Understanding AI-Powered Lead Generation with Tom Schwab

Drew McLellan [00:00:01]: 

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by White Label iq, is packed with insights on how small to mid size agencies are getting things done. Bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McClell. 

Drew McLellan [00:00:37]: 

Hey everybody. Drew Mclellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super excited to spend this time with you today, so thank you for hanging out with me. My guest today is a gentleman named Tom Schwab, and Tom owns a company called Interview Valet, which many of you are probably very familiar with. So back when podcasting was new, Tom and his team very quickly learned that A not everybody wants to host a podcast and B, one of the most powerful ways to become known and become seen as an expert or an authority, which of course, you know, I’m a big fan of, is to be on other people’s podcasts, to find new audiences by being helpful and valuable as a podcast guest. And so the whole business of Interview Valet is about helping their clients find the right podcast to be on and then being a great guest on those podcasts. And many of the guests that we have here at the Build a Better Agency podcast come from Interview Valet. They know us very well. They know exactly who’s going to be useful and helpful for you. And for many years they have offered us some great suggestions for podcast hosts. But Tom is a subject matter expert. What I love about Tom as a business owner is that he is a student. He’s always experimenting, trying to learn more things, trying to apply new technologies. And so he and I were having a conversation, an unrelated conversation actually, about a year ago, and he was telling me about the fact that that AI was becoming one of the greatest referral sources for his business for Interview Valet. And I said, tell me more about that. And so we started talking about it and I was like, wow, that’s fascinating. You would be a great speaker at the summit to tell people about that. So this last May, Tom was one of our breakout speakers. Our breakout speakers are always super hands on, super tactical things you can take home and put into practice. So Tom was one of the speakers and he talked about how they are using all of the different AI tools as referral sources, how they’re feeding themselves, in essence to chatgpt and Perplexity and Claude and all of the other tools out there so that they show up from this sort of third party subject matter expert as, as a resource. And he was saying it actually has become their greatest source of new business opportunities. So it was a great speech at the summit. People were buzzing about it for days. And I knew that I wanted to get that same information to all of you, even if you weren’t able to join us at the summit. And so that’s why I’ve got time here today, you know, because how we’re, how we’re producing content has to change. The reality is search engines aren’t going away, but they are certainly evolving. And how people are searching is changing. We all know that. And in fact, our presenting sponsor, White Label iq, also knows that. One of the things I love about them is they too are constantly evolving the way they work with their clients. So White Label IQ does white label design, dev and paid media for agencies all across the land. And so they partner with agencies that need some help with that, whether it’s one time help or ongoing help. So when they’re building websites or landing pages or things like that for clients, today, for your clients, if you’re a partner of theirs, they’re being very mindful of the fact that they have to construct those websites differently so that they are friendly to all of the AI bots that are out there looking for subject matter experts and resources. And so I love that they are constantly evolving the way they serve us as agencies and the way they serve our clients to be even a better resource for all of us and for your end clients. So if you’re curious about partnering with White Label IQ or you just want to thank them for being a sponsor on the podcast, head over to whitelabeliq.com ami all right. Okay, let’s get to Tom and learn about how he is leveraging the content that his team is producing. And I’m sure they’re doing this for clients as well, so we’ll ask him about that to make sure that they’re showing up when chat or any of the other AI tools are serving up resources. So let’s get to it. Tom. Welcome back to the podcast, Drew. 

Tom Schwab [00:04:52]: 

I am thrilled to be here and continue the conversation. 

Drew McLellan [00:04:55]: 

Me too. So you were one of the speakers at the Build a Better Agency Summit last May, and you talked about a topic that had everybody buzzing for multiple days. So it was really about how you’re using AI to drive traffic and leads to your business for both you and for clients. So step us back and sort of give us the big picture of that content. And I have a Ton of questions about the actual practical, how you did it. 

Tom Schwab [00:05:24]: 

Yeah, I’m going to step back even till January of this year when we were talking and I shared that we are seeing leads that are coming from ChatGPT. And at that time I knew that they were great leads. They were closing faster and we were getting more and more of them. Now one of our clients who runs a big AI agency said that’s because the podcasts are being indexed by AI, but we didn’t have any proof of that. Now as time went on, we got more and more indications of that and now it’s clear that AI is indexing all human content. And there’s a reason for that, especially podcast interviews. And what we’re seeing is more qualified leads that show up. So right now, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, all of those are our number one referral source. And what we’re seeing is that when people show up, they are more qualified, they’re, they’re ready to go. Right. It’s not top of funnel traffic anymore. These are people, these are people that have done the research through a trusted friend they call Claude or whatever. And it’s, it’s been amazing and we’ve learned stuff along the way, tested it with our clients too. And it’s, it’s very interesting on where this is going. 

Drew McLellan [00:06:46]: 

So it’s sort of modern day word of mouth. 

Tom Schwab [00:06:50]: 

It is. And then to me it’s weird because it’s like when you say chatgpt, is it that referred me or who referred me? Right. And most people are now saying, well, who referred me? Because they think it’s a person. 

Drew McLellan [00:07:04]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:07:04]: 

There was a great study that came out recently from Cornell and now granted this was an E commerce study, but they showed that the traffic from AI converted nine times better than traffic from SEO. Right. The first query that they put in there was 29 words. So this idea that I’m going to pick a couple keywords or even a long term keyword and rank for that, that’s like Y2K now. So not only did it show that it was converting better, but they spent six and a half minutes on the AI before they came to the website. So I just wonder how many people didn’t come to the website because they found something that said this isn’t perfect for me. And at the end of the day that’s great because we’re not optimizing for more traffic or more leads. We’re optimizing for, for profits. And that comes from clients value we work on. 

