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Full Transcript
Welcome to executives after hours, real conversations with real leaders. This is your host, Dr James Kelley. I want to make you a promise that over the next 60 minutes you will learn at a minimum two things. One, every leader and executive makes mistakes on the way to the top and two and more importantly, everyone has a unique story to tell and that’s what we do here on executive. After hours. We sit down with leaders across a variety of industries and we talked to them about that
Dan. Unique story, so welcome to the community and stay tuned for today’s episode on your executives after hours and what’s a Beigey is like ill. There’s a lot of problems in the world, but there’s no greater time to be alive, right? Because for a lot of jobs it’s not where you know, where do you work at? It’s not a location, but what you do.
Hey Lou, welcome to Thursdays episode of executives after hours. That’s. That is Mr. Tom Schwab, cofounder of interview Valet. Basically it’s a concierge service for you to get on some of the best podcasts in the country or in the world, and I’m actually working with them as well. I love Tom. Tom Is just a great guy. He’s always been willing to be helpful for me at different parts and phases of, of requirements or request. I mean, um, I just really liked Tom. He, he, him and Dan make a great team together because they’re just good people at the end of the day. So. All right. Today’s quote for the book, the crystals gift to find lessons from authentic leaders who thrive in adversity comes from Mr. Bill George, and if you don’t know bill George, he’s the senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former chair and CEO of medtronic and Arthur Arthur, author of discover your true north.
So bill really is one of the founding writers on authentic leadership from a practitioner’s point of view. And so when I got him to read my book, He’d been on the show. I’m bill’s bill’s a no nonsense guide and so I’ve got some really good recommendations, but this, this recommendation actually, um, put a tear in my eye because I know that he’s not blowing any smoke whatsoever. And um, it made me feel good that I was doing good by writing something good. So this is what this is what bill had to say. James Kelly extraordinary book, the crucibles gift will guide you on a deep exploration of how to become an authentic leader, learning and growing from your crucible experience with increased self awareness, integrity, compassion, and ability to relate to others falling. Kelly’s great wisdom will not only enable you to become a better leader, but a better human being as well.
So that bill, I say thank you. That was a very humbling one. I’ve got many that I’m super humbled about, but, but again, he’s a no bs guy, so I just was blown away by that. Sorry, coming April 23rd should be up right now for preorder on Amazon. It’s the link. If the link is not in this, that means it’s not available, but hopefully it’s available. So. All right, follow me on youtube this week was relatable ness, my favorite made up word to describe the best leaders that you will meet in terms of their ability to connect to those, uh, where they’re at on their personal journey. So until then, I will talk to you next week. Tomorrow on Tomorrow’s episode, I’m going to actually read just five, 10 minutes short episode. I’m going to actually read a part from the book because they at like a virtual book tour where I’m going to read to you, hopefully not bore you a section from the book. And again, you can actually get this and I keep forgetting to mention this. You just go to my website, deb, Deb, Deb, Dr James Kelley Dot Com. To get the introduction chapter for free, just click on the crucibles gift at the top and you can check it out. And if you like it, great preorder. If you don’t like it, great, let me know why. Either way feedback is king and so I’d like to hear from you on either side of that equation. Have a great day and I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow. See a proverbial year,
I just, it’s a, it’s a very open sharing, noncompetitive, um, a environment and I love that,
but yeah, I got to say your comment about, and I know that you’re paraphrasing from someone else, but it’s a pretty saturated market right now when you think about the number of users or listeners to the number of podcasts,
I would argue with that, right? Because of please do, I think, I think it’s harder to, you know, the Jb Gloucestershire the morning coach when he first started, what, 3000 episodes ago that he came on out of nowhere and was getting 80,000 downloads and almost sort of the same way that, you know, ABC and NBC and CBS used to get a third of the viewers because there wasn’t a whole lot to choose from. So I think as more people come in there, the market gets more fragmented,
but
there’s still more opportunity in the fragmentation. Right. Um, so it’s like television stations have gotten more fragmented. Um, um, oh, the advertisers haven’t just said, well, you know, you’re getting a smaller audience so we’re not going to advertise there. It’s like, no, it’s a, there’s more niches in that audience. It’s a better audience. So, you know, I, I still look at that is, you know, it’s uh, we don’t live in a world of scarcity anymore and you know, um, uh, Christopher lochhead and uh, um, we talked a lot about this and one of his friends, uh, uh, Mike Maples, uh, talks about that the rules have changed, you know, that it’s not a world of scarcity anymore, it’s a world of abundance and it’s so. It’s like, how can, how can I get my portion, how can I, um, how can I serve this? Uh, it’s not like I’ve got to take it from you anymore and you know, you walk around and the world is abundance and calories too,
but you, you, you, you talked about the sense of abundance and I guess these three defining what success is and just so you feel comfortable. I have it recorded so it was going to. But I guess it’s also defining what, what, what is an acceptable level of success, but what do you think from, from a podcast standpoint is, is worth keep going? What’s what’s worth hitting record like we’re doing now? We get in, we go.
Well, I think it’s, I think too many people focus on the vanity metrics, right? I love that. Same by the way. That’s awesome. Well, and, and the problem is, is there’s all kinds of vanity metrics and they always show us the vanity metrics, you know, um, and I think as part of that game of vacation, right? So they’ll show you your downloads on your podcast, you go onto facebook, they’ll tell you how many likes you have. I can go on and see how many new twitter followers I have, but they don’t mean anything, right? So I could have gotten 200 new twitter followers from robots yesterday, but it makes me feel good. It makes me want to go back to that system. So I’m sorta like gamification. I think you’ve really got to look at it and say what connections am I making? Right? Because the marketing at its heart, businesses as hard is working with individual.
So you know, marketing, starting a conversation with somebody that could be an ideal customer. So you got to look at and say, what am I doing here? Is that starting a conversation? Is that helping that and looking at it more from the strategy side and not, you know, the tool side or the metrics there. I think so many of us get caught in, um, in the little data that that means nothing as opposed to the big things. Um, and like the tools, right? Tools are amplifiers of ignorance or talent, right? So a podcast is a tool. If you’re great at communicating with somebody, a podcast will help you with that if you, um, if you can’t communicate, podcast is just going to help you communicate poorly with more people. And I think of a friend of mine, Dan Miller had a lightening, struck a tree in his property and he had an artist come in with the chainsaw and carved a beautiful eagle into this.
