The Conversation Economy: Scaling Trust with Tom Schwab

In this deep-dive episode of the Franchise Freedom Podcast, host Giuseppe Grammatico sits down with the "Godfather of Podcast Interview Marketing," Tom Schwab. Together, they explore why traditional funnels are dying, how AI is revolutionizing SEO for franchise business consultants, and why your personal brand is your greatest asset in 2025. 

Whether you are a corporate executive looking to escape the rat race or a business owner looking to scale, this conversation is packed with actionable insights on the "Conversation Economy." 

Choose the right path at https://ggthefranchiseguide.com. 

About the Guest: Tom Schwab knows the best things in life come through conversations, not funnels.
Special Gift for Listeners: Tom has curated a specific set of resources just for the Franchise Freedom audience. Access them here: https://interviewvalet.com/franchisefreedom/

DISCLAIMER: The information on this site is for general information purposes only. Franchising involves risk and careful consideration should be given before making any decisions.


01:23 Introduction and Welcome
01:48 Guest Introduction: Tom Schwab
02:32 The Power of Conversations in Business
02:45 The Conversation Economy: Why Funnels are Failing
04:11 Evolution of Podcasting
04:25 AI & SEO: Why ChatGPT Loves Your Voice
04:32 Host vs. Guest: Which Path to Franchise Fame?
07:10 Guesting vs. Hosting: Which is Right for You?
12:18 Podcast Interview Marketing
14:08 The Introvert's Advantage in Podcast Marketing
20:39 AI in Podcasting
20:48 The 24/7 Expert: Cloning Your Conversation with AI
27:43 Final Thoughts and Farewell

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Transcript

Tom Schwab: 0:00

There are people right now that are doing podcasts and podcasts interviews just so they can get indexed and recommended by AI. AI loves human content, that's why they're indexing all of the podcast interviews. So we've had clients before that worked with an SEO firm that said, oh, you'll never rank for that. And they did podcast interviews and guess what? They rank for it now. Marketing that doesn't provide results is called arts and crafts, right? And nobody wants to be a podcast guest, that's a hobby. This is the first podcast that I'm talking about. We've been training it all December, and I've always said, do more with your interviews. Don't just do more interviews and saying you're always one conversation away. So one of our clients actually introduced us to a platform where I could take all of my interviews, over 500 interviews, put those in there. I put my book, all my webinars and came up with a AI clone of myself and it now. 24 7. You can go there, you can chat with it, typing answers back and forth. Or what's really neat is you can click call. Call Tom's clone and you can have a conversation with me.

1:10

Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe gr, the franchise guide.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 1:23

Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your franchise guide, the show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom. Thanks for joining us today. We have a very exciting episode. Uh, you've been listening to me for a while. We've had a lot of solo episodes here in 2025. But in the beginning of the year I asked for your feedback, you said you wanted more guests. I said, well, you know what who's gonna be on top of that list? And Tom Schwab from Interview Valet was on top of that list. So Tom wanted to, uh, welcome you to the show.

Tom Schwab: 1:50

Giuseppe. I am thrilled to be here. I love these conversations and this is, you know, the same kind of conversation we we'd be having if we sat down over a cup of coffee and people get to listen in.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 2:00

Absolutely. We've known each other for a while and, podcasting is how I kind of cut my teeth in, into this business to learn about content creation. Before video was involved, it was just, uh, audio when I had first started. You're my go-to when it comes to podcasting and guesting and things like that. The joke prior to us recording was if anyone has any questions on podcasting, I'm just gonna send them this episode and make my life a lot easier. All joking aside, uh, I appreciate you joining. I know, uh, you got a lot going on there, but, uh, before we dive in, uh, give the audience a little context of who Tom is and how did you get into podcast guesting.

