Growing Your Audience Through Podcast Interview Marketing With Tom Schwab

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell and I'm feeling incredibly blessed in this moment. Little, little tired, to be perfectly honest. One of those moments where I realized I didn't give myself enough sleep in the last couple of days, actually we did a training, we had a three day long speaker training at our home over the weekend and I am still sort of recovering from that. We, you know, if you've ever been to a training or a seminar, you know how much energy gets generated and I don't know whether you've ever led one of those. I know a lot of people are pivoting into that space of either wanting to be speakers, wanting to do TEDx talks, wanting to sometimes even create coaching businesses, all that kind of thing. Well, without digressing into that space now, I'll just say that really what's going on in those events, at least from a leadership standpoint, is that you're, you're actually holding a container, you're holding a sacred space for people for them to have the breakthrough that they came for and for them to get the learning and for something really positive to occur. And that holding space process is exhausting. I don't know how else to put it. It's really a blessing. I think it's divine and there's a lot of divine ness in it. And it's also exhausting. So you got to take good care of yourself. And I preach this. So I'm calling myself out in the moment that this week I, I did take pretty good care of myself from time to time, but it needed to be, I needed to create even more focus on the self care piece because resilience is so important. So I am owning that. I'm calling myself out on it. And in this moment I am aware and I'm grateful, so incredibly grateful for that awareness as well as for the opportunity to speak with someone and to introduce you to a new friend, somebody that I've come to start working with actually in the last few months and really love this guy, love his energy, love what he's doing in the world. I'm going to share a little bit about his background in just a second through his bio and then we're going to dig right in. So hopefully you're having a little quiet time for yourself that when it comes to that area of self care that you're using this podcast and other podcasts as a vehicle as a tool for you to take care of yourself, whether it's to just relax and listen to somebody else's voice. Hopefully that voice doesn't put you to sleep, although if it does, that's a good thing too. I just meditation and anything to get a good sleep or a little nap is terrific. And hopefully there's also some new awarenesses that you can put into action, things that you become aware of and then put into action in your life that makes things even that much better than they already are. So without further ado, Tom Schwab knows how to build an online business. And many of you I know are either in an online business space or you're pivoting into that space. So marketing at its heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer. Drawing on his engineering, corporate and e commerce inbound marketing experience, Tom helps thought leaders, coaches, authors, speakers, and even folks creating emerging brands get featured on leading podcasts with their which by the way have their ideal prospects. The people that are already listening to shows that are talking about things that those folks are also wanting to attract, as in new clients, etc. So he helps to turn those listeners into customers. That's really the bottom line. I think that's the most important thing. We are finding that not only is a podcast one of the most fun things in the world to do, but it is a state of the art tool for marketing. We're going to talk a little bit about that today as well, because I think this is everybody's ability and it's not a difficult one either. Everybody's ability to become a broadcaster, everybody's ability to have an impact in the world beyond their job or their day job. You could call it a side hustle of sorts. And it's an incredible tool for marketing. As I said, one of the things that Tom does is that he helps people to either get featured on podcasts that have their ideal client as one of the listeners to that podcast. So that's a great fit. And he also helps people to get on podcasts, meaning he works with folks who already have a message and want to get on other people's shows and he helps people who have shows attract great, great folks to those shows to speak to their audience. So without further ado, Tom Schwab, welcome to the Conscious Pivot podcast.

Adam, I am thrilled to be here.

Yeah, what a blessing, man. What a blessing. We were just chatting before we hit the, the record button on this one that the, the time zones, we're actually three hours apart. I'm in California and he's in, in Michigan. And where he is situated in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They're sort of on the, on the very, the edge of what is the Eastern time zone. And part of the advantage of being in that location is that in the summer in the world, probably in the sort of late spring and summer and even into the early fall, it stays, it stays light out pretty late. Like as in almost 10 o' clock at night, is what you were saying, Tom? Is that right?

It does. And the summer days are awesome. And it sort of makes up for the nine months of winter here. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Well, I won't say anything about that.

Because we've got folks that are listening consuming this content from all over the world, including some places where it's pretty cold or it's pretty rainy or it's, you know, really, really hot and sunny, etc. So, Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know I have just given a bit of a very brief overview of your bio. What is something that is not in the bio that you would love for people to know about you?

