Episode Transcript
Glenn Harper [:00:00:00
Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:00:00:04
Julie Smith.Glenn Harper [:00:00:04
What’s going on, Julie?Julie Smith [:00:00:05
We were just talking about accents.Glenn Harper [:00:00:07
That’s right. Well, I have a Ohio. I can’t really do much with that accent.
Julie Smith [:00:00:11
Ohio, right?Glenn Harper [:00:00:12
That’s middle Ohio. Used to be northern. It’s a little different. Got coffee today? Glasses on. You liking the weather?
Julie Smith [:00:00:19
It’s raining. No, I said it’s miserable.Glenn Harper [:00:00:22
Trick or treat.Julie Smith [:00:00:23
We’re on the bell curve. Down for weather.Glenn Harper [:00:00:26
It’s not good. Well, we’ve got a really treat today. We got Tom Schwab here, founder and chief evangelist and of Interview Valet. Even though this sounds like he’s a traditional preacher, one needs only to chat with him to know that he is an evangelical. For another type of belief, he is the brains behind Interview Valet. Whereas they specialize in helping podcasters market their show content to their targeted customers slash audience. This, of course, means more views, which means more exposure, which means more ad revenue. Everybody wins.
Glenn Harper [:00:00:55
Tom Hale for what we call in Ohio, call the state up north the dreaded state of Michigan. We, of course, say that in just as Michigan is a beautiful state and their schools are top notch. Tom seems to be confused in what he wanted to be when he grew up. But in spite of his first love of marketing and the military, he decided to do something easier than marketing. Mechanical engineering at West Point. What the hell? In Tom’s spare time, he challenges random people who irritate him to boxing matches. This makes kicking someone’s butt legal. Gloria.
Glenn Harper [:00:01:21
Genius. This is gonna be fun getting to know Tom. So sit back and enjoy. Thanks, Tom, for being on our show.Tom Schwab
[:00:01:26
Well, I’ve got the Chicago accent. You know, I’m not AI because I dropped the G on all words that end in ing. And I’m thrilled to be here and just having an exciting conversation.
Glenn Harper [:00:01:38
Well, that’s what it’s all about. Well, you know, I like to do stalk my guests a little bit, and you have a lot of good stuff out there, but you have a. It’s a vacuum for other things. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it says you grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the shadow of the old Gibson now heritage guitar factory. And it said that you are used to play guitar with Jimmy Page and Angus Young. Is that true?
Tom Schwab [:00:02:01
I was gonna say if the Internet says it’s true, it must.Glenn Harper [:00:02:04
It has to be.Tom Schwab [:00:02:05
I was gonna say I didn’t move to Kalamazoo until I got out of the service, but I still go to the bar that’s right next to the old Gibson guitar factory. It moved down to Nashville in the 70s. But there’s a great bar called Louis who’s got pictures of all those people when they came to pick up the guitar.
Glenn Harper [:00:02:25
Isn’t that crazy? In Kalamazoo is the epicenter of the incredible musicians that play that guitar. It’s crazy.
Tom Schwab [:00:02:33
Yeah.Glenn Harper [:00:02:34
Who knew? So you hail from Chicago.Tom Schwab [:00:02:36
You said, well, the suburbs of Chicago, right? I. I say Chicago. And then people. I’ll say, well, where in Chicago? And I’ll say, Fox Valley. And they’re like, well, that’s more like Iowa, right? 38 miles outside the city. But, you know, being in the service gave me a chance to see the world, different viewpoints. And you said I was confused of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I don’t know if I want to ever grow up.
Tom Schwab [:00:03:02
It’s this idea of. It’s an evolution, right? Everything I’ve done only makes sense as an entrepreneur in the rearview mirror, right? I always say the biggest piece of fiction I’ve ever read or written was that game plan or the business plan, right? Everything was up and to the right. And then you get out there in the real world, and you. You figure out what the clients want, and it’s always a. An evolution of what your idea was. So I’m always excited about what the next evolution is in the world.
Glenn Harper [:00:03:32
I couldn’t agree more. So, you know, when you grew up in. In this little town, what’s it called? Fox. What?
Tom Schwab [:00:03:38
Well, it’s. The city is called St. Charles.
Glenn Harper [:00:03:40
It’s in Charles.Tom Schwab [:00:03:41
Fox Valley.Glenn Harper [:00:03:42
St. Charles. Did you. When you were a kid there, growing up, you got your parents. Did they. Were they entrepreneurs? Did they work real jobs? How did that go down?
Tom Schwab [:00:03:51
My grandfather was so. He was a business owner. And, you know, he was probably the biggest impact on my life. And I. My dad, God love him, we had a great family, great life. But he was a loyal employee. And I’ll never forget when I left the service, and he told me that I was a fool, right? How can you leave the service, right? All you got to do is put in another 15 years and you’ll get the retirement. And I’m like, that is just not for me.
Tom Schwab [:00:04:19
Then when I went straight commission, he called me a dang fool or something else like that, right? He’s like, you can’t do this, right? You’ve got a house, you’ve got a family. You can’t make these big bets. And I’m like, I believe I can. And you know, I, he lived long enough to say that he was wrong. And I, I guess I was always an entrepreneur. Born into a non entrepreneurial family, but had enough influences in my life that showed me a different way. And is it the right way? Is it the wrong way? I don’t know, but it’s, it’s my way. And I’ve enjoyed the, enjoyed the, the ride.
