Unlocking the Power of Podcasting: Tom Schwab on Leveraging Interviews for Business Growth

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Mark Evans: Welcome to Marketing Spark, where we explore the cutting edge strategies and stories behind today's most successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, and marketing leaders. I'm your host, Mark Evans. Today, we're exploring the world of podcasting, which has exploded in recent years. Who better to guide us through it than Sean Schwab? Tom is a true pioneer in this space. He's the CEO of Interview Valet, company a that has helped countless businesses, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs amplify their messages through podcast interviews. With so much content battling for the spotlight, Tom has perfected the art of turning podcast appearances into a powerful marketing engine. In today's episode, we'll talk about why podcast interviews work so well, the biggest mistakes businesses make when leveraging this platform, and why podcasting is more relevant than ever. If you're looking for ways to boost your visibility, build trust, and grow your audience, this conversation, I'm sure, will provide actionable insights. Welcome to Mark and Espar.

Tom Schwab: Mark, I am thrilled to be here, excited for the conversation.

Mark Evans: I hope that introduction was a good promo for the conversation we're about to have. Interview valet has been around, I believe, since 2015 back when podcasting was just starting to gain momentum. I'd love to know your journey to starting the company and the initial vision for it. As important in hindsight, and I think it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs focus on is, what would you have done differently to launch either Interview Valet or another type of company within the podcast space?

Tom Schwab: Thank you for calling me a pioneer. You you get called a pioneer ten years afterwards, not at the same time. As I look back on it, my background was inbound marketing. Right? Company was HubSpot's first ecommerce case study. We built the entire company up with guest blogging. I'm in the sabbatical phase after that company and people said, how'd you grow your business? Well, guest blogging, but by 2014, it really didn't work. I started to hypothesize I could I bet you could podcast interviews that same way to get in the the know and trust. We tested it. It worked great. I didn't wanna do an agency because I knew the work involved in that. Did a cheesy little PDF, did a course that I never took out of beta because people just said, I don't want to learn how to do it. I want you to do it for me. So we beta tested that. As I look back on it early on, you you get called a pioneer now, but back then, you got looked at like you were weird. I'd do my elevator pitch, and I would say all of this, and then people would say, what's a podcast? And I think I jumped too far ahead where people couldn't connect the dots. I remember somebody saying when radio first started, it was called wireless telegraph because nobody knew what radio was. You have to go from where they are right now to this new thing. I think I was ahead of the market and couldn't speak to the market at times. It wasn't until about 2019 where podcasting took off where people were like, oh, yes. I understand what you're doing now. Mhmm. But it was good because it gave us three or four years to build those relationships, the basis, get that product market fit there. So that's one thing that I'm trying to be cognizant of right now. Like, even when you start talking about AI, sometimes people's eyes glaze over, so you've gotta tie it to something that they're already familiar with.

Mark Evans: I can feel your pain when it comes to launching a startup before its time. Many years ago, just after the original .com boom, a friend and I cofounded a online service that connected consumers to specific types of products they wanted to buy. Great product. Really thought it had a lot of potential, but we were probably three or four years too early and couldn't raise enough money to last until the market finally found us. And entrepreneurship and startups, timing in many ways is everything. If you have the right product at the right time for the right consumers, then you'll hit it. If not, if one of those is missing, it becomes a much more risky proposition. You know, you talk about podcasting finally hitting it around 2019. It is amazing that over the last five or six years, it has become an entrenched part of the marketing landscape. We can remember when blogging was super sexy and everyone had a blog. Now blogs are not very sexy. They're still part of the marketing mix. In its wake, podcasting, I think, has become a very interesting creature. Curious about your take on the medium's growth in the last few years. I would suspect that during the global pandemic, podcasting took off, and then you've got high profile people embracing podcasts now. Where is the podcast industry? How much more room is there to grow? What's your take on the overall landscape?