To me, it is. I have lived a blessed life. Right. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. By the time I was 17 years old, I had never been more than 150 miles away from home. And by the grace of God and a clerical error, I got into the U.S. naval Academy. So to all the taxpayers, thank you for paying for my education. And that changed my world. So within a year, I had been around the world, been exposed to so many new people, so many new ideas. My world had changed. And I never wanted to go back there. And I think as I look back at how big my world was then compared to what it is now, I. It's just a fraction of that. I mean, the tools that we have today, for you and I to be talking, right, thousands of miles away, talking over video, we wouldn't have dreamed of this as kids. It's just no better time to be alive. So for me, I am just, I am grateful. I pinch myself every morning waking up and thinking I would not have dreamed this a decade ago. Although when I was a kid.

Yeah. And you know what? Thank you so much for that, because the next question I was going to ask you is, what's something that you're grateful for in this moment? But you just dovetailed right into that. This is. I mean, this is a pinch, a pinch me moment. And it's not necessarily what folks might think, as in, yeah, great, we get to be playing in this arena this way. And podcasting is exciting. It's fun. It's, you know, there's all that sort of excitement around it. And. But that's not what I mean. I mean, every moment that we're aware that we're consciously aware and aware of something that we're grateful for is a pinch me moment all by itself. I mean, that's.

And to me, I always try putting things in perspective. Right. Whatever problem you have looks huge when you're facing it. But somebody pointed out to me, and I always tell myself this, for me, a bad day is like when the Internet goes down for five minutes and it shuts my whole plans off. A bad day for my grandfather was when he buried a child. I am blessed.

Yeah. There's no question. We definitely can blow things out of proportion relative to different time and space, different context, for sure. So let's dig in, Tom, to a little bit of your story. And I think what will be fun for our listeners today, too, is to understand the medium of podcasting and how it plays into your pivot and your own pivot story, of course. And where is that medium, podcast medium going?

Do you see?

What's the next pivot for that? Or the opportunity that people have to utilize this medium as a way to either create a megaphone for their brand, for their message, for the message in the brand that they've yet to create, yet to. To get clear on, but want to. Because things are definitely moving in the direction of more entrepreneurial pursuits, whether it's on the side as people doing these side hustles or creating these kind of things in the evening or on the weekends, etc. But it's definitely a move toward personal freedom, a move out of sort of centralized management of the workforce and of human resources and talent into a more decentralized, free market space. So I threw a lot at you there. Just take any piece of that and let's. Let's run with it.

Yeah. There was one of the words used, there was a megaphone. And I think in some ways that's the problem with the world today is that so many people are trying to use megaphones and it just adds to the noise. A lot of people will talk about, how do I break through the noise? The problem is, is that most of the time, it's adding to the noise. So from the standpoint, if Apple and Coke have megaphones and you've got a megaphone, I guarantee you your megaphone will never drown theirs out. And so to me, I look at it and say, I don't want to try breaking through the noise. The question is, how can I get in on the conversation? And while the world has gotten bigger and bigger, it's also gotten smaller and smaller. So we have the ability to talk to a billion people, but we also have the ability to talk to thousands or tens of thousands of people one on one. And to me, that's what makes podcasting so effective, is because it is an intimate conversation. It is that one on one conversation. You know, I think of a couple of years ago, I was flying out to California to speak in an event, and the gentleman next to me, he could have been my best customer in the world, but I never knew it. And I could never break through the noise because he had earbuds in the entire flight. And so it would have been rude for me to break through the noise and rip the headphones off and say, hey, do you want to listen to me? But if I could have gotten in on that conversation that he gave his full attention to, that's where the power was. And to me, I think that's where podcasting is going and where you talk about the pivot. I think we're seeing this all along because we talk podcasting. But my two youngest daughters are 18 and 21. And I asked them, what's the pod stand for in podcasting? They smiled and rolled their eyes, and they're like, I don't know, dad, what's the pod stand for? See, they'd never known a world with an ipod. You know, they don't remember the times where you had to take, like, plug it in, download it, get the cable, sync the MP3s to them. It's just on demand radio. And I think really that's where it's going. It's not so much the label, it's how people are consuming the content. So, you know, sometimes podcasts are picked up by Sirius xm. So satellite radio, that can be a podcast. I was on a podcast about a year ago, and a couple buddies from Arizona called me and said, hey, I didn't realize you were in town. And I called him back, I said, well, why did you think I was in Tucson and they're like, we heard you on the morning drive this morning and just figured you were in town. And it was actually a podcast interview, Adam, that I'd recorded like six months before that got picked up on local radio. So I think it's interesting how everything is merging together. And, you know, we're on a podcast, but if somebody sees this as a video on YouTube, is that still a podcast? If they see the video put up on Facebook, is that still a podcast? I don't think it matters as much as going back to what you had said there at the beginning. Marketing at its heart is starting a conversation with someone that could be an ideal customer. So you and I can create this in whatever medium is easiest for them, and they can consume it in whatever medium is best for them.