Well, that same winter I went outside with the, probably a very similar chainsaw and just about cut off my leg, right? And so I can say it was stupid chain saw. No, the chase sauce, just an amplifier. So, you know, you could, you can use email marketing to communicate better or to spam people, you can use podcasting, I’m a to be a self promoter and turn people off or you can use it to communicate and draw the people towards you. Um, so I, I just look at it as a, as a world of abundance and I’m trying to keep the, keep the ID on the big picture,
but I mean as an editor, not so correct me if I’m wrong. Come. Yeah, you’re the CO founder, the founder of interview Valet. Which one is. I’m the founder. Founder. Okay. So as the founder, I mean you have fun being fair, you have vested interest in this success. Right. And I would imagine, and I’ve seen this with my show for sure since we first met, which was probably two years ago at this point when I first talked to you, um, I’ve seen an onslaught of booking agents contact me. I mean, I don’t actually have to go out and find anybody anymore, which is totally different than when I first started. Like when I first started, I had like letters and I was like emailing people and I was asking friends of a friends of a friend, like I had to work hard to get guests.
I don’t actually have to work that hard anymore, which in some ways it’s good in some ways it’s bad because they don’t necessarily know if I’m getting uh, the talent that I necessarily always want, but it’s made my life a lot easier to get talent. So I have a question here. Hold on. I’m getting there. So, so do you find though, this is my point, is that now I feel like we’re, I think is getting saturated. It’s not only with shows and I agree with you that nice shows or a niche audiences I guess are becoming much more acceptable than my wife listens to specific podcast coaching, things like that. Like she’s, she’s very much into like athletic coaching type stuff. I would never listen to those things. I’m not that interested. But I also think that within the niches it’s also getting saturated. So I mean, I don’t know, like what, where’s the point where it’s. Yeah, I dunno, I dunno, I don’t know if I’m making any sense. I just, I find. Yeah,
well, and I, I think it comes back to that, you know, that idea of um, it was Eric Weinheimer set the world doesn’t need more bs, you know, Eric’s the first guy to um, uh, to climb Mount Everest and loved working with them on this virtual book tour. And he says the world doesn’t need more bullshit and I think that’s so true because a shoot, if it, if it’s not an explicit
show already, I just want to eat out there. Or are you going to edit Doug Sandler’s? It’d be like, I don’t give a fuck. So. Okay, perfect. Well you’ve got to follow the house rules, so if you’re the first one to do it, I can do it. But uh, but with that, it’s like, so, you know, you talked about no, nobody needs another copy and if your idea is, oh my podcast is going to be just like this, but a little bit different or I’m just going to be a little bit better, you know, the world doesn’t need another copy, the world needs something different. So it’s that whole idea of going back to category design, you know, when play bigger it be different, don’t just be a little bit better because I honestly believe that today are online, you know, it’s never been easier to do a transaction, you know, if you want to sell something, just be a penny cheaper than that other person and, and you’ll get the sale and you’ll race to the bottom.
But it’s never been harder to build a business. And you talked about booking agencies. Yeah, there are a dime a dozen out there. And the barrier to entry is so low, so low you can never, you can. Well you can have a va any place that says yes, I’m, you know, a great booking agent and I know, you know, 10 people. Um, I know some booking agents there that claim to be great marketers and their job before hosting their own podcast was working as, as a subway, you know, working as a sandwich artist is subway great, they’re great people and stuff like that, but don’t call yourself a marketer. And that’s one of the things that. So we don’t, we don’t look at this as booking agent, right? Getting on a podcast is not tough, right? There’s what, 40 400,000 podcasts out there, you know, getting on one is not tough.
What we focus on is really how can you use this to grow your business. So we look at it more from a podcast interview marketing strategy and my background is inbound marketing and you know, all we’re doing right now is using podcasts, interviews like we used to use guest blogs to get in front of somebody else’s audience to get that. No, like trust, get the back links, get the traffic from there. So it’s not like something that’s totally new, but we’ve taken podcasting and inbound marketing and put it together with that. So when people say, you know, I’m looking for a, um, a, you know, a booking service, well, great. You know, tell me a little bit about your business. Let me introduce you to one because you can get just a booking service for a whole lot cheaper than what we sell, but if you’re looking to get results, if you’re really, you know, focused on that and not just getting on a podcast, well then we need to talk because, you know, I think one of the things, you know, um, for me, I know that you guys provided tremendous service and you’ve got a great customer list of people that use you.
And then I know that you guys have been awesome and I’ve gotten a number of great guests from you guys for sure without a doubt. But for someone like me who has limited budget, I find your service difficult. I’m not, not undesirable because it’s totally desirable because I think what you guys do is provide extra huge value for your customers. So I don’t, I don’t want to be very clear, Tom, and I’m talking to you. I’m not dismissing anything that you guys do. I think you guys do amazing stuff, but for me I find it expensive because I don’t have deep pockets. You know, and I’m not saying you guys are because I think, what is it for like 24? It’s like 6,000 or 5,999, if I remember correctly for about 5,434. Okay. Sorry, I don’t want to. I don’t want to. Data is numbers and you guys are super transparent about it on your, on your website, so by all means that you’re not hiding anything, but for me, I don’t have $5,400 so I’ve got to knock down the doors, a different podcast. The problem that I have, and this is where I think your guys service comes in handy, is that you add a level of credibility when you go knocking down and you’ve created relationships with some of the best podcasts across the country where I go knocking down, I have a sell sheet and they say, Hey, I’m selling myself. Which is way less attractive to a podcast. I’m kind of like a premise that I think, at least in my mind holds true.
Yeah. And I guess from that standpoint too, it’s like we never focus on the cost, right? If cost is an issue, that’s fine. I mean, um, I wrote a book, I give away more than I sell and what we do is not magic, right? It’s a system and it’s one that we find and everything, our best clients are the ones that come to us and say, hey, you can either have time or money. One of the two, you know, I, I, I’ve got more. What’s most valuable to me is my time, you know, I want to be Sinatra. I want to get up there and only perform, you know, Sinatra could have done everything for himself, but that’s what, that’s not where they brought the most value. So yeah, that’s why we’re working with a software service companies and book publishers and you know, um, some leading authors, coaches, speakers that, that sort of thing there. So they’re really looking at it as return on investment, not so much the, the, the cost and you know, um,
some of the things that I don’t want to dismiss that I feel like I was a bit of right there and it wasn’t trying to be. I just, for me personally, I, I see the total value. Like I see the value financially, I can’t afford that value proposition but I, but I see the value and I understand the value of like, I don’t know if I get be because now I feel like I’m an asshole. So I gotta just, I gotta backtrack a little bit.
