The SECRET to Building Trust in a Noisy World

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up. Expect the odd misheard word.

1. 0:00
   Wes Mathews

   So I'm super excited for today's guest.

2. 0:01
   Tom Schwab

   I'm Tom Schwab. I'm the founder of Interview Valet. The way I see the world is the biggest problem we have today is how do we talk with our clients? How do we build trust? To be a podcast host is a lot of work. 80% of podcasts die within the first 10 episodes. But I think you're also building a relationship with a listener because there's something intimate about voice. And I'd even say voice over video.

3. 0:29
   Wes Mathews

   And it's that idea of creating the way that's easiest for you and then repurposing other ways, right? It was that one win that motivated me at the time. Like, this is why you do it week in, week out. You put the work in, results will come. Be consistent. You made that point earlier. Just consistency is so important of just doing it and you just have to do it. This is the unfiltered truth about entrepreneurship. Raw, no BS, no sugarcoating. Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel. I'm your host, Wes Mathews.

   Each episode, we'll learn from experienced founders and uncover the top 5% learnings that led to their success in all things personal, family, and business. This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, delivering clear marketing strategies, ROI, and no surprises. So I'm super excited for today's guest. What I'm excited to talk to you about is just I'm a very brass tax kind of guy. And you're a no fluff and hype as well guy in terms of your unique approach and how you approach business. Tom's been an entrepreneur for 10 years.

   And just a lot of good things that you can add a lot of value in terms of what we're going to talk about today. You can see on your microphone the interval. Why don't you just take a few minutes and introduce yourself.

4. 1:50
   Tom Schwab

   Yeah, I'm Tom Schwab. I'm the founder of Interview Valet. Call myself the chief evangelist officer. And the way I see the world is the biggest problem we have today is how do we talk with our clients? How do we build trust? And too many people are talking about just break through the noise. We're all breaking through the noise and just making noise. I believe we're all not just one funnel away, one conversation away. And really, that's what we've been doing at Interview Valet for the last decade.

   Helping thought leaders, coaches, consultants, professional services, get out on podcasts, the right podcast so they can talk to their ideal clients, build that trust, build that thought leadership. And the amazing part today, Wes, is that it's not only our ideal clients that are listening to podcasts. It's the AI that refers them. So we've been doing it for 10 years, have a team of 20, all here in the United States, all remote. And we're more excited about this medium now more than ever.

5. 2:55
   Wes Mathews

   You bring up a good thing right away, which is AI. I hear a lot about voices getting replicated, things going away. I've seen some pretty cool technology, phone answering services that pretty much will handle the client's conversation, book it to appointment. What do you see the impact? I mean, you being in Interview Valet, focusing your business on podcast, what does AI mean to you as you plug forward for the next one to three years? And how does it change things?

6. 3:25
   Tom Schwab

   Yeah, to me, it's a tool. Just like any tool, there's good and bad to it. I'm looking at it more from the discoverability. Y2K, people would go to the yellow pages. And it sounds funny now to think about that. But then they went to SEO. They'd go to Google and look at things. I think that's going to be as archaic as the yellow pages. If you look at the data now, more and more people are going to AI for the answers. And I think we can either fight that or leverage it.

   And I think it's a great time because there was an article in Forbes out of a study at Cornell just recently. And granted, they were looking at it just for e-commerce. But they said that traffic from AI converted nine times higher for a sale. And it was amazing. People were spending six minutes before they even came to your site on AI talking about it. And I think that is great because at the end of the day, we don't want just more leads. We want more profits.

   And those come from clients that value what we do. And so I think it's great that AI now is really filtering the clients that come in. They'll look at the good, the bad, the ugly about you, and then decide, hey, is this somebody I want to work with? Because it streamlines it for them. And so I'm not as worried about, well, will I be replaced by an AI agent that's going to talk with them? No, I'm just thrilled that the people that are coming to us are better educated, better filtered.

