Looking for a quick, inexpensive and effective way to build thought leadership while promoting a personal or corporate brand?

In this week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Interview Valet CMO Dan Moyle explains why participating in podcast guest interviews is an impactful strategy for expanding brand awareness and shares the process Interview Valet uses to book interviews and ensure their clients are fully prepared to ace their guest appearances.

Listen to the podcast to learn why podcast guest interviews are a winning inbound marketing strategy, what goes into Interview Valet's strategy, and how Dan's clients are realizing ROI of 1000%+.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth and I am your host , and  this week my guest is Dan Moyle, the Chief Marketing Officer of Interview Valet. Welcome, Dan!

Dan: Thank you Kathleen, it's a pleasure. I'm happy to be here.

Kathleen: Yeah! It's great having you. We've talked and you've put me in touch with some amazing podcast guests so I'm interested to talk to you and get a peek behind the curtain of what you do with Interview Valet. Before we dig in too deep, though, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and about the company?

Dan: Sure. So Dan's my name, obviously. I'm a marketing geek, but outside of that, professionally, and just doing it out of passion, too. I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a biker. I have my Harley that I love to ride when it's nice out, and I'm waiting for that right now. Let's see, I love to read and educate myself. I just recently started a reading program, and every morning I'm up early to educate myself and develop myself.

I'm a podcast host myself. I love listening to podcasts. I've been doing marketing for a number of years now, maybe 10 years or so, something like that. Started off in the TV news business and moved into marketing and did some amazingly fun inbound marketing.

So yeah, it's been quite a ride. And now I'm working with Interview Valet, and, basically, we work with clients -- inspiring thought leaders, we call them, so, coaches, consultants, authors, brands, emerging brands, SaaS companies -- to get them to a new audience. You know, it used to be you could guest blog and reach a new audience and get great SEO and that kind of thing. Well guest blogging has become a very crowded marketplace, but it still works for a lot of folks. Now, instead of trying to interrupt or shout above the noise, we have helped our clients become part of the conversation with an engaged audience through podcasts.

So we get them podcast interviews that are relevant and engaging and bring them value.

Kathleen: You said your client base is inspiring-thought leaders, so if somebody is listening to this, how might they know if they're a good candidate to become a client of Interview Valet?

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. We look at somebody who has a budget to invest in their advertising and marketing promotion, so it's not just "I wanna get on podcasts." Right? You can go do that yourself and get on a bunch of-- at least a few shows anyway. But we want to make sure they have the budget and the means to invest in themselves, to get ROI. That's one of the things.

Authors are great connections for us and great clients for us, so doing a book launch with them has been awesome. We've worked with Morgan James and Simon and Schuster for some of that. With that said, it's generally gonna be non-fiction books, so somebody who's written a book about business or sales or marketing or leadership or something like that -- and they often will have something else besides the book, right? A consulting business or reaching a new audience for speaking gigs, that kind of thing.

So, if you wrote a book and you just want to sell it, podcast interviews may not be the best way to go. However, if you have other things in that whole machine behind the scenes, that's very good. And then for us, it's working with people in, basically, three areas. We work with anything to do with business, that could be sales, marketing, leadership, development, coaching, real estate investing or financial stuff. One of our clients is a CPA, so it runs the gamut as far as business goes.

The other one is health, wellness, and nutrition. So, fitness coaches that have online courses -- that kind of thing. And the other one is faith and Christianity, and we have a lot of connections to faith-based podcasts. So we help with that as well. So that's kind of our world.

Kathleen: It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that your best clients are really individuals interested in building their personal brand and being a guest on a podcast is one way to do it as opposed to individuals interested in promoting a corporate brand.

Dan: Well, that's a big part of what we do, but we also will sign on some great companies that want to promote their brand through their people. So if it's only a brand, probably not. But if it's your brand through people... For instance, one of our clients is a software as a service company that helps people with their social media advertising. Two of the co-founders are our actual clients so they talk about their company, they talk about their story as co-founders and one as the marketing person and one as the business set-up person. Not set-up, but the kind of nuts and bolts of it all, right? So, like that.

We work with HubSpot as one of our clients. We've worked with a couple of different executives to get out there or their different personalities to get out there for the brand and for themselves.

