041: Tom Schwab - Talk to Your Ideal Customers for Free

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective, and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill g. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business coach, Bill Gallagher. We've got a great story today about really how you can talk to your ideal customers for free. And we're really talking about how to get and leverage your voice, principally through podcasting. And I have with us today a great guest, Tom Schwab, who's the founder of Interview Valet and he knows all about building online businesses. He used to live near me in Alameda when he was a nuclear engineer in the Navy, but now he's in Kalamazoo where he's got a couple of grandkids and he's growing up his thing. He's originally from Chicago. He's got a breadth of background experience. But many folks have asked us about our podcast. How do we get into it? How do you do it? What does it provide? And as we build and now have thousands of listeners all over the world, it's a powerful, powerful tool, not just for us, but for all of our guests. So I'm really excited to welcome to the show. Tom Schwab.

Bill I am thrilled to be here. The only way it could be any better is if we were both there in the Bay Area.

Well, every now and then we get a guest in studio and that's kind of nice because we can share a beer over the podcast or something like that, but for the most part we're talking to people all over. I've had guests from our first show is Bob Bloom, the expert Inside Advantage. And we did that and he was in Lake Como, Italy, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous place. So we've had people from all over the world and we continue to have some amazing folks, other coaches, entrepreneurs of note and with interesting stories to tell tell, as well as authors and Gurus in the space of scaling up a business. So really glad to have you here.

Thrilled to be here. And I think it really just proves that the tools that we have today, you know, there's a lot of problems in the world, but if you look at it, there is no better time to be scaling up your business. You know, the things that we have at our hands for free, a lot of them, you know, the biggest companies probably didn't have 20 years ago. And so with that, we'll talk a little bit about that today and how you can leverage those to scale up your business.

Well, before we get into the heat of it, let's talk about how you got here. Tell us your story and how you arrived in this business. Because there's so much I think we can learn from the evolution of one's business and the formulation of the ideas if we could just go back to the beginning and apply those things early on. But so much of it is not only about self discovery, but about understanding how others in the world see and relate to us. So tell us your story.

Very much so. And I always say, you know, I'm 50 years old. My story only makes sense in the rearview mirror. If I would have looked at it when I was 17 years old to leaving Chicagoland area, I never would have believed it. You see, I was a Midwestern kid, grew up. I had never been farther west than the Mississippi river and I'd never been farther east than Michigan. So my world was really small. Had the great opportunity to go to the U.S. naval Academy, see the world, serve aboard a U.S. naval aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, that at the time was based out of Alameda there. And so life was great. The world was big. I got to experience a lot of things. And in the mid-90s, there were cutbacks in the Navy, and I had done all the fun things that I wanted to do. And I looked at it and said, okay, this is the time for my next chapter in life. And so from there, I went from there to corporate America and worked for a major medical device company. I always joke that I came to Kalamazoo on a snowy February day and I said, I'll take the job here, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to die here. Well, 20 some years later, I'm still here and it's become home. But my, my fear was always that my world was going to get small again. Right? It had been so big, but now so progress through that. You know, I went through corporate America, engineering, operations, sales, marketing, had my own distributorship in the state of Michigan, and then with that, started my own company and did the entrepreneurial endeavor, built that company up using inbound marketing, which is basically, you know, using the Internet to connect with people, to get known, to engage. Built that company up and sold it. And one of the things that struck me is that, you know, no matter where you are right now, I don't care if you're in, you know, the Bay Area, if you're in Kalamazoo, if you're in Lake Como, as long as you've got the Internet, you can connect with partners, customers, all the rest of that. And so really from that, I always have thought, as an engineer, right, that's how I started my training. I always think about things as systems, how you can do that, how you can make them scalable, how you can make them more efficient. And really that's what we've gotten into now with inbound marketing, in particular, using content of podcast interviews to really drive the online sales and marketing.

It's really interesting. There is always an evolution of our thing. I'm on my way to Hawaii this weekend to work with a couple of our clients there, and for me, I need to be on the road. But the idea of Michigan, that is a hard thing. But I guess every place is the place that you love, right?

And the thing is that we're at a point in our life now where one week out of the month, we try working in a different city. So from that standpoint, you know, our business is digital. I don't have to be in the office all the time to get the work done, right? So, you know, I'll spend a week in Nashville and I'm a morning person, so I'll get up and, you know, I can work from, you know, 4 o' clock to 11 o' clock and have the rest of the day off to see clients, to see friends, to do all those things. You know, I always love coming out to California because with the time shift, I'm waking up at 2am in the morning anyway, so I can get a full day's work done and then go to brunch and start the fun day.

