In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking how SMBs can build AI Authority. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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- Show Notes
- Strategic Counsel Summary
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How SMBs Can Build AI Authority without Spending a Fortune with Tom Schwab, Interview Valet
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It’s no longer good enough to just have a solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign. Now, you need AI to trust you so you appear in AI searches, like the very top “AI Overview” bubble in Google. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of competition out there, which makes it even harder for SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) striving to be seen. But, hope is not lost. Unlike traditional SEO, you can’t just pay your way into building authority. You must earn it with consistent conversation that can be attributed to you. We wanted you to learn from a specialist in this space, so we welcomed on Tom Schwab. He’s the Founder & Chief Evangelist Officer of Interview Valet, and the Author of several minibooks. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Marketing should be a magnet, not a megaphone
- Hyper-specific positioning makes it easier for AI and people to recommend you
- Anne’s soapbox: niching down is uncomfortable but critical
- Building trust through consistency and truthfulness
- Why AI trusts conversations more than keywords/SEO tricks
And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- Classics: How to Build Unconventional Cultures That Thrive with Gui Costin, Dakota
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [01:24] Introducing guest Tom Schwab, founder of Interview Valet, on helping thought leaders talk directly to ideal clients and the AI that refers them
- [03:15] Marketing should be a magnet, not a megaphone
- [06:15] AI cares about share of voice and sentiment
- [09:59] Hyper-specific positioning makes it easier for AI and people to recommend you
- [14:20] Tom’s example: passion and authentic connection outperformed hard work alone
- [16:16] Anne’s soapbox: niching down is uncomfortable but critical
- [19:30] Leadership means leading, but there are many mediums (writing, one-on-one talks, podcasts) to fit different strengths
- [21:19] April’s shift toward more personal storytelling on LinkedIn
- [23:12] Case study: Gavin Zeklinski’s Acuity Scheduling story vs. faceless competitors
- [25:29] Why AI trusts conversations more than keywords/SEO tricks
- [27:24] AI is going multimodal and what that means for you
- [29:50] Building trust through consistency and truthfulness
- [31:17] Anne’s example: using ChatGPT as a thought partner to score and refine her LinkedIn newsletter in her own voice
- [34:04] Know who you want to talk to and what you want them to feel/do
- [36:56] Using AI as an honest critique partner to improve communication
- [42:37] Finding your audience with tools like SparkToro
- [45:35] How to know if it’s working: qualitative gut feelback plus quantitative signals (mentions, traffic, referrals) over a long tail
- [48:59] Just asking people how they found you is imperfect but valuable attribution
- [52:16] AI is now part of your marketing ecosystem, but it still starts with putting yourself out there
- Rapid Fire
- [52:44] current reads, worst marketing advice (“it’s a numbers game”), and a hypothetical anti-spam law
- [52:51] From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks
- [53:13] Tom’s least favorite advice
- [54:09] If Tom created a new law, what would it be?
- [56:12] Closing thought: “what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others”
- [57:12] Connect with Tom through Interview Valet and check out his minibooks
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
What is Strategic Counsel?
Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.
Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about how small and medium sized businesses can build authority without spending a fortune on advertising. So we talked with David Burnett, founder of AOK Marketing a few months back about how important building authority is in the world of AI. So there we talked on Nets and Bolts of AI Attribution. We might get into that a little bit today, but if you’re really looking for that and you want to refresh on that, you can check out this app.
00:57
You can check out that episode. The common theme though from that episode through to this one is that it’s no longer good enough just to have a SEO, SEM campaign. Now you need AI to trust you so that you appear in AI searches like the very top in the AI overview bubble in Google. Yes. And unfortunately there is a ton of competition out there, which makes it even harder for SMBs striving to be seen. But hope is not lost. Don’t worry.
01:24
Because unlike SEO, SEM, you can’t just pay your way into building authority. You must earn it with consistent conversation that can be attributed to you. And everybody can play that game. Yep. Which is why we’re going to talk this topic again, because today we’re going to specifically focus on SMBs, since many of our SMB clients have been asking us how to best leverage AI. And we have a great guest today who is a specialist here, and that’s Tom Schwab of Interview Ballet. So Tom, do you want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story?
01:54
Sure. I’m Tom Schwab coming to you from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I founded and run a company called Interview Valet and we help thought leaders, small and medium sized businesses talk directly to their ideal clients and the AI that refers them now. And we do that through targeted podcast interviews. And this idea of, like you said, of it’s tricks, it’s hacks, it’s pain. It’s like, that doesn’t work anymore. What it is is you’ve got to earn
02:24
that trust from your clients and the AI. And so it’s gonna be really interesting to talk about what we have learned over the last 11 years of doing this. And I always say my microphone makes me sound good, but my team makes me look good. So most of it I’ve learned from my team and from our clients. That’s awesome. And Harold from Kalamazoo, I know I shared that’s where my brother lives, but it’s so funny where he’s like, oh, you know, Kalamazoo, nobody’s ever heard of it. I’m like, yeah.
02:49
My brother’s lived there for, I don’t know, 15, 20 years. My sister-in-law works at KZ College. I’m kind of a little familiar with Kalamazoo and everybody’s like, what? So there we go. I know we had that conversation before, so I won’t make everybody listen and relisten to the same conversation Tom and I had, but had to share that little tidbit. Tom, let’s talk specifically about the problems SMBs face in getting seen and what mistakes they generally make here, because we know that…
03:15
It can be tough for even the biggest businesses, but SMBs have a really special sweet spot that they need to play in. So can you kind of set the scene for us about the problems and the mistakes that they made and why this is so hard for them? Yeah. And I think a lot of times it’s, we’ve been told, Oh, you just have to be seen, right? You’ve got to be heard. You’ve got to be known by everyone. And it’s this idea of, I’ve got to be as known as Walmart or Amazon. And it’s like,
03:44
I just want to be known by the people that makes a difference. And there’s a lot of times where I think the industry was trying to get us to buy megaphones, right? Try to be louder more often. And there’s this idea, oh, we were told all you’ve got to do is break through the noise. And so many times we were just making noise. And I think AI allowed us to do it louder, right? And so this idea that, oh, it’s all about repetition.