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Thank you for the distinctions there. Our company is called More Love Media, and we've delivered a program called More Love Marketing, which is the essence of it is to meet people where they are and then not leave them behind. So meet them where they are and then not abandon them. Do the work. It takes to develop relationships. So it's about building relationships. It's about being in. In a relational, in a relational context versus a transactional one. Something that's transformational versus transactional. And building relationships is not easy. It takes time, it takes commitment, and it takes on some level, at least from our standpoint, a commitment not to. Not to abandon people either just because they don't buy from you or don't buy from you when you ask them to or demand that they do or call them to action or any of that other sort of old paradigm language around it. So you're adding a distinction there, which is the word conversation, which I think is fantastic, because that people that you will converse with are people you're developing relationship with. It may be, you know, that it doesn't have to be the kind of relationship where you take people home to meet your family. Right. That's not necessarily the ones that you're going to end up at their table for Thanksgiving, but it's relationship nonetheless. It's a connection nonetheless. And that that does start in the area of communication, of how we converse with one another. So I really appreciate that distinction.

You know, Adam, I was amazed the kind of relationship that you can build online over podcasting. About 18 months ago, we had a tragedy in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A very sick individual basically executed 10 people. And it happened on a Saturday night. I woke up Sunday morning and my phone had all these texts and Facebook messages from people that I had never met in real life, people that had heard me on a podcast, people that I had been a guest on their podcast, saying prayers for you and your family. Hope everything is okay. And I'm waking up on a Saturday morning scrolling through this and thinking, what are they talking about? It wasn't until I walked downstairs and my wife was watching the television and told me what happened. Adam. It was weird because here there were people that heard Kalamazoo, had heard me, had talked with me. We've never met in real life, but they were the first ones to reach out. It wasn't high school friends, it wasn't family members. It was people. And I'm like, I might not know how tall you are because I've never seen you in real life, but there was enough of a relationship there that caused people to take action. And I think that makes the world a much better place.

It sure, like you said, it's a big world, and yet in there, and it's also really small. And it is in many ways a one to one. I mean, that's the context we're in. If you can't develop a conversation on a one to one basis, how can you possibly develop a meaningful conversation? One on a thousand? I mean, it just doesn't work. I know people want to play, and in our space, we get a lot of people that want to play a bigger game. And we're all for that. We're all for that. And yet at the same time, you also have to know it's both. It's the ability to, to create meaningful connection with one person is the same context or the same process that you would create meaningful connection with a thousand. So it really does start at the heart level. So share with us, if you could, a little bit about how it is that you got into the podcast space, because I imagine that was a pivot all by itself. And then we'll take that journey from that point to a place where I really would love to know, have folks know a little bit more about how you see the landscape of the podcast today, what you've seen as opportunities, and where those opportunities might be in the future.

Sure. And the way I got into it is my background is inbound marketing, you know, using content to attract, engage and delight. And my e commerce company was one of the first case studies that HubSpot, which is the big inbound marketing company, used. And about four years ago, in 2014, one things I noticed is that blogs weren't working nearly as well, as they used to, blogs had become saturated and had been helping a couple of friends that I was in a mastermind with grow their digital marketing. And one of the things that I hypothesized on was that we used to use blogs and guest blogging to sort of supercharge it. So instead of me putting a blog on my site and having it be read by three people, you know, one of them being my mom, why don't we put it on Huffington Post or Wall Street Journal? You know, tap into that known audience, get the know, like and trust, get the backlinks, everything that went along with that. So I thought, could you use podcast interviews that same way? And so we tested it, and I was blown away. The conversion rates were like, 25 times higher than blogs. The traffic was immediate. People were saying the sales were closing quicker. And at first I thought, okay, it's a personality, it's a fluke, it's a niche. You know, I'm an engineer at heart, so it's like, let's figure this out and disprove it. And what we found over testing it for about 18 months and refining it is that. No, that really is a process. And to use that know, like. And trust that you can gain from there, to move people from being a passive listener to an active visitor to your site and an engaged lead and, you know, put it together, and it's really. It's not art. It's not magic. It's really just a system, a marketing system. And I really believe that podcast interview marketing will be just as big as Facebook marketing or email marketing in five years. And I think we're really seeing that some of the bigger brands are starting to use this because they realize that they've got the same problem that the small companies have. There's a lot of noise out there, and how are they going to break through that?

Yeah, so how is it that you could. You pivoted out of the engineering space and got into that, or was there some steps in between that kind of led you down that path?

