Guesting, Growth, and the New Rules of Authority, with Tom Schwab

Guesting, Growth, and the New Rules of Authority, with Tom Schwab

In this episode, Charlotte welcomes Tom Schwab, founder of Interview Valet and pioneer of podcast interview marketing. Tom shares his journey from engineering and e-commerce to becoming a leading voice in authority building for consultants, coaches, and advisors. The conversation explores why authority—not attention—is the real differentiator for service providers, and how podcast guesting accelerates trust and business growth.

Key topics include:

• Tom’s origin story and the evolution of podcast interview marketing
• The difference between attention and true authority
• How AI is now a major referral source, and why podcasts are favoured by AI engines
• Practical strategies for leveraging podcast interviews to build authority and generate leads
• The compounding effect of consistent guesting versus hosting your own show
• The importance of authenticity, niching, and the “heck yes or no” client filter
• Actionable steps for founders to start building authority in 30 days

Tom also shares tips on repurposing podcast content, nurturing prospects, and why consistency trumps chasing shiny objects.

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Transcript

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Audio Only - All Participants 0:40

In fact, one of them bought us the domain interview valet and said, here's what you need to call it. And the first few years I'd give my elevator pitch. So excited to do that. And people would look at me and say. What's a podcast but's pod? When was this, Tom? What, what year are we talking? This is like 2015, 2016. Yeah. It wasn't until about 2018, that people really understood the power of podcasting and, you know, today, podcasting, it's almost a funny name, right? Podcast comes from the iPod. And most people that listen have no idea what an iPod is, right. Google it. I know, I was thinking about this last night. I was, watching that series on Netflix. Nobody wants this. And they talk about the pod. And I, so many of the people that I wear, particularly in the US call it the pod. And I'm like, but hang on, you are too young to even know what an iPod was. My dissertation was on the iPod. That's how old I'm at university. But, yeah, I I, I just always, when you just like think about it more literally, it is so funny that that's where the name comes from. But, sorry. you say that now and people go, I didn't know you were a history major. Right. And so with that, you know, today, what's a podcast, right? it's on YouTube. It's on, it's on social media with the shorts. Heck, I just saw this morning that TikTok is starting their own podcast network. So it's this idea of you can create the way you want to and then repurpose it and put it on different platforms right there. there are people that just read the transcripts. so it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's incredible. I think like it is the most natural, of marketing techniques. When I think about, well, certainly for me, chatting and conversation, and that's how I get to. That's how I connect ideas in my head. So when it comes to like the, the starting point, the foundational stone of, what I think of as like a marketing waterfall effect, to me it starts with a conversation. So why not record it? And then you can extrapolate it and do loads of other stuff with it, as you just mentioned, whether it's copy or video or you know, and beyond audio. but lots of people feel like they need to be given permission to go create a podcast. Like they think, well, who am I to, position myself as an authority? And I, I want to get your thoughts on that. I know we talked about attention versus authority and why you reject more attention equals more business idea and what authority looks like in practice. And I'm curious to hear you explain a bit more around that because I think if, if you've been more than 10 years in. One niche, you have the right, you have the authority to be an authority. and for many, the easiest way to start doing that is a podcast. And I think you need to look, it's what's the easiest way for you to do it. Mm-hmm. Right. Some people like to write, other people, like to talk, I'm more of a talker, but I think that authenticity right now with writing people, first thing they think of is, oh, that was done with ai. Right? You just wrote a blog. or they wrote it for you. Whereas I think that authenticity that comes through with conversations, the AI sees it and people see it. And at the end of the day, you had mentioned, the better the marketing, the easier the sale, especially for services, right? Because if they hear you, if they understand your heart, your vision, how you see the world, they see the problems they're facing. They're either gonna be drawn to you or repelled from you. Mm-hmm. And either way is fine. Right? At the end of the day, we don't need more leads no matter what. Everybody is spamming you in your email saying We can get you 50 more leads or 70 more phone calls today. Right. That is, that is activity. Value and profits come from ideal clients, so why don't we just talk and they get to know us, and they can either say, yes, Charlotte is the person I wanna work with, or No, and that's fine, and there's someone else that would be a better fit because at the end of the day, it saves both your time and their time. And the other thing about Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And something that I lean into more as I get older and grumpier and more stubborn and have less energy. I'm less likely to be anything other than myself. and I think, that is authenticity, whether it's in my personal life or my, professional life. And I see that as an advantage in the sense that you will, the people who like you will come towards you faster and vice versa. And to me, that is speeding up of, the know, like, and trust process and the, the movement from, Awareness through to becoming a client. And I'm all for that. I don't think there are many things we can do to speed up that process with many of the high ticket, expensive high cost offers that some of my clients, I work with many service providers who will only take on clients that are over kind of $60,000 and often upwards of a million. And so, that decision making process isn't fast. you can do to really speed things up. But one thing you can do is, is be yourself. And