Tom Schwab: In some ways, I'm still amazed we call it a podcast. Right? Because the idea came from an iPod. Right? You used to have to plug it in, download it, and that was podcasting. And I think podcasting been around over twenty years, but has continued to evolve. Right now, 90% of all podcasts have video. People are repurposing it. Joe Rogan got a great podcast, but I can't watch the two hour podcast. I've never watched an entire episode, but I'll catch the little clips. And if I catch that clip on TikTok, is that still a podcast? I think what it is, it's an interesting time where it's easier than ever to create in the way that is easy for us, to repurpose it in the way that's easy for our clients. From that standpoint, I think podcast continues to evolve. I look at it more as on demand content. I don't think that's going away. That is powerful. It's becoming more powerful with AI. As other things, our first reaction is, oh, this was created by AI. Right? Whether or not it's an email or something like that. When you hear someone or when you watch someone on a video, there's no doubt that you and I are real people because if I was AI, I would talk in complete sentences with fewer grammatical errors, where this is more people know it's real. Search engines and even the large language models are picking this stuff up and and using that. Over the last few months, there's been more and more talk about how do you get found by the AI or the language models, and we're seeing ourselves and a lot of our clients are saying, yeah. We're starting to get leads from ChatGPT, and I think that's because you've got that share of voice and then also the sentiment out there. I'm very bullish on podcasts, and really, it's this media that's easy to create, easy to consume, and easy to repurpose.

Mark Evans: AI is obviously the sexy creature these days. Everybody's trying to figure out how to embrace it. I read recently that Google's Gemini language model has something where you can turn words into a podcast. I think for any podcaster that's exciting and terrifying at the same time. From what you've seen, where is AI having the biggest impact on the podcasting industry? I look, for example, at services that can summarize podcasts quickly, can create as many tweets as you can, automatically create show notes. I'm a user of Descript, for example, and you can get its AI engine to create YouTube summaries and blog posts. There's all kinds of amazing things that AI can do. But from where you sit, where is AI delivering the most value? And value in terms of still allowing podcasts to be authentic, engaging, and organic.

Tom Schwab: There is that one where now you can put a document in. I can load my book, it'll start a podcast based on my book. But it's weird if you ever listen to them because they don't have that human interaction, the sense of personality. There's a lot of promise in AI, but what we're seeing actually value from it. What's worth the dollars and what's moving the needle is repurposing. It's what you were talking about. You can take forty five minutes of an interview. You can slice it and dice it. And especially for, like, marketers that are trying to get more out of less, that's not only more out of less money, but more out of less time. The talent is what we call them, CEO, the speaker. You've taken forty five minutes of the CEO's time, you better be getting a whole lot out of that. Mhmm. Now it's so easy to do the forty five minute interview, then get the transcript, write some thought leadership positions on that, LinkedIn posts, different posts, get those videos out there. The CMO pitches this idea of podcast guesting and is betting on it, and the CEO comes in and says, that was a fun interview. I didn't have to travel for it, and you got all of this content for it. They're coming back and saying, yeah. Let's do more of this. There's a lot of promise of AI, but that's what's really delivering right now.

Mark Evans: I find that every day. There's a couple things that I will do to cheat. One is when I'm writing content myself, When I'm walking my dog, I'll record a voice memo on the fly. It could be two or three minutes. I'll transcribe it and then get ChatGPT to generate ideas or even generate content that as a writer and editor, I'll polish. For podcasts, you can transcribe an entire interview. Ask ChatGPT what are the most interesting sections of this interview for LinkedIn posts or what's a really great idea for a blog post or what are the most interesting video clips? The ability to transcribe and repurpose information is mind blowing. That's the big opportunity for marketers. That's the big opportunity for podcast ROI to really come to the forefront.

Tom Schwab: Even that third person perspective, right, one of the creative ways we've been using it is to help people get better with podcast interviews. Right? I can give you my opinion and tell somebody, Mark, you're talking too fast on the podcast. That's my opinion. But we've taken it now where we'll take the transcripts. We've built over all the years that we have different feedback on it and say the guest, Mark, you talked eight faster than the host. And you look at the last three interviews, you've been doing that. Then it's not my opinion and you don't wanna insult somebody. Or you didn't answer these questions completely. Or you've talked over the host seven times, even to the point of what grade level did you speak at. Sometimes if you've got a technical founder, and you gotta bring it down to the customer's level. Right? And you can show them on a podcast interview, you spoke at a sixteenth grade level is how they used to do it, and the host spoke at a ninth grade level. There's a big mismatch right there. The jargon. Another thing we'll do is take their interviews through and say, pull out the jargon. What could they have said better? And it's a nice way where you're not personally attacking someone or it's a CMO. How do you tell that to the CEO? You're using too much jargon. But if you can say, hey. I ran this through this third person. This is what they came up with. Some things you may wanna keep in in mind there.