I mean, going from the pivot there, I got out of the Navy and pivoted out of that. And when I did that, my dad called me a fool. Right. Just stay in the Navy for another 15 years. You can retire. And I'm like, the world's changing. You know, peace had broken out when I got out. You know, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Then I went into the corporate world, and I really wanted to get in the sales side. That's when my dad called me a Darn fool or a word like that, like, how can you take a strict commission job? And I just, every time, just saw that the world was changing, and I wanted to change with that. So I think it's the same thing with blogs. I saw that blogs were getting saturated. There were millions and millions of blogs. People weren't listening or reading them nearly as much. So it's like the strategy still worked, right? Using content to attract, engage, and to like people. But it's time to pivot and find out what the new medium that people are focused on with that. And to me, that audio was the most intimate form of communication, because I think even more than video, video you can have. You're not sure if it's teleprompters, if it's the first take, if it's the fifth take, but I think with podcasting, and really where it's going, it's more authentic dialogue, right? So the best podcasts are just two of us talking. So it's. It's like listening in on a conversation, the two of us. If we were sitting at Denny's having breakfast, and the listener is the person.

And I'm getting the moon. The moon. Moon over my hammy. Right? That's what I'm getting there.

All I know is we're getting separate pots of coffee. I'm gonna go through it fast. But it's like a podcast is like sitting in the next booth over listening to two interesting people. It'd be really rude to turn around and look at them and be really rude to just get in on the conversation, but you just want to sit there and listen to it, and it's authentic, it's real, and. And people are who they are, and I think that's where you're seeing podcasting going.

So you're saying that podcasting is like eavesdropping then, huh? Do you need. You need a. Is it like wiretapping? Do you need a war?

Maybe it's a little bit of the voyeurism in there, too.

I was going to say voyeurism. Yes, exactly.

And I think you're seeing more podcasts going to that authentic dialogue. I've been on over a thousand podcast interviews, and. And for a while, the big thing was ask every guest the same five or six questions, and every guest would give the same five or six canned answers. And, Adam, it was painful at times. I can remember being asked a question and thinking, if I could answer this, that I just killed my wife and her bloody body is at my feet, and they would have answered. That's great, Tom. And gone on to the next question. It's like we're not even listening here. You're going off your script. I'm going off my script. You know, nobody likes that. And to me, it's really that authentic dialogue. That's where. That's where people learn. That's where you're inspired. That's where conversation happens.

Yeah. What's inspiring you beyond what you've said already about the future for this medium? Because there's no question that, you know, everything in business will find its way back to marketing. If you. If you don't understand and aren't working on a greater understanding of marketing, of your marketing, the. The way in which you market and how effectively you communicate with the marketplace, then you're going to get left behind. In fact, there's almost no chance you'll be able to succeed on a sustainable level. So, yeah. What's your inspiration for what that's going to be?

To me, the thing I am most excited about is there's an old line that marketers can eff up everything, right? Marketers will ruin everything. When billboards started, people would drive to see the story, and then they put up so many billboards that it got to be, you know, just site pollution. Remember when you got an email and it said, you've got mail? Well, marketers figured out a way to turn that into spam. Banner ads used to be helpful, and then we just stopped watching them. So whatever we create, marketers can destroy it. But I'm seeing podcasts are different, right? Because it's truly the nice guys that are surviving in podcasting. If you look at all of the top podcasters, it's really hard to be a jerk on a podcast day in, day out for that amount of time, or to be a jerk and try to hide it. It's going to come out. So I think people are just more authentic on that.

Yeah, I agree with the latter. I don't know if I agree with the former. People can certainly, can certainly, you know, show. And I think people do show up in many ways exactly how they are. It's just a question of reading, reading between the lines because you're right over time, the sort of the truth about someone, you feel it, you know, whether you could point to something and say, well, you know, they've done this or they've done that isn't really the point. But what feeling you get from them do you get? You get a sense that this is a person who is real. Are they and that's where I think what you said about scripting kind of flies in the face of some of the podcasters out there that do work from a script or do work from a sort of a very set and rigid way of organizing their show. Now, look, structure is important, so it might be helpful to create some distinction around that. Structure is important and yet at the same time, a conversation has a structure, but it's tough to keep a good conversation, an interesting conversation and organization, organically unfolding conversation. It's hard to keep it in a structure. It's like, try to keep that thing in a box is, you know, canned and it feels canned. And I think over time people get that feeling that something feels canned. And I don't know that they maybe people listen to 20 episodes and then they go, yeah, I just can't listen to another one.

And it's interesting. I sometimes think that my grandfather would have been better posed for the future than maybe my grandchildren will be.