   And yeah, there's a lot of things that we're using AI for to understand our clients, to understand the markets, to even give them feedback on all their interviews. So I think it's a great tool. And I really say the only thing we're limited by right now is our curiosity of what we can do with it.

7. 5:27
   Wes Mathews

   Yeah, you bring up an interesting point. So my background is digital marketing SEO. So I entered that space in 2006 to 2009. That was my entry point when I first sort of took the entrepreneurial leap. And Yellow Pages was the big dog in the industry. And I actually hired a couple guys from Yellow Pages. And it's funny you say that Google is sort of the new Yellow Pages, because me coming from that world, I don't use Google anymore, barely, probably 5% of my searches, everything I use.

   I use ChatGPT pretty exclusively. But the amount of in-depth I'm going down a rabbit hole, like, hey, I'm looking for an expert on this, that, and the other service product. And what I want to touch on for you, because I think it's really important that some people understand for podcasting your business, how to get yourself out there. And as the world changes, I think people really need to double down to become a thought leader on whatever they're interested in, whatever they're kind of going to market with.

   And something that's really important is in a podcast, like show notes, like, you know, the content that the person is providing. So it is searchable, findable via ChatGPT. SEO is moving to ChatGPT. So when you think about that, what I want to highlight and just talk about is just like that relationship component to me, that AI is just never going to replicate. I feel relationships are just, it's the gold, I mean, gold's had a nice run over the last year, but like, you can't replace that good old fashioned relationship.

   And how else in today's day and age, do you create that relationship? What are your thoughts around that?

8. 7:07
   Tom Schwab

   I agree with you. Relationships are the ultimate currency, right? Inflation can't touch them. Heck, death can't even touch them, right? They're valuable forever. And that's something that can't always be automated. So when you're having a discussion, right, like we're doing now, not only are you building a relationship with the host, who, you know, do you want to say is an influencer because they've got all the people listening to them. But I think you're also building a relationship with a listener, because there's something intimate about voice.

   And I'd even say voice over video. Because give you an example, I was flying someplace at one time and I was getting off the airplane. And somebody came up to me and said, are you Tom Schwab? My first thought was, are you a process server, right? And I was like, yes. And he's like, I thought I recognized your voice. Now, granted, I probably didn't look the same coming off a flight that I look like here, right? If I had grown the beard and he didn't know me before and seen pictures before, those things change.

   But your voice is that that common thing. And I think people get to get to know, like, and trust that, you know, you think of people like Zig Ziglar, that just that voice that that accent that he has, you, you, you know, it immediately and you trust it immediately.

9. 8:37
   Wes Mathews

   Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, also, too, if you have a face for radio, then, you know, voice is good on audio. But I think how do if you're a business owner, writer, entrepreneur, you know, I'm a type A, I'm a visionary entrepreneur, I even had a little reluctance to like, put stuff out there, right? So like, just being brutally honest, like, you look at, hey, like, I'm gonna put out a podcast a week, you have to meet all these people, like, number one, it's a ton of work.

   Number two, there is this level of like, I don't call it anxiety, call it whatever, but you've got to put your stuff out there. I think when you put your stuff out there, now what, right, judged, you know, whatever those things are, and it's out there forever. So how do you what some advice or some tips you would share with some people like, hey, like, suck it up, and you got to do something like that. That's my voice.

10. 9:29
    Tom Schwab

    Well, it's, first of all, you're right, right to, to be a podcast host is a lot of work. 80% of podcasts die within the first 10 episodes, right? And it becomes they're proud of it for the first quarter, and then they're embarrassed by it after when people ask them about that. So I always look at it as how can you test something, or even as an engineer, right? How can, how can I get more out with putting less in? So often, leveraging someone else's audience, right?

    So speaking at somebody's event as opposed to putting on your event, or being a guest on a podcast as opposed to hosting it. The other thing is, when you're doing conversations, right, and this could be you go to an event, look, maybe you don't want to do a keynote, right? That's a whole lot of work and slides, but you'd be on a panel, right? I'll answer questions. Same thing with a podcast interview. And the amazing part is, is, you know, the questions that the hosts ask is the same thing that clients are asking.