Tom Schwab: 2:32

You know, it's one of those things where it's an evolution, not a revolution, right? And I believe that we're all one conversation away. I am an engineer by degree. I went back to school and, uh, got my MBA in marketing. I understand all the marketing speak, but I also understand as a human, as an entrepreneur, right? The best things in my life didn't come through a funnel. They came through a conversation, right? The best clients, the best employees, heck, my wife, right? My bride came from a conversation. It's not like I had this perfect Facebook campaign and a marketing funnel, and I think we have forgotten that. The importance of conversations, especially when it's a high ticket, high relationship, high service business, right? You can buy a product. You can compare the spec sheets. But for most of us, when you're working with a franchise advisor, you're betting on the jockey, right? I trust Giuseppe to bring me the best opportunities there. While I'm a big fan of automation, we're entering the conversation economy where conversations are more powerful than ever.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 3:35

I cannot agree more. This idea of human to human marketing, which never really went away. But to your point, with the automations, with AI now, I mean, now it's like, am I talking with a person or is it, is it an AI chat? Which is also fine, depending on the information that's needed.'Cause I also utilize AI in, in our business as well. But the big part is I think people just lost that connection. And to your point one great practice is you look at the deals or the accounts over the years, and you look at where they came from. How many are actually coming cold from a funnel? Usually it was a conversation, a referral and we're talking more and more about this, but to your point, we've moved away from it. So podcasting, right? There's lots of different ways, uh, BNI and the Chamber of Commerce, and there's so many different ways of networking and getting to meet others. Why are you so excited about podcasting? Because that's something I got involved at about six years ago.

Tom Schwab: 4:24

Yeah, and when we got in it six years ago, podcasting meant a totally different thing.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 4:29

Yes. Right.

Tom Schwab: 4:29

At that time, podcasting was audio only. You ask most people that listen to a podcast today. What's the"pod" mean in podcast? They have a no idea that it was from an iPod, right?

Giuseppe Grammatico: 4:41

I didn't know that.

Tom Schwab: 4:42

That's where it came from. With an iPod broadcast and it's this idea of used to have to plug it in and download it. Today, podcasting is more on demand media, right? So what is a podcast? Well. If somebody's listening to this, it's a podcast. If somebody's watching this, it's a podcast. If somebody catches a a 62nd clip or 92nd clip, it's a podcast. Heck, even like SiriusXM Radio now runs podcasts. So is that radio is a podcast. I don't care what you call it. This idea that I just want people to hear me. I think it's one of these great conversational things. I'm a big fan of BNI and in-person networking. But the problem is that it doesn't always scale. Especially if your business is beyond, beyond a certain geography, right? You've gotta figure out a way to connect with your clients. So many times people now are talking quantity or quality; more or better. It's this idea of just post every 15 minutes on social media. Very efficient, not very effective. Or email a million people every morning. It's very efficient, but it's not effective to spam them. Like you said, you go to BNI, you get introduced by somebody. There's that transfer of authority, you get to talk with them and you know that converts, right? It's the quality. But the problem becomes is how do you scale that? And I look at podcasts. Let's dissect this, right? Nobody jumped on here because they saw Tom Schwab, right? You are the thought leader. You are the person that has that authority. By you introducing me, you transfer that authority to me and you get to talk with people at scale. I sometimes feel guilty as a guest because the host does the vast majority of the work. The guest gets the majority of the benefit, so thank you.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 6:29

Well, you get to do most of the talking. So yes, there's definitely some editing and things behind the scene but it really depends on the guests. I always say, you know, these questions are open-ended. We don't wanna just answer it with yes and no and just have a real conversation. Forget we're even recording. I appreciate that. When I first started, I think it was February of of 2020. The agency that helped me launch told me I had a face for radio so I, I took that. Until later that year we went on YouTube and I said, I'm screwed now. We have to change the format. It was nerve wracking that first year. Getting comfortable in front of the, uh, camera. Where am I looking? What's the right lighting? Six years later, my SquadCast wasn't working, so we're on a different platform. Things happen and you kind of just roll with it. As we mentioned, these are first world problems. These are minor things. This is a, a couple parts in this question, but a question I get all the time and something I had to figure out when I initially started my journey about six years ago was: do I launch my own podcast? Or, because they're different strategies and different benefits, I'll be a guest in other people's shows? So can you talk to us about the benefits and if you would recommend both, or if you recommend starting guesting versus launching your own show.