Right?

Because.

Yeah. Why do you say that?

Because he wouldn't have understood all the tools and the tactics. You know, he would have been amazed by those. But you know what, he could have found somebody else to do those for him. But he knew the strategy, he knew what he was trying to do. And I see that more and more people are just saying, if I only use this tool, if I only use this hack, whatever it was, and they're looking really at a transaction, not a relationship. And I think businesses, long term businesses, profitable businesses, have to be built on some kind of relationship. It's never been easier to make a transaction online or transaction anywhere.

Right.

If you want to sell something, just go on Amazon and be a penny cheaper than the next person and you'll sell it. But it'll also be a race to the bottom because they're going to sell it for a penny less than you. A true business is one that has lifetime value of a customer. It's got loyalty, it's got profits. And that's only going to come through relationships. If you're just seen as a transaction, no matter what you are, you're disposable, you're replaceable. And so from that standpoint, I think the more things change, the more we've got to look back and say, what is the strategy that we're trying to use here? We can with the new, with the new technology, but we have to say, what's the strategy behind it?

Agreed. Yeah. You know, to me it's a. We're talking, we're just putting language to things. To ideas. I appreciate doing that. And I like to think of things in analogy format as well. So there are easy ways for me to remember. Remember things. To me, this is really new paradigm versus old paradigm in the way that we, or at least how we feel and how we've been speaking about it and then writing and publishing some articles and LinkedIn and elsewhere about this, is that it's a movement away from a mentality of. And a paradigm of closing sales versus opening relationships. And I think that when you talk about the problem with marketing that a marketer can kind of come in and screw up anything, I think that's the essence of it. People have to learn how to market and to survive and to thrive in business, you've got to be an excellent marketer. But. But being an excellent marketer has to still come from a place of authenticity, and it still has to meet people truly where they are. Otherwise, if you're doing something for the sake of, as you say, just making a sale or closing a sale, you are not, you're not creating a relationship, and therefore you're not actually creating a business that is sustainable because it's the most costly thing in business to acquire a new client. So the client acquisition cost, as it's called, is the highest of any aspect of the business. So it's about opening a relationship and then continuing to serve that relationship forever. I mean, that's why, and I'm not taking exception to the language you used, it's just one of these little things that we point out is lifetime value of a client is something we even go, okay, what does that really mean? Because our intention is to have no lifetime value. I mean, we want to have no end date, I should say, no shelf life to the relationship. So that the lifetime value, if you were going to call it, is eternal, so to speak, that we're going to continue to serve and add value whether they buy, don't buy, et cetera. Because some of these relationships take a long time to incubate before people decide that you're for real, that you're what they're looking for, that you're somehow different than the run of the mill, you know, other guy or other, you know, woman that is just going to do it for cheaper or promising more and delivering less in all likelihood. And it's that that takes a lot of effort. There's a lot of time that goes into it. I mean, I know we're. When we nurture, you know, our nurturing system the way that we seek to nurture those relationships through our social media and through any other things, is all about meeting. Meeting a person in that place where I love what you said earlier, where you attract, engage and delight them without then also having a catch to it, that there's no sort of a quid pro quo, as in, I'll do all these things for you and then you must buy from me, and that's what makes the relationship, and then I'll move on to the next person and do the same thing with them. So I think it really is telling in this moment that you've got a market and you've got a market in an authentic way. And what I love about podcasts, personally, is that it gives you access to do that. Like, we didn't start our podcast thinking this is a great way to market. We didn't start our podcast thinking that somehow or another, this is gonna be another way to call, to create a call to action and disguise it as something else. I mean, you know, another little mousetrap, another. Another tripwire, as it's, you know, in the Internet marketing space called. Or another lead magnet.

We don't.

We don't. That's not. That wasn't our. For it. And what we're finding is that people are engaging with us and they're staying engaged and ultimately when they learn about what we do, which is in many ways to train people on there to pivot into something new, whether it be speaking or it's some other area of a business idea, like an Internet marketing, you know, like creating a digital product or something like that that they're finding us and they're asking us. You know, we've been listening to your show for a really long time. We really love it. Oh, we've been a part of your Facebook group. We really love what you guys are doing there. Hey, can you tell more about X, Y, Z thing? And that's very different than a lot of this other older paradigm way of sort of manipulating or tricking people into believing they've got a problem that you have the solution to that they must act upon today or they're a loser.