I was going to say it sucks the first of the year we did change the programs a little bit because yeah, I mean to, to write that check for, you know, $29 a $5,400. That was a big chunk. So you know, now you can break it down per month. So we break it down. All we ask is, hey, let’s make a minimum engagement at 12 interviews here. So we’re more than willing to work
with people, sign me up. Do you want to give you a credit card over the nine? Seven, seven, four, four, four, three, two, two, zero, zero, zero. One. I don’t actually know it, so that’s fine. But once you put that comes, you get that because, uh, I found it online. A bathroom stall in the bathroom stall. Um, so. All right, so let’s, let’s kind of dive into a little bit about, you know, what, what interview valet does and I think it’s very clear what you guys do. You help you help people from. So let me back that up. You guys help individuals land on podcast, but talk to me about your strategy in terms of helping your clients get on the most appropriate podcasts.
Right? And that’s where it is, you know, because I think every business today, the biggest problem they have is obscurity, right? So there’s people that we could help with our product or service just the way it is today. If they only knew about us, you know, it’s not like we’ve got a limited number of clients anymore, you know, at least the viewer in a digital business and conserve remotely. You’ve got access to hundreds of millions of clients, you just need to find those ideal ones. So that’s really what we focus on. And you know, my background, my first job out of college was running a nuclear power plants. Um, well we’ll get to all the go out to everybody that, uh, isn’t the US thank you for paying for my education to the Naval Academy, but it just, it proved to me that everything can be systematized. It’s, you know, it’s not, it doesn’t have to be magic.
So we’ve tested this, we refine it and you’re right, the first step in that is the prospect and getting on the right shows and everybody goes, well, what shows do you want to get on? And they’ll, they’ll name the five biggest shows. Well, it’s not a a rifle or it’s not a shotgun approach, it’s a rifle approach. And we really look at four things that make a big, big difference and only one of them is the podcast, right? So the first one is the podcast, you know, what’s the popularity in Itunes, but even more so, what is the ideal listener? I mean, you can, you can listen to the podcast, you can, you can read the description, you could figure out who they, the listeners are to that. So that’s just one portion of it. The second part of the foundation is the website, right?
Because every podcast you go on is throwing you a back link. So we look at the popularity of it, the, um, the authority of that website. Uh, we’ve got some clients that are doing this just for the sel value. The third one is their social media reach, you know, how much are they promoting this? Um, and if we’ve got a client that is trying to build up instagram because all of their clients are on instagram last, one of the things we look at, um, on that. And then finally the experience with previous clients, uh, you know, there’s no, no reason we have to reinvent the wheel every time. There are certain podcasts that always seem to convert well for certain types of people. Um, and then other ones that are, are big, but because they have just generic audiences or the same, you know, six or seven questions and people really can’t get a get to know you there.
So it seems like they never convert. Well. Um, so with that, that’s, you know, that’s really what we look at. So it’s the podcast, the website, the social media reach and that experience with previous clients. Have you have, you seen in the last 12 months an uptake of clients who have realized that that a podcast really is the best forum at this point in? I think media the help? Very much so. And I love working with software service companies and accountants, right? Because what does that mean? Sorry. Um, so, um, a, a, a subscription model where it’s a digitally delivered product. So hubspot with Hubspot, their software as a service company, Prezi, we work with them. There’s a lot of those, you know, uh, acuity scheduling. What do you mean?
What do you mean you work with them so that you get them on podcasts in order to get in front of their ideal audience to use podcasts. Interviewing marketing and the reason I love them is because they know all their numbers so they can break it down per channel and tell you what their cost of lead acquisition is, what their cost of customer acquisition is. So they can tell you if we spend this many dollars on facebook, this is how many leads or how many customers we get, or if we spend this many dollars on blogs or um, you know, a conference, they break that down and so with that they’ve come back to us and tell, tell us that their numbers show that their cost of lead acquisition and their cost of customer acquisition is the lowest or lower on podcast or interview marketing. No. So like last year we did a study of 10,000 marketers, podcasters, podcast guests. And one of the questions we asked was where do you get your best Roi on your marketing dollars? Now, granted we asked a lot of podcasts are so it skewed it a little bit, but even I was, I was shocked when podcast interview marketing came out as number one for Roi, followed closely by facebook and then email marketing. So I really believe that, you know, in five years from now people will be talking about, you know, using podcast interviews as a marketing thing, as much as they’re talking about social media and email marketing.
I think, you know, um, and, and you are much more embedded in this space. I’m kind of on the peripheral as a host and occasional guest that the ability to be in front of a captive audience for 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the podcast obviously is huge. You know, for me, I think, you know, there, there are certain people who don’t like long form and there’s certain people who do. There’s some people who love the same seven questions, you know, uh, what is it entrepreneur on fire or whatever that won’t not on fire. What’s the one I’m on? Hack the entrepreneur. Yeah. Like, yes, people love that. But, but the point is, is that each one of those podcasts have a specific audience with a specific desire or want. And what I like, what I would, and I don’t know, this has been well broken down from a marketing standpoint, but to have just a sheet saying longform, conversational here, your list, um, you know, short standard questions. Here’s your list, you know, I think that to me, the evolution is starting to aggregate these into their categories and then use them as marketing dollars towards either brands and maybe they’re already doing this towards brands, but also customers looking to figure out best bang for buck or the Roi as you said, because I feel like to your point, it’s very much an evolution in the podcast industry. Um,
and if, if you look at it, it’s almost going back to that analogy we used with television, a similar thing. If you look at podcast interviews as just a media buy, right, how much is it going to cost you to go to the local radio station or the local television station and say how much for a half hour of time, you know, well first of all it’s going to be the sales department that calls back because they’re gonna say, well, you know, Mr Schwab, if you buy this much advertising, we’ll have you on at 5:00 AM and if you do this much, we’ll get you on at 5:00 PM. So you could look at it as a media buy, but even more so, like you said, I’m really focusing in. So I, we even look beyond, you know, short form, long form to what’s the age demographic, what’s the sex or gender demographic of that. Um, you know, is it, is the faith based, does it have that sort of point of view? Isn’t explicit,
but like, how do you know that? Right? So let people ask me all the time with WHO’s your audience? And I go, my guesses is these people, but I don’t, I have no way to measure that. I mean, at least not that I’ve been told,
it’s probably more art and science. It’s not like I’m a radio where they say, you know, this is what it is. And even there, I, I scratch my back, scratch my head sometimes when somebody says, you know, I’ve got a radio show and it’s got 4 million listeners to it. I’m like, you know, just because you know, you’re on wls out of Chicago doesn’t mean you have 40 million listeners because your show is on at 2:30 AM. I’m, I think those were the salt.