Julie Smith [:00:04:58
I’m curious, do you have any siblings?Tom Schwab [:00:05:00
I do. Three. Three siblings and none of them became entrepreneurs.
Julie Smith [:00:05:04
Okay.Glenn Harper [:00:05:05
So you ought to wonder, was mom and dad trying to do in reverse psychology on you and say, you can’t do that. And then you say, oh yeah, watch me. Or were they, you know, wait, are you the oldest?
Tom Schwab [:00:05:15
I’m the second oldest. And I think it wasn’t so much my parents as it was the people that I ran into in life. Right. Caddied at the country club. Right. And that gave me a great experience of saying, how come these guys get to golf on a Wednesday when everybody else is working on a Wednesday? Or I, I worked at a liquor store stocking shelves. And the owners were two young entrepreneurs and learned so much from them, still friends with them to this day. And I think there was enough examples of different, different ideas, different ways to go.
Tom Schwab [:00:05:54
And I think at times we just go with the normal way. Right. When, when your parents are doctors, it’s normal for you to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. But I think it’s important to just look at what other influences you have in your life and examples and say, this is the one that looks most appealing to me.
Glenn Harper [:00:06:11
When you were working at the liquor store, how old were you?
Tom Schwab [:00:06:15
I started when I was 15 and I was having fun just stocking shelves. And then I’ll never forget when I turned 16 and I got told the good news and the bad news. Good news is I’m going on payroll. The bad news is my take home was less.
Glenn Harper [:00:06:33
Isn’t that terrible? Did you, were you a sampler of the merchandise at all because you had the keys of the kingdom? Just out of curiosity. It’s one of those things. As a kid, you’re like the dream come true, right?
Tom Schwab [:00:06:43
You know, you would think so, but I was just talking to my boss, Bob Lundin from Lundin’s Liquor World, probably about a year ago. And I’m like, I never drank there, I never stole product, anything like that, because they were so good to me and I was so loyal to them. Right. I wouldn’t want to get them in trouble. I was more like Standing in, in the aisle behind the cash register, shaking my head, no, don’t sell to this person. And then they’d come up and say but, but the ID looked good. And I’m like, yeah, I go to school with her. It was probably her older sister’s id, something like that.
Tom Schwab [:00:07:22
So it’s one of those things where had the opportunity. But they treated me so well right. That I had the loyalty.
Glenn Harper [:00:07:30
But I think it’s different that. Because again there are, you know, I felt like I was kind of that way growing up, working as, as a young, you know, really young. I, I just always felt like it was like my company and I wouldn’t do that to me so why would I do it to them? But I, I just think that’s a, it’s got to be something the way you were raised. It has to be. Some values are instilled with you. But it was just a different lens because most of my people I hung out with and friends they’d exploit wherever they worked. I mean it was, it was crazy.
Tom Schwab [:00:07:58
And there’s a term that I remember that Stryker they used to psychologically self employed. And that’s something that I look for in our team and you know, people will say, well, I don’t like managing people. Well, if you need to be managed, you should not work for me because I’ll, I love leading people but if I’ve got to manage you and micromanage you, this is not the place for you. So I’m always looking for those people that are psychologically self employed. I think of when I promoted my operations manager, Jessica Morgan. She is awesome, right? And she took over operations and she started going through the, the P L and all the rest of that and she’s like, what is this monthly recurring 15 charge for? And I’d be like, ah, shoot. I’ve, you know, that’s, it’s what I’ve been meaning to cancel, to cancel. But I just get busy with it, right.
Tom Schwab [:00:08:51
And she’s like, she went through and she cleaned up all of those. She cared more about my money than I did.
Glenn Harper [:00:08:59
And that’s the challenge. I don’t want to skip ahead to these entrepreneurial things because I want to see again trying to paint the picture of your journey and how you got where you got and then how do we implement it. But it’s amazing how people don’t look at it that way. Most people, it’s hard to find a employee or a colleague that wants to look at it through that lens where they care and it’s bigger than them. They always want to look at what it’s for them.
Tom Schwab [:00:09:23
It’s.Glenn Harper [:00:09:24
It’s crazy.Tom Schwab [:00:09:25
Yeah. And I think of my friends that worked at McDonald’s or Burger King, right? They would, they would always pass us out, you know, four extra bags of food when we came along, right. And they didn’t know their boss. It was a corporation for me, you know, I knew Bob and Dave’s family and they gave me perks like, like I get at no other job. So here’s an example. Dave drove a Camaro. And every time there was a dance in high school or something like that, we used to switch cars and I, I’d have to clean up his Camaro, take the car seat out of the back, pick up all the Cheerios and stuff like that. And I would detail that car great.
Tom Schwab [:00:10:07
So I could take it for one of the dances. And he’d drive around town in a. What was a 69 Plymouth Fury. And it’s one of those things. It’s like that was just one of those little perks that he offered me. And that’s something that I try thinking of now. It’s like, would I stay there because he gave me a 15 cent raise? No. But I’d never leave because it was almost like family.