And you think about that, by definition, that's bad marketing because the return on investment isn't there. You're just churning on that. And I would argue that every business's biggest problem today is obscurity. Right? We've got so many customers available there that no matter what you have today as a product or a service, the biggest problem is that you're obscure to those people that you could help. You know, you could help them right now, and they would pay you dearly for what you have if they only knew about you. And I really think that's changed. One of my favorite tweets that I've ever seen came from rand fishkin from SEOmoz, and he put, today, the best way to sell something is not to sell anything, but to earn the awareness, the trust, and the respect of those you might help. And really, that's what it's all about. I mean, that is good marketing. That's kind of marketing where people don't treat you like you're a leper, that you're, you know, an Internet marketer. No, that's good marketing if you. If you can go out there and earn the respect, the awareness and the trust of those that you could help.

That's beautiful. And thank you for repeating that. I was going to ask you to repeat it. So you did. That's. We're in sync. This is way cool. So share something that you're inspired to talk about either in the business space that you're in right now or in your personal life. And I'm happy to go down that road as well with you. And because you're. I think people probably saying, this is a smart guy. I like listening to this guy. So I want to know maybe a.

Little bit about.

How it is that you're feeding your mind and what inspires you. And again, I want to look at the future, too, as to what's the space here? Podcasting in particular, what's that going to look like three years from now?

What inspires me is cross pollination. In nature, the only way you get fruit is. Is through cross pollination. One tree to another. Right. I believe it's the same thing for humans, that the only way we bear fruit in our lives is being exposed to new ideas, new people. Now, that used to be so hard right here. I live in southwestern Michigan. How am I going to learn from somebody that lives in California now? It's never been easier. So, you know, today, if you're ignorant or isolated, it's largely by choice. And that's what I'm so excited about, is that you can learn whatever you want through videos, through podcasting, you can teach whatever you've learned. It's never been easier. And that's one of the challenges I always make to people. Is that what's ordinary to you, Amazing to others? Now, what you know in your mind, you think, well, everybody knows that. No, everybody doesn't. And that could help a whole lot of people if you would just Share that with them. And it's never been easier to do that. And I think podcasting is probably the easiest medium to do that. If you're an introvert and don't want to go on stage in front of 100 people, it's okay. You can have a discussion right here with Adam.

Right.

It's just one on one. So introverts can do it. If you don't like how you sound, don't worry, you don't have to listen to your own podcast the way you look. Well, just don't do video podcasts.

Don't turn on the video cam for me. It's like, don't upload it to YouTube if that's gonna bother you.

That's right. I'll just. Oh, sorry, Adam. My camera's broken today, which really means I didn't shave.

I'm still wearing my bedtime, my pajamas right now.

Well, we call it around here the podcaster mullet. So when it's video, it's only got to be business. From here up, it can be already down below. Totally.

Yep.

And even, like for me, I'm not a writer, but, you know, I can dictate stuff and I can transcribe things and make it into a blog and clean it up. So that's what I'm most excited about, is how easy it's gotten, how anybody can do it. The barriers to entry are lower. That the way to repurpose the content and to share it with people in different ways has never been easier. You know, you can transcribe this with an artificial intelligence program called temi.comt e M I for 10 cents a minute. So you could take an entire hour long podcast. It's going to cost you $6 to transcribe the whole thing. And that's a huge blog right there. So once again, go back to that.

I want to plus what you're saying. You know what, finish your thought and then I want to circle back to that one. Sure.

I'd just say there is no better time to be alive. For me to write a blog is a homework assignment. But you know what my current workflow is? I get an idea in the shower. I write down four or five bullet points. I go on a rant for four or five minutes into my phone. I send that in to be transcribed, and within probably a minute, it goes to somebody on my team. That cleans up my English, puts all the correct pronunciation in there, puts a picture, all the rest of that. And I just got a blog.

So this is just piggybacking what you're saying. I suppose, different way of doing it. We use Zoom. So right now we're recording and we're using Zoom for the, for the upload to YouTube. And anybody, I mean literally anybody can get a free account on Zoom and turn the camera on, or not turn the camera on, your choice, and record your audio and then upload that link. So when you close out a Zoom, and I have no investment in Zoom, our daughter lives up in the Bay Area, actually knows the founder and super, super nice guys. What I've told, really humble, just a good, good man. But. So that's my plug for Zoom. But you get a link, you upload it to an unlisted. You know, create an unlisted link on YouTube takes six seconds. You go to YouTube, you click on the video, you click on another little, little, little button that has, for transcriptions, that's right there. And it turns your, your audio into a transcription instantly. I mean it's like literally three seconds later. It doesn't even cost you six bucks, cost you nothing. And you copy and paste and stick it in a document like you say somebody else or you, or you outsource the cleanup, the editing, etc. And we're using. So that's like you said, that's one way that when you want to get your content created and used and repurposed, you can use that to do it. And with the podcast, we're converting every one of these podcasts into a blog. So for SEO purposes, as you know, I mean, this is in fact maybe say a little bit about that for those that are listening to this, that don't know quite exactly how it is that that's used, this is a big tool for us. So in terms of how we get domain authority for our website, the podcast is a big deal for that.