Well, so I mention it because we're talking from California to Kalamazoo, but we have guests on from around the world, and our listeners are also worldwide. And both the Internet and the world of podcasting let us reach that kind of a global audience. At any time of day or night. People listen, and on their terms, when they want to, they tune in as they're running on the treadmill or across a trail. They tune in while driving to and from or on the train, and they fill their idle hours with productive learning and thinking and like that kind of thing. So I think it's a powerful tool for folks no matter where they are, right?

Very much so. And it really goes beyond time also, because right now we're talking in 2017. I guarantee you there's somebody in 2020 right now that is listening to this for the first time and they'll go, wow, this is really neat. And I have to admit, it's always weird for me to talk to a podcast host, you know, live, because when I listen to you on the podcast, you talk at one and a half times speed. So not only can I pick when I listen to it, but at what speed?

Right.

So when I actually talk live to podcast hosts, it's like they sound so much different, right?

Yeah, you can bump it up. I do that a lot when I'm doing audiobooks. So I tend to do audiobooks both. I tend to do books, business books, both audio and written, and I'll use both interchangeably. And when I'm listening, I may listen at one and a half to two times speed, depending on how many times I've heard it or whatever. But it helps me to deeply ingrain an idea so that I'm completely facile with it and can share it and work with others as a coach. So I think the other thing that's interesting is, so if you're watching this on YouTube versus listening on the podcast, you'll note that we have fancy studio mics and nice headphones and things like that in our setups here. But you don't actually need that to be a great. You might need that to be the host and so on. But if you're just going to be a guest, your iPhone or, or Android phone will work just fine. So you can go mobile, you can use a little earbud mic even and sound just fine as a guest on them. And as you get over time, like I'll carry with me, I've got a little pocket mic that can go easily in my carry on baggage, or I have a little lavalier mic. I can use either one of those that create terrific sound. Just from a technical standpoint, I don't want people to be intimidated by this or the mic that you've got there in thinking about getting started, right.

You know, I've done over 400 interviews and I've done them from the beach, I've done them from Vacation from hotel rooms. You know, as long as you've got a good Internet signal or phone signal, you can make it happen. I mean, the weirdest place was probably stuck in traffic. There was a, unfortunately fatality up in the road. And I hadn't moved in 45 minutes, but I had a strong cell signal pulled off the side of the road. And it was a great interview, great audio quality. So really, there's not a whole lot of barriers anymore to getting your voice heard by your ideal customers.

So the people that we work with, our purpose as a company is helping leaders build a better world. Sooner or later, the people that we work with discover and articulate a purpose and a set of values, and they create a big, hairy, audacious goal, a bhag. And they identify a core customer and they articulate their top brand promises, and that defines all of their. The core of their strategy. And then helps with all the other sexier things as well as helps them then to figure out how to execute in the near term. So with those kinds of things in mind, then we go out and we have a particular message. Right. So what is it that you're able to do with folks like our listeners and our clients? How do you help them get heard? How do they get started with some of this? Tell us a little bit about how that works.

Sure. Really what it comes down to is you're so right identifying that person that you want to talk to, because you've got to choose who your ideal customer is. There's 7 billion people in the world. They're not all your own customer. So when you get clear on who you want to work with, what you can offer them, and why you're the best. Most of us have a great product or service. The problem is we're just obscure. There used to be this idea of, can I break through the noise? How can I get. Break through the noise and get heard. And you know, Bill, I was flying out to California, I think it was about a year ago. And one of the things I noticed is the gentleman sitting next to me on the airplane, he could have been my ideal customer, but there was no way I was going to get through to him because he had his earbuds in, he was listening to what he wanted to. I guess I could have yelled loud enough for him to hear me, but probably wouldn't have gotten a customer that way. And I think more and more what you're seeing is that our customers are starting to filter what they listen to or even what they read. You know, you can get screens now that block the ads or, you know, not all the pop ups on your emails. So from that standpoint, it's better to get in on the conversations that are already going on, that they're listening to, that they're paying attention. So what we do with our clients, and you know, it's not magic, it's just a system that we've worked on, tested, is really starting out. And there's six steps to it. The first one is prospecting. You know, find the right shows that your customers are listening to. And it's not always the biggest shows. You know, from a personal example, I say I've been on a show before that had 50,000 downloads and from that I got two dozen leads. And I was thrilled by that. It was a great show. I enjoyed it. I was on another one, got solid leads. I was on another one. Shortly after that, the host said that she got 350 downloads per episode. Now at that point I'm like, well, I'm here, let's do the show. That's fine. It's a great show. I know it's going to work. Well, from that bill, I got 150 leads and I looked at that and.

That'S a big pool.