You're right Kathleen, it's not just the brand, but it's somebody within that brand. 

Kathleen: And fair to say that that somebody within the brand needs to be someone who's really passionate about and dedicated to content creation?

Dan: Absolutely, yeah. The nice thing about podcast interviews is that you are creating content as you're just talking. Like, we're just having coffee talking, right? You're creating that content, but you definitely have to be passionate about it. It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes a knowledge base to be able to comfortably talk with podcasters around the world.

Kathleen: So, as you said earlier, anybody can go be a guest on a podcast. And certainly there are people who hustle and get out there and make the contact. I feel like, from the little exposure that I've had to Interview Valet, I was able to immediately see you have a much more structured process around this.

Talk to me a little bit about the process that you all use for positioning your clients and doing outreach and securing these interviews. And there is even a process around how you follow up on the interviews you secure.

Dan: The success is in our systems, right? And relationships. It's not just a system, it's relationships, but the systems are huge for us. If I want to go out and just be on a bunch of podcasts, I'd have to go search for the right kinds on my own . And so often, I don't know who my audiences is, so we work with our clients to figure that out. Me as an individual, I could just try and go research a bunch of shows, but I'll tell you what, Kathleen, there's over 400,000 podcasts on Apple podcasts alone. So, good luck with that.

And how do you figure out what kinds of terms and keywords and that kind of stuff? They have some of that, but not everything's great. How are the numbers? Do they have a good audience? So all that research -- we have those systems in place, we have a team -- we call them podcast porters -- and they have those relationships. And those porters are the ones who research shows, who know them, who have that relationship. The system's in place to find them and then that relationship is built on people.

You don't talk to a dozen people at our company, Kathleen. You had one person, probably, that  reached out to you and said "I've got a few guests, how do these look?" so that you're not being inundated with a bunch of stuff from our company. So, those systems are in place to be able to find those podcasts.

And then outreach... I mean, gosh. Our State of Podcast Interviews report recently found that the more downloads a show has or the bigger the audience, the much less likely they are to take a cold pitch. So me as an author, Dan as an author, if I want to go try and pitch myself to a show and they get a lot of downloads -- if they've never heard of me, they're not even going to take my pitch. But if they've heard of that agency that they trust, now all of a sudden it's got more weight and it's not a cold pitch anymore, it's a warm introduction.

So those processes and systems are in place for us and, you know, it's things like regular email. We use a little bit of automation, we love automation, but in this age of automation, the relationship is so important. We do outreach very organically, using things like videos. You know, Loom video in an email goes so much further than just a bunch of text. The one-sheets that we created for our clients are all very consistent in their quality, and so it's not just some person on MS Paint with a Word doc. This looks good.

Kathleen: So talk for a second about those one-sheets because that was one of the first things I noticed when you all reached out to me. I should clarify, Interview Valet reached out to me not to book Dan, so he's here because I actually chased him down and said "You need to come on my podcast!"

It was about somebody else, about a client of theirs and that was part of what reminded me I needed to contact you. But you had a really nice, as you call it, a one-sheet, which is sort of like a prospective on the potential guest. So can you describe that a little bit and maybe we can put a link to an example of one in the show notes?

Click here to see an example of an Interview Valet One Sheet

Dan: Oh, sure! Yeah, absolutely. So a one-sheet has two functions. Number one, it gets the hosts' attention or the producer of the show (some shows are big enough to have producers or a gatekeeper of some kind). It gets their attention. It has to look good and be consistent. You know, our branding is very consistent, so as they get used to seeing those, it's easy to just glance at it and go "Okay, I know who this is."

Kathleen: I wish that listeners could actually see what I'm seeing right now. So Dan was saying his brand is consistent, and we're recording this on Zoom. I use the audio but I get to see Dan when we talk. The colors of Interview Valet are black and red. And I know this because he's sitting there in a pullover that is black and red that has "Interview Valet" embroidered on it in red and white. And he has his mic with the red cover and then the sleeve that he has over his mic that says "Inbound Evangelist Dan Moyle" and it's all black and red. It's all on-brand. So he is walking the walk.

Dan: We do. We try to, anyway.

Kathleen: Great! I think it's great!

