From Soloist to Choir: How to Scale Trust in the Age of AI with Tom Schwab

00:00
Tom Schwab
You became the voice of the business because you had to. That bravery built something real. But the next act of leadership is not singing louder or longer or more often. It's building the choir that lets the music continue and grow beyond any singular voice, including yours.

 

00:34
Tom Schwab
At the start of every month, I want to walk you through our thinking on a big idea that we're having here at Interview Valet. We put it into a mini book and this one is called From Soloist to Choir. The Way to Scale Trust in the age of A.I. Now here's the uncomfortable truth. The very voice that built your business may now be the thing that's limiting it for most founders, coaches, consultants, and business owners. They started with one voice. It was yours. The founders, you were the face, the salesperson, the marketer, the expert. And it worked. But the market has changed. And as AI increasingly recommends people, not just brands, one voice is no longer enough. In the Navy, we used to have a saying, one is none. If everything depends one critical part, you don't have strength. You have exposure.

01:36
Tom Schwab
The next stage of founder led marketing is not singing louder or more often. It's becoming the conductor. Building a choir of trusted voices who can reach audiences that you can't, carrying the message further, and building a business that doesn't just depend on the founder alone. So today, let's talk about how to move from being a soloist to a choir introduction. The bravest voice in the room. You became the voice of your business because you had to. In the beginning, there was no one else. You were the founder, the salesperson, the marketer, and the face. You did the interviews, you wrote the posts, you took the stage. When someone asked who's behind this company, the honest answer was you and only you. It worked. Your voice built trust. It built the business. And so you kept going. More interviews, more posts, more talks.

02:42
Tom Schwab
Because the thing that got you here was you. Founder led marketing is the most powerful growth engine a small business has. I built my own companies on it, and I believe in it completely. Heck, my title is Chief Evangelist Officer. The uncomfortable truth. Well, I want to put it out to you. Founder to founder, the thing that built your business is now most likely the thing to cap it. Have an open mind. As Bixon said, if you haven't changed your mind lately, how do you know you still have one? What got you here is now your ceiling. You only have so many hours, so many interviews you can do before they all start to sound the same. So many topics that you can credibly own. And in a market changing faster than any of us expected, you have a new problem.

03:34
Tom Schwab
The old playbook never accounted for how the machines are deciding who to recommend. And they're not recommending you nearly often as you think. Chapter 1 the Soloist Trap in the Navy we had a phrase that stayed with me for decades. One is none. If you only have one of something critical, a single pump, a single valve, a single point of failure, then functionally you have none. Because the day it fails, and it will fail, you're dead in the water. Redundancy was not a luxury on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. It was the difference between mission and disaster. Most founder led businesses are running one. One voice, one face, one personality carries the entire weight of the brand's trust. And like every single point of failure, it feels perfectly fine right until the moment it doesn't. The fragility you can't see.

04:37
Tom Schwab
When everything depends one person, three things become true. And all three are dangerous. You cannot scale it. A soloist can only sing so many songs. You can do one Interview a week, maybe two, before the quality starts to drop and the material repeats. Your reach is capped by the size of your own calendar. 2. You can't protect it. If one voice gets sick, burnt out, says something regrettable, or simply needs a vacation, the entire marketing engine stalls. A single controversy, a single bad week, and there's no one else to carry the tuning. Number three. You can't sell it. A business whose trust rests entirely with one founder is very hard to value, and it's even harder to exit. Buyers do not want to purchase a brand that walks out the door when you do. Now, here's a cautionary tale.

05:37
Tom Schwab
Think about brands built entirely on a single magnificent voice. The one that comes to my mind is Ziglar. Zig was one of the most influential voices in sales and motivation for a half century. He was extraordinary. And when he passed in 2012, the brand built on his voice largely faded with him because there was no choir behind the soloist, no one to carry it forward. Look at other great personal brands today and ask yourself the question, who's the second voice? For some, I can't name one. Tony Robbins has been a titan for decades, but who's his heir apparent? The next voice ready to carry that stage when he steps off? When that powerful voice is gone, retired or simply tired, what remains? A catalog of recordings and a brand that has no future tense.

06:37
Tom Schwab
You see, a soloist can fill a room, but only a choir can fill it after the soloist is gone. The trap is that being the soloist feels like strength. The applause is real, the audience is yours. But strength cannot be transferred, protected or scaled. Then it's not strength, it's exposure. And there is a force out in the market that's about to make that exposure more expensive. Chapter 2 AI recommends people, not brands in the summer of 2024, one of our clients, Agent AI, told us something that changed how I think about everything. They explained that one of the key ways to get recommended by AI, whatever you want to call it, LLMO A E O G E O It's to have a share of voice and positive sentiment across the places where real conversations happen. Forget about being discovered.