And so with that, the way the search engines crawl the sites is they're looking for content that would help people. And so they'll crawl through looking for words. The more words you have on a page, the more chances there are that they're going to be find the good words in there. And I would even say sometimes the words people misspell can be important on that. So you think about it, most people talk at 150 words a minute. If you have a 30 minute conversation, just imagine how much content is there. And so the search engines are going to crawl that. The other thing is that 10% of the US population is hearing impaired. Somebody pointed that out to me that there are still people that read that and to them, the difference between a good podcast and a bad podcast is one that they can read or maybe even read along as they're listening to it, because they can't hear it as well. The other thing that's sort of a hidden gem in podcast interviews is the backlinks. Right? We've got some clients that are doing podcast interviews just for the backlinks. And the way those work is that the search engines are looking to say, what websites should we put at the top of the Google ranking? So when I put in a search, which one should I show first? And one of the trust factors or the authority factors they use there is what other sites have linked to them. So if Adam's site links to my site, it's a signal that, hey, I think that this site is so good that I'm going to send my people off my site onto Tom's site and vice versa. So if we send it off onto Adam's, that's a signal to Google that says, hey, we think this is value. And some of those are even more valuable, like the ones from educational like Edu, those are gold. A website that comes from the government, like.gov, those are golden links. So you might say, why would I go on the Kalamazoo Valley Community College podcast? Why? Because you get an Edu link that is golden there. Or there's a lot of podcasts out there that the government services are doing. So it could be some government buying agency does a podcast. Well, if you're on there, you get a link back from the US Government that is a trusted source. As far as Google comes for ranking websites, yes.

And something too, I want our folks to know, is that the sort of optimal size or minimum size for a blog that would be usable for SEO purposes, that those crawlers, whether it's for Google or one of the other search engines, is going to find is about 1200 words, which is again, when people speak on an average of 130 or 170 words a minute, it's not difficult to get a hun, you know, to get 1200 words of content created. And then you're looking to rank and we won't get into the, into the, you know, the details of this stuff get in the weeds pretty quickly. But you're looking to be ranked in certain keywords, keyword phrases, et cetera. So it's those, it's those words that show up in the blog, those words that you know that you're looking to get ranked in, that will help the domain authority for Your website, which means, in essence, more people will see it when they search for certain words and phrases your site would come up on maybe page one of a Google search versus page six. And that is all good for business. That's all good for, as you said earlier, people knowing who you are. Forget the word you used when you said that the most important thing for a business or the most frustrating thing for a business is what is that we're obscure.

That's the biggest problem we all have today is that we're obscure.

Yep. So this is one of those great ways where you can do something to cure the problem of obscurity. And I also want to just re. Reiterate something you said earlier. Actually just say it back the way you said it, that being ignorant or isolated is by choice. This is, this is something that people. There's no reason that you have to be ignorant or isolated. If you are, it's. It's that you're choosing to be because there's so many easy ways to. To have to do something about that obscurity and have the world find you. So I would love to know at this point, you know, we can go on. I mean, I'm fascinated by, by this topic, and I'm sure there are some folks out there kind of shaking their head going, oh, man, this is just what I've been waiting to hear. And there's some people out there that are probably thinking, geez, I don't, I don't really, you know, I'm not, I'm not in an online business at the moment, or I'm not, you know, I haven't created a website. I'm not looking to get traffic to my website and all that kind of thing, which is fine. At least you. You get a little bit of the, you know, underbelly side of things. But before I ask you our final question, Tom, anything else that you want to say just to close any open loops there?

Well, I would just say what you just said there. You got to be real, you got to be authentic. Everybody's favorite color is transparent. So whatever you're going to say on a podcast is not going to resonate with everybody. And if you try to make it resonate with everybody, it won't. I guarantee you. You go on a podcast, there's going to be a fraction of those people that will go, that person is an idiot. And they'll go on. There'll be other people that just go, you know what? That was interesting. And they'll go on with their life. That's fine. Doesn't mean that either one of those people are a bad person or you're a bad person. But I can tell you what, you're a bad fit when it comes to being a customer.

Right?

