Beat Obscurity: Podcast Interviews That Build Trust (and Profit) | Stories With Traction

Show Notes:

In this high-impact episode, Matt Zaun sits down with Tom Schwab, Chief Evangelist Officer & Founder of Interview Valet, to unpack how leaders can use podcast interview marketing to beat obscurity, earn trust at scale, and convert ideal clients, and how to repurpose one 45-minute conversation into a month of authoritative content.

In this episode, they cover:

✅ Obscurity is the real enemy — Why trusted conversations (not more funnels) drive the best partners, clients, and hires

✅ “Crowded space”? Good. — Most shows are inactive; focus on the active, right-fit podcasts your ideal buyers already follow

✅ Leader-as-evangelist — Your CEO’s personal audience is ~10× the brand’s; don’t abdicate storytelling—lead it

✅ Quality over quantity — Don’t “create crap at scale.” Clarity, stories, and specificity beat generic content every time

...and much more!

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Tom, welcome to Stories of Traction podcast.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Matt, I am thrilled to be here and dive deep into this conversation. I'm so excited.

 

Matt Zaun 

I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I know you're incredibly busy, so I really appreciate you spending time with us today.

And I want to dive right in to podcasting, the importance of podcasting, some of the things that you do.

Before we get to the podcasting piece, can you tell my listeners a little bit about your company and what your team does for your clients?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Yeah. Well, I believe that the biggest problem we have is obscurity, right? You could help lots of people. They just don't know you.

So how do you overcome that? So Interview Valet helps thought leaders get out on targeted podcast interviews so they can talk to their ideal clients.

And today, also the AI that's indexing them, right? The AI is listening to every podcast indexing it, and that's going to be the referral source of the future.

 

Matt Zaun 

Thanks for sharing that. And one of the things that I hear, and I'm sure you hear as well, is that podcasting is a crowded space, which I kind of find fascinating because every leader wants to be on social media.

They want their company on social media. So if you talk about a crowded space, mean, social media is highly crowded, right?

And I believe last time I looked, there's a little over 3 million podcasts, but very few of them are active.

And the ones that are active, they've cultivated, they built the audiences. And then each podcast has its own separate audience, targeted audience, different topics that they talk about.

So when you really look at the activity running podcasts, it starts getting more narrow and more narrow. But I want to hear from you, your perspective, your experience.

When you hear someone say that podcasting is a crowded space, we shouldn't focus on it. What's your response to that?

I always look at it.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

If it's a crowded space, there's a reason there. The reason you want to be there, right? The best football games, the best baseball games, guess what?

They're crowded. The ones that nobody. What wants to go to aren't. So what you talked about is true, somewhere between three and four million podcasts, but 80, 90% of them are dead, meaning they haven't published in the last 30 days.

So now that goes down to 300,000 or 400,000. And then start looking at the category they're in, right? So if you're a dental podcast, there's probably 20 great dental podcasts and there's room for another one.

Leadership podcasts, the same way. It's the idea of it doesn't need just a generic podcast, but if there is a different voice, a different format, a different story that people can have, the world needs that.

And so from that standpoint, I look at podcasts as it's really outgrown the name podcast. When it started 20 years ago, podcast came from an iPod broadcast, right?

Most people don't even know what pod stands for in a podcast. Today, it's repurposed so many places, right? It's audio, it's in YouTube, it's cut up into clips, right, for social media.

So to me, it's really more on-demand media. And from that standpoint, it's great because it's very easy to create and then even easier to repurpose in the format that people want.

So I don't think it's a crowded space right now. It's crowded if you've just got a copy of a copy.

But if you've got something fresh to say and a fresh viewpoint, the world needs to hear you now more than ever.

 

Matt Zaun 

Great point. So you mentioned the 80% to 90% being dead. I do want to talk about that because there's a lot of podcast hosts that have great work ethic, right?

So it might not necessarily be a work issue. It might be the understanding of how to properly run a podcast.

I don't know exactly what it is. You would know a lot more about this than I do. Why do you think that there's that volume of podcasts that just die out?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

I think it is a few factors. The first one is Simon Sinek says, start with why. Why are you doing the podcast?

What's the overarching thing? I even talk with clients and say, why do you want to be a guest on a podcast?

That's a hobby, right? The results is what you're trying to get out of that. So I think it's like with anything else, right?