Dan: We learn from the best, with IMPACT and HubSpot and all those guys. There's so many great marketers out there doing it that we just try to learn from the best.

So these one-sheets are ready to get your attention as a host. They're going to have the headshot on there of the client so you can see them. We like to see people, right? It has their name, obviously, and a tagline of some kind. So on mine, it's "Dan Moyle, an inbound evangelist." And then there's a key-focus of some kind. You know, "empowering business leaders to be better or whatever that might be." And then there's the bio, and we try to keep it concise. I try not to have a ton of paragraphs and a ton of words because we know, everybody is busy and you've seen the same bio again and again. So we try to make it a little bit unique compared to the every other bio that that client might have.

We'll try and keep it concise and then there's typically a suggested show intro, you know maybe one paragraph, maybe two at the most. Because again we know that show hosts are very busy and if we can give you the tools to create your own intro from what we have, or if you wanna read ours that's fine. We try to make it as easy as possible, so all of that adds up to a "yes," right? The other function of that one-sheet is to help fuel the conversation, right? So the suggested interview topics. These are the things that the client -- the certified guest that were offering up -- is very versed in. It's their talking points basically. So as the host sees it, hopefully they say "Oh yeah, these are great headline looking subjects, I'm very curious. I want this for my audience." And then it helps fuel that conversation during that interview of, "So tell me more about this ... you know, tips to be a great guest, Dan." That's my one-sheet.

All that adds up to be this professional looking document that we create for our clients -- to help a host say yes and then have a great conversation.

Kathleen: Now I feel like I have to ask you about your tips to be a great guest.

Dan: Yeah, gosh. You know-

Kathleen: Is that something that you ... do you actually coach your clients on that?

Dan: We do. When a client comes on, we have what we call a kick off call, and I take off the CMO hat and put on the onboarding coordinator hat, and I talk them through all this. We coach them on how to promote the show afterwards, how to be a great guest. We send them  a welcome package that has a professional microphone. You mentioned my mic and everything here. This is what we send them, we send them a microphone, an Audiotechnic ATR 2100 professional mic, so that they really sound good. Being a guest -- being a great guest  -- means that you sound good, you have a solid internet connection, you're not doing it on a phone, in a tunnel. We coach them through all of that. Of course we're always in the process of improving, right? So right now, I'm improving the process of all that and I'm creating video training that walks them through each one of these steps. "Here's some tips on how to be a great guest, here's how to set up your microphone, here's how to help us with the one-sheet." All these kinds of things.

We do that on the kick off call. So yes, we coach them through that and that's why we call our clients "certified guests," because they've gone through that coaching and we try to go back and listen to their shows as often as we can and if we have constructive feedback to give them, we will. They want that, so we try to help them improve all the time.

Kathleen: It's amazing how much the little things make a difference on podcasts. Because as somebody who has a lot of guests come on -- and some are clearly more experienced than others -- I found myself putting together an email that I send out in advance. I don't think I sent it to you because I knew that you would know all of this. I have to cover things like, please don't rustle papers on your desk as we're talking because I don't think people realize how much their microphones pick up on and all of the sudden ... you know, I should do it right now, just as a ... here, I'll do it. Like that sound, or if I started to type, you know ... it's only pounding but people don't realize it and so sending that guidance out and letting people know in advance to not, you know, leave the ringer on their cell phone.

It all sounds really obvious but it's kind of like when you go to the movies and they have to tell it to you before every movie. You still have to tell it to people beforehand, so it is great that you guys are covering that and preparing your guests.

Dan: Some of that feedback came back from our survey that we did. it's things ... like you said Kathleen, well no kidding, common sense right? But we don't think about it.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Dan: When I launched the podcast and starting recording interviews, I would take notes thinking I'm going to be a great interviewer, I'm going to take notes. As I'm typing, it's super loud. I had to stop that very quickly.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Dan: You call them little things but they're big things.

Kathleen: They are, they're big things. Even the click of a mouse, I remember one of the first podcasts I did and I ... I was like what is that sound? What is that sound that keeps happening? It was my mouse clicking.

Dan: Same.

Kathleen: So you learn those lessons very quickly.