No, it's not. It's a small pool, but it's like there's more fish in the ocean than there are in a barrel. Yeah, but man, if you can show me where the barrel is of my customers, I'm going there every time. So prospecting is the important first part. The second one is pitching. How do you approach a podcast host and say, I've got something to help your audience, to add value to it? Because it's just like the same way with radio or television. You can't just say, hey, I want to talk to your audience. It's a little bit different on radio or tv because if I called the local TV station now and told them I'd love to be a guest, I guarantee you they wouldn't ask me, what do you have to talk about? It would be the sales department that said, well, if you buy this much, we can get you on the 5am news. And if you buy this much, we can get you on the 5pm news. So it's a little bit different in podcasting. It's not advertising based.

Well, I'm always looking for that message. Right. If somebody's got something that I think is going to be of interest to our listeners. So when I'm moderating a panel and one of the guest entrepreneurs says, my business $200 million with three people. I'm like, oh, yeah, you are going to be at my show. People want to hear that story. When I talk to a friend, I'm like, how are things going? He's like, oh, it's really good. We've been growing. We've added some office and stuff. We're up to 800 people now. I'm like, oh, you're start up to 800 people in three years. He's like, yeah, we're still growing, though. Like, okay, we need to get your story on the show. Right. So I think about those or when I'm at one of our summit conferences and I hear a speaker on the stage and I'm like, okay, that guy got my attention. That guy cut through the noise. We need to get them on.

And it was because they had a story. So it's trying to explain to the host what you're offering that will be insightful, engaging, thought provoking to the audience.

Right, right.

So you got prospecting, pitching. The third one is preparation. You wouldn't show up to speak at a conference if you didn't know who was there, what they were talking about. And it's the same way with the podcast. Not only preparing for who you're talking to, what the questions could be, but also helping the host prepare so they know who you are. The fourth one is the performance, and this is the only one you can't outsource. Sinatra only sang, but nobody else could sing for them. But there are best practices that you can do with that.

You mean to get your performance up.

To be able to deliver, to get your performance up. You know, things like telling stories. You know, nobody likes to hear an infomercial, so tell stories. Give more resources that are available on there, you know, so I'll pull back the curtain and show you. So one of the ones that a lot of times that I'll talk about is people go, well, how do you get on your first podcast? Well, we could go through that, or there's a little infographic that I have, and it's the six steps to get on your first podcast. I realize people are running now, they're multitasking. If I gave it to you right now, you probably wouldn't listen to it or wouldn't remember them all anyway. So it's just easier to say, hey, if you want, you know, the six secrets to getting booked on your first podcast, I've got a free download with that. And then just say, you can find that free download@interviewvallet.com ScalingUp, right? Everything that Bill and I talk about will be there. Now this is step number six and showing you behind the curtain. Now, why would I send them to a dedicated landing page like that? As opposed to just say, hey, just go to interviewvallet.com because this is going to change over time. Somebody's listening to this in 2020 and I want them to have the same experience on that. So when you go to that, you're going to find out just what we talked about here. For those of you who are listening on a podcast, you have no idea what I look like, you have no idea what my site looks like. But when you go to that page, what you're going to find is all information Bill and I talked about. And there'll be the artwork for Bill's podcast, the Scaling up podcast, because that's that sort of trust factor on there. And we did a lot of testing with that and that made a big difference. It's almost like E commerce. You know, if you see the MasterCard logo and all the other ones, the Better Business Bureau, it's those trust seals and those are really important. So we do the progression and then the final one is just promotion, right? You spent all this time talking on a podcast and you think this is great. Well, this is evergreen content, so you need to promote this for a long time. You know, we've got clients out that are now out over three years and they've got podcasts they did three years.

Ago, but they're still.

So from that standpoint, it's really just a system, right? So the interview is the content, but everything else is the system to put in there so you can just scale up, wash, rinse and repeat so that you can turn listeners into visitors, into leads.

When we do a pre show interview, we're listening for and looking for a few things. The first thing is the big idea. Like what's the core big idea that we're promoting? In this case, it's developing a dialogue, getting your message out to an ideal customer with a podcast. That's the big idea of this show. And then, and then there's some kind of a hook, right? So the surprising thing and the hook could be part of the story. It could be the shift or the moment of transformation. It could be a fact or something that's surprising, like 200 million and three employees. Something that's jarring, that's attention getting that we will use to open the show. And then we look to help them organize about three main takeaway points, right, that we want to underscore with it. And then that story that opens it, it's the origin story, or it's the evolution of the idea, or it's a case study or something like that that tells the story. So if we open with the hook that probably occurs somewhere late in the story, then we can go back and we can step back to the beginning and start to move through how did they get there? And so on. People are listening for the, the fulfillment of the realization of the big idea or the big shift that occurs for people, right?