Most people give up on their New Year's resolutions before February because they've just got a resolution. They don't have a why they're doing it.

So I think that strategy part behind it of why you were doing this will keep you going through the challenging parts.

I think the second thing is that knowing that life gets hard. Most podcasts die within the first 10 episodes.

And think about it. What's going to happen in the next 10 weeks of your life? doing of Time. I guarantee you there's going to be something that comes up, something unexpected, and if all of a sudden you miss one week in podcasting, it's really easy to miss another one, and all of a sudden it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's why a lot of people will say, before you do a podcast, they call it phase zero. Go out and be on other people's podcasts to get comfortable with it, and then don't hit publish until you've got six episodes in the can, right?

Because life is going to get busy there. And then finally, I think speaking as a business owner, an entrepreneur, I think sometimes it's the shiny object syndrome.

Today, in this land of instant gratification and pure analytics, which aren't always honest analytics, there's this idea of, well, I can do this digital marketing, and the next day I see the results.

A marathon, not a sprint. People point to Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan did a whole lot of things for decades before he became Joe Rogan, the podcast host.

There's a lot of people that have four or five years of experience in podcasting before they become the overnight success.

So I think those are all things that you have to think through before you hit publish on that first episode.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow, great points. Thanks so much for sharing that. You know, one of the things that I find fascinating, so I work with a lot of C-suite executives of medium-sized companies, and there's a lot of these individuals that for whatever reason, they want to delegate every aspect of marketing.

They want to delegate to their team. They want their team to be sharing the stories. They want their team to be involved in every aspect of marketing, which I find fascinating because if we look at titans of industry, so if we look at someone like a Steve Jobs, I find it very difficult to believe that Apple would be the company it is today if Steve Jobs

Did not focus on the storytelling element of Apple, did not focus on the marketing element of Apple, did not realize stage dynamics, right?

How to get up, share stories, connect with an audience. But it's interesting because you have a lot of these leaders of medium-sized companies, they want to get to the next level.

They want to build these massive brands. They want everyone to recognize who they are, but for whatever reason, they're delegating the storytelling and marketing aspect to other individuals and their team.

Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't delegate different things, different parts of the system, if you will, but what would you say to a leader listening that they don't want to be sharing their story, they don't want to be going on podcasts, whatever it is to get the message out?

What kind of words of advice or what kind of perspective shift would you give them so that they understand how quickly the world is changing?

There's so much abundance of noise. In order to break through and get through that noise, they have to be sharing their stories.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Yeah. I know. As you said that, it reminded me something I learned in the Navy. There's delegating and then abdicating, right?

And you want to make sure that other people in your company are telling the story also, but that doesn't mean you just abdicate to them, right?

You are the leader, and part of the leader is leading, telling the stories, getting known. If you look at, there was a study done that said the leader of a company always has 10 times the following of the company.

And I remember hearing this at an event, and they used Steve Jobs, they used Sir Richard Branson, they used all these examples.

And then there was 100 business owners in the audience, and they said, take a few minutes and look at it if it's the same for you.

And it was amazing, the same rule applied. So if you want to get your company more known, you need to get more known.

People want to work with with companies they know, like, and trust. And the other day I was at an event, McKeel Haggerty.

There's a company called Haggerty. If you ever see a beautiful car drive by, it's probably insured by Haggerty. It's a company out of Traverse City, Michigan.

And he has become the spokesperson for the company. And, you know, it's a family company. Now it's publicly traded.

But he's like, I've got to be out there and be the evangelist for our category, right? For our company, for our clients.

It needs somebody to lead it. And one of the things that really struck me when I heard him talk about it was he said that you've got so many things to do.

We're all busy, right? We all don't have enough time. And he said, if you're going to invest the time, make it more valuable.

And I think that's a very powerful thing, especially today in the digital age. If you're going to spend an hour telling your story, talking on a podcast, whatever it is, make sure you get the most out of that.

And that's one of the great things is, you know, if you're talking to your team, well, videotape it so that you can put it in the training.

If you're telling your story on a podcast, well, repurpose that, put it on social media, all of those things, because none of us have a content creation problem, right?

We're always talking to people. A lot of times it's the content capture and content repurposing. So this is the job we've all signed up with, with being a leader.

That's a leader of a company or a leader of a family. You got to tell the stories.