Dan: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Kathleen: Well I want to turn to the most important thing, which is how does being a guest on podcasts get you better inbound results? Beause that's really what this podcast is about. It's about, you know, improving the results you're getting from your inbound marketing campaigns. So you must have plenty of stories -- whether they're anecdotal or actual data -- that you can cite about the impact that being a guest has had on either yourself or your company or your clients.

Dan: Absolutely. So the nice thing is, when you talk about inbound marketing there's ... of course there's all the official definitions, one from HubSpot, some from others or whatever. But really what it comes down to is drawing ideal customers to you with your concept. Right? Doing it through content and everything else, but drawing them to you means becoming part of that conversation. So being on a podcast and being in that conversation -- being a thought leader -- is step one.

Having listeners is great but that's like views on a website. it's a vanity metric. You can't have conversions without views but only views is the same thing as listeners. It's only a vanity thing. We like to turn them into leads by coaching our certified guests on sending them back to your website. As you're talking to someone and you're giving those tips, and the host says "Well that's really great, you know where can we learn more about that?" Well, go back to my website and learn more.

Heres the thing, heres the magic sauce. Pull back the curtain a little bit ... it's not just go to the home page, right? We send people back to what we call a welcome page. The listeners hear it on the podcast and then they see it in the show notes, for those who go to the show notes. It's a link which creates that SEO link and sends value back to your website as the certified guest, right?

It all works together. It's "mywesbsite.com/thispodcast" is the structure -- very simple. So like even, even for us on your show Kathleen, I've got InterviewValet.com/inboundsuccess.

Kathleen: I was going to say, you better have a link, right?

Dan: I do.

So Inbound Success listeners can go download a tip on how to be a great guest, right? They can connect with me on social media, they can read a little more about me and get to know me and they'll see your show's artwork so that they begin to go "Okay, yeah. Dan was on Kathleen's show, I do remember that. This is really cool, Kathleen obviously had him on there so now I trust Dan." Right? If your listeners know, like and trust you, they're going to get to at least know me and hopefully trust me from that.

So we send them back through that welcome page  -- you know in digital marketing we often use the term landing page. I think of a landing page as a page with a form, and no navigation. I have to take that one single action.

We like to tell our certified guests that listeners are at different points in their path with you after listening to you on that podcast. They might kind of like you, so they're willing to take a small action. So we have a CTA on that page, that's a small action -- very little barrier to entry. Maybe it's an infographic with no email gate.

Then there's a medium yes, and for some people that might be buy the book. If I'm a sales evangelist type author, maybe they have my sales evangelist book on there and you can buy the book. Twelve bucks on amazon is a pretty low barrier to entry, but it's still something. Or maybe it's a video, a free video tutorial that you have to give me your email for, and you watch my videos.

Now I'm hearing you on podcasts, and I'm seeing you on video ... now we've got a relationship. Then the heck yes, is the "buy now" button basically. So for a consultant that might be "book time on my calendar," for a speaker it might be "have a discovery call to see if I'm right for your event." Whatever that might be, it's the "heck yes," the big yes.

So that's the inbound part of it, is getting those listeners to go back to that website. It should always be very easy, if I've got a very complicated name ... you know Schwarzenegger or something? We all know Arnold, right? If you have a hard to spell name, make that URL as simple as you can, and then the slug afterwards as simple as you can. If you have a long show name, were gonna make that a concise, you know, slug as it were.

That's really important to us, too. That's kind of the inbound side of it.

Kathleen: So you've got these welcome pages and obviously people will be able to see an example of that when they, if they check out the show notes and click though on yours. What kinds of results in terms of conversions -- well traffic and conversions -- do you see on those?

Dan: Conversions are awesome. We've seen them as high as 75, 80%

Kathleen: Wow.

Dan: Yeah, it's incredible. Way back in my mortgage marketing days, I was happy with my landing pages getting a 40% conversion rate.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Dan: That was unbelievable. 20% was like, "Okay, we're good." These are converting at 50% and above for the most part. Now, traffic -- that's the other side of it. How often is the host putting the actual welcome page link in their show notes? That all depends, obviously, on their audience, right? We've found conversions to be incredible.

I want to tell you one of my favorite client stories. Craig Cody is a CPA, and he lives in New York and he wanted to expand his reach beyond just his borough in New York. I don't know if he's in Manhattan, Brooklyn, where he is exactly. But he's in a borough in New York and he was doing pretty well. He wanted to help other companies and other people expand their reach -- entrepreneurs, expand their portfolio as it were.