That’s what that is at that time.
Right. And sometimes it’s just one of the things that we look at is that people’s audience, a lot of times just like them, right? You, you, you’re attracted to people that are like you. So let’s put some male host, a lot of times it’s more of a male audience and vice versa, you know, if it’s, if it’s somebody that’s, you know, uh, has a millennial podcast and they’re 30 years old, I would probably guess that, uh, you know, if you’re trying to, if you’re trying to get a baby boomers not a good podcast to be on,
that’s pretty astute though, right? So one of the things I always teach in marketing is that we, we buy what we think we are. So it’s probably, it’s probably, I never even thought about it. It’s probably the exact same thing in podcast when you think about it. Uh, just a couple more questions that we’re going to flip the script here and kind of talk about Tom and Tom’s journey. Besides more fragmentation essentially in the podcast industry. Where do you see it going like you, because that is, keep wondering how many shows can there be, at least in the US? I mean, I think globally there’s a long way to go. Like when I talk to students here in the Middle East, they’re like, what’s a podcast? And I have to tell them it’s the purple button on their phone and they’re like, oh, what’s that? So, so outside the US, I think a lot of countries, it’s still growing by leaps and bounds or even in the introduction phase, but at least in the US. But where do you see this going? Like where is so big and too big and like, I don’t know, like. Yeah,
and I think it’s still. I still think it’s an infancy stage or at least the early adopter stage, right? Because how many blogs are there? I mean there’s probably 100 or a thousand times as many blogs as there are podcasts, but still, you know, there are people, you know, going into blogs I think were, were really. It’s funny, there’s, when you ask a student, you know, what’s a podcast? Ask them what the pod means in that. My youngest are 18 and 21. And I asked them one time, you know what’s, what’s the pod bean had podcasts. They rolled their eyes and said, I don’t know dad. What’s it made they, they’ve never known a life without a smartphone. So I think it came from ipods, right? The original ones, you had to download it, then put the cord in there. I mean you had to be techie to even listen to those. Um, and so it comes from there. So sometimes I’ll ask, people do listen to a podcast and they’re like, no, but then they’re listening to like Sirius xm radio, which is, a lot of that is repurposed podcast. A lot of am radio is repurposed podcast. So I, to me it’s more like radio on.
That’s how I describe it. Gm cars in, in the, in the states here I think are common worth where you can download it straight to the dashboard. And uh, last summer I got a call from a couple of buddies from the navy and they’re like, hey, I didn’t realize you were in town, you know, let’s get together tonight for dinner. And after I got the second message, I called him back and I’m like, why did you think I was in town? And they’re like, well, we heard John Morning drive this morning and I started to piece this together and found out it was a podcast interview that I had done whatever, six months before it got picked up, some local radio stations. So to them, you know, I was in Arizona, uh, talking on the local radio station. So to me that’s the future of it. The future of podcasts is not podcasts.
It’s have that audio content. Uh, and uh, you know, uh, I’m an audio learner and sometimes I’ll, you know, I’d proudly say I read at least a book a week, but, you know, the last time I actually read a book, um, Ms Dot is few and far between. I listened to them. So that’s just, you know, that’s how I learn. So I think there’ll always be that. And you know, somebody asked me what time, you know, when do you think podcasts are going to get to 100 percent. I’m like, television and radio have never gotten to 100 percent know. They’ll always be that. Those people that are audio learners.
Well, you know, on the other side that we were just saying triggered a thought in my head, you know, when you think about costs running the radio station, for example, man, what a drastic way to lower costs by just repurpose the podcasts, right? So you find that 12 shows you love and this is happening. I mean it happens with c suite or happens with, um, uh, there’s a network out of Seattle and I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s just all podcasts that are repurposed on radio stations around the world at the end of the day. And it’s such a low cost to do. And more importantly, the barrier to entry is so low to do it. So, so let me ask you this question then. I want to pivot because this is something I’ve run up against lately with my own guests, but as well as trying to be a guest.
You know, my, my book comes out in April and what I’m finding is that so many podcasts are booked way in advanced. So you and I are talking right now and when this thing goes live, what is today? Today is a February sixth, just so we can mark the date. This will go live for me like the last week of March I think and I think to myself, if you are selling a book or or something that has a date, whatever it is, right? But books obviously the most recent in my mind, you almost have to start a full year to nine months out getting on podcasts to get the podcast to air during the presales process. Maybe nine months is a bit far, let’s say six months, but. But do you find now that from at least a a book standpoint? Yeah. Maybe there’s other context I don’t know about that. There’s a lack of knowledge about the timeline from interview to publish.
Very much so. And we always tell our clients three to four months to start beforehand and that can vary and really are you self publishing your book and you want to pre sell it so that you get that extra revenue coming in. Well then probably start before three or four months, but if you’re just trying to do a blitz, you know, a lot of times when we’ll work with a major publisher, they’ll say, hey, give us, you know, a dozen interviews the week before it goes live and a dozen interviews the week after it goes live because all they’re trying to do is, you know, hit some lists and then a month after it’s out there, they forget about the book. So there’s different strategies, but, uh, you know, the best podcasts, they’re like doctors offices and restaurants. If there’s not a waiting list there, there’s a recent and you know, even if you’ve got a wonderful relationship with a podcaster, you can’t come up to them and say, uh, you know, James, I’ve got a book coming out, you know, two weeks from now, do you think you could, you know, put my interview in there.
It’s like, no, I’ve, I’ve already edited them. I’ve numbered them all the rest of that. So that’s why you’ve got to really start three to four months ahead of time. Um, but the good part about that too is that when that book launches, you can have a lot of other things to do so you can almost time shift, right? So, um, today’s February, if the book’s coming out in June, we’ll get all the work done here and in February and March for the virtual book tour and then record that and then you don’t have to worry about that when the book goes live. I will not mention names, but we have started a book tour before the book was finished with the final editing. All we had was a, uh, a cover and, you know, a book summary of it. And that was enough to go on. Now some podcasters say I’ve got to read the entire book for them. We got them, you know, an early edition. It sure wasn’t a galley copy was like a pdf pdf. Uh, but that was enough. But, uh, uh, yeah, to me, why wouldn’t you want to start it early?