    It's the same thing that AI is searching for, right? You don't have to figure out any hacks, right? Just, Marcus Sheridan used to say, they ask you answer, right? And so it's a very natural way to get out there. Now, as far as the hesitancy of getting out there, I think if you've got some concerns about that, that means you'll be great out there. Because the people that are, I always call them the super extroverts, you know, the carnival barkers, they just go out there and they want to hear themselves talk.

    That doesn't work anymore. That drives people away. We did a study and the two thirds of our clients self-identified as introverts. And it was great because they thought about the answers. They wanted to bring value. They wanted to have a discussion. Typically, introverts are better on one-to-one discussions like this than standing in front of an audience. So there are mediums that you can share, right? That you can get your words out there. I think what's not allowed of leaders today is to be invisible, right? It's part of the leadership.

    It's part of the job, right? Now, it doesn't mean you have to be an influencer or a celebrity, but you can't be in the witness protection plan, especially in high ticket engagements, especially in service-based businesses. Heck, I'd even say like software as a service. Let me give you an example. Acuity scheduling was acquired by Squarespace. It was Squarespace's first acquisition, right? And what makes Acuity different than schedule once, Calendly? I don't know. They all do about the same thing. But funny, Gavin Zuklinski had lower churn because he built his business up through being the face of the business, right?

    He was out on podcast interviews. And so when somebody would come to me and say, oh, Calendly's got this new feature. Yeah, but I like Gavin. I like what he stands for. I'm going to stay with this. And so even with the software as a service platform there, his churn was less because his sales were built on a relationship, right? I don't know if Calendly and schedule once is US-based or in Bangladesh, right? I don't have a lot of loyalty to them. But when I knew this guy's story, the origin story, why he built it, what his team was like, that's why I stuck around there.

    So I think the idea of just being, well, I'm just going to be behind the scenes and not do that, that's not an option anymore.

11. 13:26
    Wes Mathews

    I really resonate with that. I really agree with that. I mean, I think back like my dad worked for Chrysler for like 44 years. I mean, we're both from Michigan. So we have the automotive here. And that was the way things were. And I think you could hide behind the brand and the brand was the thing. But to your point of having to become that thought leader, that trusty sort of face to the brand is so important. So out of all the things to do as an entrepreneur, like how did you kind of take the path of relationship or like how did you think about interview valet as a business?

12. 14:02
    Tom Schwab

    It's nothing is revolutionary. It's all evolutionary, right? So my last company was HubSpot's first e-commerce case study, right? Build it up from a regional player to a national leader, sold it off. And I was in my sabbatical phase. And people were asking, well, how'd you build it? How'd you grow it? And at that time, we built it all through guest blogging, right? And it worked really well. Tap into the audience, get the no like trust, the traffic. But this was 2014. And I'm like, yeah, but guest blogs don't work anymore.

    So I hypothesized, huh, I wonder if you could use podcast interviews. So we tested it, it worked really great. People said start an agency. And I'm like, no, agencies are a lot of work. So I wrote this cheesy little PDF that I used to give away. And then I had a course that I never took out of beta. And Wes, the people that were honest, the beta testers said, listen, you know, I don't want to learn all this. I just want to be the guest. You take care of all the rest.

    And I was like, oh, that's good copy. I'm taking that. One of them actually bought us the URL interviewvalley.com and said, here's what you should call it. And so we launched it in 2015, a decade ago. And for that first few years, people would say, what's a podcast, you know, when I give them the elevator pitch. And then it really took off. Once podcasting got more mainstream, it took off after COVID, when businesses realized they didn't have to travel and, and shows and everything like that to reach their clients.

    And then it's really taken off here, I'd say in the last six months, as people are realizing that the best leads are coming from AI. And AI is indexing podcast interviews. And that's where they're getting a lot of their content. So it's, it's an amazing time.