Tom Schwab: 7:34

This is a very common question, should I be a guest or a host? To me it's what are your goals, right? Should I be an Uber driver or an Uber passenger? Same platform, but it depends on your goals. So being a host is a great way to nurture your current clients, your current prospects. But this idea that if I build it, they will come. That was hard enough in 2020 when you started. Today, it's even harder, right? There's so much out there. So if you've got that following already, yeah, being a host is a great way to do it. But being a guest is the great way to go out there and get new exposure, new leads. It's almost like speaking on other people's stages until you have your own there. And the other part with that too, is that you get the benefits of all the backlinks, right? For the SEO, you get the authority, you get people mentioning you on social media for other ones. So I'm not sure that it's an either or, I think sometimes it's a both. But what I always recommend to people is make sure you've tried the medium, before you launch something yourself. We had one of our clients that told us, and I, I thought she was perfect on this. She said I was a bridesmaid before I was a bride. What does that mean? She's like, well, before you plan your own wedding, you've seen it behind the curtain. It's the same way. It's, it looks different than if you're just sitting out in the audience. And she's like, if I had just sat out in the audience of a podcast and then try to launch my own, I wouldn't have been as confident. I would've been able to see what I liked, what I didn't. We work with a lot of podcast production agencies, right? We don't produce podcasts ourselves, but they'll come to us and they call it phase zero. So while they're getting ready to produce the podcast, you know, there's usually about a 90 day period from when you start to when it goes live. They say, go out there and get some reps on other people's podcast. Talk with them, see how they have it set up, practice on other people's stage before you start your own.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 9:27

Yeah. I, uh, seven, eight years ago was on my first podcast as a guest. That's how I broke into it and, and started, to your point, you start experiencing the things you like, the things you don't like. It was crazy because it was, we recorded video, but as you mentioned it was mostly audio. So, just getting used to that, to the conversations, being prepared. Sometimes I, I felt like I was getting stumped with some of the questions and, you know, hey, we're here to set everyone up for success here. We're not looking to stump, but let's prepare some questions, maybe some topics that we're gonna talk about. It's all an experience and to your point, the goal. The goal is big. I have people all the time asking me, are you getting a lot of leads from your podcasts? A lot of prospects? And I go, you know what? That's the wrong way to look at it. Is that a benefit? Sure. Absolutely. You're creating content. But my goal was, uh, most importantly was, was networking. It was during COVID, so we weren't meeting in person. So it it wasn't, it just happened to work out that way. But we were meeting virtually across the country actually globally. We had quite a few, uh, you know, going into to Europe and Asia, which was actually really exciting. And you know, just to hear about what was going on and just, you know, being in different parts of the world, but there's a lot of benefits there. But ultimately what are you looking to do? And for myself, I had launched a book with five or six episodes of the podcast and we transcribed it, had a copywriter. So there's so many things that you can pull from the podcast.

Tom Schwab: 10:44

When you started, that was the beginning of the decade. And now here we are halfway through the decade, and who would've ever believed that? That we're not only talking to our ideal clients, but we're talking to the AI that refers them. There are people right now that are doing podcasts and podcasts interviews just so they can get indexed and recommended by AI. AI loves human content, that's why they're indexing all of the podcast interviews. So we've had clients before that worked with an SEO firm that said, oh, you'll never rank for that. And they did podcast interviews and guess what? They rank for it now. Our number one referral source as of May, 2025 is AI. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, all the rest of that. And those leads are amazing, right? They know so much about you. There was a study out of Cornell recently that said traffic from AI converts nine times better than SEO because it's not they're not looking at, give me a list of 20 people that are like Tom Schwab. No. They're asking the questions and they're saying the partner that's ideal for you is Interview Valet. So these are exciting times. It's gonna be interesting to see at the end of the decade; what it looks like.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 11:54