Glenn Harper [:00:10:35
And to that point, your father, your grandfather, somebody had instill in you that when you borrow something from somebody, you always give it back to them better than they gave it to them. You. So you had it clean, full tank of gas, ready to go. And he’s like, wow, this is the cheapest car wash I ever got. Probably. But most people don’t do that. They don’t understand that rule. If you borrow something, give it back better than way you received it.
Tom Schwab [:00:10:58
Yeah. And even that reciprocity, right, if somebody does something nice for you, do something nice for them and it becomes this upward spiral as opposed to taking advantage of somebody and doing a downward spiral. Right? And same thing in business, right? If you, if you do the minimum required, they’ll send you the minimum referrals and profits, right? But if you take that extra step, then they want to do something nice for you. And it’s a, it’s a great, great place to be.
Glenn Harper [:00:11:26
So you’re growing up here, you’re working in a liquor store driving Camaros. Sounds like a. Awesome high school years. And then at some point you’re like, well, I feel like I got to go. Did you play sports? Did you box in high school? Or did you have that sport or. No, you didn’t Even pick that up till later.
Tom Schwab [:00:11:42
I was, I was a cross country runner. So I, I ran track cross country and then working at the liquor store. There was one of the gentlemen that walked, walked in and he had worked for them a number of years before. I didn’t know him before then. And this guy had just been around the world and he came in to talk to Bob and Dave, and he went to the military academies. And I just thought, what is this? And Bob explained to me that, you know, oh, there’s service academies and you can go there, they pay for your education. You get to go, you know, all the rest of this. And at this time, I was looking at college, and I’ll never forget Northwestern.
Tom Schwab [:00:12:29
I looked at. And at that time, Northwestern with tuition and room and board and everything, was $10,000 a year. And I’m thinking, I’ll never make $40,000 in a year to pay back that, that degree, right? That was so much money to me. And then I’m like, the academies. That sounds really interesting. So I started to go down that route and by the grace of God and a clerical error, I got in there. I was born without depth perception. So, click.
Tom Schwab [:00:13:03
I wasn’t medically qualified, but they didn’t catch that on my records until my senior year. And by that time they gave me a waiver on it.
Glenn Harper [:00:13:12
How crazy is that? So you went to the Naval Academy first, and then you went to Mester, Michigan after that, or how’d that go?Tom Schwab [:00:13:20
So I went to the Naval Academy, graduated from there as a mechanical engineer, ran nuclear power plants on an aircraft carrier. And then when I got out after five years, I was interviewing for different companies. And one of the companies that I was interviewing with, I wanted to take the job in, in San Jose, and great company. And then I realized by that time I’m married, I’ve got two kids. I. I couldn’t afford to live in San Jose. And so they said, well, we’ve got another facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Right.
Tom Schwab [:00:13:59
In fact, that’s where Stryker Corporation is based out of. So I’m like, sure, let’s. Let’s look at it. So on a snowy February day, I said, I’ll take the job, but I’m not dying here. And it’s a home, it’s a great place to live, raised a family. But. But that’s what got me back to the Midwest.
Glenn Harper [:00:14:19
I gotta get. Go back to this. You’re in high school, you work in a liquor store, cadding, you go to Naval academy and you’re dealing with Nuclear subs. Like, how does that. That’s a massive jump. How did you decide to do that? I mean, that’s. You gotta be pretty smart to do that.
Tom Schwab [:00:14:35
You know, it makes sense in the rearview mirror. But in a period of, what was that, six years, my life changed dramatically. So when I was growing up, I’d never really been more than 100 miles from my home, right? And then a year after joining the service, I’ve been around the world, been to Australia, seen so many things, met so many different people. And I think it’s always this idea of what’s next. What’s that curious thing? Once I graduated, it’s like, oh, yeah, I’m an engineer. Let’s do nuclear power. That sounds great. And so I’ve always looked at, like, what has this foundation set me up for the next one? And that’s why I say, life is an evolution, not a revolution.
Tom Schwab [:00:15:24
And, you know, I. I look back and there’s some people that I know that sold medical devices at the same time I did, and they’ll say, you know, oh, well, now I’ve got, you know, know 25 years of experience. And that would kill me today, right? It’s like, I want to get one year experience, maybe two years experience, and then use that to build on the next thing. And, you know, it’s this idea that I think I get bored easily, so I’m always looking for that next challenge. So especially in today, right there, you can always build onto the next thing.
Glenn Harper [:00:16:00
So this is the question. We always have this question with our guests, like, is this something that one is born with, or is this something that the environment you grew up in dictates that you have to look at things through a lens because you want to get out of something and be something, right? It’s impossible. I think most of the time you’re born with it, and you just either you have it or you don’t. And if you have it, do you act on it? And like yourself, you definitely acted on it. Some people are kind of scared and they get a real job first and they go do it, and then the people that don’t aren’t born with it. They never take the chance. So what do you think it is.
Tom Schwab [:00:16:39
That’S interesting? I think some of it could be environment, right? Your peer group. If your peer group is doing it, you’ll do it, right? All my peer group was cattying, so it seemed like the normal thing to do and to put yourself in that peer group. The other thing is the necessity, right? Of I wasn’t getting an allowance. If I wanted money to go on dates or anything like that, I had to earn it. So there’s that necessity. And Christopher Lockhead from Category Pirates was the one that taught me this. He said there’s Biggie entrepreneurship and little E entrepreneurship. And he views Biggie as like Mark Zuckerberg, you know, venture capital funded, right? They’re, they’re making big bets that, with other people’s money.