13. 16:03
    Wes Mathews

    Well, you're an expert. So I love to have experts on and ask specific questions. And coming from asking you from an entrepreneurial perspective, right? I've met some great people in my life, a couple that one, they have a really great ghostwriting company, like they write books for entrepreneurs, right? And, you know, they're talking to me and they're like, you should write a book and do all these things. And I'm like, yeah, first of all, nobody cares. Right? So I think you have the entrepreneurial head trash, right?

    Of nobody cares, which I think can apply to podcasts and books. And then I like looked in the corner of my office and said, what am I going to do with a pile of books in the corner of my office? So my question to you on podcast is, if somebody's like, you know what, I've dipped my toe in, or I'm thinking about it, but like, how do I get it out there? Or like, do you have a real simple back of the napkin plan for somebody that if they have, you know, what they should do, should they professionally do it?

    Should they do it themselves first? And then how do they even get somebody outside of their mom, which I know my mom listens to mine to listen.

14. 17:06
    Tom Schwab

    Well, and it's that idea of creating the way that's easiest for you and then repurpose in right. I've written a book. It was a homework assignment, right? That's not how I naturally communicate. So this medium is a whole lot easier for me. Okay, so focus on that. The next one, I would say is look at your goals, right? People say, should I be a host or a guest? Depends on your goals, right? Should you be a Uber driver or Uber passenger? Same platform, but totally different goals.

    So being a host is a great way to nurture your current leads, nurture your current clients, right? Being a guest is the way to go out there and get new exposure, get new leads. And so often people try to think of how can I scale this, right? Start small, right? If you want to be on a, do a podcast your own or be a guest, try somebody else's platform first, right? This idea of before you run a wedding, you should probably attend a wedding or be in the bridal party.

    So being a guest is a way to test that out. And you don't have to start pitching a thousand podcasts, you know, don't start out with Joe Rogan. Find out friends that have a podcast, right? See if you can be a guest. Listen to some of them, right? Leave them ratings and reviews, leave them some social media love, right? And then reach out and say, you know, Wes, I've listened to the podcast. I really liked this. I think I could give value here, right? And, you know, Vaynerchuk says, jab, jab, jab, right hook.

    Just give, ask, right? Give some love with a rating and review. Give some love on social media. Give them value in the podcast interview and they'll be asking you to be on and to be on again.

15. 19:03
    Wes Mathews

    So that's, that's some great advice. And I, and I want to give specific advice, you know, to somebody thinking about, Hey, like, how do I get involved for me? Like being an entrepreneur, number one is super lonely in general. I think people have this illusion that like, I don't know what an entrepreneur really is, but even in the podcast world, right? When you're doing it, you put it out there. Sometimes it's crickets, right? Like you don't get feedback. I didn't know if anybody's engaging with it.

    And your point of like, give, give, give, ask. I'm at the point now with mine where I'm getting pretty good influx of people wanting to be a guest on the podcast. And I want to share that because you said something really interesting. Somebody reached out and because I get a lot of them and they're all very generic or there's like these companies, right? Consulting companies that are for hire and kind of hit you up. And you know, one of them said, Hey, like I really, and look, they either could have listened to it or used AI, but they took the time and they said, Hey, you went over, interviewed so-and-so, and you were talking about this.

    I really liked how the conversation, like they gave, they gave me specific. So I'm like, okay, somehow they listened to it. And then they said, you know, we really love your content and left you a five-star review. Oh, by the way, our CEO is a really enthusiastic guy and he'd love to be on your show. Like what do you think happened to that request versus the other request? I'm like, oh, like they're complimenting me on my content. And they gave me a five-star review. I sent it over to our crew.

    I said, hunt this down, like have them on the podcast. So I mean, I think that's really great advice because that really stood out versus the other hundred or whatever I had coming through the door. That's really great advice.

16. 20:50
    Tom Schwab

    And some people will come back on that and say, well, Wes, that's not scalable, right? I can't do that to every podcast. Well, it's not scalable, but you know what? It's very effective. And there's an agency out there right now and their tagline is almost a punchline in the podcasting industry, right? They say, we'll help you pitch a thousand podcasts in the time it took you to pitch one, right? Our goal is not to pitch podcasts. It's to land on the right ones, right? So it's not more, more, more.