07:41
Tom Schwab
The machines are increasingly the first referrers who gets recommended. And the machines, they have a clear preference. AI recommends people, not brands here's the pattern we keep seeing and the one I want you to sit with. AI is indexing and recommending people, not brands. When someone asks an AI assistant who the experts are in the field, it returns the name of humans far more readily than it returns company names. You already see the same logic on social media. When a brand account does show up on your LinkedIn feed, it's usually a promoted post. An ad posting from company pages almost does nothing organically. The reach lies with the people, not the logos. This was driven home to me at an Entrepreneur's organization event. A presenter pointed out that the founder typically has 10 times the following of the brand.

08:43
Tom Schwab
Think of Elon Musk vs Tesla, Richard Branson vs Virgin, Mark Cuban vs all of his companies. The human outputs the brand by an order of magnitude every time. I routinely mentor entrepreneurs and I consistently see the same trend. The machines recommend humans. So a brand with only one human is a brand with one shot. Why one voice can't win the index? Here's where the soloist trap and the new referee collide. If AI rewards share a voice and AI recommends people, then a company represented by a single person can only ever capture a single person, share one name, one set of topics, one demographic that happens to resonate with that voice, the rest of your potential share of voice, the audience topics and conversations your one voice doesn't reach well.

09:46
Tom Schwab
They simply go uncapped at Interview Valet, one of our core beliefs is more is not better. Better is better. So when we understood this, we didn't just tell the founder me to do more interviews and repeat himself. That would have been more not better. Instead, we did something that, on the surface, looks like the opposite of focus. We added voices and became the best growth decisions we've made in a decade. This chapter ahead shows you why it works and then exactly how we did it. Chapter 3. A choir outperforms a soloist. Joe Pelosi built the largest content marketing event in the world. He's the founder of Content Marketing Institute and Constant Marketing World. And he's the author of Content Inc. If anyone has earned the right to be the soloist, it's Joe.

10:43
Tom Schwab
Recently presenting at the Build a Better Agency Summit, Joe shared the concept that names this whole shift better. Anything I've heard, he calls it the trust portfolio. You see, don't bet it all one voice. Joe's insight was simple and profound. If he was the only speaker, the only voice, the only face of content marketing world, then he was putting all of his bets one person, himself. So instead, he built a portfolio of trusted voices across his leadership team. No single person was the whole brand. Each owned a piece, a format, an audience, a kind of trust. Together, they were a portfolio. And like any good portfolio, it was diversified against the failure of any single holding. See, a soloist bets everything one voice. A portfolio spreads the trust and compounds it. The media company Move.

11:51
Tom Schwab
Watch what Scott Galloway has done, because it's the trust portfolio executed in real time. Professor G took off as a personal brand. He's a smart, entertaining professor with a big audience. He was a soloist, but he was smart enough to see the ceiling. And he started to bring in other voices that spoke to audiences he could not. He launched Professor G markets with Ed Ellison. He launched racing moderates with Jessica Tarlov. He's deliberately pairing himself with younger, more specialized talent. He's still the umbrella, but underneath it, he's building a trust flywheel and a media flywheel that produces far more content than he ever could alone. He is moving from I'm a popular professor to I am the trusted media platform that launches voices, shows, products and subscriptions and one day perhaps sells the extra voices are not an accident. Their strategy.

12:59
Tom Schwab
Dave Ramsey did the same. He's built a roster of personalities that share his tone and his values while bringing their own style and attract audiences that he never could. The result is a brand with a visible succession plan and one that does not end when one voice does. Josh Dworkin started the Bigger Pockets podcast. He quickly brought on Brandon Turner as a co host. Over the years, they've added more voices, bringing on new hosts and spinoff shows. It's allowed them to be acquired by private equity in 2018 and 2024. I doubt this would ever have happened had Josh been a soloist. The pattern is everywhere and you see it. Venture capital firms, law firms, consulting firms and countless others have understood for generations. You develop a bench of experts, each with their own reputation rather than betting the firm on a single rainmaker.