Drew McLellan [00:08:02]: 

Right? Yeah. So when you say that AI is reviewing podcasts, are they doing that from wherever we host our podcasts? They doing it from off of our website. How are they linking all of those pieces together? 

Tom Schwab [00:08:18]: 

So if you look at like ChatGPT when it shows the sources, November of 2024, it started to show sources and where it’s pulling from there is Apple. And so, you know, look at the sources and it’s going to be Wikipedia, Amazon, if you wrote a book, maybe your website, and then after that it’s all long form collaborative content from the host site. 

Drew McLellan [00:08:42]: 

Not so not. For example, you, I know you put your podcasts and transcripts of your podcast on your website. We do the same thing. I’m sure a lot of listeners do. It’s not there. It’s not. They’re not getting it from there. They’re going to Apple or they’re going to Spotify or they’re going to wherever they identify as a third party source. 

Tom Schwab [00:09:03]: 

Correct. And it’s sort of that idea of that source has a whole lot more credibility than, than my site does or your site does. 

Drew McLellan [00:09:10]: 

Right, right. 

Tom Schwab [00:09:11]: 

And it’s sort of that third party. So they’re pulling from there. And the reason they’re doing it, I just saw, oh, there was Probably August of 2025, there was a report that came out and it called model collapse. And some people even refer to it as digital dementia. And what they were finding was that when AI trained on AI, it got worse, not better. And it’s almost like making a copy of a copy of a copy. And I guess after like five generations, it was just gibberish. So the idea is they’re looking for AI, any human content that they can train on. Right. That’s the, that’s the fuel now that’s in limited supply. And by and large, podcast interviews, conversations like this, they know our human content. So with that, that’s why they’re indexing all of them. And it’s not only being found, but being found for the right thing. 

Drew McLellan [00:10:08]: 

Right. Well, you figure what 50% of content now is AI created. So it’s, it’s sort of going, nope, nope, nope, nope. Oh, real voices. Here we go. Yeah. So in theory, just having your podcast on Apple or some of the other sources, iheart or any of those would be a plus. But I know that you guys have spent a lot of time thinking about how to tweak that content or how the show notes look and all of that to even further elevate the ability for all the AI bots to consume your content and understand it appropriately to send the right people to you. So what are you doing differently now that you know that one of your critical audiences is all of the AI tools out there? 

Tom Schwab [00:10:55]: 

You’re right. We’re not just speaking to our ideal clients. We’re speaking to the AI that refers them. So many times, you know, early on especially, someone would say, I did 50 podcast interviews. And if you listen to them, it’s like, no, you didn’t. You did one interview 50 different times. It’s like, yeah, if you wrote a weekly blog and it was the same blog, you don’t get credit for it. 

Drew McLellan [00:11:19]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:11:19]: 

That’s what people were doing. Now what we’re finding is find a specific topic, talk about that topic so that you can, you know, repurpose it, have new content out there, and then the next interview, do a different topic. So it’s not the same. Same keynote every time. And that has been very, very powerful. That’s one of the things we’ve seen. The other one is having more voices. So that can also help with your share of voice. And let me give you the example here. We’ve got three verticals. Business, Health, nutrition and wellness, and faith and spirituality. Drew, I am not the face of health and wellness. Right. I don’t speak to that audience nearly as much. So we got one of our key leaders on our team, Chloe Williamson, runs the that pod. And she went out on podcasts and she was able to speak the. The calories, the ketos, the. The basic thing that we are still talking about with podcast interview marketing. But our leads from ChatGPT just skyrocketed on the health and wellness side once she started going out there and talking about it. So I think it’s important that even with founder led marketing to have more voices out there, because, you know, I’m going to relate more to an older audience where some of the people on our team may relate more to a younger audience. So I think that idea of having different content out there, different voices, can also be very powerful. 

Drew McLellan [00:12:50]: 

And are you talking about. So, for example, you and I are on this podcast together, so are you saying I shouldn’t do all the interviews or. As long as most of my podcasts are with other people like you, you are the. The share of voice difference in our library of content. 

Tom Schwab [00:13:09]: 

I think you could. Not necessarily on the host side, because we actually tried that at the podcast interview marketing show and it was a nightmare that first year. Right. Because everybody was talking and there wasn’t that consistency that people were expecting. But I think when we go out there on other people’s stages and you can see. You can see this with big companies. Right. At one time, HubSpot had, we call them talents, had six different talents that were going out on podcasts and they could talk to different things. And you could think of publicly traded companies. Right. There’s different people that talk about different things. And I think as small agencies, we can look at that too. Right. The founder can talk about strategy, but there could be somebody else on the team that is much better on the execution or that could talk to a specific vertical that you’re focused on. 

Drew McLellan [00:14:01]: 

And did you find there’s a difference between. 

Drew McLellan [00:14:05]: 

Somebody who is podcasting on their own podcast every week versus somebody who is out and about on other podcasts? 

Tom Schwab [00:14:13]: 

As sad as it is, it looks like they’re giving more credibility when you’re on someone else’s stage. 

Drew McLellan [00:14:22]: 

Huh. Interesting. 

Tom Schwab [00:14:22]: 

Then as a guest than your own. And it’s sad because as a host, you’re doing all of the work you’re doing, the promotion, all the rest of that, the preparation. As a guest, you’re just showing up. And in some ways, you can sort of think about it in physical reality, too. Right. All the people that were at the Baba Summer there in Denver already knew you, loved you, so you weren’t getting any extra value from that. Right. You were nurturing your current audience, whereas I, coming in as a guest, there was that transfer of authority. And also I was tapping into a new audience. And I think it’s the same thing on podcasts. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:01]: 

Also Interesting. So if whether it’s your own show or it is, you’re going to be a guest on someone else’s show. How do you need to think differently about your content if one of your core audiences is now the AI tools that are spidering all that content? 