Tom Schwab [:00:17:29
And then he says there’s literally entrepreneurs that are making big bets with their own money, right? And this idea that they’re not just trying to, to make Wall street rich, they’re trying to change their life, they’re trying to change their employees lives. And so I think some of that could be, could be environment, right? Where it’s like, I know what I want out of life and I’m just saying a job is not going to get me there. I’ll work really, really hard, but I want to have more control in my life. And I don’t think there’s, there’s a wrong way, right? The world needs people that sign the front of the check and the back of the check. But I, I think there’s. Once you have done one for too long, it’s hard to do the other, right? I always say I’m unemployable right now.
Glenn Harper [:00:18:20
You’ll never go work for somebody. It’s impossible.
Tom Schwab [:00:18:22
Right. And I think the flip side too, once you have been an employee for so, so long, it can be really, really tough too. It’s almost like we refer to it as being institutionalized, right? And Shawshank Redemption, where they have such a hard time after they’ve been in the institution. And I’ve seen this with friends that have gotten out of the service for, you know, 20 or 30 years. It’s really hard after you’ve been institutionalized like that.
Julie Smith [:00:18:50
So you said your grandpa had a, an effect on you. Where do you think that impact happened? Do you think it was in your youth that maybe helped get you to where you are today? Or do you think it was an epiphany later in life about maybe how he lived or what he did or what he said? Just curious.
Tom Schwab [:00:19:11
Yeah, thanks for asking that. It makes me, it makes me think through this. And I think it was his example. And so Cunningham Service Station was like the big auto, auto station in St. Charles. And he knew everybody and everybody knew him. They trusted him. He was like the little celebrity there.
Tom Schwab [:00:19:34
And I loved that because the richness of his life was the richness of his relationships, right? We could go out to a restaurant, and everybody, he’d either be going over to their table and taking me along, or they’d be coming over to his table, right? And so it was just a. A very rich life that. That he was having fun with. And in some ways, I still look back on this because I. People will ask, what’s the best business advice you’ve ever gotten? And I don’t know the answer to this one, but I do know the best, the worst business advice I’ve ever gotten. And that came from my grandfather before I went to the academy. We were sitting down, having a beer, right? He thought it was my first one. But of course, he said, choose carefully who you drink with because you can’t choose who you work with.
Tom Schwab [:00:20:24
And I understood what he meant by that. Right. But that was his world, not my world now. And, you know, if you weren’t within 10 miles of St. Charles, you’d never be a customer of his. And he had to take all customers. I got to the point in my life where it’s like, no, that rule doesn’t apply anymore, Right? And so I always think of him that he had to take all customers. And today we don’t.
Tom Schwab [:00:20:49
Right. We can be choosy. And I think if I. If I wouldn’t want to drink with you, if I don’t want you around my family, I certainly don’t want you around my business. And other times, I’ll think of him, of, you know, he wouldn’t understand the Internet, but he’d understand how to grow businesses, right? So from the standpoint of, you know, podcast interview marketing, he had no idea what the Internet is, what podcasts are, all the rest of that. But if I explained it to him that, well, you can go on and talk to other people’s audiences, get that know, like, and trust, and you don’t have to leave home. And he’s like, oh, same thing I did when, like, I joined the country club or spoke at the Rotary Club. I’m like, exactly.
Tom Schwab [:00:21:31
That makes sense to him. So a lot of times I think of, would my grandfather understand the strategy that I’m doing? Because I think he was a great business person. And while he wouldn’t understand the tactics, man, he would. He would understand the strategy.
Julie Smith [:00:21:45
I’ve. I’ve only listened to you for 20 minutes, but I. I think if I could wrap that into a red bow, I think he taught you the impact on relationships.
Tom Schwab [:00:21:55
Yes.Julie Smith [:00:21:56
And I think that’s probably what resonated with you as a Young and. And still does to this day.
Tom Schwab [:00:22:03
I would agree with you on that. It’s that relationships are the ultimate currency. Right. Nothing can take them away. Inflation doesn’t. It doesn’t touch them. Heck, those relationships even last beyond death. Right.
Tom Schwab [:00:22:17
There’s. There’s people that will still. You know, my grandfather was gone for 10 years, and people would still see me and say, hey, you’re Jim Cunningham’s son or grandson, right? Like, yeah. How’s your grandpa doing? He passed away about 10 years ago. Oh. You know, he was a great man. Right. And they would do anything for me because of what my.
Tom Schwab [:00:22:36
Or who my grandfather was to them.
Glenn Harper [:00:22:39
It’s funny, you know, as a golfer myself, I love having a caddy. It’s so much fun, right? They can. You have. You have a good rapport with them. They make you feel like you can make the shot. They take care of all the details. They understand how you’re going to swing after the first two balls you hit. They know what’s going on.
Glenn Harper [:00:22:57
Right. And it’s valuable. When you have. When you have a good caddy, a good relationship, you end up usually shooting pretty well. If you have a caddy that doesn’t have a relationship with you, you’re going to immediately blame them, Right. It just. It’s in life. And then you, as in the liquor store, you’re everybody’s best friend because you’re selling them what they want.