It’s funny because I went back and forth on that personally where I tried to do some early on, but then the date wasn’t nailed down. Um, you know, the cover wasn’t nailed down and I just was uncomfortable and then, and then to be fair as an author and you’ve done this, I feel like it takes a while for the content to really seek in so that you can say it in a concise, meaningful way where at least that’s me. Like I have such a short term memory issue. So, so, you know, if I write something I almost forget what write pretty quick because it’s just kind of being thrown out of me. Um, and so I have to, like you, I’ve probably read my book now like 10 times. I’m pretty sick of it to me on what it is, but, but you know, I’m proud of it, but you’ve read it so many times now.
Then now I can regurgitate it and get all the catchphrases and be like, oh this is that and that. So now I feel like I’m much more prepared to go on shows. The problem is, is that now the shows that are going on now maybe may, maybe after the book launches, which is a bit of a downer. So anyhow, it’s an interesting time in podcast and for my audience, you know, Tom, uh, you know, an interview interview valet does an amazing job and I think that um, you, you got into this quite early in the process before, I think it’s boomed night and I’ve especially seen the boom in the last 12 months for sure. Um, with the frequency of people reaching out and the time lag between my shows has grown from a month or two to three to four months and I actually watched that quite closely where I’ll, if I see that leg getting too far out, I’ll actually cut off interviews for awhile to bring that slack back down. Um, because I, I always find it kind of unfair. I don’t know what you think about this, but like if you were able to come on and I say to you, all right, well this is going to publish in August. I think that’s unfair to you, right? Like the, like the message you have, why you came on might be important or pertinent or whatever and your life might change in six months. So I don’t know. For me,
I think, you know, it’s all the kids in clowns like surprises, so if, if I didn’t know that beforehand, that might be an issue, but you know, for some people that they’re planning ahead that way. Um, and I think that’s, you know, when you, when you talked about, you know, getting more pitches and more guests, I always laughed. I probably get now at least a pitch a day. Most of them come from agencies wanting to be on my podcast. The James. The funny thing is I don’t have a podcast, but they all tell me, Oh, I’ve listened to your podcast. I love it, and our guests would be great on your show. And I’m like, Hey, if you’re going to lie to me at least tell me I’m pretty, but I’m sure that I’m on somebody’s list someplace that got posted, shared, sold, whatever it was, and they’re pitching me because I’ve got a great podcast.
I love that. I’m, I was going to say, sorry, you keep bringing up topics I think are interesting is that that’s actually the next phase. I think that podcasting, by the way, from a, from a client perspective, is that PR firms now are going to have, and they’re starting to do it, but a dedicated arms to podcasts.
We work with some PR firms, that white label, we basically work with them in order to do that because pitching a podcaster is so much different than pitching other media, right? Because most podcasts aren’t journalists and if you, if you send them the full press sheet, the, the, the full press release and stuff like that, they look at it and go, what’s this? So it’s really different from doing that. And we’ve even got a couple of clients, uh, that said, hey, we’re taking the corporate clients and they said we’re going to take a portion of our pr budget, cut that off and re re allocate that to a podcast or interview marketing.
That’s awesome. That’s definitely where it’s going. All right, so let’s, let’s just say that Tom was not born and raised in interview valet. So I’m going to make that assumption that that’s right. So were you actually at now, Tom? I don’t know even know where you live.
I live in beautiful Kalamazoo, Michigan. It’s happened. It’s halfway between Chicago and Detroit, which proves if you’ve got an internet connection, you can do podcasts and interviews from any place
now. Were you born and raised in Kalamazoo?
No, I actually grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m about 40 miles west and I hadn’t been more than probably 120 miles from my hometown before I went to, um, uh, joined the navy. And so in 1992 I came after I left the navy, uh, I came to Kalamazoo on a snowy February day to take a job with a fortune 500 company here. And I still remember this saying, I’ll take the job, but I’m not going to die here. Thirty some years later. My family grew up here. Um, my, uh, my daughter married a local boy, uh, and they got two wonderful children and so this is home.
So, so talk, like what’s my parents lived in Bolingbrook at one point. Oh yeah. So is that somewhere, just for my audience, I was just like southwest of Chicago a little bit. Is it somewhere out that way?
Correct. So, um, I was out in the Fox valley. Okay. So St Charles Aurora area there. So about 15, 20 minutes from bowlingbrook.
Yeah, it was a, I love Chicago. I actually went to Chicago after I graduated college and I lived there for like 10, 12 months, but I was a block from Wrigley field and I could have and basically it was like the Blues Brothers House. So I was right next to the train. And so every time the train came by, turn up the volume, turn it back down and you got so used to it that you didn’t even think about the act of changing the volume on the TV. But go ahead.
And what’s amazing now is like ill, there’s a lot of problems that the world, but there is no greater time to be alive, right? Because for a lot of jobs it’s not where, you know, where do you work at? It’s not a location but what you do and nobody, nobody knows. You know, the, the corporate world headquarters of interview Valet is in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know, if there’s, if this was 20 years ago and we had a pr firm, I would have had to live in Chicago, downtown Chicago or New York now, you know, it doesn’t make any difference.
So. So talk to me about going into the navy. Did you go right in, out of high school? Did you go to the academy or straight? Straight to the,
uh, what’s it called? Basic training, you know, so, um, I graduated high school at Seventeen. I graduated in what end of May and then went to the naval academy in early July and they’ve got their basic training there, a plebe summer, uh, and that’s what started there. So, um, you know, uh, the first time I was on an airplane was flying to, uh, to the academy and a year later when I came home, uh, I had been around the world, spent a week in Australia and in my world per head forever changed by that point.
So, so my wife’s brother went to the naval academy as well. So tell me your experience when you first come onto campus and the first 10 thoughts that came into your head. I’ll let you even have three thoughts. Really if you like.