people will latch onto that sooner or it will repel them and they'll go the other way. This idea that you're one funnel away, right? That somebody that's hired you for six figures or seven figures, that they're gonna buy a $7 trip wire product. Mm-hmm. And then they're gonna get nurtured for six years, and then they're gonna give you, six or seven figures. It doesn't work that way. Services are different than products, right? When you buy a product, you can return it, you can demo it, you can even, you can compare the spec sheet, right? If I'm comparing a computer, I can look at the spec sheet of it for services is different, right? You're betting on the jockey. Right? So really this idea is you buy services, you sell products, and I think that's where it's fundamentally different for us. People have to get to really know, like, and trust you. And they're betting on you. Yeah. Completely. and I, one of the things that. Yeah, I feel like comes up a lot for me is, well, that sounds like a hell of a lot of trust in a process where you don't know how long it's gonna take. Can you speak to that a little bit? what does, I agree with you. it's never just about one more funnel fix or let's just do this, or let's just waiting around. The magic thing is around the corner, but it is important to be able to share with clients that the reason for believing in this, the reason for moving through that medium to long term marketing journey, which requires effort, energy, money, time. So what does that process look like, for your clients? Yeah, and I think there's this lie out there that marketing is a vending machine, right? That you put a coin in and you get a prize out and it's so transactional there. And that might work for a low ticket product. Yeah. But for high value services, this doesn't, and. So it's really this idea of, like you said, when you introduced me, you've heard about me in numerous places. You've heard about me from different people. And so it's this idea of how can you intentionally seed the market with your content, with your data. Mm-hmm. And with, like you said, you've heard about me, not that you read about me, right? So often in our business it's personal referrals, right? Yeah. Somebody mentions it to you and that's where podcasts come in, where people have actually heard you, they've heard people talking about you. And today 70% of people listen to podcasts sped up. So they're always out there listening. And really the best customers are usually the ones that are always looking for what's next. The early adopters, they're not just going with the status quo. So trying to intentionally see the market with. Your name, your information. with ai, they call it share a voice and sentiment. Right? And that's one of the signals that AI looks for. So we think about it, share a voice. If you're on a podcast that's 45 minutes of content, the sentiment is typically positive, right? There's, there's not gotcha podcasts. So it's this idea of going out there and very intentionally talking about different topics so you get, don't get indexed for the same 30 minutes of content all the time. Mm-hmm. And then also being very clear, right? This is who I work with, this is who I bring great value to. this is the, the, the kinds of things that I believe. And then the flip side, this is who I don't work with. You mentioned this as you were putting it out there. You work with B2B service-based companies, six to seven figures. Well, that's important because the people that are out there and saying, I have a full service digital marketing agency, what is that? Right. I don't know how to refer somebody to that. Mm-hmm. It's, it's so wide that it's useless. so on the podcast being very specific, like I'll always talk about, we do a lot of virtual book tours, podcasts are a great way to do that. But we do it for nonfiction books with the business behind it because we have never been able to see how you can get positive return on investment off of a fiction book or a memoir or a coloring book. So that's important to put out there because people hear that and will self-identify. And also ai, when they're giving you leads, will self-identify with that too. Mm-hmm. So let's get onto ai. When did AI start driving leads for you and what changed in late 2024 to make it visible to you and your prospects? Well, mid 2024, we had, a client come to us. We'd worked with them for a long time. Agent ai, it's Dharmesh SAS company. he's one of the founders of HubSpot. And I can remember asking them, well, why do you wanna be on podcasts? And their answer was, because AI is indexing all the podcasts. Yeah. that's interesting. And while they had said that, it wasn't until November of 2024 when chat GPT started to show the sources. Mm-hmm. And you, you can look today, on, on a, a search. Often they'll pull Wikipedia first, then they'll pull Amazon. If you've got a book, then your website's up there. And then after that, it's all long form collaborative content. And because they believe, well, AI believes that that is human content. And the big thing right now is they are trying to index all human content. the problem's called, model collapse. Sometimes people call it digital dementia. The idea is if if AI trains on ai, it gets worse and worse. It's almost like a copy of a copy of a copy. Yeah. So they're looking for new content all the time. And that is, podcast interviews, right? Two people talking. And so we started to understand it in early or mid 24, we started to see leads in late 24. And by May of 2025, AI has become our best referral source, right? That's our best referral channel. And it's been very intentional in December, more than double down. I always used to do podcast interviews, but now we have four other team members that do them also because they can talk to different verticals and, so that really gets that share of voice, the sentiment out there. It's so, so interesting. I'm just searching in my, mastermind community at the same time as you're talking because I, what I'm hearing a lot from my peers, especially in the US at the moment, coaches and consultants, is that they're getting a lot of referrals from chat EBT. So literally the words that a client use, so a, a colleague uses in our chat is person DM me on Instagram and just put a call on the form, asked how they found me, and she wrote chat, GPT actually lll, I was typing in my inquiries about finding a blah blah, blah, blah, resource and a