04:13
just being seen. It’s like, no, I want to be seen by the right people. And to me, marketing should be a magnet, not a megaphone, right? The whole world doesn’t have to know me or see me, but I want my clients to, right? So it’s idea of being targeted. And in all of your marketing, all of my marketing, I shouldn’t say you should, right? But this is what we have found is that it should be a magnet. People should turn you up or turn you off.
04:43
It’s this idea they should be drawn towards you or repelled. At the end of the day, none of us want just more leads. We were taught that too. Oh, you just need more leads. Well, leads cost you to work. What we’re optimizing for is profits. And profits comes from value from the client. And so from that standpoint, we don’t need more, we need better. So I think this idea of being seen, I put the little asterisks next to it.
05:12
being seen by the right people. And I think with AI, with the targeting we can do right now, we can be much, much more effective in targeting our super consumers, right? Those people that love us, buy all of what we offer, and then tell the others about us too. Yeah, speaking our language there for sure. As you were talking, I was thinking about the expression you hear is if you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone, right? So, which I think
05:42
applies here. we talk a lot about the same thing where our who we’re targeting, it doesn’t need it shouldn’t be so much about us anymore. Right? It should be about us being the company, right? But we want the people to see us and then do all the things you said react to us, engage with us be loyal to us. So I would love if you can talk about what what does this look like with you guys? Like, I’m already intrigued about the AI slash like true marketing or
06:08
traditional marketing and what does all of that look like? And when you’re working with someone, how do you make this happen for them? Yeah. And I, first of all, I’ll say, I believe anybody that tells you they understand how AI works, they’re either lying to themselves or lying to you. Oh, yes. That’s what I say about Amazon advertising too. If they tell you, know, how to advertise on Amazon and they’re lying to you. Yeah. It’s like a black box and all we can do is
06:37
see what happens and then also see what smart people are telling us. So early on, one of our clients came to us and they said, why, we asked them, why do want to be on a podcast interview? And they said that they wanted to be on there because AI was listening. And I was like, really? And they’re like, yeah, there’s two things. And it was, they were launching a company called Agent AI. And they said, there’s two things that
07:06
they’re looking at right now, and that’s share a voice and sentiment, right? Sort of makes sense, like with any marketing. How much are people talking about you, and is it positive, neutral, or negative? So you want to make sure that you’re putting information out there that’s positive, trying to minimize the number of negative reviews, right? So that’s where we’re really helping people. It’s like, how can you get 45 minutes of positive content out there?
07:35
about your company, about your brand, about your category, about the way you see the world there. And the other thing too is that what we have seen is that AI gives more authority to other people’s sites than it does your own. That’s not surprising, right? SEO is the same way. Nobody cares what I say about me on my website, right? They care about what’s being on other ones.
08:03
So that’s the way that where people are going out there and expanding their orbit to get heard by different people, but also by the AI. The other thing I think that it’s almost like we’re trying to use SEO principles for AI. And that’s as crazy as trying to use yellow pavement pages tactics for SEO, right? The idea of calling yourself ACME marketing. Why? Because it’ll be at the front.
08:32
of the yellow pages, right? That doesn’t apply to SEO. And I think that’s the same thing with AI. Now I hear people saying, well, you should just ask chat, like, who is the best runner in Lawton, Michigan, right? I’m actually in Lawton. It’s a suburb of Kalamazoo, right? Nobody asks AI that. That’s an SEO question. When people are asking AI questions, there’s all of this
09:02
data behind them, right? I’ve been talking to AI for months and months. It knows all these things about me. It knows about my challenges. So when it actually recommends someone, it’s got so much information there. So this idea that we can just hack it and try ranking for best blank in blank, it just doesn’t work anymore. So that’s where that content really has to be out there.
09:30
So fascinating. Okay, I’m going to rewind a second because I want to go back to one of the earlier things you said. If I was an SMB and actually we are SMB, we are consultancy. And so that kind of qualifies as being an SMB. I would probably have heard what you said and be like, that doesn’t seem any easier to me than everything else. Like that doesn’t feel like there’s a still a space for me to bake through. That doesn’t feel like, you know, that’s a
09:59
there’s a right for me to win there. It still feels very, very crowded. So can you rewind back to like for an SMB, for a small medium sized business who is again looking to put out that right message that meets that right person? Cause I feel like that’s, that is definitely, you know, what we want to get to the right person through at the right time with the right message. That’s always been.
10:25
the kind of the gold standard of how do you market and how you can be successful. So can you contextualize that for an SMB in this new world where AI authority is important? And we talked about, you know, seeing being, you know, versus having authority and how the game has changed. gives them a little bit of a, you know, a leg up or an advantage or a way to play or something to that effect. Yeah, great question. And I think
10:55
It’s less about tricks and hacks, and it’s more about basic marketing, right? So this idea is that you want to be different, not just better or louder, right? If I come out and I say, I’m the best marketing agency in the United States, it’s either me or the other hundred thousand that are lying, right? And what does that even mean? Best for whom? So I think it has to be great for small businesses
11:25
that when they niche down, right, when I hear people say, I’ve got a full service digital marketing agency, that means nothing to me. I have no idea what that means. But tell me that, you know, we’ve got a boutique agency and we do social media for entrepreneurs that are leaving the corporate world and launching their own brand, right? And that’s what we focus on. And it’s like, oh, okay, now I understand that.