Can you remember that far back? Probably. Don’t let them see you cry. Thing of don’t, don’t let them see you sweat, sweat, nothing. Don’t let them see you cry. Um, that was probably the first one. The second one was somebody told me it’s a game, so play the game. And then the third one was just being struck by how different this was from where I grew up. You know, like I said, everybody I knew growing up pretty much thought the same way. What from the same place. Um, and it, it’s amazing when, when everybody’s got their head shaved, you look the same but you come from different, different areas and that, that always just amazed me. And I met a friend that didn’t know how to drive and didn’t have a car. Their family didn’t have a car. And I’m like, how could you do that? You know, I, I figured that they were living in poverty. It’s like, no, we, we live in Manhattan. Why would you do that? And you know, just things that were so different but so interesting.
So what, what was the decision faster to actually go to the military academy?
Oh, well it was easy because I know my parents couldn’t afford to send me to college and I remember I got accepted to northwestern in Evanston and at that time northwestern was $10,000 a year room and board. And I remember thinking 40 grand, I will not make enough money in my entire life to pay back 40 pounds. And with that, uh, there was uh, a gentleman in a, in our community that was going to west point and uh, he came back, he was like two years ahead of me and uh, I ran into him, didn’t know him, but he’s telling me you get paid to go to school. He’d been around the world, done all these different things and I’m like, this sounds much better, you know? Uh, so I applied and literally by the grace of God I got in there because it wasn’t until my senior year that they found out that I wasn’t physically qualified to be in the navy.
I was born without depth perception, but they missed it the entire time, uh, or it was, it was written on the records. Nobody noticed it. So they originally told me I would never go to see, um, but I would be commissioned because they’d always invested three and a half years into me and I’m like, yes, I’m going to work as a CB and um, you know, never have to wear a uniform. They’ll send me back to, to Grad school and all the rest of this and then the needs of the navy worth that they needed a people in nuclear power. So, uh, they told me I could either go surface warfare or surface warfare and nuclear power. And um, at that time there was a $10,000 bonus if you went nuke. So before it took, it took the money.
So how did, how did going to the Naval Academy, I mean, it’s to your point, you said earlier, it’s a totally different world, right? Different people from a cross section of theu , s you in your first year traveled around the world, went to Australia. What was probably the biggest moment that formed you over those four years that you feel nudged your direction in life?
It would have to be, I think plebe summer, just being meeting so many different people from different areas. Like I said, a Roger Stanton who was a, a golden gloves boxer, uh, that grew up in the city and his parents didn’t have a car. We had some foreign exchange students from other countries that were there and seeing all these different people and you know, how they looked at things. I mean a midwest wealth is a lot different than east coast. Well, you know what, when I went to Dubai, this was later on, uh, you know, I got to meet them, mirror a, that’s a different level of wealth than even east coast loves. So to me it was like my world instantly went from this small little place to just exploded and I, I would say that really changed my life because when I came back to Kalamazoo, that was my biggest fear that my world was going to get small again.
Right. I didn’t want that. I had, I had seen, I had seen the world and I wasn’t coming home. Um, but now I look at it is, you know, with everything we have, if you’re isolated or ignorant, it’s by choice. So we’ve got clients in e Dot [inaudible] in England, in Singapore and Australia. I mean, I may talk to people around the world in any day and all this morning at 5:00 AM, I had a call with a gentleman from the UK and I love it. You know, I can stay here in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I think most of my neighbors, we, we live on six and a half acres. There’s 40 acres of vineyards behind us to go to Welch’s grape juice. But I think most of my neighbors probably think I’m a drug dealer. It’s like, how can you make money and not leave home, but to me it’s like this is amazing, you know, that, that we can do all of this as long as you’ve got an internet connection, the world is open to you,
but you know, Kalamazoo, when you go to Kalamazoo 30 years ago that wasn’t an option. So was there, you know, you talked about this kind of fear of my world getting smaller. Did you initially experience that until you met your wife and you’re kind of like, get me Outta here?
No, it really was. I struggled with that. Right? So I’m, part of the reason that I went into the navy was I was grew up in the midwest and what I was told was get a, get a job with a, you know, a stable company and, you know, just do that. Right? So I go in the navy and anybody that’s old enough, remember in 1992, um, just as my commitment was coming up, peace broke out, right? The Soviet Union had had dissolved and it wasn’t a good time to be in the military. You know, there’s a lot of cutbacks and stuff. Um, so I decided, hey, I want to try something else, you know, at that time my dad called me a fool. He’s like, all you gotta do is put another 15 years and then you can retire. And I’m like, yeah, but I’ll be old and dead in 15 years.
So then, you know, I’ve worked for a fortune 500 company in engineering and within 18 months I went from an engineering position to an operations position to running the distribution and a organization. And so my career was going up there, but James, it was killing me. It was like being on a submarine only bigger, right? If you didn’t work in that building, have kids that go to the same school as I do, live within 100 yards from my house or maybe sit a row ahead of me or behind me at, at church. I didn’t know who you were. And it felt like my world is just incredibly small here. And so I saw the sales reps out there going, uh, you know, making 10 times as much money as I was having fun doing all these things. And I said, well, I want to sell.
And they said, no, no, no, no, no, engineers don’t sell and you don’t go from the inside to the outside. So I left for 18 months and sold for a small company that later got up, picked up by J and j. m and I took enough market share from the fortune 500 company that they hired me back. And so that’s how I got into there. But to me always was trying to make my world bigger. And so, you know, it was probably, oh, probably, you know, early two thousands, you know, when the Internet came up, uh, had virtual friends learn thing virtually. Um, and that’s where I really said this is, this is what I want to do. Um, and you know, when some of those times when I was working for the fortune 500 company, um, I count the days or the years so I could retire because it just seemed like, you know, uh, once I store a fund of money that I can do it. Now I just look at it. I’m 50, I’m never going to retire, right. My, it would, my wife would, it would drive her crazy. Years ago a buddy of mine decided that a retirement, you know, if we ever retired, uh, we, our wives had kill us. So we said we’re going to do fun things with interesting people and write it off all as a business expense. And uh, uh, and he, he passed away seven years ago. But I look at it as like, that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m retired.
What I would say, just my audience knows that Karen actually works with you. So.
Yup, just not for me. We figured that out. She doesn’t report to them.
So a couple of questions. I’m really, to me, this is fascinating. This is something that mentally I’ve for sure struggle with, you know, um, I mean obviously I stayed, I’ve never been in the military and nor would they probably ever taken me, but I’ve, I’ve been lucky enough to live all over the world and my biggest fear, I saw this in Philadelphia when I was there is I just kind of felt like I was one, you know, one chink in the chain, link in the chain out of step with everybody else because of my experiences. And so I have to wonder for you in Kalamazoo, did you ever constantly, because I have this bug to always like go see a broad goes to something different. Right. So when you were here living there, were you able to fulfill that? That, that almost need? I feel like it’s a need, like a hunger to go get experiences in other areas of the world.