14:02
Tom Schwab
Our walk and the niche we almost killed. I want to be transparent about this because this is the most honest proof I have. As the founder. I was already doing a podcast Interview a week. I was evangelizing for our category, our company and our clients. When we understood that share of voice was important to AI, the obvious answer would have had me do more interviews. But more is not better. So we brought in other voices to appear on podcast interviews to evangelize for the category, the company and our clients. Liz Brooks, a senior client strategist with an impressive PR background. We had Kristen Nolan, mba, a senior client strategist with deep business and clients insights. And finally Chloe Williamson, a senior client strategist who ran our health, nutrition and wellness vertical. Now here's the part few people know.

15:07
Tom Schwab
Before this, were actually considering shutting down our health, nutrition and wellness vertical. It just wasn't generating enough leads. And I was the problem. I acknowledge that I was not the voice for that audience. The 58 year old male who doesn't know the difference between a keto and a calorie. Well, that doesn't build a trust with the audience. You see, Chloe started doing the interviews in Q4 of 2024. Within four months that vertical went from being on the chopping block to one of our fastest growing. Same hymnal, different singers, completely different results. We now average about 10 interviews a month for Interview Valet across all of our voices. Not one person repeating themselves 10 times, but a choir, each member singing the same values but in their own range to their own audience with their own background and unique insights.

16:09
Tom Schwab
This is how as a company we reach, get indexed and recommended to people I never would have reached as a soloist. The Results Since May of 2025, AI has been our number one referral source. I'm convinced our choir is why we teach this too. This is not just our story, but it's one that we have built with clients. The law firm that puts on different subject matter, expert attorneys out front. So the brand is carried by many credible voices, not just one senior partner. The franchise consultants, each with a distinct point of view, reaching franchise buyers that a single consultant's voice never would resonate with the venture capital firm fielding a different expert for each thesis. So the firm's authority compounds across partners instead of resting one. Knowing it works is one thing. Knowing how to build it, that's another.

17:16
Tom Schwab
The next two chapters gives you both the framework and the exact system we used. Four moves to build you'd Choir Going from a soloist to choir is not about stepping back. It's about stepping up. Stepping up into the role of conductor. You're no longer just a voice. You're the one who tunes the voices, points them at the right audiences, and keeps them singing together. A choir that sings whatever it wants is just noise. The conductor is what turns many voices into one powerful, recognizable sound. And here are the four moves Find the gaps in your sound. Your single voice has a range, but not an infinite range. There are audiences you don't reach, topics you can't credibly own, and demographics that simply trust a different type of messenger. Map those gaps.

18:17
Tom Schwab
Honestly, the way I had to admit, I was not the face for wellness, nor that the people wanted to see on Instagram. Here's an action item. List the audiences, topics and demographics your current voice is not reaching. For each gap, name the person on your team whose background, style or insights could fill that. That is the list of your choir's roster. Move two Set the shared hymnal. We're all singing the same song. We just sing it in different ranges with different focus and different insights. Write down your core values, your tone of voice in plain language. This is the hymnal. Every voice you add must be able to sing it authentically in their own style. You can create a tone of voice by auditing the founder's previous talks, interviews, and writings. Move three Point everyone at the same hill.

19:20
Tom Schwab
Acquirer needs a common objective or the voices pull apart. Each member can have their own audience and format, like Joe's portfolio did of podcasts, blogs, newsletters, research and even magazines. But they all must be rowing toward the same business goal. Trust built by one should be compounded over the entire brand, not just for the individual. Here's the action item. Define one or two shared objective. Every voice is working toward this quarter. For example, it might be share a voice in your category or leads to an offer. Make sure each person knows how their interviews ladder up. Move number four Put the choir on the stage. Voices grow by singing in front of an audience, not rehearsing alone. We let our talent guest on our own show and help them gain experience and confidence.

20:21
Tom Schwab
The strategic podcast Interview, we believe, is the ideal stage, a real human conversation on a show your ideal clients already listen to. It puts your people on borrowed stages, stocked ponds to build their reputation and gets them heard by their super consumer and indexed by the machines as humans worth recommending. There's a quieter benefit, too. Putting your team out front recognizes them. It energizes them and shows you trust them. Prospective clients ask me all the time whether they'll get to work with the talent. See, the choir is the talent, and it answers the real question every buyer has who will I actually be working with? Here's the action item. Choose one team member beyond yourself and book them on three relevant podcast interviews this quarter. Give them an audience that you can't reach.