11:54
And then tell me, I believe this. I reject this. So it becomes very clear on who you are, what you serve. And as I just said that, it makes it easy to think, if you were a person, oh, I could refer them this person. I know so-and-so is just retiring from corporate. He’s starting his own thing. That same way, it’s easy for AI to do it. So I think it’s very important that
12:23
you focus on what your unique point of view is and who your ideal clients are. Be hyper specific, right? Because when it was all of our clients came from a 10 mile drive of us, we had to be very wide, right? We had to serve everyone, but now we can be hyper specific. And that same example, if somebody says, I am the best social media company.
12:51
for executives leaving the corporate world and starting their own entrepreneur journey. Oh, OK. Well, there’s not a whole lot of people right in there. So if you claim that, right, and you’ve got the expertise and stuff like that, now there’s something that AI could recommend you for or other people could recommend you for. So I think it’s really, at times, it can be counterintuitive. But sometimes the more specific you can get, especially with AI,
13:21
the more you can be recommended. Well, and I can feel our listeners getting nervous by that, right? Because we have those conversations with them too. And we already said the belief of if you try to be everything for everybody, you’re nothing for anyone. But I love what you said about how if you were in a 10 mile, if all the clients were in a 10 mile radius, you have to be for everyone versus the way the world looks now, you’re trying to leverage the technology and the tool in addition to those word of mouth recommendations obviously are always gold.
13:50
But can you talk a little bit more, and this kind of builds on what Anne was asking of, like, what should people be excited about when it comes to being able to do this, right? Like, what are some of the other doors that this opens for people that they didn’t have ability to access before so that we can kind of help people maybe not be like, oh, you’re telling me to niche down and I don’t know how to use the tools and now I’m just nervous all around. Like, take us on that more positive journey. And I think it’s such a great time now because it’s not
14:20
who’s got the biggest budget, sometimes it’s got who’s got the biggest passion. And let me give you a real life example on this. At Interview Valet, we have three verticals, business, faith and spirituality, and health, nutrition, and wellness, right? If you’re just listening, I’ll tell you, I am not the face of health, nutrition, and wellness, right? And we get the vast majority of our clients come from hearing us on podcast interviews.
14:49
And I’ve been doing interviews, so for probably eight years, and we just weren’t getting a lot of leads from the health, nutrition, and wellness. And so it’s like we tried different things. And finally, we got one of the team members, Chloe Williamson, runs that pod for us. And she started to get out on podcasts. And within 90 days, we were getting leads from that. And people would say, oh, do you know Chloe?
15:19
Right? And she was saying basically the same things as I was, but she had a different passion for that. She connected with the audience a whole lot more. So I could come in and say, well, I’m just going to work harder or spend more money. But I couldn’t resonate with that audience. Right? I didn’t know their lingo. So her passion was able to connect more than just my hard work. And I think that’s where people can really niche down.
15:47
If you know your clients and your ideal clients better than anyone, you can speak their language and that will resonate with them. It’ll attract the right people and repel the other ones. And I think the other thing today too is especially in SMBs, People want to know the heart behind the business. And so if you can resonate with them, it’s easier to differentiate why they should choose you.
16:15
All right, I’m gonna get up on my tide box a little bit. I it was coming. was like, you said, Kash, and she’s gonna say, I’m gonna get on my tide box. I’m gonna get on my tide box. knew it. I almost preempted it just for fun. Just for fun? Well, you can kind of see it coming. It’s usually when I start sitting back like this, it’s usually when… She’s thinking and then all of a sudden she’s like, okay. And I’m like, oh God, here comes Yeah, the tide box coming out, which is my branded soap box in case that wasn’t clear, Tom. But I mean, first of all, yes, for sure.
16:42
this whole mentality of taking the broad and making it niche. It’s the most uncomfortable thing for small and medium sized businesses to do. And it’s the most critical thing in order to be successful. And even April and I struggle on that where we’re like, are we specific enough? Are we niche enough? we, especially for a team of two, I mean, there’s only so much that people expect you to be able to do, right? So you had to be a little bit realistic in that. in what we sell is our IP.
17:08
That’s why people hire us. That’s why when people are like, are you going to scale me and label? Like we haven’t figured out a reason or how to scale our branch yet. We haven’t figured out how that we’re going to, can do that in a way that maybe AI can help us there. Maybe we’d be a disk in our own AI, you know, large language model we can train in. Then we have like an ant that could be actually kind of scary, but now I’m actually very excited about that. So I think that that is really important for, for small medium sized businesses to hear. that and the fact.
17:38
that now with all these ways of being able to develop content. mean, Tom, obviously you come from the podcast world, we’re on a podcast, but there’s other ways of being able to get that attribution in a very physical way that is things like podcasts or interviews, going to events and speaking at events, showing up at networking opportunities and just speaking about what you do, like being a face.
18:04
of your business is so important and it’s probably one of the hardest things that we’ve seen small medium sized businesses try to grasp. One, they don’t want to do it. You usually have like a couple of people and they’re either in the business and they don’t feel like they have time for it or they don’t feel like that’s something that they want to go do or they don’t feel comfortable doing that or they don’t want the business to all tied to them. But the power of having a quote unquote spokesperson, I’m just going to use that as a generic term that everybody can understand.
18:34
that has that passion that could speak authentically about the business that can put it in context that people can understand and going out and evangelizing your business on the right channels of course is one of the most powerful ways that small medium sized businesses are winning. I mean, I will go back to, I mean, when my time at Gillette where, mean, big Mohammed razor business, right? Who would even consider coming in and disrupting that?