Yeah, it is. And people are searching differently, right? There are people using Google. I noticed that I'm using Google probably about 90% less. I'm on ChatGPT, Gemini. Sometimes I'm comparing if it's something really technical just to see what kind of feedback I'm gonna get. It's interesting how, you know, it's changed so quickly, just so fast over the last 12 months. You said nine times, the conversion. I did not know that. That's absolutely amazing. I wanna talk about AI, but before we do that, talk to us about a service offering. Who your ideal client is, and then some of the things that you're working on.

Tom Schwab: 12:26

Yeah. So I think the big thing is we're always looking for results, right? Marketing that doesn't provide results is called arts and crafts, right? And nobody wants to be a podcast guest, that's a hobby. We've all got enough hobbies. They want the results that come from that. So what's the results that you want? You want people to know you. You wanna build that trust. You wanna be known online. You wanna be known by AI If somebody hears you and they checks you out, they, you want them to find you. You wanna have all of this content to repurpose. You could launch a book with it, a podcast, grow your social media. All of those things come from this, right? Exposure brings opportunity. But one of the words that I don't use is podcast guesting, because to me most people use that like, um, public speaking. If they just go out and talk to a tree. It's like a not a numbers game. It's gotta be very targeted. So we look at it more as podcast interview marketing. Using data to find the right shows, preparing for it. Using the best practices to move people from being a passive listener, to an active listener, to an engaged lead. What we've seen, what works best is for those people that aren't geographically limited. So you've got a regional or a national audience that you could serve. Ones that it's based more on a service or at least a high ticket offer. We do a lot of non-fiction books, always with the business behind it, right? I don't need to hear you on a podcast to buy a fiction book, or a coloring book, right? So it's not a relationship sale. I think the people that do the best are the ones that they sort of feel like they're the best kept secret. They could help so many people if they only knew about them. And Giuseppe, we did a study back in 2024. The vast majority of our clients were introverts, and that struck me. What we found is that, there are those people that are the loud, extroverted Carnival Barkers, right? You get them on a podcast, and the first question is usually: Tell me about yourself? And 45 minutes later it's like we wrap up the interview.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 14:27

Right? Hey guys. Thanks for listening. I hope you're enjoying the show. As a thank you for being a valued listener, wanted to offer you a free copy of my book, franchise Freedom. This book was written back in 2020, and it's my exact blueprint in helping you find that perfect franchise. I wrote it based off my experiences and wanted to pass that along to you. Wanna chat today? You could book a call directly on our website. Top right. Side of that screen and you can schedule a 20 minute call. We'll dive into if a franchise is a good fit. I help you get qualified and figure out what that perfect franchise match may be. So I hope you take me up on my offer. Once again, franchise Freedom. Download the book today for free or book a call with me directly, and we'll help you bypass all that information you find online. Most importantly, figuring out. If a franchise is the right fit, and then figuring out what that perfect franchise looks like. So thanks again for listening to the show and back to the show.

Tom Schwab: 15:27

The people that seem to do the best are those practitioners, the experts, those humble heroes that may not be great at that BNI. They may not be great from the stage, but they can have great one-on-one conversations with people. They're not always the best on small talk, but they love to talk about their business and their passion. So those are the people that really, really excel at podcast interview marketing.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 15:51

I love that. So what are the services? Someone comes to you and says, you know what? I am extremely interested in podcast interview marketing. What's your service offerings? What's requested of me? How much am I doing of the heavy lifting?

