IAM011 – Entrepreneur Helps Thought Leaders Get Featured & Connect with Their Ideal Customers

Tom Schwab knows how to build an online business. Marketing at its heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer. Drawing on his engineering, corporate, and e-commerce inbound marketing experience, Tom helps thought leaders (coaches, authors, speaker, emerging brands) get featured on leading podcasts their ideal prospects are already listening to. Then he helps them to turn listeners into customers. He is the author of PODCAST GUEST PROFITS: Grow your business with a targeted interview strategy, and he is the founder of Interview Valet, the category king of Podcast Interview Marketing.

• CEO Hack: Trying to figure out what being a CEO means –Chief Evangelist Officer. Put everything through the filter
• CEO Nugget: Don't take everything personally. Ask, “Are we doing the right things?”
• CEO Defined: Leadership and visionary role

Other resources mentioned The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level,  Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

Website: http://www.interviewvalet.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasmschwab
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Interviewvalet
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TMSchwab
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThomasSchwab

More information from the past on Tom's site: http://interviewvalet.com/iamceo

Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today Tom Schwab of Interview Valet. Tom, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Tom Schwab 0:38

Gresh I am thrilled to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was just read a little bit about Tom so you can get to know him a little bit more. Tom Schwab knows how to build an online business. Marketing at its heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer drawn on his engineering, corporate, and e-commerce and bow marketing experience.

Tom helps thought leaders which include coaches, authors, speakers, and emerging brands get featured on leading podcasts for their ideal prospects are already listening to then he helps them to turn listeners into customers. He's the author of podcast guest profits, grows your business with a targeted interview strategy, and is the founder of Interview Valet the category King a podcast interview marketing. Tom, it is awesome to have you on the show again, are you ready to speak to our I AM CEO Community?

Tom Schwab 1:30

I sure have Gresh. I am excited.

Gresham Harkless 1:32

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, the first question I usually have is just to find a little bit more about you based off of kind of what I already said. But do you have anything you can add to your CEO story about like, what made you get started in this business?

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Tom Schwab 1:45

Well, I was looking at it as life is an evolution. And so for me, one thing builds on the other. You know, I started off my first job out of college was run nuclear power plants. And that taught me that everything is a system, you can teach anything, and you can standardize anything. When people say, Well, you don't understand my business. I'm like, no, you don't understand your business. If you can't standardize it, that's one of the things we've really tried doing here is taking what we've learned from inbound marketing, and what we used in in blogs, in how to grow a business and say, Hey, let's just use another form of content, basically podcast interviews, and use that. And so it's something we've done over the last four years. And you know, it's not magic. It's not art. It's really just a system that we've tested and refined. And I'm excited, to share with people here.

Gresham Harkless 2:34

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, could you tell us I guess a little bit more about that system and what you're doing with Interview Valet?

Tom Schwab 2:39

Yeah. So I would say to any CEO, your biggest problem right now is there to your obscurity, your ideal customer, right with what you have offering right now, your product or your service, it may not be perfect, it may not be where you want, but it is perfect. For some people right now, the only thing that is keeping you from helping them and them from rewarding you financially is that they don't know your life. Right? You're obscure.

So one of the things we really focus on is how can you, how can you connect with your ideal customer, and a lot of people now will start to say, well, you know, how do I break through the noise, I've come to the realization, I'm not breaking through the noise, I'm adding to the noise, right. So if it's apple, and Coke, adding to the noise, and I'm trying to break through the noise, I'm never gonna win that battle.

So instead of trying to have the loudest megaphone, I just want to get in on the conversation that my ideal customers are starting to listen to. And I think people are starting to filter things out and choose who they want to listen to what they want to listen to when they want to listen to Gresh, and even what speed they want to listen to. When we first started talking, I'm like, your sound weird, because I'm used to listening to you at one and a half times speed. And when we first started to talk, it's like, wow, he sounds a lot different.

From that standpoint to a CEO, it's like the question of how can you use this technology? How can you use all these tools and largely free tools that we have today? In order to get in front and have that discussion with your meaningful discussion with your ideal customers.

Gresham Harkless 4:11

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a very interesting perspective to kind of look at is that you're kind of adding to the noise, but how can you flip it and become and have those meaningful relationships that you're speaking about, I think is the ideal target for most CEOs and entrepreneurs and business owners. So I wanted to ask more about like, what makes you What do you feel makes you and your organization unique?

Tom Schwab 4:31

To me, it's really the focus, right? As I said, there's no magic there's no art but I think the companies that really focus on one thing I call it zone of genius that comes from a book, Gay Hendrix, The Big Leap, he talks about your zone of incompetency, your zone of competency your zone of greatness and your zone of genius. All we do is focus on podcast interview marketing. So with that, we're sort of the idiot savant sub where we've got a team of 14 all in the United States. And, you know, we've built relationships, with the podcasters. Out there, we understand the mediums we focus on just in three verticals.

So there are 400,000 podcasts, we don't focus on all of them. You know, we focus on business, faith and spirituality, and health, nutrition, and wellness. Those are our three verticals. So I think always niching down, and figuring out where you can be the category King, there's a great book that really impacted my life called play bigger. And it's how pirates, dreamers, and innovators create dominant markets. And the premise that they make there is that more and more in life, it's a winner take all society.

So you've got, you know, the person that's really niched down and owns that category. And then you've got other people that are just trying to play in the category. So from that standpoint, a lot of people, a lot of our current clients that love us that work with us, they say, Hey, could you help us do this? Could you help us Build a website? Could you help us with our social media? Could you help us launch your podcast? I'm like, we probably could. But you don't want us to do that? You know, as a CEO, you know that you want to hire the people that specialize in that? You know, my, my family practice, Doctor, I love him dearly. He's a great guy, but I am not going to ask him I trust you. Would you do my heart surgery? No, I'm going to a specialist on that one. I hope hopefully, I never have to.

