests that we look at with every new prospect that comes to us. It's like, do we think they're an inspiring thought leader, right? I'm not going to promote the person that's got the newest course on why you should do a blog. I'm sorry, that's just not that interesting, right? That was like 30 years ago. The other thing is that for the betterment of all, and we just look at that, that it's got to be a win for everyone. Somebody's got to come with the right heart to put it out there and say, this has got to be a win for the host, for the audience. You're not using and abusing audiences. So I've been very pleased and honored by the talent that we have that comes to us. You know, leading nonfiction authors, category designers, professional services, coaches and consultants that want to make the world a better place, and love to help them amplify that. And we've also had some people that prospects that come in and we just say, we're not the agency for you. We've had a couple clients that started and we're like, yeah, we're not the agency for you. And refunded them their money because I didn't feel good about what we were doing. I'm proud of every client we have. I'm proud of every team member, and I'm proud of the ideas that we're helping spread.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yeah, yeah. And I've had some of your your clients on my show, and everybody's always been super, super professional. So this has been absolutely fascinating. I take a lot away from our conversation today, that there is really an element about focusing on spreading your message and understanding on how this message can be amplified through a particular type of a podcast, and then even when I want to do guesting or hosting right, that there has to be this, this magic that that matches, because A good conversation is a good conversation. I always say I want the audience to feel like we're actually having a coffee or glass of wine, whatever the preference is, and then they're eavesdropping into a real conversation. Sometimes I'd say, gasp, a bad word, but there is this reality element about it, where people say it feels like an actual conversation. So Tom for somebody who is now thinking about increasing their expert status or building their authority and wanting to go on podcast interviews, where would we send them? How can they find you?

Tom Schwab:

Yeah. So the best practice I'll show you is just always to send them one place and give them three ways to say Yes, right? So I'll give you an example. Go to interviewvalet.com/architect, and everything we talk about will be on there. And there's really three ways that we can help you. First, first one's easy. Doesn't take much time. Podcast interview, marketing assessment, 10 questions, can you use this strategy? Next way is, I wrote a book. It's called

"Podcast Guest Profits:

How to Grow Your Business with the Targeted Interview Strategy". You can buy it on Amazon, but if you go to the website there, I'll give you a free copy. If you're in the US, I'll mail it to you. If you're overseas, we'll give you the digital version. And then finally, if you're listening to this and saying, this sort of makes sense, right? I'd like to see how I could use this in my business, I could talk directly to my ideal customers on targeted podcast interviews. Well, I'll put my calendar there. We can have a discovery call and explore that, and all of that will be at interviewvalet.com/architect,

BEATE CHELETTE:

wonderful. Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I am doing this very selfishly. I'm always learning something So Tom, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, and that is it for us today. Thank you again for listening to or watching the episode of the business growth architect show. Wherever you pick it up, please share today's takeaways with maybe just one other person who needs to hear what we were talking about today and until next time and GOODBYE. So appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode. Please subscribe to the podcast, give us a five star, review, a comment and share this episode with one more person so that you can help us help more people, thank you again until next time. Goodbye. You.

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