Tom Schwab [00:15:19]: 

Yes. And that is so important because going back to that, we don’t want more leads. We want more great clients. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:25]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:15:26]: 

Be very, very clear of what you do and what you don’t do, because AI is going to be telling them the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:36]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:15:37]: 

So make sure that you put it out there what the ugly is. So, for example, we found early on that we would get leads for. We do a lot of virtual book tours, but we’re very clear now that we only do them for nonfiction books, where there’s a business behind it. So we’re putting it out there. We don’t do memoirs, we don’t do fiction books. Right. Of these are the people we work with. These are the people we don’t work with. Yeah, because as we talked before about that Cornell study, if they’re spending six minutes asking all of these questions, you want them to be weeded out there. Not once they’re, you know, into your sales process, because that’s waste their time and waste your time. So I think it’s very clear of, this is who we help, this is who we don’t help, and also have a strong point of view so that it can differentiate, you know, me from every other, you know, what they call full service digital marketing agencies. 

Drew McLellan [00:16:38]: 

Right, right. 

Tom Schwab [00:16:38]: 

If that’s what we’re trying to, to rank for, it won’t work. 

Drew McLellan [00:16:42]: 

And so that point of view, that is something that, again, no matter what show you’re on, you would sort of, as part of your intro or as part of the conversation, you would weave that sentence into the language so that again, there’s repetition in that sentence. So, you know, for example, you know, at ami, we talk about, you know, we believe most agency owners are accidental business owners, and it’s our job to help them run a profitable business and teach them the things that they didn’t learn coming up through the agency ranks. So for, right. So for you, you have a sentence or a sentence or two for each of your verticals that allows you to sort of put your point of view out there, right? 

Tom Schwab [00:17:22]: 

And that’s a great way to even start an interview because so many times they’ll say, so Drew, tell us about yourself. And you’ll hear people give their CV, and at the end of 45 minutes, it’s like, that was the entire interview, right? This, nobody really wants to hear the story until they understand what it supports. So to start that with, at ami, we believe that, right? That’s a very strong statement at the very beginning. And people will turn you up or turn you off. Then as you tell the rest of your story, it supports that. The other thing too is just come back and say, I reject, right? We all believe sometimes the same things, right? Motherhood, apple pie, all the rest of that. But what do you reject? Right? And like, for me, I’ll say, you know, I believe we’re all one conversation away. I reject the idea that we’re all one funnel away, right? And things like that so that it can be very clear that people will. Will turn you up or turn you off, right? The best marketing should filter out the people that aren’t ideal clients. 

Drew McLellan [00:18:28]: 

Well, and again, that repetition, right, is powerful as they’re collecting their data and sort of cataloging You. The more times you say sort of your key sentences, the more strongly that gets associated with your brand or your name or your company, whatever it is. Yeah. So talk a little bit about sort of from a technical point of view, how did you start to change the way you showed up in interviews, whether it was your own show or someone else’s, to start garnering the attention of the bots? 

Tom Schwab [00:19:03]: 

And I think it comes back to when you first reach out to someone and, you know, they talk about one sheets. 

Drew McLellan [00:19:09]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:19:09]: 

And so many people would have their one sheets. They would have, you know, a dozen questions on there. Well, if somebody asks those questions, every interview is going to be the same. So you just set yourself up for failure with that. 

Drew McLellan [00:19:24]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:19:25]: 

So figure out what different topics are. And I always think of topics as what would be a blog article that would get people to. 

Tom Schwab [00:19:34]: 

Engage with it and be curious about it. Right. If the. If the topic is Tom Schwab’s entrepreneurial story, not even my mom is interested in that one. Right, right, right. Focus on. Focus on the problem that they’re doing. So I think that’s really important there of giving them interview topics and making sure that you talk about one in particular. Right. And after you’ve talked about it for a couple of times and repurposed it, take it off your one sheet and put another one on there. So that’s very intentional for the conversation as opposed to, hey, you know. And there’s still people out there teaching the idea of just show up and tell your story and people will. Will come. It’s like, no long ago, somebody told me that we were all selling Preparation H. Right. Nobody cares about our product or service. They care about the pain in the rear end. So let’s focus on. Focus on that. So I think it’s being very intentional on that. And just assume there is your best referral partner out there that is listening to every one of your interviews. So make sure that everyone has something new for them to learn about you and send new clients your way. 

Drew McLellan [00:20:49]: 

Yeah, it’s interesting because really what you’re saying is set a topic and then, rather than giving them six or eight topics to talk to you about it, set a topic and then give them better questions to ask about that topic so they can drill deeper into that topic. And then, like you said, and then have a series of topics that you rotate through so that, you know, you are, for the average listener who might be on five or six podcasts a year, you are, you know, hitting home the five or six key messages that you would want someone to know about your business and the ways that you can be most helpful. 

Tom Schwab [00:21:25]: 

Right? 

Drew McLellan [00:21:26]: 

So it’s. I mean, obviously, the interview has to be of value to both the podcast host and their audience, but by helping them drill deeper and have a more meaningful conversation, A, it’s a better episode, right? As a, as podcast host, you and I both know that it’s great when you can go really deep with somebody, but B, from a selfish point of view, it begins to establish your expertise. 