Mark Evans: When I look at the AI landscape right now, the tools are amazing for anything you might wanna do. For podcasting, obviously, there's lots of tools to help you with production. At the end of the day, authentic conversations matter, and that's the real power of AI. The reality is that for people like you and I, we live in the eye of the hurricane. We live and breathe this stuff. We understand the value of it. We recognize this is something that we're passionate about, and we know the potential that podcast has from a business perspective. But many businesses are sitting on the sidelines. They may listen to podcasts. The CEO may like podcasts, but they're not actually doing it. A question I think a lot of them would ask, is it too late for my company to to jump into podcasting? And for businesses that are starting to explore the idea of either hosting a podcast or leveraging podcast interviews, what are the most important things that they should know before they dive in? Things like how much they cost, how much time they take to produce, how drive ROI. What should they focus on before they say this is something that we're excited about and now we're gonna actually do it?

Tom Schwab: Yeah. A lot of questions.

Mark Evans: The first

Tom Schwab: one, is it too late? There's some people Gary Vaynerchuk says, everyone should have a podcast. Jordan Harbinger said no one should have a podcast. The truth is the world doesn't need another podcast, another TV show, another blog. What they need is a great one and one that's unique. Right? They don't need another company. They need a different type of company. Right? That's the first thing. How can we stand out with this? Then it becomes, why would you use this medium? And we talked about this before. It's easy to create, to repurpose with the tools and everything there. From a cost benefit standpoint, producing a podcast as opposed to producing a conference or going to different conferences, wow, it's night and day. So it's cost effective to do that. The other thing too is most of the time, it can be spun up either in house or with a partner. It's not gonna take years and years to do this. The question becomes then, should we have a podcast or should we be a guest? Right? Should we be a host or a guest? I always look at that as it depends on what your goals are. Should you be an Uber driver or an Uber passenger? Same platform, but you're trying to get different things out of it. Being a host, having your own podcast, that is a great way to nurture your current leads, to nurture your current customers. But if you build it, they will come, doesn't work. Right? Discoverability is still the biggest problem. If you want new leads, if you want new exposure, if you want new backlinks, you gotta go out in other people's stages. That means podcast guesting. Mhmm. The other thing too is that we've worked with a lot of production companies, and they call it phase zero. And they'll take the talent from the podcast and put them out on podcast interviews first Because that way, they get comfortable with it. They find their voice. They can see how other people are doing it. When they come back to do their podcast, they've got more confidence. They've got more clarity around they can do it. And also, there's a a finite window there. Right? It it the last I looked took ninety days from when you put that first episode in until when it got approved. If you wanna start a podcast today, even if you have that episode, it may take ninety days for it to hit the world. I don't know where the customer service support number is for iTunes podcast, but if you find it, let me know. This is a great way to get out there to talk about your podcast and to drive listeners there. Too many people are one end of the spectrum or the other. They're intimidated. It's too big, and they never do it. And then the other ones are, let's do a podcast, and let's launch it Monday. The truth is that the majority of podcasts die within the first 10 episodes. Right? It's very easy to start one. It's hard to keep it going. It's a commitment. I've seen too many companies embarrass themselves where they're like, yeah, we've got this new podcast, and they promote it, and then they forget that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Right? They miss a week, then they miss a couple of weeks because somebody's traveling and they they run out of guests or things to talk about. They go from one quarter promoting their podcast to the next quarter somebody asks, hey. How's your podcast going? And it becomes an embarrassment. So that's a nice way to try before you buy. Go out. Do some podcast guesting. Do you like the medium? What have you learned about the medium? After you do that, then you can launch your own.