Very much so.

And that whole story, that honing that story is something that a lot of, I think some of our entrepreneurs don't have. Well done. Right. So developing the story, sharing it with other people, learning to tell your story well, is a really useful thing. I coached an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur actually, a little over a year ago, and he had a really powerful, compelling thing. And I'm like, okay, what's your purpose and how did you get that and what's your story? And as we stepped through, he had a really powerful story. He had all the parts there. He just hadn't crafted it together. So he crafted it. Then I coached him a couple times in delivering it. And then I'm like, okay, go tell that story to like 12 people in the next three days. And then by the time you get to that pitch meeting on Monday in New York, it'll be powerful and you'll find the heart of it, you'll find your place in it. That makes all the difference in being really compelling. It's not that complicated to break it down. So figure out what the transformation or the hook or the big thing is. And then step back through the beginning, work it through, practice it a few times, till it's pretty compelling, right?

Very much so, Bill. And you know, I always say that, you know, people, people buy from people, so it's that story that resonates with them. If they can hear your story and say, this person understands my problems, he can help, he or she can help my problems. You know, I trust them. All of the rest of that, that moves it along. And we've seen that you, if you're just selling a widget, a commodity, well, then it may be price. But if you're really selling a service, a relationship, people want to know who they're working with. And you've got to figure out a way to do that. You know, is it one on one meetings? Is it speaking at live events? Is it phone calls or is it podcasts or podcast interviews?

I think, though, that they all complement each other. Right? If you're the head of a company or an evangelist for a company, you've got to get good at sharing your story, at getting your message out there on a consistent basis. And the same disciplines, in a slightly different version that apply to podcasting, apply to public speaking, apply to presenting, apply to all of these realms where you've got to communicate and evangelize your idea and share it in a compelling fashion. So the structure of it, the preparation, the delivery, all of those things matter. And not just here. In this world of podcasting, one thing from your speaking immediately comes to mind. And that is a technique that I use. I used to use it a lot, and now I use it less frequently, but I do at least once a week, do some mirror work. So mirror work is a particular thing that I think maybe originates in acting. But you take what you've got to deliver your story, your script, whatever it is, and then you just deliver it again and again in the mirror. And I remember the first time I did it, I had to prepare a section, and I got coached to go do this thing 10 times in the mirror. And I thought it was annoying, and it was annoying and silly and formulaic and whatever. I go and I do it, and I'm like, at like four times in the mirror, I think to myself, maybe I should just quit and just lie that I did this. And then I thought, well, I'll just do it one more time. And so I did it another time, like, well, whatever. Well, maybe I'll just do it one more time, and then I'll lie. And about the sixth or seventh time, I was completely moved, overcome with emotion at presence, right? Not so much in the actual story, but about the human being on the other side of the mirror, the person that I am that desperately wants to contribute to people, to make a difference, to be heard, to be liked, just in the presence of my own humanity, humbly taking some coaching and doing something. About the seventh instance of this, I was just struck. Now, people that know me now know that I cry pretty easily, that I have pretty good emotional range, but it's a really powerful tool. And then I went through and decided, well, maybe I'll go ahead and do three more times. And by the end of it, I wasn't a silly bundle of emotion, but I was powerful and clear and connected. And if you can deliver your message to yourself and you can be with the other person on the other side of the mirror, right? If there's nothing in yourself that you're not at peace with. And all that makes you an extraordinarily powerful speaker.

You know, you're right. No matter how you do that, it's your emotion that has to come through. You have to connect with people that way. And we've had some people where I'll ask them, would you drive across town to speak to 10 prospects? And they're like, sure. Well, would you drive across the state to speak with 100? And they're like, sure. I'm like, would you get on a plane to speak to 1,000? And there's some people that like, at 100 go, no, I don't speak in front of crowds. They're not comfortable with it. They haven't gotten to that point. And one of the great things is that even if you're an introvert and don't want to get up there and speak in front of a crowd, you can still leverage technology. You can talk one on one, right? We're having a discussion here. It's not intimidating, but you can leverage that then and use that to reach so many more people. And then you could even repurpose that, right? So you've got this video now that you could put on different places. You. You could take the transcript from it. But all the communication aspects, like you said, apply to however you're communicating with people.