Tom Schwab [00:21:48]: 

With depth, and it makes it more intentional. And I’ll give you some examples. Sort of behind the scenes, right? When you asked me to speak at the Baba Summit, I was. I was thrilled, but it wasn’t, hey, Tom, do you just want to come and talk? No, there was a topic. There was a planning on that, and I think too many people forget about that on a podcast. It’s like, hey, you want to speak on my podcast about what? There’s numerous things that I could talk about. But what is most important and just behind the scenes here? One of the things that we teach at Interview Valet is that before they hit record, right? Just tell the host, I’m thrilled to be here. I’m. I’m excited to bring as much value as possible. And ask the host, where do you want to go? What. What can we drill down on deeply and make sure that that’s agreed to before they hit record so you know where you’re going? Both people know where that flag in the sand is. It’s not just, hey, let’s. 

Drew McLellan [00:22:48]: 

Let’s just chat, right? 

Tom Schwab [00:22:49]: 

Let’s. Let’s chat, right? Nobody wants to. To. To listen to a chat especially. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Our ideal clients, you, yours, mine, they’re busy. They’re. They’re tuning in to be entertained, but also be educated. 

Drew McLellan [00:23:04]: 

Yeah, for sure. 

Tom Schwab [00:23:05]: 

For sure. 

Drew McLellan [00:23:06]: 

Okay, so, number one, I have a rotating series of topics that I’m freshening up on my one sheets. If I. If I’m pitching myself as a podcaster or even, you know, somebody who has a show where they have guests, they’re also varying the topics of those guests. And if they’re doing solo casts like I do, they’re also thinking about those solo cast topics because that’s, you know, that’s typically 45 minutes of deep content that is just the host voice. So that, again, you’d want to be really intentional about sort of making sure that that content stays varied enough that all of your areas of expertise are showing up. But also, what I’m hearing you say is to you even, even in your own podcast to say, just a reminder at ami, this is what we believe and throughout the thing you’re working in, I believe and I reject statements around that topic to sort of make to get the bot’s attention. 

Tom Schwab [00:24:06]: 

Right, Exactly. Even to say the clients that we bring the most value to are, you know, they have a global audience or a national audience. Podcast interview marketing doesn’t work if you’re very, very localized. Right. If they’ve got a drive to you to make it very, very clear because they’re going to be indexing those and using those same words as they tell people, is this a good partner for you or not? Yeah. 

Drew McLellan [00:24:33]: 

Now, I know you used some tools to sort of think about the audience and how to craft your message. So I want to ask you a little bit more about sort of the technical side of this when we come back. But let’s take a quick break. Are you tired of juggling multiple tools to manage your agency? Meet Deltech Workbook the all in one solution for marketing and communications agencies. Streamline your projects, resources and finances all in one place. With real time dashboards and reporting, you’ll have full project visibility. You can plan team capacity weeks ahead to avoid bottlenecks and keep your budgets on track to maximize profitability. It’s perfect for both agencies and in house marketing teams looking to work more efficiently. PCI is a certified delltech partner offering expert implementation and support to ensure your success. If you’re ready to transform your operations, visit PCI Us Podcast for a free consultation today. Hey everybody, just want to remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.comgroupsbabaPodcast. so again, facebook.comgroupsbabpodcast all you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader and we will let you right in. And you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are going to be of value to you. So come join us. All right, we are back with Tom Schwab from Interview Valet, repeat guest on the podcast has been with us at many s summit. So a friend I know to many of you but Tom’s topic, as I told you in the intro at the summit, really sparked people’s attention. It was a very interesting way, as you might imagine at the summit. Talked about AI a lot, but this was a very interesting way to think about AI in terms of how do we show up in those search results. So, Tom, we were talking before the break about sort of from a content perspective, how to position yourself so that you’re attractive to the bots. But I know you did some things with some of the technical tools to sort of think through how to show up and how to sort of make sure you index properly. So can you walk us through some of the more technical side of this? 

Tom Schwab [00:27:11]: 

Yeah. One of the great tools out there is called Spark Toro. Do you remember Rand Fishkin from SEO Mars? 

Drew McLellan [00:27:18]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:27:18]: 

This is his current company and it’s almost spooky what they can pull up on your visitors to your website. They call it audience engagement. Right. So I can say everyone that goes to this website or goes to this conference or has this word in their LinkedIn IO, it will tell you the audience insights there and it’ll tell you what social media they go to. It’ll even tell you what search engines they use. And for search engines, they include Perplexity, Claude, Chat, GPT and Drew. In May, when we were talking, I’d always use the word chatgpt because when we would go to sites, we would see how much their audience used these different tools compared to the average. And for AI, ChatGPT was always number one. Now it’s lucky if it’s number three, right? It’s Claude and Perplexity. Those seem like the ones that are going. And I don’t know that it’s necessarily more of a sharer, but I think the masses now are using, are using ChatGPT. Our clients, professional services owners, right, they’re using more the Claude and the Perplexity. But I use that tool to say, should I be trying to show up on AI? And we’ve done it for some clients that it’s like, no, your audience is very, very non technical, more mature, I’ll say that instead of old. And they’re not on there, so why would you try going there? And it’s the same way that SparkToro also shows you the audience, what different social media they use. And that’s one of the things we always look at. If we’re going to repurpose the content, what are we repurposing it for? Is that, is it LinkedIn? Is it for TikTok? Right. The people that say you have to be everywhere. No, you need to be everywhere. Your clients are where they’re making buying decisions. 

Drew McLellan [00:29:21]: 

Okay. So you use SparkToro, which I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about lately. So you spark toro to sort of figure out who your audience was, what mattered to them, where to show up, then what. Then what did you do? 