Yes. And I think sometimes you can have those experiences locally to by the people you hang around with and others great people around here, right? Salt of the earth, you know, factory workers, agricultural workers, great people. But they don’t understand me. I don’t understand them, so a lot of times it was, you know, the, I would hang around with um, uh, the person that was on a, a work visa, uh, coming in from a, uh, from a different country. It’s like, that was interesting, you know, um, uh, I was always the one trying to find some ethnic restaurant. I used to call western Michigan, the land of white bread. Everything tasted like applebee’s. But to me, I, you know, so I think, you know, you don’t have to go to the Middle East to get Middle Eastern food. We just found a great restaurant the other day. Uh, that was probably the closest thing I moved here. Well, now you can go there and you can be the, uh, the oddity that brings people over and, and you know, teach them American food and shows them what a twinkie is and all those things we learned in Chicago.
I guess for me, this is what I find fascinating about your personality, Tom, is that you have a couple of juxtapositions. You’ve got a small town kid never left my little area and then you’ve got this. I’m a world traveler, you know, and then you’ve got, I’m a small town kid again who has the itch for world traveler and so I find that the anchor of Kalamazoo, was that more based on your wife and her family being there? Was that based on you saying, you know what, I’m going to make the best of this in the long run.
I think happiness is a decision not where you are. And um, you know, our families, the family was growing up, right? I saw carrie.
How old were you got married?
Uh, well, first time I got married I was 22. Um, and then, uh, I’m on my second marriage, my practice, my practice marriage didn’t work out nearly as well, but Karen and I have been married now for 10 years. But with that I, you know, um, I didn’t want to keep relocating my family all the time and plus being in the sales side, you build up those relationships with customers. Um, and, and you know, if you keep moving all the time, it’s hard to, um, to monetize those nearly as much. So there was that, but you know, even now, you know, small town kid in Kalamazoo, well our youngest is in college now and one of the things that Karen and I have said is that we’re going to live one week out of every month in a different city, right? We’ve got virtual jobs. We can be anywhere.
Work is what we do, not, not where we go. So like, um, in February here we’re going to go out to San Diego for a week, you know, social media marketing world. Um, and I actually love going to the west coast because now I, I normally wake up at 5:00 AM. So I guarantee you when I’m there I’m going to wake up at 2:00 AM, you know, I can get a whole lot of work done in the morning before the world starts, before the conference starts, I’ll take a nap in the afternoon and, you know, be able to do whatever I want. So, um, to me, you know, uh, you, you’re traveling,
you’re scratching that itch now. Yes. Yes. So tell me, tell me about like when you first start having kids, because how old are you first having, I think, I think as a dad it’s a really interesting transition in life. I mean getting married, one of them, but I feel like sometimes depending on your situation, married is like just adding the ring in some more time with somebody right now. I’m definitely simplifying it by all stretches of the imagination but, but, but having a kid it just turns, turns the temperature up just a little bit. So. And I say that tongue in cheek. So. So tell me about when you became a dad, like did you have preconceived thoughts and now you’ve seen your kids come through, do you think that you, when you think back over time, other things that you wish you would’ve done differently? Not necessarily bad or good, but just differently
to question and to answer you. The first one, I was 23 when I had my first child. I always thought, I always joke I’m a, she was born, she was born six months after we got married. Yes. She three months premature and wait, eight and a half pounds could do the math on that one. But, um, my, my first thought was, I’m not old enough to do this. I’m not smart enough to do this. And Luckily there was a, uh, a friend of mine’s dad who was like a father figure. Um, he said something to me that struck me throughout my entire life. He says, we’re all making it up as we go, right? What if you have your first child at 23 or 33 or 53? Uh, you’re still making it up as Shuko. And he pointed out that, you know, the first time the president of the United States, um, walks into that office.
It’s the first time he’s done it, you know, the first time the captain of a ship takes over. It’s the first time he’s been a skipper. So from that standpoint, just trying to enjoy the process learning. I’m not thinking to this, you have to do it perfect, but that you can learn. And that’s one of the things I love today is that we’ve got access to so many people. You know, today if you’re isolated or ignorant, um, you know, it’s by choice so you can always learn how to do something. Um, you know, if you want to be a better father, you know, getting, getting a men’s group, getting a mastermind with people that are going through that. Um, so, so you can surround yourself with those people. And I don’t know, would I have done it differently? Um, I’m sure there’s a lot of things that I would have done differently.
I mean, one of them was in my twenties. I was focused a lot on my career and making money and that was one of those things that I could have done later in my life. Whereas the kids were only young for a brief period of time. But the flip side of that is what I changed that. Heck no, because now I’m, I’m 52 and uh, you know, I’ve got two grandkids. My, my wife always gets mad if I ever say I have two great grandchildren. She’s like the wonderful grandchildren, great grandchildren. But now it’s like, it’s so cool. You know, my, my best day of the week is when they come over to visit and they don’t, they don’t understand my calendar or my schedule, but uh, they understand my priorities
for Mary and I, that’s our biggest fear is that we are, we exposed our kids, all these different places in the world and Mary moved a lot as a kid and, and none of her siblings live close to each other and my fears, my oldest is 10, my youngest is three and I’ve got two in the middle. Is that when we settled someplace, W, W we’ll be back in the states either the next year or the year after that, but within two years for sure is that when my kids get through college, they’re going to go off someplace else and maybe never come back. And then we’re going to perpetuate the cycle in terms of, in terms of Mary’s parents and my mom never seen us, you know, like we see my mom wants to be two years and St Mary’s mom. That’s it. You know, just from the nature of where we live and I think about this, what you just talked about and how impactful and powerful and emotional and important as a grandparent that you get to have these moments with your grandkids. And I can imagine for you how tender it is and awesome it is. And great as you can give them back when you’re done and, and all of that is, it’s got to be such a great, a great gift, if you will.