Glenn Harper [:00:23:15
Like, how. What a great job that is, right? And then here you are, you’re going out to the military, and here, you know, where you’re responsible so the ship doesn’t blow up. I mean, that’s.
Tom Schwab [:00:23:24
That’s pretty good.Julie Smith [:00:23:25
The irony and the worst advice you believe you got, and then the fact that you worked in the liquor store, like the. The full circle of that, right?
Tom Schwab [:00:23:33
Yeah.Glenn Harper [:00:23:36
So here you are, you’re working at a real job, and. And you’re like, yeah, this is cool. This is all right. And you’re like, yeah, I’m just really not doing what I want to do. What was the factor that said, wait a minute, I have this idea. I have this other thing I want to do, or I want to hang up my shingle and do my thing? What was the impetus for that aha. Moment to go, I need to do something different?
Tom Schwab [:00:23:57
And once again, sometimes people will say, oh, I had this great idea, this great plan? I think, God, the world, whatever, just kept hitting me upside the head and saying, hey, stupid, this is the next step. Right. So I went from working inside at Stryker to being A sales rep to having my own distributorship. And I thought, oh, you know, I’ve got my own business here. Well, I had one supplier and was really just sort of the middleman there. And when they decided in 2008 to cut out the middleman, it made sense to them, right? But I had this sideline business, and if you ever see people walking around with the little knee scooters after they’ve broken their ankle or those weren’t available, so we were like, renting them out locally and people were telling other people about it. And I had read a book called Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh son Brian Halligan. They went on to form HubSpot.
Tom Schwab [:00:25:00
And I listened to that, read the book, and then reached out to him and said, hey, has anybody ever tried this for E Commerce? And they’re like, no, but it should work. I’m like, yeah, I think so too. So I was HubSpot’s first E commerce case study. We built that business up from a regional player to a national leader, sold the business off. And then when I was in my sabbatical time, I had people that said, well, how’d you grow your business? And I said, well, guest blogs, but they don’t work anymore, right? By 2014, guest blogs were pretty passe. And so at that time, I thought, oh, I bet you you could use podcast interviews the same way. So we tested that. It worked and had.
Tom Schwab [:00:25:44
Our beta testers were the ones that said, hey, you should launch this. They were actually one of our beta testers bought the name Interview Valet and gave it to me and said, this is what you need to call the company.
Glenn Harper [:00:25:56
How cool is that?Tom Schwab [:00:25:59
It’s like in the Navy, we used to have a line that said, you have to know right answer when told. And so I think there’s a lot of things in business where listening to your clients, listening to the market will give you the answers.
Glenn Harper [:00:26:16
In my head, it’s like I’m just trying to wrap my head around. You’re literally in. Go to the naval Academy, you’re working on a nuclear sub. You are being told what to do and how to do it. Extremely structured for those five years, right? And then all of a sudden, boom, you come out, you got megacorp kind of telling you what to do. Do they cut you loose, your sales rep kind of doing your thing. And then all of a sudden you’re like, I’m going to make all my own rules. I’ll do whatever I want.
Glenn Harper [:00:26:40
And here you are, right? And it’s. That is. That is A big pivot. I mean, that’s hard to do.Julie Smith [:00:26:47
I’m gonna guess that he’s very structured in regards to, like, how he does.Glenn Harper [:00:26:51
Well, that’s the training, but still, right.Julie Smith [:00:26:53
Like, so I feel like he just uses that strength inside, what you do day to day.Tom Schwab [:00:27:00
I. I think it’s also the mindset, right, of coming at it from an engineer or seeing how other people have run it, right? And people say, well, do you. Do you run on traction or eos? And I’m like, I’ve read all those books, but, you know, it’s a little Navy nuclear power, a little John Brown striker, a little eos. And one of the things that I always saw is even in nuclear power, you’d have to identify the problem very quickly and then take action, right? And there were standard operating procedures, things we would do, things we were trained on. But that’s what I always loved, the drills that we would run. How fast can you identify that problem? How fast can you. Can you fix it? All the rest of this. And so to me, business has been similar to a game on that, right? Of the quick execution and then also learning for each one.
Tom Schwab [:00:27:56
And one of the things that I’m. I just pull my hair out at times where people will say, well, you don’t understand my business. My business is so complicated, right? I could never train somebody to do that. And I’m like, you don’t understand. Right now there are submarines, aircraft carriers going around the world. The average age of someone running a nuclear power plant today is 22. They’ve got high school education, very smart, very motivated. But if you had to get, you know, MIT PhDs to run nuclear power plants, you wouldn’t be able to do it.
Tom Schwab [:00:28:35
They were able to figure out the systems do it because they understood the business. I’m like, you can’t teach somebody how to do it because you don’t understand it yourself. And I think that’s something that I’ve always taken that, you know, how can I systematize this? How can I understand it? How can I learn from every mistake that we make so we don’t make it again and then have other people that can not only do it, but do it, but do it better than me do does.
Glenn Harper [:00:29:04
Every time you get on a boat in one of the three lakes that surround you do. Are they always calling you captain and you always got to drive, or do you get to be a.