Tom Schwab: 16:02

Great question. One of our taglines came from a client. He said, you let me be the guest, and you take care of the rest. I'm like, oh, that's good. I'm taking that. The one thing we can't do is the performance, right? That's you, you've gotta do that. But we can do everything to support you with that. So when people come to us, we have that initial discovery call. It's always with me. We've got a team of 20, but I wanna talk with every person that we might invite to work with. It's this idea of could you get great results from this? We'll be straightforward with you on that. And then as we move forward, it's like, who do you wanna talk with? Let's use data to find that audience. Let's go through your messaging, of past interviews, your website, what's your point of view? What are those things that you wanna share with the world? What makes you different? And one of the things I see is the best podcast guests are the ones that show up and say, this is the problem in the world. This is how I see to solve it and if you agree with me, come along. You want people to turn you up or turn you off, not forget you. So we do everything from preparing the guest, getting all their documents together, working with them on the topics. We'll do a walkthrough interview, uh, so they're comfortable and confident before every interview. We set the interviews up. We book those, we prep you for them. We've got team of 20, uh, all in the United States here. After you do the interview, we'll even listen to the interview afterwards to give feedback so that you're always getting better. We wanna make sure that you get more from every interview. Not just do more interviews. So we can do the repurposing, you can get a month's worth of social media content from one interview. It's one of those things where we're really focusing on how can you become a category of one, how can you be known? How can you differentiate yourself in the market? Because I think these days of just, well, I'm gonna break through the noise. That doesn't work anymore. You want people to know, like, and trust you and see you as the only choice.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 17:55

I like that. There's so many shows out there. There's so many shows that don't pass. You probably know the stat: 10 shows. I think I read somewhere they just kind of give up on it. They expect immediate results. They got into guesting. I'm sorry. Uh, interview marketing. They launched their own podcast and they give up after a dozen episodes or so. This is a long term as we were talking, once you show up to a show, right? You're a guest, it may take 2, 3, 4 months for that show to be produced. It does take time. It's not a, an overnight thing. I learned the hard way was you gotta get very clear on the types of shows. What audience you wanna be in front of because you could be doing lots of shows and a lot of interview marketing, but not, not on the right shows, not in front of the right audiences. So I think that's a big part of it. So the solution isn't, let me jump on more shows. It's getting on, as you mentioned, the right shows. So it sounds like you do the heavy lifting. You get the clients on the show. So the repurposing aspect, is that something that you offer? Is that coaching or is that you actually do the repurposing?

Tom Schwab: 18:50

We do both. We'll, we've got a guide that shows you how to do it, but most of our clients just came and said, I just wanna be the guest. You redo it for me. And so we've got a team that's does it with excellence. So we do that right after every interview for our clients if they need that, if they don't have an in-house team for that. Because like you said, we're looking for results. You mentioned the meantime between when you reach out to a host and they invite you, scheduled, recorded, edited, and live, it's about 90 days, right? About three months. And so clients will come to us and our prospects, and say, can I try it for a month or two? No, you won't see any results in a month or two. At the end of that first quarter, you'll be having this feeling that, oh, these are great conversations. There's these are gonna work. That second quarter is when they go live and you see the traction you get with them. So that's why our initial engagements are always six months, right? Because we watch you to see. The results with this. And then after that, we go month to month, right? We earn our business every month, and we've got clients that have been with us for years and years. We've been in business going on 11 years now, and the oldest client with us has been with us seven years.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 19:58

Oh, That's a good thing, right? If they're staying on some something's working. Not to put you on the spot, but do you guarantee, that the show gets published? Sometimes I've been on shows and the show just never gets published for whatever reason. Um, how do you handle that?