Tom Schwab [00:29:33]: 

Then? That was one. Then also looking at the sources in chat GPT. Right. Look at where it’s pulling answers from. 

Drew McLellan [00:29:43]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:29:44]: 

And doing that. And those are the big things for the data. There’s a lot of people right now that saying they can. They can figure out everything with AI. I don’t know. I. To me, it’s still the. The black box. I think if anybody says they’re. They understand it perfectly, they’re either lying to themselves or lying to you. 

Drew McLellan [00:30:03]: 

Yeah. Well, it changes every day. Even if you understood it yesterday, it’s different today. Right. So that’s part of the challenge of it. It’s a moving target, for sure. 

Tom Schwab [00:30:11]: 

Yeah. And so then also I would say repurposing it, because it’s not only looking at podcast interviews, it’s also looking in social media. Right, that’s clear. So repurpose that content to try to get it in the social media. I always tell people, just don’t do more podcast interviews. Do more with your podcast interviews. Yeah. 

Drew McLellan [00:30:32]: 

Well, I’m curious. What do you recommend? So if somebody’s been on someone else’s show and they get the note that we all send out saying, hey, your show’s coming up next week, here’s all the links and all the things, how do you recommend that podcast guest best promote their appearance on someone else’s show? 

Tom Schwab [00:30:50]: 

Yes. And the bare minimum is to promote it. 

Drew McLellan [00:30:54]: 

Right, Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:30:55]: 

And to think about being a guest. Right. If you invite me to speak at the BABA Summit and then I ghost you afterwards. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:03]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:03]: 

That’s just rude. Right. It’s the same way with the podcast interview. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:06]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:07]: 

You took the time because you thought their audience was your ideal audience. Right. You wanted to get in front of them. Why would you disrespect the podcaster afterwards? Don’t you want that to be the start? So I always say, at the very bare minimum, follow their stuff, make sure that you acknowledge it. Right. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:27]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:28]: 

If they. If they tag you in it, make sure you follow it along. Somebody makes a comment about it, they’ve listened to the podcast, they’ve engaged. Make sure that you go and engage with them. Right. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:39]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:40]: 

It’s a great way to get followers. That’s at a very, very bare minimum. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:44]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:45]: 

Then I would say it’s so easy today to get the transcript, get the video, do your own clips there, too, because there could be things that are meaningful to you that the host didn’t get. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:56]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:31:56]: 

But always tag the host in it, right? Because once again, their audience follows them. So that way you can tap into their audience yet again. One of the things that we have found in video clips and we learned so much from our clients, and one of our past clients now works at LinkedIn, and one of the things that she pointed out to us is that you don’t want to just be Tom Schwab talking to the camera. Show a little bit of the host asking the question, then show the guest. And not only does it give you more credibility, but it also gives you more. The algorithms will promote that a lot more. And I remember asking, well, do you have to tag the other person in there? And this person that worked at LinkedIn just sort of smiled and it’s like, we know who they are. You don’t have to tag them. And it was like, oh, yeah, the facial recognition. They know who Drew is, so they’re going to start pushing it to his audience. 

Drew McLellan [00:33:02]: 

Yeah. Interesting, interesting. So in terms of content, in terms of how you’re showing up, what else are you doing that’s different now that you’re. Now that you’re trying to be a resource? Because that’s really what you’re talking about is being a resource for all of these bots so that they can serve up great and accurate information to whoever’s doing the query. And as a side benefit, that may lead them to you, but it doesn’t work if you’re not actually a good, credible resource for the bot. They’ll just. They’ll dismiss you. So how else are you thinking about your content differently again, whether it’s on your own show or when you’re a guest on someone else’s, Is there other things that you’re doing to kind of tweak that content? 

Tom Schwab [00:33:44]: 

Very much so. And, you know, some people will be talking about the same thing for years and years. Right. If you’re a thought leader, you have to have leading thoughts. So, you know, one of the things we always push our clients for is like, that one sheet has to be updated every six months. If you don’t have new ideas to talk about, people are going to get tired, the bots are going to get tired. So always think about what’s coming next. And that’s one of the interesting things, is that AI is really good of telling us history stuff of what happened, but it’s really bad at predicting. So the things that people are interested in are. This is where I see the world going. 

Drew McLellan [00:34:27]: 

Right, Right. And I think that’s oftentimes, I have no proof of this, but I suspect that that’s oftentimes what people are using AI to do is to. Okay, you’re an agency owner of 27 people in 2025. How will your staff look different by 2030? Like, I think it’s asking those. I think people are asking those kind of questions. So to your point, if you can fill in those blanks and be future facing, that would be valuable content for the AI tools to grab. 

Tom Schwab [00:35:01]: 

Yes. And I think of the Baba Summit. Right. Your keynote is always the one that I look forward to because you summarize. Okay, this is where we were. This is where we’re going. 

Drew McLellan [00:35:12]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:35:12]: 

That is interesting. Right. That is worthy of a conversation. Not, you know, the five secrets to make five figures in five seconds. That’s a listicle. That’s a blog. Nobody wants to listen to that. So to have big ideas on there, the questions. And I think of one of our clients, Bix Bixon, he’s a futurist out of Vancouver, and he always said that a podcast should leave you with more questions than you had when you started with it. It should change the way you look at that. And he said, when it goes viral, it doesn’t mean that it gets so many likes. But it’s like I listened to Drew this morning and I thought about it all day and I brought it up with somebody over lunch, and then it came up into other conversations. Those are the interesting conversations that you want people to have. 