 

Matt Zaun 

For sure. All right. So give us some ideas about this time investment. So someone goes on multiple podcasts, just give some ideas for my listeners on some of the different things that they could do from a marketing perspective, a company culture perspective, even from a public speaking perspective, right?

They're ironing out different stories that they could be sharing in staff meetings. They could be sharing on stage at a conference.

So what are some of the different layers that they can be peeling back regarding being on different podcast interviews?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Yeah. And so really, you think about it, a podcast is typically 30 to 45 minutes. So in about an hour, you can go out and speak to your ideal clients and the AI that refers them.

And there's different stories to think about, right? The origin story is important, but you don't want to keep telling the origin story over and over and over.

The best stories that you can tell is the client stories, making them the hero and talking about the problem, right?

One of our clients in category design, Al Ramadan, he always said, the point is the pain, right? The hero's journey, all of that.

Start with the pain. And you can see it when I started this and you said, introduce yourself. Tell us what the company does.

I started with that I believe statement. That is so powerful in your stories. I believe that. That's a great way to start talking about the company's values, what we believe.

And just as important can be sometimes I reject. Differentiate yourself from the others out there in the competition. Like one of the things that I will often say is I reject the notion that you're one funnel away.

So many marketing and digital marketing say, oh, one funnel, right? I'm big into automation. I'm an engineer by degree.

But the best things in my life, and that could be employees, partners, clients, they all came from conversations. They didn't come through funnels.

Heck, even my bride, right? She did not come through the perfect Facebook. Facebook. Funnel, and then became my bride.

No, it came from a conversation. And I think at times we get so enamored with, we can do things efficiently, right?

In the time you've been listening to this, could have sent 2 million emails. Very efficient, but it's not very effective.

So I think as leaders, we need to talk about what is the most efficient way we can do it, you know, to do it at scale, to make the most out of every precious hour that we have.

And then what's the most effective way, right? This idea of, oh, I got to break through the noise. I don't think that's it.

It's everybody's yelling and nobody's getting heard. Maybe you just need to build that authority and be seen as different.

Okay. So you mentioned the efficient, and then you mentioned conversation.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about it from an AI perspective. So we all know AI is here.

We have some ideas on where it can go in the future. So from an efficient perspective, I want you to talk about.

How AI has made the podcasting space more efficient, but I also want you to talk about the conversation piece.

Is there any concern that you might have going forward regarding podcasts utilizing AI to generate fake people?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

I'm going to put a timestamp on this just so we sort of know where we're talking right now. We're talking toward the end of 2025, and this is where it is right now, is that there are AI podcasts that are out there.

Largely, you can tell that they're AI, and it's a rehash of everything that's already known. So they're taking all of the stuff that's out there and getting the best of.

The quality is low, but the quantity is high. And we can see this in other areas too. One of the reasons that blogs are becoming less effective is because now you can publish 100 blogs in the time that used to take.

to publish one. And all we're doing is we're creating crap at scale, right? So I think that's the road to failure.

I think the podcasts and the conversations that are getting the best traction, right, getting the best effectiveness, are those ones that are talking about ideas, the future, what people believe, all of those things really, AI, chat, GPT, cloud, whatever, are not great on that.

So where I think AI comes into, it helps us, it doesn't replace us. So for example, we used to prep every one of our clients individually, one-on-one, right?

Now we've got a report that we give them beforehand that says, hey, here's everything you need to know about the host, the guest, their social media.

Things to stay away from. Great. We can use AI. We used to listen to every one of the podcasts and give feedback.

We still do that, but now there's a report that comes through there. And then that says, Matt, know, here's things that you did great.

Here's some opportunities you may want to look at. And then I think the biggest benefit right now with AI is the ability to repurpose.

You can take 45 minutes of content and get a month's worth of social media out of it. And as a leader, it doesn't take any more of your time.

And a prime example of this is like they say Joe Rogan gets heard by 100 million people. Matt, when I heard that, I was like, there's no way one out of three adults in the U.S.

listens to a three-hour podcast. And we licensed the databases, and it shows that Rogan gets 2 million downloads per episode.

Number one podcast. The other 98 million? They're listening to a 30-second clip or a 60-second clip, and then they'll say, oh, yeah, I listened to his interview with Elon Musk, right?

No, you listened to 90 seconds of it, but you got that information, and guests can do the same thing with that.