Yeah. And as far as your fears, will you be perpetuating it? I don’t know. Don’t go either that way or it’ll go just the opposite way. Right? So if, if you’re, if you grow up in an alcoholic family, there’s probably a good chance you’ll be an alcoholic or you’ll be totally opposite and totally against that. So, you know, will your kids grow up and be world travelers or will they, um, you know, just want to stay, say day in one place. I think it will be one of the other. And as far as being isolated, uh, like if the people, you know, that came from Europe to the United States and left their family that was leaving their family, you know, you’ve probably never see him, they’d die and you would, you’d know about it a month later or something like that. But for us now, it’s, it’s funny. Um, uh, the kids face time so much. I’m going, going back and forth and uh, you know, the, uh, the grandkids, uh, oh, we’ll facetime us all the time or they’ve got a couple great grandmothers that they want to talk to, you know, grandma, Pennsylvania and next thing you know, for 10 minutes there’ll be on facetime going through there. So, you know, once again, we live in an amazing time.
So just a couple more questions and I’ll let you run. I know you’ve got things to do. Um, talk to me about. You’re one of these I think is always interesting as I hear these stories again and again, and, and um, you know, Neil, because he’s in your mastermind group. Um, and uh, in fact, Neil Neil, I was with dinner. Sorry, side note. No, no one of my audience is going to get this whatsoever, but, but neil was with me a few weeks back and Paul from website and leads I’m doing, he’s doing some work for me. He, he emailed me and I took a photo of Neil and I at dinner at Depaul. Um, so anyhow, I love Neil. He’s such a great guy taught. So what I’m curious about is, you know, I’ve heard from so many people that a mastermind group has had transformed their thinking and spring boarded their careers. What is the mastermind group done for you?
To me it’s, you know, you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with and if you just spend time with yourself, especially as the digital worker, um, yeah, it can be bad, you know? Um, if you look at it,
solitary confinement is cruel and unusual. That’s what we do to the worst offenders to punish them. And in some places it’s against the law, right? But yet, so often we do it to ourselves, right? I’ve got to stay in my cubicle and work hard. I’ve got to stay in my office and work hard and it doesn’t give you a perspective. And so like Neil, I love him and I actually got to meet him a couple a couple years ago. I mean, I’ve got friends that I have never met in real life. I mean, James, when we meet, it’s going to be weird because I’m like, I didn’t think it was that, that height even talking to you. It’s weird because when I listened to you on the podcast is always a one and a half times. So I think exposing people to different ideas. Um, it’s weird because it sort of goes back to what I saw in the military, right?
Because when I grew up in the midwest, everybody thought like every body else around there, there wasn’t a lot of diversity and that’s why we had accents back there. And even accents are starting to go away now. But once you get into like a mastermind and you know, I’ll, I’ll put up a problem or something like that. Well, I’ll niels, niels half my age. So he sees it from a different viewpoint. He also doesn’t see it from the American viewpoint, so he’s got a different way of looking at that. So to me it’s perspective, right? Because the, the only thing that all of us are lacking is perspective when none of us know our blind spots. So being around people like that and when Neil says, Hey, I’ve, I’ve had this challenge, and I’m like, Huh, he was the first one to put words to it.
But I have that challenge too. Or sometimes they’ll ask like, like you just did about I’m raising kids now. That causes me to think, um, and while I might have the answer, it reminds me of what the answer is and I might take that and now say, wow, I am so glad James asked that question because that’s important for how I deal with my kids now, or how I deal with my grandkids. I’m one of the things that, that struck me early on in life and, uh, goes back to sort of that navy experience I had was when we grew up, my dad was a, grew up near, um, near Wrigley there. And uh, he moved his family out to the suburbs, right? And we had this small lot but he wanted to put fruit trees on it. So I think he got like one of every fruit tree, you know, an apple tree and orange or north street, but plum tree, whatever.
And they never, uh, uh, had fruit on it. And after a couple of years, one of the neighbors who was a farmer coast, you got to have cross pollination. You’ve got to have other trees like that around here. So thank God he bought some the next year we all had a fruit from the trees. And I think it’s, you know, James, this same things in life really is that to bear fruit in your life, you have to be exposed to new ideas. And that could be from, from reading, from traveling, from, um, experienced different people. I think one of the, um, one of the real curses at, as these niches, you know, is that now it’s available for me to only listen to the podcasts of people that think like me and new stations that agree with me. And that’s one of the things, like all of our clients, I listened to the first podcast interview just to give him a feedback and I love those because the other day I, I listened to the adoption now podcast, you know, I never would have listened to that otherwise, but you know, to find out that you can adopt embryos, you know, uh, that have been leftover from like ivf.
I’m like, that is such a cool idea. But, uh, so that cross pollination and I think that’s what, to me, the mastermind does, you know, it’s that forced crosspollination. That’s awesome. Speaking of your mastermind, I know that you have a book just quickly because there’s a wrapping this up work my audience, I don’t know if you’re still producing or distributing that book, but actually good. I’ve actually got two books. I’m a podcast guest profits, how to grow your business with targeted podcast interviews. Here’s my first one. And then Aaron Walker and I who’s A. I’m a partner with him at view from the top. Um, we wrote a book together called the mastermind blueprint, which talks about how we set up the mastermind. We have so many people asking us about it, um, that we put that together. Where can I get my audience, get those?
Um, I was going to say, um, there are available on Amazon and we’re fine. Fine books are sold, but not tell you what, if I give away more of these books, if you want a digital copy, I’m happy to give you a copy of that. You know, James, I’ll, I’ll put together a page just for your listeners. Interview Valet Dot com, forward slash after hours. Um, everything that James and I talked about there. Um, I’ll put the books there. I’ve got a checklist that I use before all my podcast interviews. And then there’s also an infographic that a lot of people ask for, which is, you know, six secrets to getting booked on your first podcast. Awesome. So, final question, and then if you listened to my podcast or had any of your clients who come on my podcast, you may know this, Tom, for where you’re at, what you do and who you are, how do you define happiness? To me, happiness is like success and it’s the, the gradual and ongoing, um, achievement of a worthwhile goal. And I got that from Dan Miller. Uh, you know, if I’m always moving forward, uh, to what I want in life, um, that’s happiness to me. Happiness is the path. Getting there, not once you get there.
What time of swag and so known for bastardizing. Hey, you got top Tom Schwab, the founder of interview Valet. Thank you for your time, your energy and your willingness to sit down with the executives after. Thank you James. I can’t wait till we get to sit down in real life someplace. Yeah. This summer I’m driving from Philadelphia to, through San Francisco up to Seattle with my four kids and my wife. I’m trying to do a book tour slash podcast tour slash radio tour slash TV tour all at the same time. So yeah, so we’re absolutely. All right. Thanks Tom.