19:01
And here you come with Dollar Shave Club and all of a sudden they have this cult following and then Harry’s comes below, you know, behind it and you’re just like, how in the hell did they do it? And they did it like this. They did it like this. so, it may not be to disrupt a big, big brand, but you can definitely get a share of attention. You can definitely get the people that you care about to listen if you’re smart about that. So I’ll get off my tide box for a second. I’ll let you guys respond to that.
19:30
Well, I love that. it’s like, I always look at it as leadership means leading, right? And when people say, well, I’m not comfortable being out there. Well, that’s part of being a leader, right? Now there are different ways to do it, right? I’m an introvert by, you know, probably on the spectrum there. I don’t like getting up in front of big crowds, but I love talking with people one-on-one like this, right? So there’s ways that you can do this, right?
19:59
I’m not great at networking at night, right? I’m useless after about 7.30 at night, but I’ll get together with people for breakfast. So I think what you have to do is look and say, where are my unique strengths and what mediums can I use them on? Example, I’ve written a lot of blogs in my life. Every one of them felt like a homework assignment. Right? So for me, I would much rather have a discussion and then you can repurpose that into the clips, the shorts, the blogs, whatever.
20:29
And it’s interesting, we did a study years ago, two thirds of our clients at that time were introverts. And these were people that were, wouldn’t be comfortable going out on a keynote stage, but they were great talking with somebody one-on-one on a podcast. So there’s different ways that you can do it. So you don’t have to do everything. Find what your unique advantage is, right? Don’t play where…
20:56
you don’t have strengths. So figure out what that is and then leverage that. Well, and I love that because I feel like this now we’ve turned the corner of like, don’t be so scared. We’re giving you the tips of how to go and do this. Right. But I think the other interesting piece here is that there are plenty of options for that. Right. And so Anne and I just launched a book on personal brand in March and
21:19
So much of what we talk about in that book is identifying authentically who you are at your core and then leveraging that to show up the way that you want to in the world, but specifically through your professional or professional or business, depending on who you are. And I think that that is also one of the things that people miss because you said, if you’re in a leadership position, the expectation is that you lead, but leadership doesn’t have to look the same way for everybody. And the same is true of thought leadership.
21:46
And so I find that one of the exciting things about all the tools we have is doing some testing and learning and even for me continuing to try to figure out where I want to show up and how, right? So for years, this podcast was so like just crazy fun, right? Well, you get into the sixth year of podcasting and you’re like, I need to flex new muscles or learn new skills or do different things, right? Cause it just doesn’t have the same level of achievement, right? And I’m heavy achievement.
22:13
For a long time, I shied away from LinkedIn. just, posted our podcast episodes, but I didn’t post anything about myself. And in the past few months, I’ve shifted that to really pour my storytelling ability, I think is what I would call it, but marrying the professional and the personal so people feel like they can get to know me. And that’s a trend on there right now, right? Of course. But I think it is when you can think about it as there’s lots of different avenues, there’s lots of ways to try it out. This isn’t like, oh, we have
22:42
TV only and you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? There’s so many more different ways to explore. And I think if you really figure out at your core and are honest with yourself about where you’re comfortable, where you think your skills lie, that can help you identify the channels. Would you agree? I would agree with you. people want to know, especially with SMBs, they want to know the values behind it, the face behind it. When you were saying, know, Gillette, I can’t think of any face with Gillette. But when you said,
23:12
Dollar Shave Club, I can not only think of the founder of it, but when he shows the picture of his grandpa, right? And so there’s that personality behind it. And I think that can affect so many things. One of the clients we worked with, Gavin Zeklinski, started Acuity Scheduling, and that was Squarespace’s first acquisition. And now, what’s the difference between
23:38
Acuity scheduling and Calendly and schedule once. I don’t know, they all do about the same, right? But Gavin got on there and he would talk about how he built the platform for his mom, right? Because she was having these struggles and they were the first one to allow payments through it because she wanted that. And so she started to sell it to her friends and stuff like that. And he’d talk about his team being up there in the Pennsylvania area.
24:08
People would use it and they’re like, oh, know Gavin, I know the story behind this. Now, schedule once, Calendly, I don’t know if they’re out of Bangladesh or not. And so when Squarespace bought them, part of the reason they had said is because his churn was so much lower, right? People weren’t just switching to the next one. Yeah, the next cheapest option, yep. Yeah, it wasn’t that I’m going to this next software platform. It’s like,
24:34
No, this is the company I work with, right? I know their story. And I think that has a lot of value to the stability of a company and the value of a company. A thousand percent. think our listeners are probably like, oh, and in April tricked us. We’re just having a marketing conversation and this is just their opportunity to kind of give us the other, you know, four one one and how to appropriately market. So I want to go back to.
25:01
the point that you made earlier, Tom, that it brings this all home and then it allows us to have a very tangible conversation. Cause I love all of that. What we talked about, all of those rules apply and even more so in a reason, and you told me this when we talked, but maybe you can elaborate on it more is that AI trust conversations more than keywords and SEO tricks is what you said. So that’s the reason why, if you guys are sitting there going, why are we having this conversation for the uptime with Anne and April? This is why, because
25:29
what we have done before or what we believe before why like PR is important and content’s important. All these sorts of things are important. Having the spokespeople is important. The great message tracking and the authentic message conveyance is important. It’s because this is what AI is listening to. So maybe Tom, you can kind of talk a little bit about that so we can hit that home and then we’re going to go into some, some tangibles on this. Yeah. And I went back and got my MBA later in life.
25:56
and spent way too much time, way too much money on it. And I think my grandfather, God rest his soul, could have told me what marketing was, right? It’s having a conversation with someone that could be your ideal client, right, or customer, right? And it’s that same thing. It’s like, huh, when I talk to the right people, I get business from it. When I talk to the right people, I get referrals from it. So it’s all of this idea around conversations. And for a long time, technology was
26:26
So. Dare I say stupid that it slowed us down, right? And, first, well, you could talk with people around the world, but you had to figure out Morse code first, right? And then I think someday we’ll look back and you had to type how archaic was with that. Why would you do that? Right. Because we couldn’t talk. Well, now we can talk. And even to the point of 20 years ago, it was keywords. The computers weren’t that smart.