Mark Evans: One of the realities of podcasting these days with the barriers to entry disappearing. When I launched my podcast three years ago, I did it because I've realized that the ability to create a podcast was easier than ever. I it was less intimidating than it was before. Whatever platform you're using, you can find guests. They can appear on your podcast whether you're using Riverside or Zencast or or any other platforms out there. Recording a podcast is the easy part. Editing is fairly easy too, but that's the talking part. But the walking part, to use that analogy, is as you say, is distribution and promotion. And making sure that people actually listen to the podcast or watch the podcast regardless of the platform that you're using to do it. If you record a podcast and no one listens to it or watches it, then your ROI is zero. Can you give some examples of companies, clients that you have that do a really good job of podcast distribution and promotion?

Tom Schwab: That's one of the things a client taught me. More is not better, Better is better. So do more with every podcast. Do more with every interview. Don't just keep doing them over. And figure out what the monetization model is for it from the very beginning. Some people are using both guesting and hosting as more of a strategic networking to get to clients. I wanna be careful of what names I say and because it's almost like account based marketing is what they're doing. We wanna talk to these people, so we're gonna have our podcast and invite our prospects on, or we wanna be seen in these different ones. Right? I wanna speak on the inbound stage. I know that if I go on these podcasts that are part of the HubSpot network, that will get me recognized. That's some ways to do it. I I think if it's just I wanna make money on this, there's too many people that start a podcast with that and they don't know how. Trying to do it just based out of downloads is really tough. Joe Rogan makes a lot of money, but the people that have the best return on investment are those ones that have a strategy behind it. Right? They're trying to get their own clients. It's not just getting the clients, but getting the sticky clients and the right clients. One of the best ones early on, and he's talked about this publicly, so I'm not talking out of school, there's a company called Acuity Scheduling. It was Squarespace's first acquisition, and it's a great scheduling app. Right? We worked with Gavin, the founder of it, really early on. It was great because he not only talked about the product, but he talked about the story behind it. Right? How he had built it for his mom and how he worked payment systems into it because that's what she needed. He talked about the the culture behind his company. Is that gonna make the cash register ring right away? I don't know. He he got out there and people are like, let me try this. But what it did was made stickier clients. Right? What's the difference between Acuity and ScheduleOnce and Calendly and all the rest of that? I don't know. They can all knock off the same features, but I knew Gavin's story. I knew his heart, the people there. Every time a new one would come in, it's I'm not gonna switch to you. I I know nothing about the company. Believe that he had stickier customers, less churn, and that helps the valuation too. Right? How are you gonna differentiate yourself in a market? Especially in b to b sales, it's more of a relationship sale than a transaction. Right? If it's a $5 product, fine. Do a Facebook ad and a funnel and all the rest of that. But I think as you get bigger engagements, it doesn't take a funnel, it takes a conversation. There's a book that I read years and years ago by Bill Troy out of Columbus, Ohio, and it was called clicksand, how digital marketing will ruin your business. One of the things he said in there is like, big fish don't swim through funnels and whales don't click. We've had clients come to us and it's, why do you wanna do this? Because they wanna be associated with different players. Right? I wanna be able to say that I spoke on this stage, whether it's physical or digital. Right? I wanna be seen as a thought leader, not just somebody that's coming across their Facebook feed.

Mark Evans: I'm glad you mentioned the reality that companies do podcasts for different reasons. Sometimes it's brand awareness. Sometimes it's customer relationships. It's interesting that talking to prospects is a little bit like the Trojan horse or going to a party and someone asks you how much money you make. Everyone knows that's the thing that you're trying to do, but no one wants to admit it. No one wants to admit that you're having a prospect on your podcast because you wanna convert them into a customer. It is interesting when companies are exploring the podcast that they're realistic about what they wanna get out of it. They set their KPIs against those goals. It doesn't have to be a single metric. It doesn't have to be about revenue. It can be other things. The other thing about podcasting that's resonating with me is that because there's so much content out there, because inboxes are being pounded with cold outreach, is that, especially in b to b, relationships matter more than ever. I've rallied around this idea of people powered marketing. People buy from people. A a company doesn't buy something. A person buys something, which is, I think, one of the reasons why conferences have come back so robustly after the pandemic because we want relationships. We wanna trust people. We wanna like people. What's really great about a podcast is that through audio, there's a sense of personality. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, for example, have mentioned many times on the Pivot podcast that they'll go to an event and people will come up to them and treat them like an old friend because they're in their ears or their phones all the time. That is one of the most powerful things about a podcast is that you're out there, people can hear your voice, and the voice is a very powerful thing. If you've a voice that people can rally around, it goes back to the old radio days, people will instantly gravitate to you, and there's a sense of affinity which will separate you from other companies out there. Thoughts on that?