    It's like, how can I get more out of it? And so that's a prime example there. How do you stand out, do something different, make it easy for them. I think too often people think about, what do I do as a podcast guest? Well, drop the word podcast and just focus on what do you do as a guest, right? Show up on time, reach out to them, send them thank you afterwards, promote the episodes, all of those things that humans do and it builds the relationship.

17. 21:56
    Wes Mathews

    I want to touch on something you sent over. I think it's really interesting as I read it and kind of marinate on it. Marketing is getting more efficient at things that are less effective. Explain that to me, like what does that mean to you?

18. 22:12
    Tom Schwab

    It's most of digital marketing today, right? Where we can now, thanks to AI and automations, you know, I can send out a million text messages, right? Or I can spam, I can scrape Apollo and get a list of 10,000 ICP candidates and I can email all of them, right? With automation, I can send everybody on LinkedIn a DM, right? And I look at that and I'm thinking, I hate when I get those, why would I want to use those? It's very efficient, right? I can throw some dollars at something and boom, I get all of this activity.

    And you know what? It might work a little bit, right? But are those your ideal clients, right? Or are these just people that are tire kickers that are going to waste your time? And so I think too often we're focusing on activity as opposed to results, right? One of the big complaints now is everybody's traffic is down, right? HubSpot will tell you their blog traffic is down, their leads are down. But have you noticed their stock prices up and their sales are up? It's sort of like what I was talking before about that Forbes article, right?

    I don't want a hundred people to click on a Facebook ad or a Google ad to come to the website so that one of them can be a client, right? One of our clients nailed it when he said, I'm tired of the sales funnel, right? Where I've got a kiss of a hundred frogs to get one client. He's like, can't we just do the sales cylinder where I have six discussions and get five clients? I think that's the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, you know, to run a hundred clients through a funnel, very efficient, but it's not effective.

19. 24:13
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I'm with your guy. I hate the word funnel that drives me crazy. Well, it's interesting, like from a digital marketing perspective and businesses, I used to tell people back in like, let's call it like 2009 to 12. Because, you know, coming from like the website design and SEO space, right? You know, it's lead generation. And I used to tell people, you know, you want a professional company to manage your website and your digital marketing, right? You don't want your sisters, cousins, brothers, neighbors, daughter managing it, right?

    Like if people resonated with that, they got that because some of them had that person doing it. Well, the reality is today in 2025, that person I think can manage the digital really, really well. You know, digital marketing is, you know, a lot of the tactics we're talking a little bit prior to launching, like the calendly SaaS products, like the little widgets out there that you can just kind of take and connect and what you can build today versus five years ago is unbelievable. So how do you recommend podcasting to fit into that?

    Whether it's just, you mentioned like, you know, be a groovesman first before you get married and do all that. Is it, you know, what's a good cadence for somebody? I mean, people like kind of a recipe card. Is it like try to get on one once a month for six months and then kind of go to the next thing? Or how would you sort of build out that recipe card?

20. 25:36
    Tom Schwab

    And that's a great question because it's consistency, right? Let's go back to other things, right? When they told you to blog, right? You don't get credit for writing 10 blogs today and then not doing anything again for a month, right? Better to write a blog a week. So I think with podcasting, figure out a cadence that works for you, right? Our clients have told us when they do less than two interviews a month, it's like reinventing the wheel, right? But I most of the time don't recommend anybody doing more than one great interview a week, right?

    And some people go, well, if one a week is great, let's do one a day, right? And it's like, no, more is not better. Better is better, right? Or with somebody that came to us and they said they wanted to do a hundred podcast interviews in that month. Like why? Oh, because it'll be massive exposure, right? So it's streaking, but I wouldn't recommend it as a business practice, right? So it's this idea of get that out there in order to always have clients finding new stuff for you, having the AI find it.