The ones that you want to talk to and attract, you want to repel those people that aren't great customers. You want to connect and attract those people that are ideal customers, because those are the people that are going to hear you and go, this person understands me. Adam can help me. I want to work with him. And those are the people that are going to be thrilled by what you do. You're going to have fun working with them. They're going to be more profitable. And those are going to be your customers that are broken hearted when you retire because they want to keep working with you, you know, until you drop dead.

Indeed. Yeah. And hopefully that's a long time from now. Tom, you're also the founder of Interview Valet. And so for folks that want to find out more about Interview Valet, find out more about Tom Schwab. We always have our full show notes, so there'll be links and access to information, additional information about how you can contact Tom or get in touch with this company and find out more about the services they provide, which is, among other things, they work with people who want to get on podcasts. So those of you that want to get on podcasts and those of you that already have a podcast that are looking for even more guests, great guests, because they have a full stable of really amazing people that they represent. So, Tom, you also said something which I just want to repeat, because I love this quote, that everybody's favorite color is transparent. So love that. Love that quote. Will you be transparent with us and let us know what kind of rituals or ritual you have to create more of what you're looking for in your life? So that feeling of success, that feeling that you're on purpose and fulfilled and peaceful and prosperous, what's a ritual that you have for that?

I try to run everything through a filter and make my decisions through a filter. I had a dear friend. We'd gone to high school together. And when we were in our 30s, we were talking someday. All we wanted to do was retire, but we decided that if we retired, it would drive our wives crazy and they'd kill us. So we defined retirement as doing things we loved with people we enjoyed, writing everything off as a business expense. Well, Brian died when he was 46 of liver cancer. Same thing Walter Payton had. So when I turned 50, I thought of what we had promised each other, and I said, that's it. At the age of 50, I am going to consider myself retired. So I am going to do interesting things with fun people and write it off all as a business expense. So that's one of those filters that I look at. And right now there's so many opportunities of things you could do. And so I try to always put that filter, is it interesting? Is it with people that I want to work with? And if. If it's not, you know, if it's not three yeses on that, then it's. Then it's not right for me. So that's one of those rituals that I try to. To put all my decisions in life through. And it seems like it really helps with clarity because today there's in a land of abundance. There's more opportunities out there. And some of the times it's the hardest part is not saying what you're going to say yes to, but what you're going to say no to. So you can say no to the good to say yes to the great.

Yeah. Well, Tom, I take it as a. I'm going to take that as a compliment because the fact that we're spending time together means that in some way, this time together meets those three criteria. And I feel blessed to be. To be included in that. And. And it's the same for me as well, brother. So I really love to be careful about how it is that I say that I spend my time and what I say yes to. So I'm really happy that I, and our team said yes to you and working with your company and also having a guest today. So super amazing. And I certainly hope that everybody that's either listening to this or listening and watching on YouTube that you've gotten a lot of value out of it. I've taken a ton of notes. I've got value out of this. And my hope, of course, and my prayer, even, is that you continue to get value out of every day. Today you got value, and I know you got value out of today, not because you listen to this podcast, but because you woke up and there was no guarantee when you went to sleep last night that you were going to wake up today. So to me, that's something to recognize. And my prayer is that you wake up again, you and me and Tom and everybody, that we all wake up again tomorrow, and that we are in that moment where we're taking that first waking breath, that we are, in fact, aware that it wasn't guaranteed the night before, that we would wake up. And therefore that's a blessing. As we're taking that first breath, that first aware awake breath of the day, there are people who will be taking their very last breath and there will also be people that are taking their first, very first breath of life. Babies being born all over as well. So it's a sacred moment. It's a holy and special moment. It's something that deserves gratitude and appreciation. So there's a three part ritual that we use, the waking ritual we teach and share with folks and it is that you wake up, number one. I hope everybody's going to say yes to that. I mean, you could be the greatest skeptic in the world and I hope you'll say yes to that step that second, that you are in appreciation in that moment and gratitude in that moment. And thirdly, if you're willing to do it that from your bed or when your feet hit the floor that you say these words out loud. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. It's been a true blessing to spend time with you here today. Tom, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. Thank you all for listening, for watching, for supporting. We'd love it if you'd leave a review on itunes. In fact, we're going to have a sweepstakes for the folks that have left those reviews really soon. So appreciate the reviews. You can also leave a comment if you'd like and I interact with you on our website, AdamMarkelle.com podcast and of course, if you'd love to engage with us in another medium which we're finding great value from, which is our Facebook community, which is startmypivotcommunity. You can get there by going to pivotfb.com we'd love to connect with you there further. So have a beautiful rest of your day and many, many blessings to you. Ciao for now.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.