So he decided to do podcast interviews. When working with us, it's 12 interviews minimum and we suggest two interviews a month, minimum. And it's going to be $700 a month.

Kathleen: I was just going to ask about pricing, so you've already answered my question on that.

Dan: Yeah. So pretty plain pricing, and of course that includes everything that we just discussed, right? There's no upsell, there's no premium, there's no ... we will do all this for you. We will help you with getting promotion, we do all the prospecting, all the follow up, I mean all these things.

Kathleen: So am I right that that comes out to about $350 an interview?

Dan: Yep.

Kathleen: That's really reasonable, I mean if you were trying to get interviews yourself and you've factored in the time value of money, you've probably spent that anyway.

Dan: Oh at least, yeah.

So Craig decided that this was going to work for him, so he goes out and he starts getting interviews. $350 per interview isn't cheap, but it's reasonable depending on what you're doing right? It's not just twenty bucks a pop, right? So he goes out and he finds the value of a new customer for him, whatever that is ... he figured out that in the first nine months of working with us, he had a 600% ROI. So whatever he spent with us, he made back six times. 

Kathleen: That's great.

Dan: Incredible. Well then, after working with us for 18 months, that 600% became 1200%. Part of that is because of the evergreen nature of podcasts right? I mean, if I'm listening to this podcast six months from now, all of a sudden I hear, you know, the value ... and I go back to the show notes and I come back. Now all of a sudden, I've got returning people which is awesome. So Craig found that and after 18 months it was like 1200% ROI.

Just incredible. He's growing his brand well beyond just his area as a CPA. He's consulting companies around the country. That return value for his clients is huge.

Kathleen: I imagine that's like the gift that keeps on giving. Because it's a little bit like when you discover a great new series on Netflix, and you're coming in on season three, but you can go back and binge seasons one and two. I think a lot of people do the same thing with podcasts. I know I certainly do. I just started binging a new one this past week, and so you're absolutely right. The actual episodes may have been recorded awhile ago, but for those people just discovering the podcast ... they're just hearing it. There's certainly a lot of evergreen value there.

That's really interesting. Do you find that once your guests have worked with you for a little while it starts to snow ball and they begin to get asked to come on podcasts, you know, on their own? Is there a graduation phenomenon if you will?

Dan: It's funny you say the word snowball because first of all, it snowed this morning here where I'm at in Michigan. But secondly, I just actually wrote this idea for our team about how every interview is a snowflake that adds to a blizzard of awareness that you create. So it's funny that use that -- it's like you were in my head there.

Kathleen: ... and then it turns into an avalanche.

Dan: Yes.

It does. it's funny because as you build your brand you do get invited on other podcasts. You know, the podcasting world, as big as it is, it's a small world. So as people are listening to it, or as a host of my own show I listen to other podcasts and I say "Oh, that's a great guest, I'm going to go call them or email them." Or whatever it is "Or tweet at them, and invite them." And so that definitely happens out there. We have clients that have been doing this for three or four years with us now, and they've stuck around. That's great, and we'll keep doing it and we'll keep going forward because they know that we help them manage those invitations, too right? We've got a guy named Aaron Walker, who wrote a book View From the Top. He's a big business coach and he's a big speaker, he's got a huge business he runs, and masterminds and stuff.

We run his podcast interviews because he doesn't have the time to even answer, "yes this is a good podcast" or not. We could say "Yep, we'll schedule him. Here ya go." And then we'll get him the brief sheet that helps prepare him for the interview, we'll get his one-sheet over to the host, as you've seen ... all that stuff that we do, we do for him. So he stuck around. We have other guests that come on and they'll do 12 or maybe 24 interviews with us, and do it for one year, and they'll say "Okay. I think I'm feeling pretty good." And they'll move on. Okay great, no problem.

We've taught them how to be a great guest and the value of interview marketing, as a tool. So the bigger we can create that category and make great guests out there, the more we all win. We love that part of it.

Kathleen: Yeah. I think if the ROIs there it's a no brainer.

Dan: Oh yeah.