Tom Schwab: 20:10

We do, and we always, you know, if you wanna call it the Baker's Dozen or the Podcaster's Dozen, uh, we always get extra shows in there because like you said, there are times where something happens. Right. I can think of one where, the host, she got breast cancer and she stopped. She stopped her show. Now, it's not the guest's fault, it's not the host's fault, but we wanna make sure that if we guaranteed you this number of shows, that we don't have to come back three, four months later. So we always pat a couple extra ones in there. But yeah, we're guaranteeing that, you get live shows. So we were, uh, hinting about AI and we talked about in the beginning of the episode before we started recording. Talk to us about what you have worked on. Did you clone yourself? You were talking about something with AI. This is the first podcast that I'm talking about. We've been training it all December, and I've always said, do more with your interviews. Don't just do more interviews and saying you're always one conversation away. So one of our clients actually introduced us to a platform where I could take all of my interviews, over 500 interviews, put those in there. I put my book, all my webinars and came up with a AI clone of myself and it now. 24 7. You can go there, you can chat with it, typing answers back and forth. Or what's really neat is you can click call. Call Tom's clone and you can have a conversation with me. Now it uses a lot less filler words than I do, but it's in my voice. I've been amazed as we've been training at this month, how spot on it is. Now it's only trained on podcast interview marketing. So if you ask, good places to eat in Kalamazoo you gotta ask me that, right? My clones not trained on that, but I think it's a great way to keep that conversation going. So people hear me on a podcast, right? They probably have some questions, so now they can go there anytime and ask those questions. If they get the information they need, they can always schedule a time on my calendar there too. So I really believe we're coming to the conversation economy. This idea that we had to work through typing or a screen or something like that. I think that was just a small period in time. And I think more and more we're going to conversations. Heck, I even now with AI, I find myself talking to ChatGPT more than I do with typing to it. Yeah, if you want to have a conversation with my clone, you can definitely find that on the website.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 22:30

All right, and I gotta ask this question: who am I talking to? Is this the live Tom Schwab, or is this the AI version? Sometimes you don't know if I talking to a live person or not but that's cool. And it's learning, right? I mean, you add another a hundred episodes and you're covering different topics and it's constantly evolving, constantly learning. And I love that, especially with these platforms. They're able to do it so efficiently, you know, upload the show and sometimes change up the answers. I really like that. Where can people find this and start talking with your AI version?

Tom Schwab: 22:57

Go back to Interview V alet with a v.com/Franchise Freedom. I'll put my AI clone there. You can talk with that. I'll put my calendar link if you wanna talk with the one and only Tom Schwab with all the filler words. I'll also throw a copy of my book up there. You can buy it on Amazon, but if you want a free copy, you can get it there too.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 23:19

Love that. And that's the best place to reach you if they wanna start reaching out or learning more about your company services.

Tom Schwab: 23:25

Very much so. Everything's there at interviewvalet.com slash franchise Freedom. I'll put my social media there. One of the things that we've learned over the last 11 years is keep it simple, right? You gotta realize that 70% of people are listening to it sped up. They're working out while they're doing this. They're driving, they're multitasking. So you gotta make it easy for them to take the next step and keep the conversation going.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 23:49

Love that. There's so many other questions that I have and I have such a passion for podcasting. This has just grown, my belief for having that personal brand. The personal brand is something that cannot be necessarily cloned if, uh, you are in franchising. If you are in podcasting, if you are in painting. I just had a conversation with a painting franchise. People are following you. They have that trust in you. You have that authority. So no matter what business you get into, I truly feel this is where people shine, via their personal brand. This is what stands out. Do they wanna hear an AI interview or do they wanna hear the live person really giving kind of, this is my advice, this is what's going on. These are changes in the industry. What are the thoughts or what else are you seeing when it comes to marketing? Because I know for myself, and, this may be a part two down the road, but I noticed that for me, I always have different ways of speaking. With new individuals, looking at potentially, buying a franchise. And I feel like there's never this consistency. We've tried, you know, buying leads and we've tried paid ads on Facebook and Instagram. They've worked out really well, but there's a lot of sifting through individuals. As far as you know, what you're seeing, do you recommend one platform and sticking just a podcast guesting and going a hundred percent? Do you recommend dabbling? Is that depend on the industry you're in?