few resources popped up, you and one of four specifically named resources. And I just looked so interesting and I seeing more and more people, get referred clients by ai. So I think the fact that you are kind of reverse engineering that in a way because of this inspiration from, um, from that client of yours and then kind of putting it to use for your own business is so fascinating. Do you feel like it is at the early stages of that, do you feel like there's still opportunity to kind of. Take advantage of it. Very much so, and I think the opportunity is to do things that are effective, not necessarily efficient. Right? AI has let us do, dare I say, crap at scale, right? And so, yeah, there's this idea of, well, I could put out a thousand blogs in the time I could do a, podcast or podcast interview, or the idea that, in the time we've talked here, both of us could have sent out a million emails, right? It's very efficient, it's not very effective. So looking at things that are effective and then to make them more valuable by, don't just go on the interview, promote it afterwards, right? We purpose the content, get the shorts, the clips, everything right? There's, yeah. People will say, Joe Rogan gets heard by a hundred million people. That's a number that gets thrown around all the time. No, he gets 2 million downloads per episode. Makes 'em the number one podcast in the us the under other 98 million people. They're listened to a short or a clip and they're like, oh yeah, I listened to the, interview with Elon Musk. And it's like, well, you listen to 90 seconds of it. But other podcasters can do that. They, guests can do it the same way. and it doesn't take more of your time. You can slice and dice and, get a month's worth of content out there. Yeah, and we do this a lot with our clients. We have a program called Authority Builder, which is, um, it differs from what you do in the sense that we're helping them to build an authority platform, whether it's a book or a podcast, that they are able to then create content for in a natural way on an ongoing basis, particularly if it's a podcast. But the goal being that for 20 minutes of your time you spend. Discussing a topic or having a conversation with somebody, um, which is the actual content of the podcast itself. You can then extrapolate that and we do it for clients with 18 different, um, outputs from a single episode, which means basically their marketing for the next two weeks to a month is sorted depending on the cadence of the publishing. I just think it's the smartest way to work for anybody who is, catering for an audience that absorbs information in different ways because we don't all just read, or we don't all just listen or just watch. but also for the people who struggled to come up with new ideas or topics. and the fact, just like the, the idea that, it takes us so many times for a message, particularly if it's like a. A, a very kind of, innovative message or something that's different to the audience. It takes many times of hearing it before it really resonates with them and they understand what you're talking about. And I'm not saying people are stupid, I'm not saying that at all. I think our attention spans are less these days than ever before. But I do think that what we take for granted, because we're doing it every day for our audience, isn't necessarily quite as, cut and dry. And they'll need to hear it kind of discussed in different ways or repeated back to them in order for it to really resonate with them. So I think you're doing yourself and your, your, audience a disservice if you just put things out there once. So I love that kind of concept of recycling something we really encourage our clients to do. Yeah. One of my favorite phrases is what's ordinary to you is amazing to others. And you said at the beginning there, well, what would I talk about? Right. I don't have expertise. I, I'm not an expert. Well. You are an expert, right? Mm-hmm. With the time that you have spent in your industry, the viewpoints you have the point of the point of view, all the rest of that, you've got something to add there. And the funny part is, is that we have seen that the vast majority of our clients that are guests are introverts and they love one-on-one conversations. Yeah. They don't necessarily love small talk, but they will talk about their business, their passion. And really that's, you and I are having the same conversation that we would if we were just sitting down over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or a pint, you know, completely depending, depending on the time of day. And so, you know, I could ask anyone, you know, what's the top 10 questions that you get? Right? Yeah. They could do those. Okay. Those are 10 episodes. What are the biggest min misconceptions? There's another 10. Yeah. Where do you see the industry going? All of those things. And that is something that you can't get from ai. Right? An interview, that's the podcast interview. That's the six hacks to make six figures in six seconds. That's stupid. Right? That's a, that's a listicle, that's a blog. But let's talk about what's working today, where we see it going. That is an interesting conversation. I just wanna ask you like, how, so you, you came up with some really good points there about how to discover topics that you should discuss. I, what a big thing for us is, is exactly what you said. Make a note down of all the things that people, mention to you, the questions you get asked. I always encourage my clients to, and most of my clients carry around a, a moleskin notebook like this one that I'm jotting down in right now. And I always encourage them to use the back page to write down any of the kind of. Phrases or questions that they hear repeated by clients, because that is, I mean, that is like a mini version of client listening, right? It's the less intentional kind of way of, doing client listening. But it is active listening. And when you repeat those things back to people or explore them, they do think you're slightly psychic. It's so rare to be listened to properly these days. but I'm curious like through the lens of a, like gaming AI so to speak, how do you decide on topics like how you vary? 