So here's the cool thing, I think, in what you're saying. So the top criteria that we have for working with anyone is a real hunger to grow. Now, that can come from just your drive or the desire to prove somebody wrong in your past, a parent or a teacher or something like that. Or it can come from a vision for something that makes a better world. So you have a vision for a different kind of a future. It could be a better mousetrap. It could be a solution to energy and ecological problems. It could be something that improves the quality of life or saves life, whatever. But you've got a desire to grow. And that doesn't always mean that you're that front of the room, big crowd kind of voice, but this podcast kind of world radio, the technology lets you connect with people without having yet to confront the crowds, which for many people is a terrifying thing. And if you spend some time with it, it changes. But this gives you a great way to hone your message and develop your voice for the thing that you're most passionate about. And I'm pretty sure that most of the people listening to our show have some passion around something.

And the thing is that you can leverage it, too. I spoke up in Lansing, Michigan, a little bit ago, and I was up in front of a group of 75 people. Awesome people. I'm so glad I was there. But I had to be honest with them. I'm like, this is probably the smallest crowd I have spoken to in months, right? Because any podcast you go on has hundreds of listeners, if not thousands. And I'm thinking, you know, it took me hour and a half to drive up there, an hour and a half back. You know, it was a better part of a half a day to speak to 75 people. And with the technology that we have, I don't care where you are. You can reach so many more people with that. And just going on to what you said about, you know, that passion inside of you, one of the things that really strikes me is that, you know, it was a phrase that came from Derek Sivers, who was the founder of CD Baby, the precursor to itunes. He said, what's ordinary to you is amazing to others. So what you know and how you help customers and clients, that's amazing to other people. And you may look at that and say, well, everybody knows this now. Everybody doesn't know. And nowadays, it is so easy to share that with people. And I think we all have sort of an obligation to take what we've learned and help other people with that. You know, that's what our businesses are about, right? We're trying to help somebody. And if we help enough people, you know, all our goals are met, too. So from that standpoint, there's really no excuse anymore not to share with what you know. You know, even if you're an introvert, if you're in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wherever, you can help people and you can impact people's lives.

That's beautiful. So I think it's going to be a message of great interest to our listeners and viewers. And I just want to turn people on to your service. Now, there are lots of ways you could get yourself on and start to be a guest on other podcasts, but one great way is Interview Valet, who will help you find the right podcast for your message and get you ready to go. So that's your company, right? And we'll put a link to that right in the thing. Anything people need to know about that.

If you want to find out more information about it, just go to interviewvallet.com scalingup. We got that checklist of the six things to to get on your first podcast. There's a little training video there at 30 minutes that explains more about podcast interview marketing, even wrote a book called Podcast Guest Profits that explains the system we use. Because I'll be honest, it's not magic. It's just a system that we've used, we've tested, we've optimized. And originally we started out by teaching people the system. People said, I don't want to learn the system, I want to be the guest and you guys take care of the rest. You know, somebody said Sinatra only sang. He said, I want to be the guest. You do the rest. And I'm like, oh, that's good copy. We're going to use that in our tagline. So if you want to do it yourself, that's great. If you want to work with somebody to help you do it, that's great. And you know, we love working with people and our whole mission is to personally introduce, you know, inspiring thought leaders to millions of ideal customers for the benefit of all. So, you know, if we could work with you on that, we would love to talk with you.

That's awesome. So a Couple Quick Things InterviewVallet.com ScalingUp will be in the show notes and of course it has a whole bunch of things there to get started and do it on your own or to use the service to help yourself and get your message out there as a podcast guest. A couple other things for our folks to talk about if you are listening to this right away. So if you we have scaling up workshops all the time where we teach the fundamentals of scaling up and help you get started. Starting to fill out your strategy, learn some better execution habits, improve your cash flow and your cash production right there in the meeting and start to dial in your people. So we work through the decisions around people, strategy, execution and cash in a one day intensive workshop. We have them all the time. We have one coming up now in March and March 2016. Of course that'll be on our on our website as well if you look for events. But if you're listening to this now and acting now and you register for the March workshop using promo code, early will give you a hundred dollars off the registration. So there's limited seats and limited time available. I think that's good till February 27, 2017 and March 16, 2017 is our next workshop. We'll only have a couple public workshops this year. Of course we're doing private ones all the time. Also on our website all the time is a growth kit for free that you can download. It tells you all about the gives you an overview of the scaling up process from the book and then tells you how to begin to run your own strategy and planning meetings and has a load of worksheets to use with your team. So lots of free things of course, our podcasts and our video tutorials on YouTube.com Bill Gallagher and on itunes Scaling Up Business. Subscribe now to get the latest ones every week in your feed wherever you do it on itunes or all the different places that you find your podcast of course on our blog@scalingupbusiness.com thanks again so much Tom for being with us on the show and I hope this produces a raft of fabulous leads for you too.

Thank you Bill.

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