Tom Schwab: I've got some thoughts and I've got a personal experience. I was on a plane one time, and I'm getting off the plane and somebody came up to me and they're like, are you Tom Schwab? My first thought was, are you a process server? Yes. And he said, I recognized your voice. He started to introduce himself and we knew each other. And he had just heard me through podcasts and had followed me. And I'm like, wow. I might have looked a lot different on vacation than I would have if I showed up. That signature, people know your voice and that intimacy. The other one is there was a book a number of years ago called the new leadership literacies. It was a Spencer guy out of Stanford. He said in there that the future is vivid audio. I remember listening to that, and I rewounded a couple times. I'm like, no, it's vivid video. His point was is that often video becomes discriminatory or dated. I watch a video of somebody and they're too young, they're too old, they don't look like me. And we start judging them as opposed to the content. Or I look at the the video and I'm like, look at the size of the lapels on that jacket. That was so long ago Mhmm. That it couldn't be worthwhile now. Whereas with audio, we listen to the content. I think that's a reason that it's powerful too. It's one of the few mediums that we can consume where we want, when we want, and at the speed we want. Right? 70% of podcast interviews or podcasts are listened to sped up. There's no other medium that we can do that. Right? If you do that with video, it just looks really funny because everybody gets shaky and stuff like that. Is a very intimate and personal medium and to build that relationship with your clientele. That's what people want. They just don't want more leads. They want more clients and profitable clients that stick around a long time.

Mark Evans: A lot of the people who listen to this podcast are are marketers and marketing leaders. A lot of them love podcasts, and they would love to either have a podcast for their companies, or they'd like to get their CEOs to appear on podcasts. CEOs will tell them, I'm too busy. It's not a priority. I don't wanna be out there. What advice would you give marketers who are trying to pitch their bosses on the power of podcasting? And as important, making sure that they're comfortable with the idea that they can be on a podcast. They can talk confidently. They can come across as thought leaders. It's not an intimidating medium. They don't have to do a lot of preparation because it's all their domain expertise. What advice would you give to marketers when they're trying to sell their CEO that they should be out there and appearing on podcasts or maybe hosting a podcast?

Tom Schwab: That is something we deal with, and we've dealt with it for going on ten years. Often, marketers see the potential of this. This is great. Give me forty five minutes of your time. I can get all of this impact from it. The talent, they're like, oh, no. I've done keynotes before. It takes a lot of preparation. I think it's really framing it for them. One, this is not a keynote. This is they ask, you answer. They're gonna ask you all the same questions that we talk about with customers every day. I think it used to be worse probably pre COVID because sometimes people were intimidated by jumping on a Zoom call. Now everybody's used to it. Mark, you and I would have this same conversation if we were on Zoom as much as we're talking here. Right? So to set that forum that it's not intimidating. Right? This is not a gotcha interview. This is not sixty minutes where they're trying to get a gotcha. No. The host wants to look good by making the guest look good, to set them up for that. The other thing too is making it easy for them. So making sure that they've got the equipment, the lighting. They don't wanna look stupid. Being able to give them the best practices and then make the first experience a fun experience. Right? Make sure they're with an engaging host that immediately they see all of the things that can be done with this. The ones that do better as far as the talent, the CEOs, are the ones that are a little concerned from the very beginning as opposed to the one of, yeah, I need to be a podcast and I need to be the next Joe Rogan. Sometimes the CMO's gotta pull them back and say, we could spend a lot of money on this, but how does this make us money? There's CEOs listening to this too. One, dealing with their ego or their fears to make sure it's there Yeah. And then letting them see the business results from it. Right? That we call them the talent. Right? The CEO. There is a thousand things that she, he could do during that hour of the podcast. Right? Why should they be there doing it? And if you can really show them the return on investment The thing is that most of them see that. Right? We used to ask our clients, would you drive across town to see one ideal client? Would you drive across state to see a 100? Would you get in a plane to go talk to a thousand? Some of them would freak out with the introverts and say, no, I don't wanna speak in front of that many. But you can do that through a podcast interview and you don't have to leave your office. So I think framing it to them, especially if they don't listen to a lot of podcasts.