'cause you mentioned never talking about the same thing again. You're not talking about the same thing again and again, having a diversity of, if not topics, but the angles that you look at something from, where do you start with this? Is it a bit like old school kind of SEO keywords? Do you look for kind of like specific phrases, that you know you can kind of rank highly for in ai or what, how are you doing that right now? Is there a best practice? Yeah. So AI is different than SEO, right? 'cause it's not just a ranking for a keyword. Mm-hmm. It's ranking for an idea, but then specifically to a person. Yeah. There was a great study that came outta Cornell, university recently, and they said that AI converted nine times better than SEO. And it was interesting. Now, granted, this was for e-commerce. They said the first prompt was 29 words. And so that's not that. Talk about a long tail keyword. Yeah. And that they talked with the AI for six minutes before they came to the website. Yeah. And AI knew this stuff about them. So I really think it's more these long form conversations where you say the right thing. The question then becomes, well, what do I talk about? And those are the topics. You don't wanna do the same interview over and over and over. Right. It's like, yeah, if somebody said, I publish a daily blog, well good for you. And then you find out it's the same blog every day, it's like you don't get credit for that. So as you start to think about topics off the top of your head, you can come up probably five or seven things that I like. Right. Give those to the host the very beginning and have that, that outside view. That could be clients, right? What you're writing in the back of your, your moleskin notebook. Yeah. One of the things that we do is we record all of our calls so that we don't have to go back ask the same question with our clients, but once a month we'll come in and say, what are the most common questions that people were asking? Right? Yeah. Just load up all the transcripts in there. Yeah. And if you ask me what the most common question is, I'll probably tell you the one that was just asked, right? It's that, yeah. Recency effect. But all of a sudden it comes and it says, these are all the different questions. Boom. There's different ones. Or you listen to a podcast, right? You do a podcast interview. Take that transcript, put it in and say, we have a, a thing where we, grade all the podcasts and give feedback, and one of the questions are, what other topics could we talk about? And it's, it's that sort of, that outside observer. and you can use AI for that. And so from that standpoint, you should never run out of topics. And sometimes it can even be for the specific, right? So talking on a professional services podcast. Okay. Let's talk about how professional services can use podcast interview marketing. Well, now I'm on a category design podcast. Well, here's how category designers can use it. It's the same theme, but different examples, Mm-hmm. Why it works for non-fiction authors, why it doesn't work for fiction or memoir. So doing different takes on that. So that, it's that whole thing of content is king, but context is God. So make sure that you are very specific to your audience and you know who you're talking to there. Hmm. Yeah. So another great reason to niche in on niche, in, depending on where you're listening to, is from on who your target audience is or find ways of describing them, which are the ways that they would recognize themselves in, yeah. Super interesting. And just, thinking about how this all gets indexed in terms of ai what is the role of transcripts in this So how are the podcasts being indexed? Yeah. And should you submit a transcript or is the internet doing that for you? should this have a, should have a role in your show notes? Is this something that you should be doing specifically to, help move this along? there's a lot of SEO people will say, you know, well, we've gotta put all the transcripts in your show notes and all the rest of that. Yeah, you can, you can do it. I don't think it, really matters. there's a lot of talk Now, will websites be relevant in a couple of years? Right. We're already seeing more and more consolidation. Right. Nobody comes and reads my blogs on, On my website, I shouldn't say nobody, but the vast majority of people are gonna l read them on LinkedIn or Substack. So yeah, there's this consolidation and the idea that if I don't put the transcript up on my site, the AI won't be able to find it. That's ridiculous because iTunes, right, was a lawsuit years ago, that you have to have transcriptions on things for the Americans with Disabilities Act. That's why YouTube offers the transcripts, why they offer the subtitles there. And really, when you look at. The, where AI is pulling the content from, it's from reliable sources. So they're not coming back to my website at Interview Valet and saying, oh, this is the most reliable source. Mm, no, they're pulling it from YouTube. Or iTunes, and the transcripts are already up there. we have a, so that's part of their accessibility service, is that they do the transcripts and the, captions, closed captions for their audience regardless of whether you upload them. Is that what you're saying? they do. And even to the point where like video and stuff like that, there's some thoughts out there that they're doing facial recognition, right? So you put a post up on Facebook, they can tell really quickly if it's you and I together, or, or if it's a AI generated picture. The same way if we're in a, a podcast clip, right. It always helps if you tag the people, but if you don't, they're gonna recognize, oh, this is Charlotte, this is Tom. And, and promote it accordingly. Great. It is. The machine is watching us. Excellent. Well, at least we know how to work it. Right. So I wanna talk a bit more about, because I, this is something that I'm really curious about and it's, I, I think this is a, something with more longevity than kind of how recently AI has come into our world. But, you talk about PO podcast strategy that compounds, and I'm curious about your model for guesting versus hosting and, and when a business should start its own show and when guesting is smarter. Can you talk a little about that? Yeah, and I don't think it's an either or. Really, it's depends on your goals, right? Yeah. It's the same platform. So you think of Uber, should you be an Uber driver or an Uber passenger? Yeah. Well, it depends on your goals, and I think it's the same way for podcasts. So being a host, that's a great way to nurture your current leads, nurture your current clients, and that's, you know, why we started our podcast a couple years ago, but I had been guesting for eight years before that. Mm-hmm. And to be a guest is a great way to go out there and get new leads, get new exposure. Right. Tapping into other people's audience. Mm-hmm. because the idea that if I build a podcast, everybody will come. that might've worked. 