Kathleen: Even the cost itself is very reasonable ... just before you consider ROI. So what I'm dying to ask you, is what are some of the gets that you've gotten most excited about -- like, the show placements. Are there some where you were like "We just got so and so on this podcast, you're not gonna believe it"?

Dan: Yeah. We've worked with some amazing shows. We've been able to place guests on the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. Of course some of that is the guests themselves, right? If you're on HBR it's because you've either been published by HBR or you went to Harvard or something like that. Because we had that connection, that was awesome.

We had a guest placed on Lewis Howes, which is a pretty big up and coming show. We work regularly with the Ziglar Show, the Zig Ziglar brand. Kevin Miller, the host of that, is a big fan of ours and we place guests on there. We work with some great shows.

It's funny because we really aim to work in the top 20% of all shows when it comes to audience. So the biggest shows out there, the Joe Rogans of the world, the Gary Vee's of the world, that's like the top .1% Right? And it's gonna take a PR agency, $35,000 just to even have a meeting with them. They only have 50 slots in a year. They're a weekly show and they have fifty guests, right? They're bringing on former first ladies or whatever, like you know, "good luck."

But we work with the top 20% and we work quite often with the top 5% of shows. Some of them are some of our favorite people. A finance show that we work with, Stacking Benjamins, Joe Saul-Sehy.

Kathleen: What a great name.

Dan: Right? It's a great show, and it's got a huge audience. Craig Cody that I mentioned, he was a guest on their show twice. So there have been some great guests, and it's funny when you try and name drop some people. If you're not a regular podcast listener, some of them you may not know. Or if you are, but you only listen to business shows, Stacking Benjamins may mean nothing to you, and that's okay.

Kathleen: Right.

Dan: Or you know, if you're in the health and wellness area, you may not have never even heard of Zig, let alone the Ziglar show. So you know, it's all perspective right? They're big in that world.

Kathleen: It's all about who their audience is really, because that's what matters the most.

Dan: Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Kathleen: So what tips do you have for somebody listening who is interested in building their personal brand, and may be considering this as an option?

Dan: Absolutely. I think podcast interviews are absolutely amazing and powerful, so for anybody even thinking about it, I'd say do it. Just do it. One of the first things is to get a professional microphone and use your laptop on a wired internet connection. Don't think of podcast interviews as "I can just plug in my air pods, or plug in my earbuds or whatever to my phone, and that'll be good, right?"

It'll work, but honestly having quality conversations is so much better. So that's number one. Get a microphone and the Audiotechnica ATR2100 I think is around $60, maybe. So it's not a big barrier to entry. The other thing is, figure out who your audience really is. You want to build your personal brand. Who is that brand going to matter to? Who is your ideal customer, your ideal listener, who do you want to work with?

Go find the shows that you think they're listening to, right? If you have a big value to millennial entrepreneurs, who are they listening to? You know, find those kinds of shows and then follow them on social media, leave them a review in Apple podcasts, and get to know them, pitch them. Right? Reach out to who you think is in charge of that show, and you can get that through the host, you know is one of the gate keepers. If they're a big show, they might have a producer, or a scheduler. That's a big one.

If you can afford it, go to one of the amazing conferences out there that focuses on podcasters. Pod Fest in Orlando, Florida is awesome. Podcast Movement, that moves around the country, they were in Philadelphia this year, a great conference ... you can meet podcasters and get to know them, that kinda thing. Obviously you don't want to walk in just trying to pitch yourself with the guests. Going to meet people is awesome. Those are a couple of tips.

Then finally, be a great guest. Right? Be prepared, be on time. Know your story, don't be too salesy, know the lingo of the audience. Know the host name, and use it. All those kinds of tips, just be a great guest.

Kathleen: Yeah. That's great advice. If somebody was interested in working with Interview Valet, what's the best way for them to reach out and contact you all?

Dan: I mean, I'd say listeners ought to go to InterviewValet.com/InboundSuccess and download the tips to be a great guest, there's nine of them I've got prepared. They can read a little bit from our blog or whatever there and figure that out, and if they're interested, there's a very easy connection right there. They can get on my calendar and talk about it, they can just go to one of our many different ways of contacting us and learning more about us there, and visit it with us if they want to.

Kathleen: Great. I want to ask you the two questions I ask all of my guests.