Drew McLellan [00:36:03]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:36:04]: 

And it’s the idea of if you’re the ones that are making the predictions, if you’re the ones that are giving the new content, that’s going to be shared there. Right. There’s a million people that can. That can talk about the past, but very few have the wisdom and the insight to talk about the future. 

Drew McLellan [00:36:23]: 

Yeah, it’s really. That’s really interesting. As you are starting to notice leads coming in from all of the AI tools, how are those leads different for you than leads coming in in other ways? What are you noticing about those prospects? 

Tom Schwab [00:36:43]: 

A great question, because not all leads are the same. Some of them take a lot more nurturing and you’ve got to qualify them beforehand. One of the things that I have seen is that the people that have done come in through AI seem like they have a lot more information. But I don’t always assume that because they could have done a quick search. So I’ll make sure that I’ll send some emails beforehand that sort of bring them up to speed where they are with that. Almost like a referral. Right. You don’t know how much they told them about that. But the other thing is that you’ve got to assume that they know everything now. In fact, Drew, it was interesting. We do a two step close, right? So there’s a discovery call and then a roadmap call. And the roadmap call, I have slides and everything. I got to the end of it with one person that came in through AI and I asked at the end, you know, do you have any questions? And he’s like, nope, this is pretty much everything I was told and everything that I expected. I said, well, what do you mean by that? He said, well, before we had the roadmap call, he said, I went back into AI and asked, what do I expect on a roadmap call from Interview Valet? And he’s like, it went through all the slides. We do not share those slides. 

Drew McLellan [00:38:05]: 

That’s crazy, right? 

Tom Schwab [00:38:07]: 

But yeah, it’s so it’s not on the website. It’s not like it was scraped. It was somebody that I’m sure put it on to summarize or something like that and it got up there. 

Drew McLellan [00:38:15]: 

Yeah, somebody probably said, hey, give me the pros and cons of this proposal or something. Or compare this proposal to another proposal. You’re right. Got fed to the beast. Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:38:26]: 

Now that you say that, I’m like, I wonder if I fed the beast right of putting it up there. How can I make this more succinct or whatever it was. But whatever it was, that he knew all of that and I was taken back. But I was also reassured because if he had a question or a concern, it would have come up earlier. Or if he would have seen something that was a red flag, we wouldn’t have to spend all that time there. 

Drew McLellan [00:38:50]: 

You know, it’s an interesting thing for us to think about that whatever we’re sending prospects or clients, we have to. I know this is ridiculous, but I’ve never given it this much thought. But we have to assume that they’re uploading it to some AI tool to analyze or compare to other fill in the blanks proposals. So even the stuff that for us, we think is proprietary or why would anybody share one of our proposals with somebody else, we really probably do need to start assuming that all of that is part of the greater collective wisdom out there about us. And we probably need to be thoughtful about how we put together those tools because they are going to get a wider audience perhaps than we initially thought. 

Tom Schwab [00:39:36]: 

It’s a scary time we live in. I bought my bride a plod one of the recording devices and she loves it. But it just reminded me how many people could have one of those on their wrist at a conference. And I don’t know, it’s like it’s almost to the point now of it used to be, what, when you were little, assume that your mom is listening to everything right now, Assume that whatever, whatever you share, the world is going to be able to search. 

Drew McLellan [00:40:04]: 

Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, it’s really interesting. So as you look forward, and this is sort of dual purpose, I think it’s probably how your approaching your own shows, but also how you’re helping clients approach their. Not only if they have a show, but if they’re appearing on other podcasts. 

Tom Schwab [00:40:24]: 

What are. 

Drew McLellan [00:40:25]: 

If the. If the listeners are saying, okay, I want to think more about this, like, what are the punch steps that they need to take to sort of do the thoughtful preparation and understand the audience better, to prepare their content better, to serving up their content in a way that is bot friendly? 

Tom Schwab [00:40:45]: 

I think you still start with your client, Right. So who do you want to talk to? What do you want them to know about you, about the market, about the problem? I think it focuses. The idea to focus on the problem is key because think about it, when we all go to AI, we’re not asking for services or products. We’re talking about our problem. 

Drew McLellan [00:41:09]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:41:09]: 

And so I think to be problem focused definitely helps on that. And then just realizing that once you’ve talked about it, once they’ve already indexed it. So talk about different things. And that whole thing of content is king. Context is God, right? Small G. So you may be talking about the same, you know, same thing, but different audiences. Right. Client of ours, mutual friend, Craig Cody, right. He would go on podcasts and he would say, here’s the, you know, top 10 things that agencies need to consider to lower their. Their taxes and keep more of their money. Well, then he’d go on a dental podcast and talk about the top 10 things dentists need to do. Right. They were the same 10, but he didn’t just make it generic and say, here are the top 10 things business owners. 

Drew McLellan [00:42:00]: 

Well, and I’m sure the stories he tells and you know, I think that’s part of it too, is it’s not just. It’s not just the facts, but to your point, the context. I Find. And I’m sure you do, too. I find the best podcast guests are great storytellers. They not only teach us the facts, but they tell us the stories behind those facts, or they relate it somehow to either their own business or their client’s business in a way that we’re like, oh, that’s like me, or that’s not like me. And so I can either follow or choose not to follow that advice. And so you’re right. Context. And just having different stories for different shows, if you’re, if you’re going to be a guest on other shows, would be a powerful way for the bots to go. Oh, this is different. It’s similar, but different. So it probably reinforces the consistency of your message, but it also gives the bots more volume to share in their responses based on the query or who the query is. Again, I’m a dentist, I’m an agency owner, I’m a, you know, plumber, whatever it is. That would come up a little different. 