Tom Schwab [:00:29:12
Actually great question. I’m scared to death sometimes when I’m on Lake Michigan because the storms kick up. So Quickly, I sail out there and you know, you can have a 20 foot wave on an aircraft carrier and you don’t feel it. You can have a four foot wave on a sailboat and you’re like, oh, we need to get going back to shore.
Glenn Harper [:00:29:34
That’s awesome. So share with, you know, the client that you have, like, how did you determine that they need your service? Like, how did you come up with that idea for your business? Like, how did you come up with that to say there’s something missing, I can bridge that gap?
Tom Schwab [:00:29:54
Yeah. I think everything always starts with the problem, right? What problem are you trying to solve? And what I was seeing is that you had people that had great ideas, great services, great products, and they couldn’t break through the noise. Right. Obscurity was the biggest problem. So how do you get heard by people? And so many times it’s like, well, I’ll just buy lots of Facebook ads or Google Ads, something like that. And it’s like, well, that might help you break through the obscurity, but you’re not really getting heard. And you know, I, I later in life went back and got my MBA from Western Michigan University. Go Broncos.
Tom Schwab [:00:30:40
And you know, I took a lot of marketing classes and still my grandfather could have told me what marketing was. It’s like starting that conversation with somebody that could be an ideal client. So I really looked at it and said, how can you start that conversation with an ideal client? And tapping into other people’s existing audiences has always worked, right? From TV to radio to blogs. So I really looked at it as, as you could use podcast interviews for that. And then the other idea too, of people, people that have something to say. Right. Our mission is to personally introduce inspiring thought leaders to millions of people they could serve for the betterment of all. So it’s got to be someone that has something to say, a viewpoint, a, a point of view.
Tom Schwab [:00:31:28
We do a lot with category design, right? Because if all you want to say is I’m cheaper, I’m faster, or you know, I’m the same, you don’t need, you don’t need a conversation for that. Right. That’s just a race to the bottom. So it was really more of an idea of what has worked in the past as, you know, first principles and how could we apply technology to it. And that was 10 years ago. And today, you know, AI is indexing all podcast interviews. So it’s today we’re not only talking to our ideal clients, we’re talking to the AI that refers them too.
Glenn Harper [:00:32:08
Well, walk me through this, somebody is, again, I want to make sure I understand what you do. So I’ve got a whatever, ABC company, and I sell whatevers. And I’m trying to get the word out to get more customers, whether it’s locally, regionally, you know, globally. What do you do for them? What is your process to go through to grab somebody? What does your business do to make that work?
Tom Schwab [:00:32:31
Great, great question. So it’s the idea of who do you want to talk with, right? Who is your ideal customer? Who’s your super consumer that will not only buy all the things that you produce, but promote it to other people too? So we identify.
Julie Smith [:00:32:46
I’m curious if your, your clients know that answer, or do you have to walk them through an exercise to get them there?
Tom Schwab [:00:32:56
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they use the marketing to figure that out. Right. Based on the feedback they get from that. And here’s an example. We worked with a, a cpa. He’s got more, more personality than any accountant you’d ever want to meet. And I said, more than this, who do you want to talk to? And he’s a retired New York City detective.
Tom Schwab [:00:33:22
And he, he said, you know, all my clients are on Long island, brick and mortar. So he says, I just want 50 business owners in 50 states in 50 different industries. I want to diversify. Okay, so that’s where we start. And then as we got the information and the feedback from his interviews, he was on a podcast with dentists, and he got lots of traffic from that. And we talked to him and he’s like, oh, yeah, I’ve already got a client from that. A couple more are. We have discovery calls.
Tom Schwab [:00:33:55
He’s like, I love dentists. The recession proof. They’re cash, good cash flow. And so for the next eight months, all we did was dental podcast. 80% of his business now is dentists. So we really tried to take a strategic approach of. It’s not just. It’s not just the podcast interview.
Tom Schwab [:00:34:14
It’s not just the tactic. It’s what are you trying to accomplish with that? And then we talk to them and say, are your audience listening to podcasts? So you had mentioned if you’ve got a local business, it’s going to be a very inefficient way of doing it. Now, if you talk to everybody in the United States and only people within 10 miles can drive to your business, it’s not an efficient marketing strategy, so it probably wouldn’t work for you. But if you’ve got a regional or national audience that Works a whole lot better. You know, professional services works really well. We work a lot well with franchisors that want to talk with their clients, but also potential partners that could work with them. And then we use data to find where their audience is. We work with them on different topics to talk about so that each podcast can be influential and stand by itself.
Tom Schwab [:00:35:07
Right. So as the AI is indexing it, that it gets different content every time, and then really tying it together to make it a marketing channel. Right. If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense. So we’re always looking to get a great return for our clients. And our best clients, you know, value their time, they value their money, and they realize that everything doesn’t come through a funnel anymore. Right. It starts with conversations and.
Tom Schwab [:00:35:35
And that’s what we do for them.Glenn Harper [:00:35:37
Isn’t it crazy how the. How you market shifted from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 90? Like every decade, it’s a whole different way you have to go to find your customers. And at the end of the day, it still comes down to relationships, no matter what. It’s just, how do you get the contact to get in front of them to do that relationship is, I guess, the tactics or the method, I guess, right?