Just repurpose that. All of the content that we create, we should be making the most out of it. Wow.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I mentioned to you that my background's in the political arena, and when you're talking about Rogan and all these clips, same is true with presidential elections.

They say the average U.S. voter will vote based on eight minutes that they hear and see based on an entire duration of a presidential election, and so they're not listening to an entire debate.

Some people are. Your political junkies are, but it's those clips, and then combine together eight minutes total until someone makes up their mind.

Just fascinating. But you mentioned something I found interesting, comical, horrifying, but very true. You said creating crap at scale.

I think that it's so important for people to recognize because one of the things that I'm seeing that is hurting leaders in a big way, and I don't think that they are realizing how much it's hurting them, is they're utilizing AI for blog posts, for emails, for memos.

So I'll get an email from a leader, and I'll think, wow, this person's an incredible communicator. And then I'll meet with them one-on-one in a session, and they have difficulty connecting.

They don't know how to communicate to the level of what they're cranking out with AI. So I think it's really important to kind of expand and echo your point about creating crap at scale.

If you're not refining your stories, you're not having conversations, and I think podcasting is one of the best ways out there to do this, one of the best avenues, are you actually going to be able to connect with your team, with your clients, and are you going to be able to position yourself based on everything else you have cranking out there?

I think that's so important. So I really appreciate you mentioning that point. So speaking of stories and experience, I do want to talk a little bit more about your story because I'm always fascinated about how people got to where they are.

So I want to take you back. We won't go back to the start, but I want to take you back to your teen years because I think these years are so important in shaping us, especially people that end up being leaders.

I think the teen years have, and even if the individual wasn't a leader during their teen years, there are different things that happen that position them along the way to get to where they are.

So if I were to go back to, let's say, 13, year 13, and I were to ask Tom as a teenager, as a 13-year-old, what he wanted to do and be, what response would I have gotten back?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

I wanted to be an architect. I I also wanted to have fun experiences and make money. I was always hustling as a kid.

So for me, an architect meant going into the city. We grew up 38 miles west of Chicago in a place called St.

Charles. Beautiful place to grow up, but I could have anything I wanted as long as I paid for it.

So I was cutting lawns, I was caddying, got to meet a lot of great people through that. But my vision was I wanted to become an architect so I could design the buildings like I saw in Chicago and from people that were long since dead but still had something up there that they had put their mark on the world.

 

Matt Zaun 

Were there any architects in your family or was it surely based on you experiencing the world around you and you said, I want to build something like that?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Never an architect. In fact, the idea was is that I wanted to be an architect before I knew what an architect was.

It wasn't until I was probably 16 years old that my dad took me into the city for a con

Invention or a symposium with the college, and I started to think about it and like, I don't want to be an architect.

That's too artistic. I want to build these. I want to be the engineer. And that's when I got the clarity of like, well, I like the idea of being an architect, but what I really want to be is an engineer.

And so that's sort of that not knowing what it meant and just discovering it as I went along.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. Okay. So you went to school to be an engineer? I did.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

By the grace of God and a medical oversight, I got into the U.S. Naval Academy. And I have no depth perception.

They didn't catch that till after I graduated. And so I went to the U.S. Naval Academy. I was a mechanical engineer and just loved that, understanding how things worked, how things put together.

And it really gave me a foundation how to think about the world. And. After I graduated, I ran nuclear power plants in the Navy.

I was on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. At the time, it was the newest and finest aircraft carrier. Now it's just the finest.

And so it really gave me an idea of how to build systems and processes. And even today, as I run the business, it's still the things that I learned as an engineer.

And when people tell me, oh, you don't understand my business. It's so complicated. I could never teach someone how to do it.

I just scratched my head in thinking there's 20-something-year-old high school educated, very smart, very motivated people right now running nuclear reactors in the Navy.

If they can figure out how to do it, you can figure out how to do it. Wow.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I've had some experience with your team, emails going back and forth, phone calls, and they are first class.

Your team is exceptional. So I want to talk about that. So you mentioned systems and processes. Is there anything you do with your team to implement maybe a certain process, or do you have different onboarding sessions to make sure your team is on the same page about delivering the kind of quality you do for your clients?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

Thank you, first of all, for the compliment. I'm very proud of my team. We've got 20 people, all remote, all in the United States.