Tom Schwab [00:43:06]: 

I agree with you on there. And I think one of the things that most people miss on stories is they don’t wrap it up and they don’t put the moral behind it. And so what this means for you is. Right. 

Drew McLellan [00:43:18]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:43:18]: 

If we just let people try to connect the dots, or I connect the dots, it may or may not connect it the right way. So after we, you know, the hero’s journey, making someone else the hero, which is one of our clients, here’s the problem that they, they dealt with. Here’s how we help them get the solution. Here was the outcome. So what this means to you is. And then connecting the dots, always eat. 

Drew McLellan [00:43:42]: 

Your vegetables or whatever it is. 

Tom Schwab [00:43:43]: 

Right, exactly. Don’t, don’t. Don’t let them try to, to decide what you meant by it. 

Drew McLellan [00:43:49]: 

Yeah, that’s such a great point that it’s great to be a great storyteller. But you also, you do want to think of it almost as a fable, like, with a moral or a lesson. And you want to make sure that that lesson gets underlined at the end of the, of the story. Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:44:05]: 

Because if, if not now, I, I can’t think of the, the old one where if you go too high, the wings melt of wax, and if you go too low. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:15]: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:44:16]: 

The salt gets it right. If you don’t, if you don’t tell them what that means, they’re just going to take. The moral of the lesson is, don’t fly, you die. That’s right. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:26]: 

That’s right. I think sometimes we get. We’ve told the story so many times and we’re so familiar with the moral or the lesson that we forget that a great storyteller does sort of package the story in a way that is consumable and shareable. That’s the other part of it, too. Somebody’s much more likely to share a story when you’ve sort of handed them the endnote of the story. 

Tom Schwab [00:44:52]: 

Very much so. And even like at the end of the podcast there you talk about sharing. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:56]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:44:57]: 

One of the. I don’t know that this helps with AI, but it definitely helps with sharing one of the great things. That’s a great line. Right. If you know someone that could be benefited by this podcast, could you share it with them? 

Drew McLellan [00:45:11]: 

Yeah. 

Tom Schwab [00:45:11]: 

Right. It’s not asking for anything, but everybody you know, people know people. And as you’re listening to a podcast, you can probably think of two or three people that would benefit from knowing this. So make it easy for people to take that next step. 

Drew McLellan [00:45:26]: 

Yeah. All right, so I’m thinking about my audience, I’m thinking about my topics, I’m refreshing my one sheets. I’m going to spark Toro to learn more about where my audience hangs out, what matters to them, all of that. And then am I doing anything else on the back end to make sure that the referrals are coming in the right place? 

Tom Schwab [00:45:49]: 

One of the things that people will say is that you can’t attribute traffic from a podcast interview. Right. It’s like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s just mysterious magic. Well, it’s not specific, but there are ways to do it. And prime example is that you can send them to what’s called a dedicated welcome page. So one page on your site and it’s think of it as like a back door. Right. It’s that if you came to our house, you come in this side. It’s a special entrance. So it’s not a squeeze page, it’s not a landing page. If they want to look around the site, they can. But if you say, okay, everybody that listened to this, right, just go to interview valet.comforward/baba 2025. Well, anybody that hits that page I know came from here. So that allows you to see which podcasts were base hit, which ones were a home run, because you’re not going to get that from AI. You’re not going to be able to ask the people, so what did you search? They don’t remember all of the words. Right. It was, it was a six minute conversation and you can’t rank in AI, Right. It’s not like SEO where I’m going to make the first page of AI. No, you’re going to get. You’re going to make the page for some people and you’re going to totally miss it for others. So make sure that you’re making it for the right ones. 

Drew McLellan [00:47:12]: 

Yeah, fascinating. So as you look forward to your own strategy and your client’s strategy, what where do you envision. 

Drew McLellan [00:47:24]: 

You will continue to sort of tweak this strategy? So what are you playing with right now? Because I know you’re experimenting with something. 

Tom Schwab [00:47:30]: 

Yeah. Eddie Yoon, who wrote a great book called Super Consumers, he said something that blew my mind. He said, there’s three things that I believe that the price of computing is going to zero, trends to zero. He said the price of energy will trend to zero, and the price of a new customer or a new client will trend to zero. And all of a sudden, I thought. I agree with two of the three, but it should. Right. As we get better understanding of our ideal clients and they get a better understanding of us. So I’m trying to invest more in the future, having more of our team doing podcast interviews, making sure that we review all of our podcast interviews to make sure that we did all the best practices on that, and really trying to focus on where things are going, not where they were. Right. So earlier this year, we turned off all of our ads because we got a lot of traffic from them. Right. But the conversions weren’t there. And to me, it’s almost like at a certain point, it’s like I gotta stop paying money on the yellow Pages because it’s not working anymore. Right. That was the. What it was. Now we’re trying to do it into the future. So always, always trying to double down on the future and what’s working. And I think the other thing, too, is by having more voices in our company talking, I think that’s helped because from a developmental stage that people want to be acknowledged, Right. They’re proud of the company and to be able to let them go out and talk about it. And it also forced us to. To get more clear on our tone of voice. Prime example here, right. We’re all singing from the same playbook, right. Of podcast interview marketing. But I want to make sure that everybody is. Is on key there too. So we did a lot with using AI to go back and look at all of our past interviews to say, what is interview Valet’s tone of voice? Right. We’re educational. We’re not. We’re not scarcity. Mentality. Right. There’s no, no pressure. So we would not only define that tone of voice, but as we had new speakers coming up, we would always look at their interviews and coach them of, hey, this was on brand. This was a little off brand. Here’s other ways you could say it. Yeah. So AI can help you be a better guest and a better interviewer. Right. There’s things that, you know, if I say inbound marketing on this podcast, totally acceptable. If I say it in another podcast with just general business owners, I better add on to their. What I mean by that is. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:17]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:50:17]: 

And having an outside person. We’ve got a custom GPT that we run all of our clients interviews through so that they can, we can give feedback on that. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:29]: 

Yeah, that makes sense that you’re, you’re thoughtful about how you show up and that especially if you’ve got multiple voices from the same company, that there is a consistency of spirit that shines through. 