Gresham Harkless 6:24

Yeah, that's definitely not the person you want to ask at. So I can really understand that. So I know you gave us already some awesome books that I'm definitely gonna add to my list to pick up. So I usually ask people for like a CEO hack, which might be a book, it might be an app, or it might be something that you use on a regular everyday basis that you feel helps you be more efficient and effective as a CEO. Could you give us a CEO hack?

Tom Schwab 6:46

Yeah, to me, my biggest CEO hack is trying to figure out what the word CEO means. And for me, everybody says, Well, duh, it's Chief Executive Officer. Well, I always looked at it as Chief Evangelist Officer, right? If I'm doing this, right, I've hired the right people, to manage the company to run the company, I've got to be the evangelist for the vision for our principles, what makes us different, and I have to go out and evangelize the entire category that we're in this podcast interview marketing, that doesn't mean selling every customer it needs evangelizing it out there. And I sometimes got to be very clear.

And that's my hack. I've got one of my managers, Stan Boyle, he's got this question that he always asked me, should you be doing this, and he always keeps me accountable there. And there are a lot of things I can do, but not a lot of things that I should do. And so trying to focus on, what's your role, what does CEO mean to you, and then put everything through that filter. And if that's not something that goes through the filter, either, don't do it, delegate it, or redefine your role.

Gresham Harkless 7:54

I love that it is so important for you for everybody to definitely make sure you're saying Arizona dizziness, so to speak, as you spoke about. But also making sure that even if you can do it doesn't mean that you necessarily should be doing it, which is a good kind of distinguisher that we should kind of remember. So that brings me to kind of the next thing, which is a CEO nugget, like what types of advice or words of wisdom would you give to other entrepreneurs and business owners?

Tom Schwab 8:18

Yeah, I think as CEOs, we can take everything very, very personally. And that can be very tough. So from the standpoint of when things are going well, it's not all you when things are going bad. It's not all you so I tried to take that and just look at it from the long term of trying to make that understanding of that, you know if it's a bad hour, or a bad day or a bad month, are we doing the right things? And if it's a great hour, a great week, or a great month? Are we still doing the right things, sometimes you can get the right results from the wrong action. So just trying to look at it from that standpoint.

Gresham Harkless 8:55

That makes perfect sense. And, and I know you already kind of touched on this, but you know, we look to have like a bunch of different types of CEOs. So different entrepreneurs and business owners, people that might be running businesses from their homes or people that might be CEOs of huge fortune 500 companies. So how would you define being a CEO?

Tom Schwab 9:13

To me, it's, you know, that leadership role, that visionary role, you know, we've got a remote team, we've got 14 people on our team, we do a good seven figures in the business. But you know, some people have, you know, a smaller company, and sometimes I think it's harder to be a CEO when you're smaller, right? Because it's easy for me to say delegate Well if you've got a small team CEO includes being, you know, chief cook and bottle washer too. And every decision you make could be fatal for the business, right? If you've got two people on your team and you hire another one, you just increased your manpower by 50%. That has a huge financial impact if the person doesn't work out if it destroys the team. That's a huge, huge decision. You know, a CEO with 1000 people or 100 people adding one more person, it's not as big of a thing.

So I don't diminish the people that are CEOs of small companies, nor do I glorify the people that are the CEOs of huge companies. I think all of the challenges we have are big to us. And, you know, I've sort of know where my sweet spot is, I've always said, I will not own a company that has an HR department or a legal department, because I've worked in those companies before. And that's when the CEO stops being the CEO, he has to answer to somebody else. So not saying that that's bad, but I just tried building them up to a certain point, and let somebody else take him over just sort of knowing my sweet spot where my talents are.

Gresham Harkless 10:42

Exactly the power of knowing thyself and understanding what your goals are, and hitting your goals, not hitting somebody else's goals is definitely insanely important. So, Tom, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule to kind of speak with us. I wanted to give you the mic, so to speak for any additional kind of words of wisdom or information you can tell us about Interview Valet as well, too.

Tom Schwab 11:03

Yeah, great. I appreciate this. You know, we've talked before about your biggest challenge right now is that you're obscure. There are customers out there, there are people that could really benefit from the product or service you have today. The problem is, they just don't know you exist. So if you're listening to a podcast, right now, you understand the power of this medium. And you understand that more and more people are going to be listening to it. Some of them are going to be your customers, and in the future, are they going to be listening to you, or your competitor, now, they could be listening to you as a podcast host like, like Gresh here, they could listen to you as a podcast guest like me. But you need to figure out a way that you can use this medium to tell your story and connect with those people that could be ideal customers.

And you know, if we can be of any service to you, there are lots of resources on how to do podcast interview marketing. I really believe that in five years, this is going to be as common as Facebook marketing or email marketing. Just another way to connect with people. So love to be of service to you. In fact, Gresh I'll put a page together just interviewvalet.com/iamceo, and I wrote that book that you mentioned, but I give away more copies of that that Amazon sells.

So if you just go to interviewvalet.com/iamceo, everything Gresh and I'll talk about I'll be there, I'll put a copy of the book, all my social media, and my calendar link, so if there's anyone that can help you, please reach out to me.

Gresham Harkless 12:30

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I appreciate that time, definitely, you're providing a tremendous amount of value. And the idea of being able to be visible as CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners is insanely important. So I'm glad you're doing your part to kind of help us make sure we get that visibility. So thank you so much again, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Tom Schwab 12:48

You too. Gresh appreciates you.

Outro 12:51

Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by Blue16 Media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Thank you for listening

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