Mark Evans: I I love the idea of of being very clear on what a podcast generates. You go back to your CEO and say, we did a thirty minute interview, we wrote a blog post, we did all these LinkedIn posts, we have all these video clips on YouTube, we got this traction. Even if they didn't get any inbound, if there wasn't a direct correlation between the podcast and leads, it is reassuring to a CEO. I'm sure it's reassuring that it's just not a one off and the podcast episode went up and that was it. You're going on ten years with Interview Valet. Love to get your thoughts on where you think your business is going given the fact that podcasts are evolving and changing? What are some

Tom Schwab: of the

Mark Evans: things about podcasting that you're most excited about?

Tom Schwab: Yeah. So where our business is going is that recently we launched Interview of LA Espanol. Right? I don't speak Spanish, but a third of our team do. Right? They're bilingual. As I see where AI and technology is going, I think every company has the ability to serve markets in different languages. Right? That's coming very quickly. Just traveling overseas. I was amazed. I didn't have a problem communicating with French people, with Spanish people. Right? That barrier is going down. That just expands our market so much. The other thing that I'm excited about is the more AI content that's out there, the more people are looking for human connection. I think that the AI models also can figure out which one's human and which one AI. I think this human connection, this, as you call it, person to person marketing or human to human marketing that he referenced, I think that's more powerful. It's becoming easier for people, and I think now we're also getting the data and the metrics. Right? Mark, five years ago, I would have to admit we were probably doing more podcast guessing than podcast guesting, but now we've got the data that we license. We license a dozen different databases, and each one of them tells us a different piece in the puzzle. A client comes to us and we can say, okay. The people that go to your website, the people that go to your competitor's website, they listen to these podcasts. But it becomes a lot more targeted, and now we're getting the data that marketers want too. It's an exciting time. While the technology is always changing, I could describe this and explain it to my grandfather. God rest his soul, he wouldn't have understood the Internet Yeah. But he would have understood the philosophy behind it. We're going to get you in front of other people's audiences, your ideal customer to talk about your business, your product, to build that relationship, to drive sales brand authority. He would have said, oh, you mean going to the country club or going to the Kiwanis club? I'm like, no. And he would have been, oh, going on radio or television? No. We're gonna do it off the Internet. He'd be like, I have no idea what that is, but the philosophy, the strategy has always worked. As we get better tools, tools are just an amplifier of your creativity or your stupidity. If you've got the strategy down that you're trying to do, it's a great time because the tools will help us amplify that.

Mark Evans: One final question is where can people learn more about you and Interview Valet?

Tom Schwab: The best practice is always to send them to one place and meet them where they are. If you come back to interviewvalet.com/marketingspark. Right? That's easy to remember. That's everything that Mark and I talked about there. There's an assessment, 10 questions. Will podcast interview marketing work for you? I wrote a book called podcast guest profits. You can buy it on Amazon, or if you go there, I'll give you a free copy. And then if you'd like to talk with me, right, see how you could work this out, how you could leverage this, I'll put all my social media, my calendar right back there, interviewvalet.com/marketingspark.

Mark Evans: Thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened to today's episode of marketing spark. A huge thank you to Tom for joining me and sharing his expertise on podcasting and how it literally can be a game changer for businesses. If you like the conversation, please share the episode with your network or social media. Subscribe, rate, and leave a review. It'll help others discover the podcast. If you're a b to b or SaaS company that wants marketing to drive easier, faster sales and leads, we should talk. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you soon.