Tom Schwab [:00:36:02
Yeah. I think, you know, the strategy never changes, but the tactics always expire.
Glenn Harper [:00:36:07
Right.Tom Schwab [:00:36:08
You know, when the. When they decide. When they invented guns, bows and arrows became obsolete, when they invented different things, jet aircraft, you know, the biplane became obsolete. And I think it’s the same thing now with. With AI and everything. Older forms are becoming elite. Right. And it’s like sometimes when people talk about, you know, old marketing tactics, I’m thinking it sounds to me like the Yellow Pages.
Tom Schwab [:00:36:40
It used to work, but it doesn’t anymore. So how can you take first principles and say, what are we trying to do? And how can we use the new tactics, the new technology to leverage it?
Glenn Harper [:00:36:51
And it seems like you’re the first to do it this way, One of the first companies to do it. Right. Have you seen how you’ve had to adjust yourself over the last, what, 12 years you’ve been doing this? 13 years. How long have you had to change your tactics of how you get customers and do what you do just with the AI component that came on board?
Tom Schwab [:00:37:12
Yes. And we’ve been doing it for a decade now. And when we started, we were, you know, there was less than five people or five companies that ever thought about doing this. And we really became the category leader of podcast interview marketing, not just guesting, which to me is an activity, but actually driving results with it. And it’s continued to evolve. Right. I wrote a book that’s going on a decade now ago that talked about, you know, how to grow your business with targeted podcast interviews. And people would say, well, why would you tell somebody how you do it? And it’s like when.
Tom Schwab [:00:37:49
Well, they can always copy what we did. They can’t copy what we’re testing now and what we’re going to do. And, you know, we saw a huge uptick in the business when, when podcasting started to take off about 2018. And then after Covid, when companies thought, well, we can’t do in person events anymore. Right. So how were we going to reach our clients? And then last year, the fall of 2024, when it became clear that AI is indexing podcast interviews. Right. And one of the best ways to get referred by AI is to get the message out there on podcast interview.
Tom Schwab [:00:38:32
So it’s always been an evolution and always learning of what is the next thing there.Glenn Harper [:00:38:38
Do you think, oh, go ahead.Julie Smith [:00:38:40
Well, I’m going to pivot hard.Glenn Harper [:00:38:41
Well, before you pivot, let me. So do you think in your industry that AI is helping you and makes your business better, or is it something that’s helping you, but it’s gonna make you less relevant? Because AI takes over. Cause everybody’s worried about AI, like, is it gonna take my job away? It sounds like this is something that’s augmenting you to help you better, right? To do better. Is that a fair statement?
Tom Schwab [:00:39:07
Yes.Glenn Harper [:00:39:08
Which is crazy. Cause everyone would think, well, no, this is gonna take you out of business. Cause it’s gonna be AI. But it’s not about that.
Tom Schwab [:00:39:14
I look at AI as a tool. And a tool is an amplifier of your brilliance or your stupidity. And this struck me years ago. A friend of mine, Dan Miller, had an artist take a chainsaw and carve a beautiful eagle in it. I took a similar chainsaw and that winter almost cut my leg off. It was the same tool, but it just amplified the brilliance or stupidity of the user. And we’re seeing the same thing now, right? And AI is allowing people to spam at scale. Right.
Tom Schwab [:00:39:52
There’s a podcaster, Joe Saul Sei from Stacking Benjamin’s. He just did a post on this and he called us out favorably on this. But he. He showed a screen capture of the emails that came to him. And some of them said, dear Stacking, dear Benjamin’s, Dear Joe Saul Sehi, Cumulus Media. And he’s like, these are nothing but spam. And there’s companies out there that will tell you you can pitch a thousand hosts in the time that would take you to pitch one. And it’s like, it’s very efficient, but it’s not effective.
Tom Schwab [:00:40:29
And so we use it to. To help us, right? Not to replace us. And it’s been great. We’ve been able to give our team more tools, more data, but not to replace them. And so it’s that same thing. Somebody called it the. The barbell market. And I thought it was a great visual, right, that if you’re racing to the bottom, there’s a lot of people there.
Tom Schwab [:00:40:53
If you’re trying to do the best in class, right, there’s room there. But this idea of in the middle, where people are just trying to do crap at scale, there’s no room there. The market will is just denying that.
Glenn Harper [:00:41:10
Before you say your thing. I think the epiphany that just hit me here is all you hear about AI it’s going to replace everybody. It’s the wave of the future. You got to get on board. And it’s just this terrifying thing. You just summed it up where it’s a tool and you just got to know how to use it, and it’s probably going to help you more than hurt you. And I think that’s for our listeners. Don’t fear it, embrace it, and figure out how do you put that in your toolbox? Was that a fair statement?
Tom Schwab [:00:41:39
Very much so. And somebody encouraged me. Years ago, there was a book that came out, like in Y2K, and it was something about the. The next Industrial Revolution or something. And it was interesting to read it. And he told me, reread the book, and every time it says computers or the Internet, just change and put the word AI in there. And all of the fears that we had 20 years ago are the same we have today. It’s going to replace us.