    And then also as your business evolves, right? Talk about different things. You know, I wasn't talking about that Forbes article last week because it hadn't come out. Now I think that's very timely, right? I wasn't talking about AI being a great, great lead source a year ago because it wasn't, right? And so always trying to bring people up to this is where we are and this is where we're going. The other thing I think that's important is what you're talking about, right? This isn't a place where you should do, you know, the five hacks to make five figures in five seconds, right?

    Talk about bigger picture ideas that are timely and also timeless. If you do that, you're going to just build up this foundation of content, right? You think about how many words we talk in a minute and in a 30 or 45 minute podcast, that's a whole lot of blogs.

21. 27:45
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I had a client a handful of years ago and she was, we were just having a general conversation and she's, she was like running into challenges in terms of like lead generation. They're a really high ticket, like a really high end engineering firm. So there's like very specific buyers, like their ideal customer profile. Let's just call it, there's like a hundred companies in the US, right? That they could only buy their product, buy their services. And she's great. Like she's super conversational. People want to hang around her, but like the sales guys were having a really hard time connecting or like figuring that.

    And what they were, what she was doing is she was having, she had a podcast, but it was internally. So she was interviewing the engineers and like she was banging her head against the wall. And we were just casually talking and I'm like, have you ever thought about you reaching out to your target market saying, Hey, I noticed you guys do this. It's really great. I've loved to interview the CEO, da. She changed it. And now she's like, nobody said no to her. First of all, rarely does anybody say no to a podcast.

    So like your target, whoever you're targeting, more than likely they're going to say yes to, to come on the podcast. So she started interviewing and then making that connection after, because she's built a little bit of rapport saying, Hey, I'd love for you to check out what we do. I'd love to know that you can talk to Henry, maybe Henry and like now there's this obligation of, you know, you put this content, you do this thing, you give to your point. And then the ask is, Hey, I'd love for you to talk to our VP of sales.

    I, you know, and that was just like kind of an aha moment for her and me. Cause I kind of set it out loud at the time. And this is like 10 years ago. And that was a really big tactic in their arsenal in terms of lead acquisition. So, I mean, I want to share the thing that's a little unique and how you can leverage the tool that maybe people aren't thinking about.

22. 29:41
    Tom Schwab

    Yeah. I've heard it referred to as content-based networking, right? If I reach out to a VP of a account-based marketing company that I want to go after, right? And ask, Hey, could we have a 45 minute conversation? They're probably going to say no, right? I'll never get through the gatekeeper. But if it's like, Hey, we're, we're doing this white paper. We're doing a summit. We're doing a podcast. I'd love like to feature you as a guest. Well, now you're starting that whole relationship with them. Another one that I have seen is where some people say, well, this is my ICP, right?

    I've got to just go after them. Well, why don't you go after those people that know them or influenced them? Right. Great example is one of our clients, great talent agency, and it works really well with people that run on the EOS, right? Entrepreneurs operating system. And so it's like, okay, yeah, we could target that. But I love that the idea that he had is like, I could go off after these people one at a time, right? These companies or who influences them. So his marketing push was to focus on EOS implementers, right?

    Because every implementer probably knows 10 to 20 companies that could use his service. And if they recommend it, the founder is probably likely to use them. So he just went with that, right? Sometimes we'll have people say, you know, I want to focus on Fortune 500 CEOs. Like, sorry, there's not a podcast called the Fortune 500 CEO with 500 downloads, right? But and chances are, they're probably not listening to a lot of podcasts. But who is influencing them? Who could you get them in front of in hopes that they would share that information with them?

23. 31:35
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, that's great advice. I mean, I think it's you said audio is more important than video. And I feel like video takes another level of production and cost, you know, so as an entrepreneurial company, if they're starting to do this, I mean, what are in your world of interview valet, like what are just a season people with like fees and costs, right? Like, what do you see out there? What do you guys typically charge? Or what do you see for the market? Just to prepare an entrepreneur for like the actuality of what this is.