26:56
to listen to the entire conversation and pull out the meaningful things. So we would just say keywords and we would put them everywhere. And now it’s gotten to the point where the computers, the AI, whatever you want to call it there, it’s got the intelligence to listen to everything, to listen to the tone behind it. In fact, today, here we are in 2026, the AI is going multimodal.
27:24
So what that means is it’s not just reading the transcripts, it’s listening to the delivery. It’s watching the video. I was recently, I was at a meeting in Texas and there was a gentleman down there that used to work for the NSA, right, the spy agency. And he was the one that pointed out that you would never read a transcript from an interview and go, oh yeah, that’s the truth. He’s like, no, it’s like how they say it with what
27:53
passion? Are they looking away? And he’s like, we’ve been looking at transcripts and making decisions. And he’s like, AI now is going multimodal. So how passionate is this person? Do they sound like they’re lying? Do they sound like they’re confident in it? So it’s this whole thing of that, you know, for a long time, people were say, oh, you’re one funnel away. Right. I’m big into funnels and automation. There’s a point for it, but I reject that.
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I think we’re one conversation away and I, I talk with business owners all the time. And it’s like, if you could have a conversation with your right client, would you get business out of it? And it’s like, yeah. All right. Let’s figure out how to do that now. Well, and I mean, I’ll, I’ll admit this whole like being able to read the tone is a bit terrifying to me. I’m always the brand character tone of voice person. Right. And the idea of turning that over to a tech tool makes me a little bit.
28:51
scared. However, I do think that it is interesting for people to internalize that and to think about it as a tool in their arsenal that is much better equipped than anything we ever had before versus trying to let it be that be all end all. And so I would love like a little more insight into, I don’t want to say the human side of AI because that doesn’t feel exactly right to me.
29:20
However, you would term that, right? Because it blows my mind, first of all, that it’s possible. I’m not saying I don’t believe it, right? But also, what other doors does that unlock or how should we be thinking about really using that? I love the idea of like the NSA analogy to contextualize, right? Of like, well, this is why and this is what it can provide for you. This is what it can unlock, all of those types of things. There’s also this idea of almost like proof of life in marketing, right?
29:50
So we get things now and you’ll say, did this email really come from April or was this AI? Right? Nobody uses semi-colons correctly, but you know, this one did or the M dashes, all these things where it’s like building trust or destroying trust. And I think with companies that same way is this company trustworthy. So I think anything that we can do to communicate with our clients in a way that is
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consistent and truthful, right? AI, one of the reasons that it indexes podcasts is because there’s no doubt it’s real human conversation, right? I’m dropping my Gs because I grew up in Chicago, right? So anything with ing, I drop the Gs. I put lots of filler words in. But people are listening for that and going, yeah, that’s human. That’s trust. And it’s one of these things where people will say, I like them or I don’t like them.
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That’s fine because the sale is the sample, right? If they don’t like your marketing, if they don’t like your pitch, if they don’t like the conversation, it doesn’t mean you’re bad or they’re bad. But it definitely means you’re not a good fit there. So why not get that out very, very early once again? So we’re not trying to get more leads. We’re trying to get better clients. So, so interesting. So I’m using this now in that capacity.
31:17
So I use chat GPT and I’ve been, just started a LinkedIn newsletter. So I’ll draft a newsletter. It’s definitely coming from me. I’ll put it then into chat GPT and I’ll ask it to score me based on what leaders are searching for. I using, do I have the right words in there so that when people search, is it going to pick it up? Any thing that needs to be kind of like, just inconsistencies or anything they don’t understand. And it actually does tell me
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things it’s kind of funny. It’s like I had to read this three times. I didn’t understand this point. And it gives me a list of like 10 things to kind of go through and smooth it out. And then like I said, okay, so that’s helpful. And then I fix it, the ones I want to fix. And then I have it rescore me until I’m above a nine. Then I ask it, what do want me to do like for the next article? And it will give me several options. And they’ll be like, this is so Ann.
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or this is said in Anne’s way. Because now I’ve taught it what my tone is. And so it’s starting to refine its suggestions and the way that it’s suggesting article topics or proof points. And again, all still my content. I’m not using chat GPT to write the newsletters. It’s all still my content. But it’s very interesting to use it as kind of like a partner. once you kind of train it enough, it starts to give you very valid suggestions for how to
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phrase things or how to approach things that is like in your tone. You’re like, yeah, I definitely would say that. I definitely would say that, but it takes time to evolve that. And I think that’s another really like fun thing for SMBs to start to really, um, to delve into because it is a partner when used correctly. So when you, if it, if this idea of creating content is like overwhelming, you’re like, I don’t, can’t hire anybody to do it. I don’t have time to do it.
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you can start to get really smart about how you use the AI tool, you know, from the other side to actually create the content that the AI will actually appreciate. So it’s kind of like, again, when we talk about like, well, let’s say something to, you know, the people that are going to be our ICP. Well, in this case, AI is your ICP. And so you’re developing things that it’s going to reward you for.
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So it’s a smart way, I think, of using the tool as long as you don’t rely on it. And as long as it doesn’t become a way that you’re just generically putting content out, that again, defies the very first point, which is it needs to be authentically connected to you. It needs to be something that can be attributed to you. And that’s why it’s so important to have these human conversations. So I guess that was a little mini-tide box, but let me go back to asking you a question, because this interview is with you, and this discussion is with you, is…
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All right, now that we kind of set that stage, when people were thinking of like, okay, you got me, I want to have these, I was calling like human conversations, because that’s what I’m going to get rewarded for. How do I go about figuring out what I want to say? Where do I want to say it? How do I choose somebody? Or how do I figure out who’s the best person to say it? So can I take that, again, the marketing kind of like foil?