Tom Schwab [:00:42:11
You know, it’ll. It’ll destroy us all the rest of this or it’s going to empower us. It’s the same thing. It’s probably coming at a quicker speed, but it’s just a tool, right? It’s going to either amplify our brilliance or stupidity.Glenn Harper [:
Awesome. Sorry, Julie, go ahead.Julie Smith [:
So I’m gonna hard pivot for some harder questions. Oh, you. You talked about your grandpa, but is there anybody else? As you went, maybe, and you were in the Naval Academy working at Stryker, maybe as you’ve gone through, you know, this part of your journey that was a mentor to you that kind of helped guide you Perhaps sometimes instead of the two by four, they kept hitting you in the head that you took. Talked about.
Tom Schwab [:00:42:52
I’ve had so many mentors in my life and I’ve learned so much from them. I can think of like one was the captain of the. The aircraft carrier, right? Captain now retired as an admiral. Bill Hayden. And I remember telling him, asking him, like, skipper, how come you are so happy, right? You sleep less than anybody else on this ship. You’ve got more pressure on you than anybody else on the ship. And he just smiled and he said, someday I’m going to look back on this and this is going to be the best time of my life. And I thought of that and there are times where it’s like when Covid hit, right? Someday I’m going to look back on this and this is going to be the best time in my life, right? And I am more proud of what our team did over Covid than anything.
Tom Schwab [:00:43:42
We stepped up for our clients, we got new clients, right? So that lesson taught me there. John Brown, who was the CEO of Stryker, you know, nobody knows John Brown, but he is the only CEO in U. S. History of a publicly traded company that has grown a company 20% for 20 consecutive years. It’s never been done before. And I got a chance to meet him and work with him and he would always say about the long term, right? It’s not about what you do this quarter, but can you do it every quarter? And I see so many people that are fast up and fast down and I always think about that, right? John Brown never had enough growth to hit the Inc 5000, but he built Stryker from a small family business of like $100 million up into a multibillion dollar company and became one of the richest men in, in. In Michigan doing it too, but just by growing 20% a year. And so those are things that I look at and I do.
Tom Schwab [:00:44:58
I’m in a group called the entrepreneurs organization. That’s a global, global organization. And I mentor people and it’s called EOA Accelerator. Basically helping people get up to $1 million in sales. And I tell them straight out, you think I’m mentoring you, but you’re mentoring me. Because the questions you’re asking are the ones that I should be asking too. And sometimes when I answer you with a really good answer, it’s a reminder to myself of like, oh, yeah, I need to do this. So I think we all have mentors and we should surround ourselves with, with great people.
Tom Schwab [:00:45:36
And too often people think, well, a mentor has to be in front of you? No. Some people are in front of you, some are peers, and some are behind you. And those positions can change depending on what the time is or what the question is. Right. I don’t understand the gen. Gen Z audience. Right. So I can have someone that I’m mentoring that understands them a whole lot better.
Tom Schwab [:00:46:01
So he mentors me on that.Julie Smith [:00:46:06
So what is your end game?Tom Schwab [:00:46:12
My end game is, years ago, a buddy of mine, dear, dear friend, a fellow entrepreneur, we decided that we could never retire because our golf games are really bad and we would drive our. Drive our wives crazy. So we were probably in our early 40s and decided that retirement was going to be doing fun things with interesting people and writing it all off as a business expense.
Glenn Harper [:00:46:40
That’s some good tax advice.Tom Schwab [:00:46:42
Brian died way too early and way too suddenly. And when he passed away shortly after that, I decided, you know what? I’m going to consider myself retired. So I just want to do fun things with interesting people and write it all off as a business expense. It doesn’t mean there aren’t challenging times there. But as I look at all of the things that I’m doing, I never want to stop doing them. I never want to retire from it. So the end game is just to keep adding value, keep creating leaders, keep having fun, and keep being relevant as long as I can.
Glenn Harper [:00:47:23
He passed.Julie Smith [:00:47:24
Spoken like a true entrepreneur. So I don’t know if you were born with that or that was your environment, but every entrepreneur, there’s no end game.
Glenn Harper [:00:47:32
Impossible.Julie Smith [:00:47:33
It’s a trick question.Tom Schwab [:00:47:35
Or maybe we all just got dropped on our head at an early age. But most of the time, this is who we are and we’re not going to change.
Glenn Harper [:00:47:41
We know too much. Why would we ever stop? And again, you certainly look like you’re having fun with it, so why would you ever stop?
Tom Schwab [:00:47:48
Exactly.Glenn Harper [:00:47:50
Well, that is awesome. Well, could you give a little plug to your company for our listeners if they want to reach out to you?
Tom Schwab [:00:47:55
Oh, very much so. If you want to get in touch with with me, just go to interview valet.com forward/empower. Right. And I’ll have all my social media there. There’s an assessment, you know, how can podcast interview marketing work for you? Free copy of my book there. And if you want to talk with me, I’ll put all of my social media there. My calendar, scheduling, link will all be back there@interviewvallet.com empower.
Glenn Harper [:00:48:29
Well, Tom, it’s been a great. You’ve been a great guest. We’ve learned a lot today. Appreciate you coming in. Thanks for your 5 years of service. Appreciate that. That’s huge. And looking forward to our paths crossing here in the near future.
Glenn Harper [:00:48:42
Another great episode of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:00:48:46
Julie Smith.