    It's one of those things where there's a whole wide range to it, right?

24. 32:09
    Tom Schwab

    So if you're doing your own podcast, man, you can do it. Like you said, have your nephew's friend, cousin, do it and do it really on the cheap, or you can go to, you know, Fiverr and have people do it. The thing is, it's getting less and less, right? Or getting less and less expensive. I would always look at it. If you're going to do it, do it for at least a year, right? Make that commitment. And I think it's very reasonable to say somewhere between 250 and a thousand dollars, depending how much help, how much production you need, how much promotion, right?

    And, you know, even that $200, you could probably do it cheaper on there. But just remember, this is your brand. As far as going out on guesting on other shows, same thing, right? You can reach out to people. There's also databases out there, right? Sometimes they're like Craigslist, right? Got to kiss a lot of frogs to get a match. But, you know, there's something like podcastguest.com or podmatch. You're looking at $50 a month. You can start getting those invitations, right? If you want to work with an agency, that is going to use all the data to find the right shows.

    They're going to prep you. They're going to really teach you the system on how to use it as marketing, as not just appearances. And that includes repurposing all the content. There, you can spend $3,000 a month. But we always look at it as not the cost, but it's what you get back out of it, right? If you've got a client that's worth $100,000 and they start following your podcast, man, you can do a whole lot of interviews if it was that one client that drove all of that, right?

    So it's really to look at it as a marketing thing, right? What's the investment? The other thing I look at is, you know, a Facebook ad. I spend the dollar today. I might get some results, but it's gone, right? I don't remember what ad I spent money on a year ago. Whereas the podcast, that's evergreen. That's going to be out there forever.

25. 34:22
    Wes Mathews

    You know, somebody had asked me like, oh, what's some of the value got? And one thing stands out to me that I had a potential client we were talking to. So like my main business were in the marketing world, fractional CMO, et cetera, coming from the digital marketing world. So I have a prospect client, great relationship. And she's just been burned by every digital marketing agency known to man. She struggles with her own internal marketing. And for us, like that's a phenomenal client because I want them to be a bridesmaid first or married three times before we do business, because then they know what they really want.

    I mean, as a, as a visionary entrepreneur myself, I can change my mind and I'm kind of wacky. So like, those are the types of profile clients I love. And, you know, she's a little like, like, well, how do I, how do I not know that this is going to go down the same path? And long story short, she called me at like 7am one morning, which I'd never usually answer my phone. And she's like, Hey, I just want to let you know that I normally run every morning and I listen to music.

    I went to your podcast and I started listening to just, she's like, I started binging on your podcast and she's like, I'm all in. When do we get started? And for me, I just kind of like, and for me, it was that, it was that trust that everything I had been talking to her about. And when she listened to podcasts, it was like a continuation of our conversations and like how different, and I share that because, you know, I might not have specifically a million viewers or whatever you want to talk about, but it was that one win that motivated me at the time.

    Like, this is why you do it week in, week out, you put the work in, results will come. You're not going to drop 50 pounds tomorrow. Be consistent. You made that point earlier. Just consistency is so important of just doing it. And you just have to do it.

26. 36:14
    Tom Schwab

    And you were so clear there on who you work with, who you get the most results with, right? And the vast majority of the world is turning you off because of that, right? They want to talk about the marketing bro that promises that there'll be a celebrity in 30 days and make all of this money, right? They're selling the hype, right? Your people are the ones that are like, no, I've gotten burned by that hype before. And so when they hear you, they're either turning you up or turning you off.

    Either one is fine. And that lady turned you up, and that did all the sales for you, right? The better the marketing, the easier the sales. And so from that standpoint, you were very clear. And that's important with AI also, because that study showed that the prompt was 29 words long on average, right? So they're not just asking for a one or two word keyword. No, they're putting their whole story out there. And you want them to bring that this is who Wes is. This is who he works with.

    He's who he doesn't work with. This is why we think that he's the perfect solution as your fractional CMO.