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and apply it here and kind of help people figure out how to get really tactical about how to go do this. Yeah, and I think it’s maybe intentional is as good a word as tactical. Right. OK. Yeah, that’s good. Let’s start with the end in mind. And I would say this for any conversation. Right. Who do you want to talk to? The vast majority of the world doesn’t want to hear what you’re talking about. Right. So what?
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I’m just kidding. I’ve realized that. I’ll talk with people and they’ll like, who do you want to talk with? Everyone. Everyone should read my book. Well, you know, not everyone in the world is literate and you’ve got it in English. So that takes out the vast majority of people. Right. So it’s this idea of who, once again, that idea of super consumers who will resonate with this, who will tell other people about it. So start with who you want to talk with there.
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Then what’s the outcome of this? Is this just to make noise? Is this for entertainment? I always think about it of even when you talk with your kids, when I talk with them, it’s like, OK, what do I want them to think afterwards? What do I want them to believe? What do I want them to feel? Because I can have a great conversation, but it might not get the results that I want.
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None of us are that great of communicators that in a 30 minute conversation, we can solve all the world’s problems. So what’s the next step? What do I want them to do afterwards? And so it’s this intentionality of what is this conversation trying to do? My mom used to say something to me when I was little. I’m reminded of this as a podcast guest. She’d always say, Tom.
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think before you talk. Because I’d be so excited, I would just talk. And I find so many business owners do that, or podcast guests do that, right? I just want to come out and I just want to talk. And we confuse our clients with that. So I think if you are intentional, you’ll get a lot more results with it. The other thing, going back onto what you were saying, Anne, of using AI as a thought partner, you guys are blessed, right? When you’ve got
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two co-founders there, you can bounce ideas back and forth. It’s that whole idea of the mastermind, right? One plus one is 10. But there’s a downside in that too, because you’re friends and you don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings, right? So I often will go after an interview or like you said, after I write something to put it in there. Claude, I use Claude usually, it’s polite, right? But it’s not just trying to make me happy.
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Right, after every podcast interview, my bride, God love her, she’ll say, oh, that was a great interview. I love that one. Whether or not she listened to it or not, right? Because she wants me to be happy. I love her. Claude wants me to be better. So you can take that transcript and put it in there and say, you know, score me. Yeah, that’s what I did. We do this for all of our clients and my team usually sends it to me and it’s like, Tom, you talked.
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20 % faster than the host. You may want to slow down or you told this great story, but you didn’t tell the moral of the story. So they had to figure out what it actually meant or use this jargon, which would be perfect if it was a marketing podcast, but it’s not, it’s for small and medium sized business owners. So when you use those words, explain them. And so it’s this idea of you can use
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AI as a thinking partner and a critique to get better and better, right? Because I’ve come to realize in my life that we don’t learn from our experiences. We learn from reflecting and learning on our experiences. Well, I’m and I don’t know if you saw the look going back and forth, but the one the one respectful pushback we will give you is we’re actually not that nice to each other. We yes, we’re friends, but we’re.
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forthright people for a reason. we actually were, we had another recording with a different podcast and we were explaining how we’ve had people react to our interactions and go, and we’re like, what do you mean? We’re just debating. We’re not actually, you know, picking on each other. It’s not, it’s respectful, right? It’s to get to a better outcome. But with all of that said. That is a good friend. Yeah. So point taken though on the tool part. And what I really like about what you said is I go in my brain to it’s another
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input that comes from an objective place. And the thing obviously we know about AI is, right, it’s really good at taking a bunch of stuff and looking at it and giving you that objective perspective. so I think that, and I love data anyway, but I think that idea of being able to have humans listen to the podcast interviews and give you feedback and then have the tool to give you some data or more objective feedback that’s like,
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Oh, that’s interesting. I heard from the people that they were confused by something I said, and then the tool is telling you, right? Like, well, it’s because you didn’t tell the moral of the story. I don’t know that that’s exactly the way it goes, right? But I just, I love that idea of, and that’s how we encourage our clients to do it too, is to make it an and, not just the solving. Yeah, the solution. And that’s to me, that continual feedback to get better and better, right? I always say the
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best piece of fiction I have ever read or written was my business plan. It was beautiful. Every graph was up and to the right. And then after a while, clients told me what the truth was. They would tell me what they loved and what they loathed. And all I had to do was double down on one and stop doing the other one. And they would tell me what their time and their money. Sometimes they would be nice enough to even tell me what their words.
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But it’s this idea of if we can continually get better with that, that’s how we can refine it. Yeah, I love that. mean, and then the feedback part also very important because sometimes we want to hide behind the tools. We kind of put it out there and we cross our fingers and hope for the best. And then, you know, maybe it doesn’t come back in the way that we expected it to. But we don’t go ask why we just blame the tool and consider the day. Right.
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So the asking for feedback or being open, it’s April would say, and the test and learn philosophy is so critically important when you’re doing this because it is an iterative process. So if we’re kind of following it along now, and I love the intentionality piece down, that was really, really well said because you’re being intentional about the conversations you want to have with people that you want to be in business with, right? It’s a really great framework for how to think about
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how to put together a content strategy slash marketing plan slash sales even from a sales strategy standpoint. And a lot of businesses will still say, oh great, well then I’m gonna put content and I’m gonna go on leadership podcasts. Or I’m gonna just like, I’m gonna do some social posts and I’m just gonna kind of like put them out there organically. And there’s still a lot of like hope and pray. Like they just kind of hope and pray.