About two-thirds of them are military spouses. And one of our core values is that our success is proportional to our systems, right?

So we're always testing. We're always refining. We have SOPs that we follow. But I think now a decade in, I think if you took those same SOPs and gave those to different people, they wouldn't give the same results.

And I think a big part of it is the culture. And once again, the stories we tell. The team starts to joke with them.

They call them Tom-isms. Things that I have said so much that they start using them. And for example, one of the great Tomisms that I always put out there is, in God we trust, everyone else bring data.

So if you start with, I think, I think, well, have we tested that, right? In God we trust, everyone else bring data.

Or I'll ask for an update and we'll say, well, we're hoping to have that done by this time. And they know what answer they're going to get from me.

Hope is not a strategy. And I knew that those stories started to get the traction one May when one of my team members came back.

And she said on a team meeting that Tom has ruined weddings for me forever. And I'm like, what do you mean?

She said, I'm there out in the crowd, it's a beautiful wedding, and they're reading from Scripture, and they say, faith, hope, and love.

And the greatest of these is love. And she said, the first thing that went through my mind is hope is not a strategy for a successful marriage.

And it's like I had told that story enough that they had imbibed it. And it's one of those things where the SOP might not tell you everything to do every time.

But if people understand the heart of the company, if they understand the values of it, if they understand the stories of it, they'll be able to make the right answer.

I love that story.

 

Matt Zaun 

Thanks so much for sharing it. That's awesome. All right. So you said success is proportionate to our systems. So a book that I've read, I've read it three times so far this year.

I'll probably end up reading it a fourth time. It's Atomic Habits. Highly recommend the book. Everyone listening, James Clear.

Outstanding book, right? And I've picked apart the book. I have so many notes in the book. I've actually taken all the different things I've put into different AI systems that I have.

Based on different things that the book has shared to figure out a way to make sure that it's hyper-specific to my life, right?

How can this affect my life in every aspect, right? And it's had incredible results. I'm very, very pleased with the results.

Everyone listening to this podcast can go read that book. Most people listening to this podcast have access to some of the best AI tools that we could have never even dreamed about a few years ago.

Everyone has access to all this information, right? So we know we can figure out good systems. But I want to talk about the execution of this.

How does it differ from an organization like yours that has executed these systems? You've implemented these different processes to make them work.

And a company that has all the information that you have, but for whatever reason, they're struggling with how to actually utilize it and bring it to action.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

That's really the, that's the key question today, isn't it? For all mankind, for anyone, individuals or companies, information is free right now.

The ideas, for $20, you can get access to any of the AI models and have more information at your fingertips than the President of the United States had probably a decade ago.

So we've all got that, right? So now it's the question of how do you execute on that, and also how do you discern what you should execute on it?

And I think that's two big things. It's sort of this, with social media and AI, there's so much information that you can just consume and consume and never act, right?

And that doesn't work. But then there's the other one of... Picking what's that one thing that you go with.

So I think one of the things that we have seen is that for a decade, all we've done is podcast interview marketing.

And I've seen people come up and go down in that industry. I see other people jump in and then they fall apart.

Um, we've looked at expanding and it's like, I don't want to expand into something that we can't be great at, right?

So picking that lane and getting better and better. And I think in a decade, we've just started to scratch the surface on the possibilities with this.

So I think that can be a big thing right there. And, um, hopefully I answered that question. It got me thinking when you asked that, Matt, um, that used to be Derek Sivers, had a blog where he talked about that ideas are one through 10, right?

A lousy idea is a one and a. Amazing idea is a 10, but execution is 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, all the rest of that.

And, you know, great example, the Pet Rock. Pet Rock was a stupid idea. That was probably a one. But the person that executed that, executed it amazingly.

They made millions from that. Somebody else has got a 10 idea that never executes on it, and they never made a dollar out of that.

And so as you were talking about that with the AI, it's almost like now the information is almost like a penny, a nickel, a dime.

But the execution is what's really going to make the difference. Yeah, I really like that visual.

 

Matt Zaun 

You know, it's interesting because one of the things that I share with my clients when I'm teaching them how to be more engaging, more inspirational, especially during staff meetings, right?

So think of a leader getting up, and they're addressing maybe their entire team. up, they're maybe It's amazing that you can have subpar content, mediocre content at best, but it still be an incredible speech based on delivery and based on how someone's engaging with the audience, right?