27. 37:28
    Wes Mathews

    And I've racked my brain around like, how else can you create that level of trust with somebody? Like what other medium, to your point, I love the fact that you said like, Facebook ad, like a dollar today and gone tomorrow, like it's worth nothing. How do you build around that? I've really challenged myself to like, how can you create, you know, there's giftology, right? And, you know, John, unfortunately, he passed away, but he left a legacy of, you know, what that, what that meant, right? And when I first heard that, I was like, really?

    So giftology, like this idea of like, give that ask. I think he nailed it exactly. But I love, I love that method. I love that on the podcast of just how many things that touches and how in work and go, I was actually we're chatting to like, I went deep sea. I went fishing. And my fishing charter guy somehow, some way got a hold of my podcast. And he's on there. He's like, Hey, man, thanks a lot for like doing that. He's me good insight. Like he's an entrepreneur and he's grinding away.

    And I think that's the, you know, that's the curiosity around why are people an entrepreneur? And how do you grow a company? But I share that, because it's just you just, you don't know who's listening and who's influencing. And if he's ever talking to somebody that's like, Hey, my, my marketing screwed up, he'll be like, Hey, you, you got to listen to this guy, or like, I trust this guy, right? Well, I think that's where podcasts can just go in so many different areas. It's just so important.

    I mean, I try to tell every entrepreneur I know, figure something out and just start to do it. You have to.

28. 39:18
    Tom Schwab

    There's a great book, Bill Troy, who's out of Columbus wrote called click sand, how digital marketing is your business is phenomenal. He was the first one to say the emperor has no clothes. And he pointed out that the vast majority of the software platforms are trying to show you things that get you excited, right? So how do you know it's working? Well, look, you know, your, your time on site just went up by 40% and your click through rate is, you know, 17% better than the average, right?

    All of these things. And it's like, but what does that really mean? But we see the charts, we see the graphs, they show us what we want. And it's like, we're happy. And then you put a podcast and it's like, well, what's it doing? Right? You, there's no feedback loop that says, yes, this charter captain here, listen to this, or he listened up to this point. It's almost like what we know works, right? You plant the seeds, right? And some of them will take some of them won't.

    But all of a sudden, you know, after a number of months, years, whatever, you become this overnight success. And this idea that you can just buy your way there really quickly, I think they're making a lot of noise, right? There's a lot of people that have bought their way to be an influencer, but people don't trust them. They know who they are, but they're not engaging with them. And sometimes it's those humble heroes that have the most profitable business.

29. 40:49
    Wes Mathews

    Well, if somebody wants to embark down this journey, I mean, obviously, you're a very knowledgeable guy, interview valet, like, how do they begin a conversation with you start to talk to you if there is some interest around creating a podcast or going down that path?

30. 41:05
    Tom Schwab

    Yeah, I appreciate that, Wes. The easiest way is just go to interview valet with a v.com forward slash entrepreneur Intel, right? I'll put everything Wes and I talked about there. We've got an assessment, right? We'll podcast interview marketing work for me. There's a copy of my book there, podcast guest profits, you can buy it on Amazon, or if you go there, I'll send you a copy free. And then if you just want to talk with me, see how you might be able to work this into your business, I'll put my calendar link there and everything.

    All that will be back at interview valet.com forward slash entrepreneur Intel.

31. 41:47
    Wes Mathews

    So I normally don't tell people what to do. I just speak from experience. So like speaking from experience, don't go the Fiverr route. Don't go the cheap route. It's your brand. I recommend contacting a guy like Tom just to kind of explore the thoughts and ideas because, you know, there's a lot to it. I mean, I think people think just, oh, it's a podcast, but taking a step back and understanding and all the layers and the time that goes into it. You definitely want to, I encourage you to do it, but there's also the right way to do it.

    And guys like Tom can really lead and guide you to the right spot that you need to be for your business and what you're trying to do. So Tom, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate all the shares. Super fun talking to you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Wes. Awesome. This has been another episode of entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us for show notes or other episodes. Please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com until next time.