15, 20 years ago when there was like new and noteworthy. But today, the sad part is, is that most podcasts die within the first 10 episodes. Mm-hmm. Because people start it and then they don't see that immediate results. Sometimes we'll even work with hosts, we call it phase zero when they're starting their podcast. You know, it might take 90 days to go out and get your podcast up and, and going. So in that time, go out on other people's podcasts. Mm-hmm. Talk about your show, get comfortable, drive people back there because you know, the best place to find podcasts listeners is listening to podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So interesting. and talk a little bit about your pre-call nurture step. For example, sending a prospect to topic matched interview. So your, so the sales call can kind of jump straight onto strategy. Yeah, that the people that get the most from podcast interviews, or I'd say any podcast are the ones that do the most with it. So it's not just repurposing, but you've got that content. Now if you have a discovery call with somebody, right? Yeah. Chances are you can find them on LinkedIn. You can figure out what their industry is. And so if you're talking to somebody and they're in, professional services in the accounting space, right? Well find that interview that you did where you, I was on, uh, grow my accounting practice with, Mike Mcal. Right. Send them that link and say, Hey, I'm looking forward to our call tomorrow. I thought you might be interested in this interview. I did. send them the link. Yeah. It is amazing how. Many, a high, high percentage of people will listen to that podcast interview. Now they've just listened to 45 minutes of you talking exactly about your product for that solution, your service. Yeah. and so it, it warms them up. It's like, how else could you do that? Right. You're not gonna send them, here's my, here's all this marketing material. Please study it before our, our call. Right. That's not gonna happen. Yeah. But I mean, it's so interesting. I love that you, sorry, it's, there's about to be a storm here. I'm gonna turn the light on. It's getting really dark. I, I love this idea that the recycling doesn't finish Once, you've marketed to somebody like this, this kind of concept of you do need to continue to nurture somebody even when they've already kind of committed to the first step with, of working with you or at least getting on that sales call with you. And, yeah. I love this kind of idea of there's ways of. There's always more ways to recycle it, and there's always more ways to shortcut things. When I think about that situation, what's so smart to me and, and people listening might be thinking, well, if they've already agreed to come on call with you, why are you sending them more stuff? But it's so smart because if they do have and take the time to go listen to that, it will have accelerated them through their kind of understanding, their knowledge of what you do as is applicable to their business. Which means that the set of questions they will come with and the, the way the conversation evolves on that call will be very different and more accelerated than if they hadn't have listened to it. So we think about the know, like, and trust process. I think it, it never ends. There's always room for it to further evolve even after somebody does become a client. yeah, I love that and I, I love this thinking about, I think the reason that I love podcasts so much is because. One of, one of my favorite ways to do this is I'll, I'll get off a, sales call or a chemistry call, whatever you call it in your industry. And sometimes I'm frustrated 'cause I wouldn't have been able to articulate a point well enough that the person's fully understood it. you do need to repeat things. You need to show it from different angles, discuss it at different levels, and sometimes I'll come off feeling a bit frustrated because I know it's gonna take a bit longer for that person, for it to percolate for them and for them to get it. Nothing about intelligence, just about point of view and level of understanding of a topic. I often will then just turn on my podcast recording, open a museum and just hit record and then just talk through that topic. And I love it so much because I get it out. It's a bit like people who journal and do their morning pages or whatever, just getting. Just dumping it all out so my brain is clear again, but also it's then podcast content, but it's also then something I can turn into an email and say, and reply to them and say, I loved our conversation just now. I feel I was frustrated articulating this point. Here's just me breaking it down that bit further, and then sharing that back with them and showing that you're still thinking about them whilst, so I, I feel like there's, if that person doesn't get it, there's always gonna be at least another 10 people who don't get it either. And so taking the time to record that and then share it on with the bigger audience, not only helps that one person that I've already had the call with, but also accelerates the understanding of at least 10 other people. and again, it's customer listening in action, isn't it? And recycling. And, and for me, you said before, for everybody it's a little bit different and perhaps it's a, for some people writing is easier. I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that speaking is much faster than writing. Regardless of how fast you are at typing or how fast you are with a bio. it doesn't matter. It's just so much faster to say it and get it out and yeah, bottle it and then use it when you need it. So yeah, this is my reason for it. So efficient. Yeah. And even the idea of, authority building, right. If I say something, it has one level of authority, right? If I just record something and send it to 'em. Yeah. But if they heard me on Charlotte's podcast and they're a, a fan, there's that transfer of authority, it's like, absolutely, oh, this person is an expert. And this idea that they're only reaching out to one person. I'm not that vain anymore to think that of all the options in the world, I'm the only one they're talking to. Right? I always assume they're talking to other people. So what can I do to be seen as more of an authority? Right? If someone else, you schedule the, the chemistry call, the discovery call, whatever it is, and there's no. Discussion between that, well, you come in cold, but if I've already sent you things, that show me in different places, wow, I, I sort of come as the authority. And now sometimes it's, I'm here to focus on you to answer your questions. Right? I don't have to teach as much because they've already looked at these. And then the other, creepy things sometimes with, with digital marketing today is I know what links you clicked on before we even talked. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And in all likelihood, that's prompted what the next message you get and yeah, so I, I love that, yeah, that you are using it in a smart way and, and in a human way, despite the fact there is automation involved. can you talk a bit more about how you do work with clients? So you mentioned before, the 90 day guest storms for, but launches. I don't think you use the exact, those exact words, but that's how I know it from my understanding of interview Vale and also like lightning strikes for category design. I love these, these, these parallels with the weather forecast and I really wanna hear more about them and, and how do you know what's the right fit for you? It's really what you're trying to accomplish. So yeah, if you're coming out of the gates and you wanna launch a book and get lots of exposure on it, just as it comes out, that's what we'll call like a lightning strike or a guest storm, right? Boom. It's, it's there. you can't miss it. For most people it's more the brand builder, right? You want that continuous exposure, the continuous, thought leadership indexing, all the rest of that. So when we first start talking with someone, we'll ask them, the first question is always, why do you wanna do this? Right? What are your goals? No one's goal is to be a podcaster interview, right? That's the means to the goal. Mm-hmm. Podcast guesting is a hobby, right? We're looking at marketing here. So we look at the goals. Then try backing into that of Yeah, over 10 years, 1500 clients, we can see the patterns and say this is how it's gonna work. Right? Yeah. We can be that fortune teller, this is how you've got to, put it together in order to get the results and then we'll look back at it and say, who is the ideal audience you wanna talk to? Because you don't want to talk to podcasts, you wanna talk to the audience that listens to that podcast. So, I'm an engineer by degree. We use a lot of data, so we can tell everyone that goes to your website, what podcasts do they listen to? Or if you say, our ideal client, profile goes to this conference. Okay, everyone that goes to that conference, what podcast do they listen to? Mm-hmm. Sometimes it can even be, well, I wanna be on. HBR idea cast. 'cause that's my audience. And I can think of, one great gentleman. He was, he was, wrote a book and he had started and sold three companies. He was probably late twenties. He was the high school dropout. And he says, I want to be on Harvard Business Review Idea Cast, because that's my ideal audience. I'm like, well, you will never get on HBR Idea cast. They make their money from selling MBAs and PhDs. They are not gonna have you on, but you want to talk to that audience. So let's see everyone that listens to that podcast, what other podcasts do they listen to? Mm-hmm. And that's how we were able to target it. And so our clients come to us, they value their time and their money. So we let them be the guests and we take care of all the rest. So we prep 'em for every interview. Uh, we. Let them know. And I, I hate to say train, we, they, most of 'em are formally trained in public speaking. They've done that before, but podcasts are different. So we let them know the difference in there, we set them up for it, we introduce them to the host, and then afterwards we even get that feedback from the guests, the host, we run, we listen to all their podcasts and give them feedback on that, and then even help them with the repurposing so they can make the most out of every interview. Mm-hmm. like I said, early on, a client said, I love working with you because you let me be the guest and you take care of the rest. And I was like, oh, that's good. Copy. I'm taking that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Gosh, you've got some very helpful clients giving you catchphrases, sorting out your domain. This is incredible. You know, I have always said the, the smartest people out there are our clients, right. I've got an opinion about my business. I can hire consultants. They've got an opinion on the business, but it's our clients that are the experts, right? They vote with their time and their money, and we just have to be smart enough to realize what they love and what they loathe. Yeah. And do more of one and less of another. And I think that's, going back to ai, that's one of the things that I love. I come at things with my own viewpoint. And so I'll look at a call and say, well, this was their biggest question, but if I actually take it and run it through a third party, if you would say, well, no. Here, here are the different things. And it's amazing the insights that you can pull from that. or pull from podcast interviews too. And, thinking about your wonderful clients. You spoke to me before about the heck yes or no filter for fit with clients. How do you communicate this to pro prospects? And can you talk about it a little bit more? I think oftentimes I love that you are vocal about this. oftentimes when I'm working with clients, they think that because somebody wants to work with them, they should absolutely go ahead and take them on as a client and work together. But that looks a little bit different to you. Can you talk about it? I think when we started out, and I think when a lot of people start out there that way, right? Yeah. their ideal client is one that has money and is willing to give it to 'em. Right? That's a recipe for, for disaster for everyone. And over the 10 years we've gotten much, much clearer on who we can deliver great results for and who we can't. Yeah. And life is so much easier when you avoid the maybes. Yeah. So for us it's either, heck yes, we know your audience. We've targeted them before we've had great results with them or. Know that we don't believe this will