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So I’d like to talk and maybe have some case studies that you can share here Tom about how people and how small and medium sized businesses have been able to practically apply this intentionality for how do I let’s assume like, okay, I know who my person might be in business with. I know what I want to go say to them. How do I figure out where they are? How do I figure out like how to best talk to them? And then how do I know it’s working? Bunch of questions in there.
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One, how do you know where they are? This used to be not a whole lot of data, so it was a lot of guessing. So look at a podcast, look at a publication, and think, well, I think they would subscribe to this, or I think they would listen to that. Now there’s so many tools out there. One of my favorite is Spark Toro, and Rand Fishkin runs that. If you ever hear of Amazscore, he was the one that started that. And you can go in and say,
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Tell them your ideal client profile or tell them everyone that comes to this website and they’ll tell you what the demographic breakdown is, what podcast they listen to. It’s a great starting point there. So you can use data to find the right ones, right? That’s a great thing there. As far as what to talk about, I always say we’re all selling preparation H, right? Nobody cares about our product or our service.
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or our story, they care about their pain. And I got this from a client early on. I picked up the phone one time and he’s like, oh, you guys are just like Preparation H. And I’m like, excuse me, hemorrhoid cream? And he’s like, no, it’s a compliment, right? You gave fast relief, you became recommended, right? You’re great. And so that’s when I realized everybody’s just listening to solve their problems. So if you can talk about the problems that people have,
44:05
that will hook them right there, right? Then what makes you different? Well, the only thing that really makes you different in the world is your point of view of what you believe, what you reject, right? That’s what people are hiring you for, right? Why you built the product that way. So then you go from problem to your point of view, and then your point of view is substantiated by your life story, right? So going back,
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to the example used before. Gavin Zeklinski with Acuity, the problem was his mom had a hard time scheduling, I think it was a beauty shop or something like that. So he helped her with this, right? There’s gotta be an easier way than doing this. There’s gotta be an easier way to take funds so that if somebody doesn’t show up, you don’t lose that spot, right? So he’s got the point of view with the problem, why he saw it, and then why he built it, the story there.
45:05
You know, that supports that. So I think that’s a great framework for people to go out and start talking and evangelizing really the category. Because if we talk about our products and services, people think we’re selling them, right? Talk about the problem. They think we’re trying to help them. So to build on what you just said, because an agreement on all of that, but how do they know whether stuff is working and then on
45:35
in addition to that, how long does it take? Because, right? all know, we’re all marketing, know, marketing led, we know it’s not like a silver bullet and none of this is a silver bullet. Hopefully everybody has heard that today. But what signs am I looking for? How much time should I put into it? Like just kind of get into the, how do I know if I’m doing it right? Thank you. I said there was three questions there and I answered the first two. The third one. You didn’t have to call yourself out. I got a majority of them, right? So.
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There’s the feedback there. You’ve got qualitative and quantitative, right? So you go out there, you speak on a stage, right? It could be a podcast interview. could be a networking event. It could be a keynote. You’ve got that feeling from the very beginning. These were the right people. They asked the right questions. This was great. So that’s sort of that gut feeling, right? That’s the qualitative feedback. Then you start to get the quantitative feedback, right? Often the person that invited you,
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knows that audience, it could be a referral partner, right? So right there, you can measure that. The mean time from when a podcast is recorded to when it goes live is about 45 days, right? So there’s gonna be a lag time there. But once it goes live, you’ll see people coming to your website, you’ll see social media followers, you’ll see if you track it,
47:02
that is mentioned in the internet, right? We all listen for our own names. If you don’t, you should get a Google mentions, I think is what it’s called. And it’ll tell you every time it’s mentioned or there’s even one called alter mouse. And I think that was mentioned when AI picks something about you. So you’ll start to see those come out there too. So there’s this idea in marketing so many times that everything has to be
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100 % attributed, right? And it’s like, well, I spent a dollar on Facebook ads and the next day I know where it came from. Not all marketing works that way. And hint, Facebook is trying to get you to spend more money. Google’s trying to get you to spend more money. So from that standpoint, you’ll have that feeling, you’ll see stuff coming. And it’s also a long tail, right? When I spend a dollar on Facebook ads, it’s gone the next day. Whereas podcast interviews will be out there with the long tail.
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There’s great example. I think it was Neil Patel told this story. He’s like, if I am speaking at a conference and somebody hears me and they say, I want to work with him, but they misspell the name, Google will tell you they brought you that traffic, right? Then if they get distracted and they leave and the Facebook retargeting brings them back, Facebook’s going to say,
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I brought you that client. Now, is it truly Facebook? Is it Google? Well, neither one of those would have happened unless he was out there speaking at that event. So there’s some things that are quantifiable. Other ones are just not as quantifiable with dashboards, right? And one of the great things, especially for small and medium sized businesses, is ask people, hey, how’d you find out about us?
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And some people will say, well, that’s not accurate, right? It’s not first touch or last touch. No, but they just told you what was most important in their mind, what they valued the most. And so that can be powerful. know, there’s even, had a client, a couple of clients now that have sold and the acquiring company said they found out about them because they were so forward in media, right?
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and podcast interviews and they’re like, we saw you as the market leader there. So not only did your acquirer find you there, but they also had affected the valuation because they saw you as the market leader. And there is a lot to be said about that because when you show up, you automatically kind of get that attribution as the teacher or as the authority or as the master.
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when you are speaking on a topic, it’s already kind of assumed in that context, whether you’re putting that content out or you’re at a speaking engagement and putting that content out. So there’s something a little magical where you get people to kind of basically believe it before they even have gotten the proven to them just by virtue of fact that you’re somehow connected with these topics.