First of all, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?

Dan: There's so many amazing people that I follow and that I'm fortunate enough to be friends with, and acquainted to, it's hard to pick just one. I think my current obsession though is George B. Thomas. George is such a good dude. Such a heart to serve others and I love what he's doing with teaching people how to do video, and bringing people to him and his story. I think he does marketing amazingly well. That guy's just got a good heart.

Kathleen: Second question. You're somebody whose been in marketing -- particularly inbound marketing -- for awhile. It's a field that is changing all the time, as any aspect of digital marketing is. How do you stay up to date, how do you stay on the cutting edge, what are your favorite ways to educate yourself?

Dan: I love listening to podcasts. Listening to shows like Inbound Success, listening to other podcasts out there that talk about it, and have thought leaders ... that's huge. I listen to podcasts on 1.5 speed, so I can listen to more. When something catches my attention -- like I really want to go back -- I can always go back and listen to it again, or whatever. Obviously reading is huge. In fact I set my alarm for about an hour and a half earlier every morning to get up and have some me time to read specifically professional development books. I just, I know that that's important. As the weather the warms up ... I'm in Michigan, so as we get out of winter eventually here, I want to be able to go on morning walks and listen to audio books.

So those are a couple of my things. And then ... I mean the other thing, just think of ... you can't think of only one person as an ideal audience, right? But I think about me, as a consumer. What do I wanna ... how do I wanna take in information? How do I wanna find a new company? How am I turned off by promotional marketing or advertising? I just keep trying to stay ahead of that curve, right? If I get annoyed with Facebook feed interruptions, is everybody? I don't know, maybe. Then I go look at that data from ... to support that obviously.

I just think of my ideal customers and how would I want to interact with them if the tables were turned. I'd like to think that keeps me on the edge a little bit, 'cause I'm trying to not be annoying as a marketer. I don't wanna ruin everything like marketers like to do. So podcasts, setting aside time everyday to bring purposely and deliberately prove yourself through books and podcasts, I think is huge.

Kathleen: What are some of your favorite books and podcasts right now?

Dan: Let's see, my favorite books ... I love reading anything from Scott Stratten, Unbranding was his newest one. I go back to Unmarketing sometimes. One of my favorites is Marcus Sheridan. I love They Ask You Answer. I want to go read From Good To Great. That's come up in conversation a couple times recently. I haven't read it. That's part of my new push to read new books. That's gonna be my next one. One of my favorites isn't necessarily a marketing book but it was life changing, The 12 Week Year. That was huge for me, and I think of my life now in 12 week years, rather than just quarters. it's a whole different mind shift. So The 12 Week Year is a big one. Those are my favorite books. Podcasts is hard, there's so many Kathleen-

Kathleen: You can't pick, that's like picking favorite children for you.

Dan: Right.

Kathleen: You're not ... even if have one, you're not allowed to say it, right?

Dan: Right.

And I go back and forth -- I mean you do this -- I'll listen to one, you said binge right?

Kathleen: Yeah.

Dan: I'll go listen to one and it'll be great, and then I'll find a new one, not that the other one's bad but I'll kinda forget about it. I don't have enough time in the day. Even at 1.5 speed, I bounce back and forth between shows. I'll listen to a few, then I'll come back to a different one, and I'll go back ... there's just too many.

Kathleen: I'm the same way. I too, listen to them when I'm walking or working out or ... my other favorite places to listen to podcasts are grocery shopping and vacuuming.

Dan: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kathleen: I tend to have two or three at once that I'm really focused on, but probably ten to fifteen in my total list that I bounce amongst. There you have it.

All right, well Dan, thank you for sharing all of this with us, that was really interesting. Anybody who is interested in doing more podcast guest interviews should definitely check out Interview Valet, there's some really great resources there. If you're a podcaster, there's some really great guests that you can get through Interview Valet. So I will put those links in my show notes, but if you enjoyed what you heard this week, I would appreciate if you consider giving us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or the platform of your choice. Of course if you know someone doing kick ass inbound marketing work, please tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to interview them.

That's it for this week. Thanks for joining me, Dan.

Dan: It was an absolute pleasure, Kathleen. Thank you so much, it was an honor to be on your show.

Kathleen: Thanks.