work for you. And so with those initial, you know, chemistry calls, the discovery calls, we ask those questions and at the end of it, I'm very straightforward with people that this is the problems you're gonna have with it. This is why, you know, we wouldn't take you on as a client because yeah, you, you've got a small geography or we don't focus on the Middle Eastern market, whatever that is. but then we can say, heck yes, we know this. And people will say, this isn't scalable, but I do the sales calls for every new client that comes in because I want that filter. I know that a lot of people could sell this and oversell it. It's like, no, I want to sell the right people and make sure that we're promoting the right people, right, because this is our brand that's going on this. So we always do the discovery call and I. Tell them that, heck yes or no. And I see this as a heck yes. Let me take it back to my team. We'll put together a roadmap for you, right? Yeah. Whether or not we work together or not. I guarantee you it'll bring you a lot of clarity on how this works. And then it goes to them, right? It's gotta be a heck yes or a no for them. yeah. To me that's a much better way to do a service sale, if you will, than the hard pressure, The modern sales, right. Of, yeah. Just following up, just following up and pestering them, till they, till they say yes. I've been very pleased with the lifetime value we've had of clients. the low churn rate, people are happy and that's what you want. That's how you grow the business. And I see so many people out there that my kids taught me a word thirsty, right? They're thirsty service providers, and they're out there making noise all the time because they have to bring in new clients because the old clients they brought on last month just walked out the back door. And so, to me that's sort of a red flag. If, if somebody's whole business is getting new clients, they're probably not serving their clients well. So, yeah, hell yes or no is a key, key, decision maker for us. Absolutely. And I think, Something really interesting that kind of fits into that for me is, is, I mean, I completely get that you are on all those sales calls and, or chem calls, fit calls, whatever. Like I'm the same and I think it's the right, I will be shocked if you did anything else. There's literally a white glove on your logo. It's a white glove service, right? Like you have to do that. Like, and I really respect the fact that you've, you've got that filter. But I do know when we've spoken before, we've spoken about teams and systems and AI and how you continue to grow as a business. I know you mentioned you've growing roughly a quarter a year, a quarter. Every quarter or a quarter a year. I forget what you said, without adding headcount. And, and so you are, yes, you have that white glove service and it is very bespoke, but you are also, smart and shrewd about how, what that looks like and, and clearly, a nice clean process and really clear role definition is important. Can you talk about what you've learned over your time in business that perhaps myself and the listeners can, learn from? So, I worked under a gentleman by the name of John Brown at Stryker Corporation, and nobody knows his name, but he's the only CEO of a publicly traded company in the United States to grow 20% per year for 20 consecutive years. No one else has ever done that. And you think about that, that wouldn't even get him on the ink. 5,000 for the fastest growing companies. And his thing was always, this is not cancer, right? Cancer grows very fast and then you die, right? This, or it's cut out. he says, this is the long run. So I'm always looking at that of, yeah, how is this helping the business long term? And some people will say, well, I couldn't take all of the sales calls, right? Because I've got a team of reps, you know, taking all these discovery calls. I'm like, what's your close rate? And our close rate is north of 65%, right? And because I wanna talk to the leader, the decision maker. And so many people are, are getting lousy leads from Facebook and other things. And you know, a third of the people don't show up. The other third are tire kickers. You know, you've gotta kiss a hundred frogs to make one client. In fact, I remember talking to somebody, a couple years ago and he told me how many podcasts he needed to be on and how many people he had to talk to. And it was Charlotte. It was some astronomical number, right? And I'm like, well, why? And he says, well, because I need 10 clients this year. And last year I did Facebook advertising and I had to, reach this many people to get four clients. And I'm like, why don't you just. Talk to the right people as opposed to random people. Mm-hmm. So it's this idea of we're always trying to grow, the target that we have is 25% a year. this last couple of years it's been about 10%, a quarter, which is above our growth, but we, we cap it at that. And part of it is that with our efficiencies in our system and with using technology, that we don't have to grow our team at the same rate. Right. So we're at that scale phase where sales can go up and costs don't have to go up at the same level. Yeah. While keeping that same service. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's inspirational and I think it comes from, I, you know, no boss used to say to me, it's a marathon, not a sprint Shall, because I am very much a mover and an action taker, and it's a good reminder that the decisions we're making in business, you need to think, if you're planning to be in it in 10 years time, then you've gotta think that decision, how does that then play out over that period of time, rather than just doing it in isolation? And that's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah. And we're very. Intentional about who we invite to be clients or we refer, refer to 'em as partners. Right. Because you're going to get judged by the company you keep, right? Yeah, that's very true. So, so we want to be seen with people that we're proud to be seen with because we know that they're gonna bring more ideal clients to us. Yeah. there's a great book called Super Consumer by Eddie Yoon, and he talks about you wanna work with your super consumer. Those are the people that love you, value what you do and tell everybody else about you. Right? And so that's what we always look and say. It heck yes. Is this a super consumer? Is this somebody we can see working with long term here? Not just, we'll get 'em to sign up and we know they'll turn off, but that's okay. our funnel will bring somebody else in right after. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. so I'm just mindful of time and, and wanna be respectful of yours and just thinking about some practical takeaways for our listeners. Can you tell us a simple first step for founders who want authority and, and not just vanity metrics that they can achieve in the next 30 days? Yeah, the first step is get over yourself. Right? Love it. What, what you have could help somebody, right? Yeah, I completely agree. And so many people, I don't like my voice. Well, fine, you don't have to listen to it, right? Yeah. Or what would I talk about? The same thing you talk about with clients and prospects, right? All that same thing. So that's the first thing. Get over yourself. The second thing is take action. Take a small step, right? And some people will say. Well, I'm gonna have this Dream 100 list, and I've got this, this AI powered thing where I can pitch all 4 million podcasts. No more is not better. Better is better. If you've never done a podcast before, think of five that would have your ideal client. Right? And they don't have to be the huge ones. And that's step two. Step three is, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook. I look at it as give, give, give, give, ask. So if you wanna get on a podcast, here's how to do it, right? Give, give it a listen. Then give them a rating and review. Share their content, right? Make comments on that. In social media with that rating and review, podcast hosts, we're all vain, right? We look for our own need. So people will start to recognize, oh yeah, I've seen them around in our community. Then reach out to them, not with. I've got a book that I'd like to sell to your audience. No, I've listened to the podcast. Here are some ideas, I have some value that I could give you. Give like that people will be asking you to be on the show. And once you get on the show, once again, give, give value there. And your first one is gonna be your worst interview you've ever done. Mm-hmm. But you know what, you'll get better after that. And some people can do it that way. Other people would say, I understand that. But you know, like I said before, right? I want to be the guest, have someone else take care of the rest. So there are partners out there that you can work with that free you up to find the podcast, to do all the backend work so that you're Sinatra. All you've gotta do is, you know, show up on stage and sing. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And I was gonna ask you, what's one thing to stop doing this week that's quietly hurting authority? And I think, I mean, I'll let you answer as well, but as you were talking, I was thinking one of my pet hates is when people give up, they stop doing the thing consistently. And, and you just mentioned the first podcast you do is gonna be the worst and you, the only way is it from there. 'cause it's all about getting your reps in. So that's something I'd encourage people to stop doing is stop doing the thing. Continue. In other words. Um, because yeah, I, I think too many wonderful things are lost due to people giving up hope too soon. Um, but tell me, what, what would you encourage people to stop doing that, uh, is quietly hurting their authority? I'm gonna go back to what you said there of chasing the shiny object. Mm-hmm. Right. There are are a million things that you could do today. And if you try doing all of 'em. You'll get nowhere. Mm-hmm. So pick one. Right? Pick one that resonates with you that you believe in and commit to it. Right. I had a mentor that always would say, commit to something for a year. If you're gonna do it, say that you'll do it for a year. And he was so right, because this was when we were first starting out our business. I did a daily podcast, shout out where I do a quick little video talking about a podcast I liked. And Charlotte, I had recorded probably 90 of those before I went and, actually released them and it was some snowy, weekend and I loaded those all up to go out and I thought, oh, these are getting no traction. Right. And after about two months, I was at a podcasting conference. So many people came up to me and said, Hey, thank you for giving me the shout out there. Yeah. There were other people and saying, can you give my podcast a shout out? And all of a sudden it was like, I gotta get home. Because I think I've only got another week queued up for that. But if I would've judged it by just the analytics, I would've said, oh, it's not working. Right. But if I gave it enough time, I would've heard that feedback there. And I think that's, you, you talk about niching down, you know, the riches are in the niches. How many people go, go digging and there's a story, you know, inches, inches from diamonds or something where, you know, they stopped digging and the diamonds were just inches away. Mm-hmm. And I think sometimes you can destroy your authority there, right by, well, they were on TikTok for three weeks and then they went to Instagram for three weeks. It's like, this is not somebody that, that I wanna work with. They're not a serious person. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Consistency says a lot. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Tom. Tell us who should come and get in contact with you and how should they find you? Well, thank you for having me here. And if any of this resonated with you, you could just go back to interview valet with a v.com/ab for Authority builder, and I'll have everything that we talked about there. There's an assessment, right? If you've ever been on a podcast interview and it didn't work for you, you didn't get the results that you thought, well just give us the information on it. We'll take a listen, we'll give you a full report, give some ideas on how you can get better with that. I've, I wrote a book called Podcast Guest Profits. You can get a free copy if you go there. If you're in the States, I'll mail it to you. If you're overseas, I'll email it to you. And then if you'd like to talk with me about how you could use this, I'll put my calendar link there. all my social media will be there. It's all back there@interviewvalet.com slash ab. Oh, thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate it's so organized. I'm gonna go check out that page now. Thank you, Charlotte. Take care.