Tom Schwab [00:50:42]: 

Yeah. And it’s, it’s. You can even use that tone of voice for your social media. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:47]: 

Sure. 

Tom Schwab [00:50:48]: 

Because have you, have you ever read some. A post or something? And it’s like, that doesn’t sound like Drew. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:53]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:50:54]: 

It’s a good post and everything, but that sounds like Grant Cardone, not Drew. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:58]: 

Right. 

Tom Schwab [00:50:58]: 

So if you can take that tone of voice and put it in there and said, you know, this is the, the tone of voice, this is the, our key stories, this is our point of view, this is what we believe, this is what we reject, that can help AI write it or even, I think, like a junior intern. Right. Somebody comes in, we’ve never told them what we believe in our tone of voice. We’ll take a new marketing person and we’ll give them the brand guidelines. Right. This is the font we use, this is the color, but not that tone of voice. And I’ll forever be thankful to Darren Horowitz from the 1010 group. He really helped me with that. They do it for big companies and, you know, it’s like 50, $100,000 to do all the interviews for that. And we were able to work it through and say, you know, if you get enough, enough content out there, you can figure out what the tone of voice was. And we played around with it. It takes about 12 interviews to do it. And certain things help and certain things hurt. Right. We played around with it and put somebody’s book in it and it changed the whole tone of voice. And we asked, why do you think this was? And they admitted, oh, that was a ghostwriter that wrote that book, and it’s like, oh, even the ghostwriter could have used this beforehand to help them. So it’s a lot of problems in the world, but great time to be alive. 

Drew McLellan [00:52:21]: 

It is. There are some great technologies and tools out there, for sure. That’s for sure. Tom, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for sharing kind of what you’ve learned. And I know the audience at the summit just ate it up for lunch. They were super excited about it. So it’s just an interesting different way to think about how to be found and how to be helpful and how, to your point, to really attract the right people to us so that we spend less time talking to and trying to sell to somebody who’s not going to be a good fit, who’s not going to be delighted with what we do, who’s not going to be profitable for us as a business. And so, you know, anything we can do to shorten that window for both sides, I think it’s good for the prospect, too, that they don’t have to talk to as many people to find the right solution for them is sort of an interesting way of thinking about how AI is changing the way we do business. So I’m grateful that you came back on the show and. And reprised your keynote for us, so thank you. 

Tom Schwab [00:53:18]: 

Well, it’s always updating here, and I could set. If anybody has any questions, I use the example of a welcome page. You want to see what a welcome page looks like? Go to interview valet.combaba2025 and I’ll put everything there. And we don’t normally do this, but I had mentioned that audit of podcast interviews for if your listeners. I’ll put something in there if you tell us what your. The URL for one of your interviews. I’ll run the audit form on that so that you can see what the. There’s 21 things we look at and that’ll help you before your next interview. 

Drew McLellan [00:53:59]: 

Oh, that’ll be great. That’s awesome. Yeah, awesome. Thank you always for being such. Such a great support and of service to our audience. I know that a lot of our agencies have come to you for help and love the experience they have, and I’m always grateful that you’re willing to share your expertise. So thank you for. Thank you for being a part of our community. I’m really grateful. 

Tom Schwab [00:54:22]: 

Thank you for all you do, Drew. 

Drew McLellan [00:54:24]: 

All right, you guys, so there’s homework here. So for those of you that have your own podcast, you absolutely can apply a lot of what Tom talked about. To your own show. But for those of you that either you have your own show but you still guest, or those of you that are like, I don’t want to have a show, but I love being a guest on other people’s show, lots of big takeaways here. And by the way, I think you can apply a lot of Tom’s takeaways to long form blog posts if your guest posting on other people’s blogs or if you are doing video interviews. So regardless of the medium, I think the message here is about how do you become a resource, a trusted resource that AI is going to serve up to your prospects and how do you, how do you know more about that audience so that you really tailor that message? And one of the big points I think, for two big points that I think Tom made, one, you’ve got to vary up the message enough that you don’t just show up for one search result over and over and over again, but you’ve got a variety that are sort of related to what you do. And two, that one of the things you have to be thinking about is sort of that tone of voice and really wrapping everything you do with the moral of the story or the message of the story. Don’t I say this all the time to all of you, do not make them work harder than they have to work. Like, tell them what you want them to know so that they just get it. So great homework for you. Please head over again to interview valet.com Baba2025 to AC what a welcome page looks like. But Tom’s going to have some great resources for you there as well. All right, and before I let you go, two quick things. Number one, huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label. I told you at the front of the show, they’re the presenting sponsor. We’re so grateful for them. So again, white label iq.com ami and as Tom suggested, I am super grateful you’re here. If you know other people who you think might go, you know what, that’s not a bad podcast or I can learn something from that. I would be delighted if you shared this podcast or any of the episodes that you think are meaningful with your colleagues and your peers so that we can get out to more of the world. And you know, our goal is simply to be the most trusted and reliable resource to small to mid sized agencies in the world. So that’s not lofty at all. But you can help with that by helping us get the word out. So I would be grateful for that. I’LL be back next week. Hope you will, too. Thanks for listening. 

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a better agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.