Tom Schwab: 25:06

I think the better person to answer this would probably be my grandfather than me. Because I see a new platform and it's like, I wanna try that, I want to test this, all the rest of this. My grandfather was a great businessman, right? And God rest his soul, he's been gone for decades. He wouldn't have known what the internet was, or how it worked, but, you know, he understood what he was trying to do and he'd start with simple questions like who's your customer? Why don't you just want to talk with them? Where are they? And make sure you're there. So for him, he ran a auto service station. Everybody within 10 miles of him was a customer. For him, great marketing was sponsoring the baseball team, speaking to the rotary, all the rest of that. That worked. I can think of the gentleman that painted our house, right? He loves working with older people, older than me, retired. He still advertises in a newspaper like the seniors things. Works great for him. For him, it would be meaningless to be on a podcast or on social media. So I don't think there's one answer of this is where I should be. I think dividing yourself over all platforms evenly is a recipe for failure, right? Do one thing, do it. Always be testing. I'm an engineer, so I always say test and keep doubling down. If something's not working, figure out why. Just don't do more of it. So I think that's important there too. I think the final one is what works for someone else doesn't necessarily work for you. Figure out what your strengths are what you can do better than other people. Like I said, I'm an engineer by degree. Writing was not one of my strengths. So to me, writing blogs was like a homework assignment, right? But I can talk and I like doing that. I always look at it and say, look what you have an unfair advantage of. What comes natural to you, because those are the things that you'll like and continue to do, right? If you like talking with people, podcast or podcast interviews probably make a whole lot of sense. If you don't like that don't do something that is painful because you won't do it well and you'll stop doing it.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 27:10

That's exactly it. You nailed it. It's sustainability. It's what you'll, you know, what's the best workout? Is it dumbbells? Is it body weight? We all have different goals, but ultimately. If you're not gonna drive 20 minutes to the gym, back and forth the basement gym may be the best thing.'cause that's what you're gonna actually do and follow. I just had a, a conversation with someone and they said, man, you enjoy watching workout videos more than actually doing them. I got called out and I said, yeah, you're right. I fully admitted. So he goes, what's the best, is a kettlebell is a dumbbell? What do you have in your basement? Let's start there and start those workouts. That was a great answer. Got me. Sometimes, even myself, you need those reminders. So that was awesome. Anything else that we didn't cover? We covered quite a bit and, you nailed it. We talk about so many different marketing, getting pulled, shiny object syndrome and it gets really outta hand. Last and final words. I'd greatly appreciate for the audience that's thinking of what to do next and going forward in 2026.

Tom Schwab: 27:59

One of the things I've been signing my emails with, and I sign it to encourage other people, but even to remind myself. It's,"stay strong, the world needs to hear you now more than ever." There's a lot of negativity out there. There's a lot of information. Often I think it's those experts, the practitioners, those humble heroes that need to speak up. People can decide whether or not they listen to you or not. But I encourage people, stay strong. The world needs to hear you now more than ever, and pick the way that you wanna do that. Is that being a host, a guest, speaking on stages. You need to speak up to help people because what may be ordinary to you, it's amazing to them.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 28:35

Love that. That's awesome. Well, Tom, I really appreciate you coming on the show. We're gonna include the website and you know where to talk with the AI version of Tom. And if you're ready to talk with Tom, I'm sure all the scheduling links and as you mentioned the book and everything is there. This has been a great interview. Really appreciate. I'm always learning. Sometimes, we know the answer, we need that reminder, because there is a lot of noise. AI, SEO and at pay per click, and it's like my head wants to absolutely explode. I come from the investment space, just because there's Bitcoin and gold and silver, you don't have to actually invest in all of it. You can pick and choose and like, uncle Warren Buffet says, invest only in what you understand, not just because the option's there. This was great. Wanted to wish you and your family a happy holiday. And I think, I'm on your show next month, so I'm looking forward to returning the favor. We'll mix in franchising, podcasting and everything in between. So I'm really looking forward to it. Again, I really appreciate uh, you coming back on the show.

Tom Schwab: 29:27

Thank you, Giuseppe, and I look forward to continuing the conversation both with the clone and with you live, when you come on the podcast interview marketing show.

Giuseppe Grammatico: 29:35

Sounds great. Looking forward to it. Take care.

29:39

Thanks for tuning in if you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise. Join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today.