So it kind of speaks to your thought process of ideas, right? You can have idea that would be like a three, but if the execution's so incredible that that idea is going to go much further.

And I think about how social media and AI are massive double-edged swords, right? So social media, there's a lot of companies that can get seen now, but the double-edged sword is there could be a huge time suck.

And it's a dopamine hit, right? There's a lot of people that they'll lay on the couch and they'll scroll and scroll and scroll, and they're getting this dopamine hit when they should be doing something else.

They're forgetting their priorities, but their company could be seen more, right? And I think with AI, it's also a double-edged sword, where now we have all of this information, and I don't want to use...

I don't think it's necessarily laziness. I think it really can shift focus, right? People could utilize AI, and they get all these great, grandiose ideas.

But if it's really shifting their focus away from what they should be doing, that's where they go into the danger zone.

Exactly what you said. If you're going to do something, you want to be exceptional at it. You don't want to add 100 different things that are just okay when you can focus in on what you are absolutely exceptional at.

So I think that's really important. Yeah. There's one thing I'd like to add to that.

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

We started to use what we call tone of voice reports based on an individual or a company. And I was presented to this by one of our clients.

And it's like, never thought about that. But he said, big companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out what their tone of voice is, right?

I can listen to a BMW commercial versus a Chevy commercial. And you don't even have to name the company.

And the problem is, is that if you get it wrong, it breaks trust, right? American Express is a different ad than Discover.

And what was happening is that in social media or AI content, all of a sudden you just say, give me these tweets or write me a speech on this.

It could be a great speech, but if it doesn't sound like Tom Schwab, it's going to fall and it's going to lose trust with people.

So what we started to do was take a dozen podcast interviews and run them through an analysis and say, what is the tone of voice?

What are the key thoughts, the stories, the tone of this? And we were able to use that then in the repurposing and using it with AI.

If we've got new people coming on board, we talk about this is the tone of voice the company has.

And when we started to do it for clients also, it was interesting. We would do it. Based on their conversations, their interviews, and then we'd throw their book in there, and it would change the tone of voice.

And we'd ask, why was that? And it never failed that they would come back and say, oh, I had a ghostwriter for that book.

Oh, okay. Well, that's great. So it was a great book, but that book was not in your tone of voice.

So just like you said before, if somebody read the book and was impressed and then met you in real life, there's that break in authority there.

So you've got to have that consistent tone of voice.

 

Matt Zaun 

Outstanding point. Appreciate you mentioned that. So I want to go back to the ideas and execution for a moment.

So you had mentioned if we're looking at ideas on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being an incredible idea, and then I want to jump to the execution.

So I firmly believe, based on my experience, I'm sure you would believe this as well. I don't want to speak for you, but I'm guessing based on your background and the industry you're in, you would probably agree with this.

I think people going on podcasts would be a 10, right? From a scale from 1 to 10. A great idea if they have a really good strategic why, like you had mentioned in the beginning.

They have a great why, getting on podcast, fantastic idea. Now, here's where the execution comes in. Because even if we're talking about a leader who has had many conversations, they may have done speaking engagements, they may know how to share their story, there still is a learning curve and there's a gap before they actually see the results.

So let's talk about a very specific why. Let's say that there's someone listening to this podcast and they have a why of going on other podcasts and they want to book discovery calls for their sales team.

So the idea is they'll get on a podcast and maybe they'll give some type of freebie or a giveaway or something so someone puts their email in to get something in return.

So now they have individuals' emails, then they have a whole different campaign to connect with these individuals in an effort to share what they do and then book discovery calls.

So, and then they can work on the specifics of that. When they start... If you're podcasting, what kind of coaching would you give them on, it might take X amount of episodes, or it might take a certain amount of time, or a certain kind of podcast, a different caliber of podcast?

When would you say to that leader, okay, for whatever reason, we need to change what you're doing because it's not working, or maybe it is working.

Maybe it's working fantastic. What do you give guideline-wise from a learning curve perspective so someone can specifically get what they want out of something from an execution point of view?

 

Tom Schwab 

Yeah, great question. And podcast interview marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. So at that very beginning, everything you talked about plus data, right?

So what podcasts do your ideal clients listen to? Because you can't say enough of the right things to the wrong people.