21:21
Tom Schwab
Then measure the leads, the sentiment, and how the AI starts to notice. But what if they leave? It's the first objection I hear. My answer is, if they were going to leave, they'd have left anyway. And when they go, the content stays. I would far rather put my team out front. It builds trust, it shows the real depth of our bench, and it proves we're not just one person in a basement. For a small business, that depth often moves a buyer from interested to commit it. Chapter 5 How We Built Ours Frameworks are easy to nod along to and hard to put in motion. So let me take you behind the curtain and show you exactly the system we used to turn one voice into a choir. It was not instant. It was not magic. It was a sequence.

22:15
Tom Schwab
And you can run the same One step, one Name the gaps we started where this whole book started by being honest about the audience that I was not reaching as the founder. Some gaps were about age, some were about focus. Most businesses have multiple ICPs or ideal client profiles, but the founder usually only resonates with one of them. I resonated with the seasoned B2B founder. I didn't resonate with the wellness buyer or the audience that lives on Instagram or the operator who wanted to hear someone younger who had walked the exact same path. Naming those gaps told us precisely which voices we needed and what each one had to be able to do that I could not. Don't ask who is free to do interviews. Ask who can reach the people that you can't.

23:14
Tom Schwab
Step 2 Find the hymnal before we put anyone on stage, we had to define the tone of voice. That's what we would all sing from. Otherwise, we'd not be building a choir. We'd just be building noise. We did this with the help of Darren Horowitz over at 1010 Group. It's a top brand firm out of New York City. We fed in everything that had already carried my voice Ebooks, webinars, and most importantly, the founder's podcast interviews. There's a useful lesson buried in that work. We typically found that between 12 to 18 interviews locked in the tone of voice. After that, it barely changed. The voice is already there. You just need to capture it. From that work came our tone of voice report. And it gave us far more than a style note.

24:11
Tom Schwab
It gave us foundational stories, our point of view, our do's and don'ts, our brand voice attribute for writing and speaking, our level of formality, our core points of view, our signature language, our sound bites, and even our voice pillars. The report became our hymnal. Every voice we added could now sing from it in their own range, without ever drifting from who we are. Step 3 give each voice a solo. Next, we built a one sheet for each speaker. We focused on topics that person alone could own. Not a watered down copy of my talking points, but the subject matter where their background, their insights and their credibility was strongest. Liz owned the PR focus. Kristen owned the business and customer experience. Chloe owned the health nutrition Wellness vertical. And they all did it in a way I never could.

25:13
Tom Schwab
Step 4 Chase the overlooked audiences with voices and topics defined, went looking for the audience that I had been missing. The shows and communities the founders simply could not reach. And we reached out to those hosts on the right voice for that room. The gap analysis from step one told us exactly where to aim. Step five Review every performance. A choir that never listens back never improves. After interviews air, we hold a monthly meeting and we evaluate each one against the tone of voice report. Where did we stay true to it? Where did we wander from the company's point of view, that matters, especially for young talent. And we keep the constructive criticism largely positive because we're developing voices, not grading them. Step 6 Sing together. We also hold a monthly debrief where the choir shares the best practices.

26:19
Tom Schwab
Some of our best topics and angles have come straight from those meetings. Like any choir, it takes coordination. Each member needs to know what the others are doing, and everyone learns from everyone else. That's what keeps many voices sounding like a consistent brand. A soloist only has to listen to themselves. A choir has to listen to each other. So there it is. Six steps. Notice the gaps. Find the hymnal. Give each voice a solo. Chase the audiences you are missing. Review every performance and sing together. That's how we did it and how you can do it too. The voice that outlasts you. You became the voice of the business because you had to. That bravery built something real. But the next act of leadership is not singing louder or longer or more often.

27:18
Tom Schwab
It's building the choir that lets the music continue and grow beyond any singular voice, including yours. A choir scales past your calendar. It captures the share of voice one name never could. It protects you when any single voice has a bad week. It recognizes and energizes your team. And it builds a company with real enterprise value. One that does not walk out the door when you do. The machines have made the clear choice. They recommend people, and that's plural. They reward many human voices having real conversations. Conversations, not one logo. Broadcasting alone. The market is no longer asking for a soloist to sing louder. It's asking the founder to become a conductor. One is none. So build a choir. You don't have to stop being the voice. You need to stop being the only voice. Tune your team.

28:22
Tom Schwab
Point them at the audiences that you can't reach. Send them onto the stages where trust is built. One conversation at a time. Do that and you build something that most founders never do. A sound bigger than yourself. A business that can outlast its founder. A business with real enterprise value. If you'd like to get a copy of this ebook, you can go to Amazon or head back over to the Show Notes at podcastinterviewmarketing.com.