IAM1995 – Entrepreneur Helps Thought Leaders Get Featured & Connect with Their Ideal Customers

In today's digital age, businesses face the challenge of obscurity. Many CEOs and entrepreneurs have great products or services, but the key to success lies in connecting with their ideal customers. This is where podcast interview marketing comes into play. In this blog post, we delve into the power of podcast interview marketing and how it can amplify your business story.

• Background: Tom Schwab knows how to build an online business. While marketing at its heart is about starting conversations with an ideal customer, Schwab has utilized his expertise to aid thought leaders like coaches, authors, speakers, and emerging brands.
• Interview Valet: Tom Schwab founded Interview Valet to get thought leaders featured on leading podcasts that their ideal prospects are already listening to. He then assists them in converting listeners into customers.
• CEO Hack: Tom sees the role of a CEO as that of a “Chief Evangelist Officer”. He believes everything should go through this filter.
• CEO Nugget: Tom advises not to take everything personally and always question if we're doing the right things.
• CEO Defined: For Schwab, being a CEO is all about leadership and maintaining a visionary role within the company.

Previous Episode: entrepreneur-helps-thought-leaders-get-featured-connect-with-their-ideal-customers

Tom Schwab Teaser 00:00

So I would say to any CEO, your biggest problem right now is there to your obscure to 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 for rewarding you financially is that they don't know you're alive, right?

You're obscure. So one of the things we really focus on is how can you connect with your ideal customer?

Intro 00:30

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:59

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

Tom Schwab 01:10

Gresh, I am thrilled to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:12

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. 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 his heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer. Drawing on his engineering, corporate and e commerce and now marketing experience.

Tom helps thought leaders, which includes 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, grow your business with a targeted interview strategy and founder of Interview Valet, the category king of 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 02:01

I sure have, Gresh. I am excited.

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Gresham Harkless 02:03

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. 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 on to your CEO story about what made you get started in this business?

Tom Schwab 02:16

I always look at it as. Life is a evolution. And so for me, one thing builds on the other. I started off my first job out of college is run a nuclear power plants. And that taught me that everything is a system. You can teach anything. You can standardize anything. When people say 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 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, 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 03:02

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Could you tell us, a little bit more about that system and what you're doing with Interview Vallet?

Tom Schwab 03:06

Yeah. So I would say to any CEO, your biggest problem right now is there to your obscure to 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 for rewarding you financially is that they don't know you're alive, right? You're obscure. So one of the things we really focus on is how can you connect with your ideal customer?

And a lot of people now will start to say 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 going to 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, even what speed you want to listen to.

When we first started talking, I'm like, You sound weird because I'm used to listen to you at one and a half times speed. And when we first started to talk, it's wow, he sounds a lot different.

So from that standpoint to a CEO, it's like 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, a meaningful discussion with your ideal customers.

Gresham Harkless 04:35

Yeah. That's a very interesting perspective to look at is that you're adding to the noise, but how can you flip it and become and have those meaningful relationships that you're speaking about? I think it's the ideal target for most CEOs and entrepreneurs and business owners.

So I wanted to ask more about what makes you, what do you feel like makes you and your organization unique?

Tom Schwab 04:54

To me, it's really the focus, right? Like I said, there's no magic, there's no art, but I think the companies that really focus on one thing, I call it the zone of genius. It comes from a book, Gay Hendricks 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 Idiot savants of that, where we've got a team of 14 all in the United States. And we've built the relationships with the with the podcasters out there, we understand the mediums we focus just in three verticals.

So there's 400, 000 podcasts. We don't focus on all of them. We focus in 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, dominate markets. And the the premise that they make there is that more and more in life, it's a winner take all society. So you've got, 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 a podcast? I'm like, we probably could, but you don't want us doing that.

As a CEO, you know that you want to hire the people that specialize in that, My family practice doctor. I love him dearly. He's a great guy, but I am not gonna ask him. I trust you. Would you do my heart surgery? Now I'm going to a specialist on that one. Hopefully I never have to.

Gresham Harkless 06:42

Yeah, that's definitely not the person you want to ask at all. So I completely 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 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 07:03

Yeah, to me, my biggest CEO hack is trying to figure out what the word CEO means. And for me, I, everybody say it's Chief Executive Officer. 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 means evangelizing it out there, and I've sometimes got to be very clear.

And that's my hack. I've got one of my managers, Dan 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's 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 08:09

I love that. I love that. Yes, it's so important for you for everybody to definitely make sure you're staying here is on a genius, so to speak, like you spoke about, but also making sure that even if you can do it doesn't mean that she does.

They should be doing it, which is a good kind of distinguisher that we should remember. So, that brings me to the next thing, which is a CEO nugget. What types of advice or word of wisdom when you give to other entrepreneurs, business owners?

Tom Schwab 08:32

Yeah, I think as CEOs, we can take everything very, very personally, and that can be very tough.

So from the standpoint when things are going well, it's not all you. When things are going bad, it's not all you. So I try to take that and just look at it from the long term, trying to make that understanding of that 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? Because sometimes you can get the right results from the wrong action. So just trying to look at it from that standpoint.

Gresham Harkless 09:08

That makes perfect sense. And I know you already touched on this, but we look to have a bunch of different types of CEOs, 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 09:24

To me, it's, that leadership role, that visionary role, we've got a remote team. We've got 14 people on our team. We do a good seven figures in the business. But some people have, a smaller company. And sometimes I think it's harder to be a CEO when you're smaller.

Cause it's easy for me to say delegate. If you've got a small team, CEO includes being, 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 decision, a CEO with a thousand people or a hundred 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 all big to us. And I've know where my sweet spot is. I've always said, I will not own a company that has an HR department or 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's bad, but I just try building them up to a certain point and then let somebody else take them over. It's just knowing my sweet spot and where my talents are.

Gresham Harkless 10:46

Exactly the power of knowing that self 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 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 ballet as well.

Tom Schwab 11:06

Yeah, Gresham, I appreciate this. We've talked before about your biggest challenge right now is that you're obscure.

Yeah. There's customers out there. There's 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 Gresh here, they could be listening 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, if we can be of any service to you, there's lots of resources on how to do podcast interview marketing. I really believe that in five years. That 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 to interviewvalet.com/IAmCEO. And I wrote that book that you mentioned, but I give away more copies of that than Amazon sells. If you just go to interviewvalet.com/IAmCEO, everything Gresh and I will talk about will be there.

I'll put a copy of the book, all my social media, my calendar link. So if there's any way I can help you, please reach out to me.

Gresham Harkless 12:33

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I appreciate that Tom. 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 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 12:50

You too, Gresh. Appreciate you.

Outro 12:52

Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation in Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at cbnation.co. Also check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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