And the data exists out there, but you've got to pay for it. So we would say, who's your ideal client profile?

Of all the people that go to your website right now, what podcasts do they subscribe to? What conferences do they go to?

And we can get all that data together. The other thing is that this is not a keynote speech, right?

Since AI is indexing all of these, you want each topic to be specific. So you get credit for it.

So you can repurpose that. And so you'll do all of these things and continually get better and better with it.

But we always tell clients that podcasts are like doctor's offices and restaurants, right? If there's not a waiting list, there's probably a reason and a reason you don't want to be there.

So the data says that the meantime between when you reach out to the podcast and they invite you and it gets scheduled and then it gets recorded and then it gets edited and it finally goes live is 83 days.

So that first quarter, you're to have this feeling of these. These are the right podcast. I'm having great conversations.

Your social media team is like, this is gold. We can use all of this stuff. But it's not going to be till that second quarter when you're going to start to see those leads come in.

And the other thing that I always push back on people is that they don't want more leads, right? What are we optimizing for?

If you just want more leads, give away a car, right? You'll get lots of leads from that. No, what you're optimizing for is more profits.

And more profits come from ideal clients who value what you do. And those come from people that have self-selected.

So I always say the best podcast interviews, people should turn you up or turn you off. They should listen to you and say, this is not for me.

Great. You don't need them as a lead, right? Because they'll just cost you money. Better to find it out early.

You want the people that says, man, I love what Matt does. This is exactly what I need. I'm going to go and look at some other things that he's published or he's talked about.

So when they come to you, they're a hot lead, right? They've done all of the research so that they close faster for a higher initial amount.

And that's not only from hearing you on a podcast, but Matt, there was a study that just came out of Cornell that demonstrated that traffic from AI was converting nine times better than traditional SEO.

You know, that somebody had their first question that they asked was 29 words, right? Forget keywords now. It was 29 words and they spent six minutes talking with AI before they came to your website.

And it's like all those times they were asking questions. Is this for me? Isn't this for me? So when you're on those podcast interviews, you want to be very specific.

This is the problem we solve. This is who we work with. This is who we don't work with. Right?

Whenever I am on a podcast and we're talking about virtual book tours, podcast interviews work great for nonfiction books where there's a business model behind it.

And then I'll throw in there that we have never been able to see results for fiction or memoirs because it just doesn't work for that.

Better to figure that out early and put it out there to the world than just trying to get more leads because that wastes their time and our time.

Thanks so much for breaking that down for us.

 

Matt Zaun 

I appreciate it. And thank you for this conversation. Tons of nuggets. Really appreciate you spending time with us today.

There's three things in particular I'm going to take as a walk away from this conversation that I'm going to remember, Tom, and I really appreciate.

The first is you mentioned the why. You mentioned why are you doing the podcast? And then you mentioned strategy.

Highly recommend people listening have a hyper-specific strategy regarding getting on podcasts. The second, I appreciate you sharing about your experience.

second, sharing your experience. The Navy, said there's a difference between delegating and advocating. really appreciate you mentioning those differences.

And then the third is you said if you're going to invest the time, make it more valuable. And I really want everyone to walk away with the idea that we're constantly doing something.

How can we get more ripple effects based on what we're doing? You gave a bunch of examples, but one of them being if you're going to be in a meeting with your team, could you be recording that meeting and using it in other avenues?

I think that that is pure gold. So I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for sharing this.

If someone wants to get more information on what you do, they want to reach out to your team for your services, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Tom Schwab (Interview Valet)

If they even want to see the best practice for how to wrap up an interview, this is it. On a podcast, always send people to one place and give them three ways to say yes.

So if you want to connect with me, just go to Interview Valet. Fathom.com forward slash SWT for stories with traction.

Everything Matt and I talk about will be there. There's an assessment, right? 10 questions. Will podcast interview marketing work for me?

I wrote a book called Podcast Guest Profits. It's available on Amazon. If you want a free copy, you can go there and get it.

And then finally, if you'd like to talk with me or my team about how you could use this strategy to talk to your ideal clients, it's to talk to the AI that refers them.

I'll put my calendar there. All that's back there at interviewvalet.com forward slash SWT. Perfect. I'll include all that in the show notes.

 

Matt Zaun 

People could just click and go from there. Thanks again for your time today, Tom. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Matt.