50:17
So it is really important because when people are then searching for those topics, all this content then is coming up underneath your name, which is another attribution, which works for SEO and SEM as well. But that is like, it’s so critically important. You said before too, that they trust third party sites almost more than they trust your own too. So you have the cross-linking that’s going on behind it. And so the moral of the story guys, no matter how like, you know, the black box makes it all happen.
50:45
is that when you’re out there and you’re speaking about your brand and you’re doing it in a way that creates conversation, you’re creating that point of view. Like Tom was talking about, you’re putting, generating that content, you’re linking it back where it needs to go. You’re creating that ecosystem and AI is now part of your ecosystem. And then we always said, me and April always say that marketing is an ecosystem until now that is part of your ecosystem and you need to include that. But it all starts with the good old fashioned
51:16
putting it out there. And no matter how many ways people want to get around it and the introverts in the room who were like, I just don’t want to go network. I don’t want to go talk to people. I don’t want to put myself out there and have it be judged. Even if it’s in a written format, there’s just no way of getting around it anymore. You have to put it out there. And there’s now we’re giving you a gazillion tools to help you facilitate that, make it more efficient, make it better. You were mentioning about how Claude scores you.
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Yeah, chat GPT basically said my first article was like a seven and a half, you know, and then it’s like, you know, so it was being pretty honest. And then my second one said, this is so much better than the first one. was like, okay. So I mean, it’s like, I feel like I’m talking to April in some context. I feel like she’s my, like my chat, cheap. was on vacation while she started this newsletter. So she has left to her own devices. I was up to my own devices. So, but I think this is so critically important. Um, and I think we’ve covered a lot today and I hope that people got the power of
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AI from both sides of the coin, using it as a tool, but then also using the tool to basically train the tool about how you want to be seen, heard, connected with. Before I let you close this out, Tom, are you open to some rapid fires? Sure. All right. Well, you knew what the first question is because we kind of talked about this, but what are you reading or listening to? It would be the podcast guru. I’d love to hear what you’re listening to too. Right now I’m really listening to a book called From Strength to Strength.
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with Arthur C. Brooks. It’s interesting where he talks about early in life, right? We’ve got energy and later on in life, we have wisdom. And how do you go from one to another, right? I might not have the same energy to work 20 hour days like I did when I was 20 years old, but I’ve got the wisdom not to make the mistakes for 18 hours of those days. So you’re much more efficient.
53:13
What is a piece of advice you listen to but you wish you hadn’t or you wish you didn’t? That it’s a numbers game, right? So many people would say that, well, it’s just a numbers game. Business is just a numbers game. All the rest of that. To me, it’s like the people that are selling more, more, more, right? Even the idea of you’re one funnel away, right? I used to buy that for a while and then I look at it and say,
53:40
my bride did not come through a funnel. It wasn’t the perfect Facebook ad that cut people into the funnel. then Karen came out of the bottom there. I was like, no, it was a conversation with a friend of mine that knew me, knew her, introduced us. We had a conversation, right? I’m going to change that. You’re one funnel away. That’s, I look back on that. the great marketing, bad logic.
54:09
So well said. If you were allowed to create a new law, what would it be?
54:17
that
54:19
you were punished for spam. Right. So I like that. If you want to send me an email, that’s fine. But if I market spam, your Google spam account gets charged a dollar. Right. Or for politicians. Right. If you send me a cold email. Right. For something. And I market a spam, you lose a vote. You don’t gain one. So I think there’s we’ve got to set up the.
54:48
the circumstances so there’s some downside to this bad marketing, right? There has to be a cost to it. That’s a great answer. I really, really love that so much. That’s really great answer. We were on the beach on vacation and I got one of those that just, you you catch one of the emails and it just sets you on fire. And it was this woman trying to put time on my calendar for like the third time. And it was, and Anne knows I hate the ones that tonally get like very self-righteous and indignant that I didn’t respond.
55:16
And I fired back, what exactly is it that you think forthright people does? And my husband and I were just chuckling. Like I didn’t get a response, right? But I’m like, oh, just it makes me so angry. totally. hear you. I’m with you on that, too. I get three phone calls a day about business. They want to get me a business loan, three different calls a day. And I know exactly they call it exactly the same times. Every day for like the last, like, I don’t know, eight months.
55:44
So when we all rule the world, that’s gonna become a That’s it’s gonna be. We’re totally doing that, My old thing was I’m gonna do away with daylight savings time, but that looks like it’s gonna happen. So we’ll start with the next one here. All right, well, that’s good. So you already got that one done. So thank you for that one, I like it. That also annoys me. So we’re on the same page of there, I mean, Tom, this has been a fantastic conversation. Can you take us home? Anything that we didn’t talk about that you want to make sure the listeners know?
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you know, put a bow around this and now obviously tell people where they can find you. Well, I would just like to encourage people, right? One of my favorite sayings, it’ll probably be on my tombstone someday, client gave me a coffee cup that says on it, what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others, right? We all overestimate what other people know and underestimate what we know. If you’re listening to this, you know things that could help people, right? Now, if you figured out third grade math,
56:42
You could really help somebody that’s doing second grade math, probably more than a PhD mathematician. So I believe we’re blessed to be a blessing. So find a way to share that. And it could be blogs, podcasts, podcast guesting, whatever it is. please, what’s ordinary to you is amazing to others and help other people with that. And if we can be of any help to you, you can always go to InterviewValet with a V dot com, all the information’s there.
57:12
Copies of my books, free copies are there. You can buy them on Amazon, but get them for free. There’s all my social media there. And if you’d like to talk about how we could help your business talk directly to your ideal clients and the AI that refers them, just go back to InterviewValet.com. Awesome, Tom. Thank you so much.
57:35
And with that, encourage all of those listeners to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice. It was a treasure trove of those today. So you’re to have trouble picking just one. Cause remember strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business.
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and make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform.