Last Updated on May 22, 2025 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
The founder and chief evangelist officer at Interview Valet, a podcast interview marketing service, Tom Schwab, helps businesses get featured in podcast interviews to reach their target audience.
Managing the podcast interviews from start to finish involves many moving pieces, and things could easily slip through the cracks. Tom is keen on streamlining his business operations to prevent setbacks. Having tried some tools to no avail, he eventually improved his business operations with SweetProcess.
Not only did SweetProcess enhance the organization’s workflow, but it also made its employees more efficient at their jobs. Tom tells us all about the experience in this case study.
About Interview Valet
Interview Valet is a concierge-level podcast guest marketing service that helps people and brands leverage podcast interviews to promote their products and services. They help authors, brands, coaches, and consultants get featured on select podcast interviews.
The Michigan-based organization offers a white-glove solution that handles everything about the podcast interview while the guest focuses on showing up and speaking. To help clients get the most out of their interviews, the company provides guest training and interview preparation ahead of their interviews.
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The Pain Point of Tribal Knowledge
Tribal knowledge isn’t much of an issue when you have just a few employees in your company. Team members can ask their more experienced colleagues questions over their desks. But as your business grows and your staff base increases, sharing information over desks is no longer feasible. So, what happens when employees need to perform tasks they aren’t knowledgeable about?
This was the problem that Tom experienced as he began to scale his business. Ensuring that his team members had the right information they needed at all times was a challenge.
“When you’re a company of one or two people, you don’t need a whole lot of processes. You just lean over and talk to the other person. But as we grew, the processes became more and more important, so we’re all doing the same thing. As we bring on team members, we can get them up to speed quicker and quicker,” Tom says.
Tom and his team tried to document their processes in Google Docs and Asana to manage their growth, but those systems were inadequate. They still suffered from the problem of insufficient information.
“As we grew, I saw that we were using weird systems to do it. We were trying to do some of it in Google Docs. We were trying to do some of it in Asana, but it didn’t work,” he laments.
The Team Chose SweetProcess
As the company grew and processes became more important, Tom was committed to finding a lasting solution. When he heard of SweetProcess, he was convinced that it was a good fit for his team.
“The first time that I heard of SweetProcess, Michael Hyatt was talking about it on a podcast, and that had to be a decade ago. I looked at it, and I thought I love this. As an engineer, this is so cool. And I took it to the lady that was running our operations at that time. And she’s like, ‘Oh no, the team will never do this right. They’ll never like this.’ So I just put it on the back burner.”
Tom would later come across SweetProcess again. And this time, his team members were the ones who clamored for it because they saw how effective it was and their current process was not working.
“Owen, whom you mentioned from SweetProcess, reached out to us to be a client. We’re a client of SweetProcess, and they are a client of ours. And as we were going through the onboarding, a couple of our team members said, ‘Have you seen this product? This is awesome. Why don’t we use this?’ So, it’s actually our team that drove us to use that. And I’ve got to say, I thought it was going to be me implementing it and bringing everybody else along. Really, what it was, it was the team. They’re like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to document all of this,” he explains.
How SweetProcess Transformed the Operations at Interview Valet
Tom and his team knew that SweetProcess was the right system for streamlining their operations just from trying it. So what happened when they fully implemented the software in their company? Tom shares with us some of the specific ways SweetProcess has impacted his business operations positively.
Employee Onboarding and Training
No matter how qualified and experienced new employees might be for the job, they need adequate training to get accustomed to their new workplace. The faster an organization can train and onboard its new employees, the better it can leverage their skillset. This was a setback for Interview Valet as they would spend a long time bringing new employees up to speed with their duties.
“When we brought people on, it was really hard to teach them, and it was taking them the better part of six months to come up to speed. Now, with the processes and resources we have, we’re getting people up to speed in 30 days, and they’re doing it consistently.”
Training new hires is easier as they have all the learning materials they need in SweetProcess.
“As we go through and do things, we come up with the training, we put it in there, and one of the senior people does it, and then one of the junior people tries to make it work. If they can’t follow it along or they have questions, they work together to improve it,” Tom reveals.
Implementing SweetProcess has given Tom a new perspective on employee behavior in the workplace. He attests that, with the right training and resources, most employees will deliver great results.
“One of the things I’ve come to realize is that 99.9% of the world wants to do a good job. There’s always going to be 0.1% of psychos or whatever. But let’s not do it for them. So if they want to do a great job, and they’re not, I think as owners or managers, we have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Well, why not? Do they have the training? Do they have the systems? Do they have the resources that they need when they need them?'”
Centralized Knowledge Base
The quality of service an organization delivers depends on the knowledge of its employees. Knowledge is about information, so how much information does your team have about their job and the services they provide for clients?
Tribal knowledge is a common problem in many businesses. There’ll always be those employees who are more knowledgeable than others in the workplace. But instead of having what they know remain in their heads and having others continue to bother them with questions, you can transfer the information into a centralized knowledge base where everyone can access it. By providing a centralized knowledge base, SweetProcess allows Tom to create a level-playing field for his employees.
“As a remote team, I’ve got people in Europe and North America. I got one in Okinawa. I’m not available every hour of every day to answer the same questions over and over. And honestly, I would probably answer it differently every time. It’s better to put it in there and give the people the resources there.
Everything is in SweetProcess, and if it’s not, the first thing we say is, ‘Oh, we need to add that the next time we do it.’ It takes a little bit more time to document it, but it saves so much time,” Tom says.
As expected, Tom’s team is better off accessing any information they need from SweetProcess instead of asking him endless questions. He says they now know how to do the ‘magic trick.’
“What I found is that when we give them the resources, it makes it easy for them to flourish in their job. And they enjoy their job a whole lot more. They know what’s expected. They know the process. They know how to do the magic trick. And then they can get the results.”
Scalability
The desire to scale is one thing that businesses have in common, but most of them aren’t prepared to manage the challenges associated with rapid growth and scalability.
Beyond the financial needs of scaling a business, there are the human resources required to staff the growing business. You’ll need more competent and well-trained employees to oversee your increasing business operations. How you handle this demand can make or mar your business.
According to Tom, scaling his business with SweetProcess is the biggest game changer from using the system.
“How fast can you bring great people on and bring them up to speed? Scaling takes money—from marketing money to resources to all the rest of that. If you are looking at adding a person and you say, ‘Well, it’s going to take me all of this time for a senior person to train them, or we’re not going to get value from them for six months.’ That’s painful. Whereas if you look at it and say, ‘We can bring somebody on. If it’s the right person, we’ll know within 30 days based on this.’ So, to me, that’s been a game changer from looking at scaling the business and doing it cost-effectively.”
Effective Documentation
You know that the documentation of your business procedures and processes is effective when they are comprehensive for your team. People can get any information they need, on their own, without asking you questions.
Documenting his business operations in SweetProcess has changed Tom’s typical day at work. He no longer receives tons of questions from his employees about how to execute their tasks.
“I have a lot fewer Slack messages and emails from the team asking, ‘How do you do this?’ And I’ll be honest: early on, everybody wants to be a wizard. As entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes we like to be the firefighter, the hero who puts it out. I know everything. But the problem is, as the company grows, I don’t know all those little things.”
Tom doesn’t have to ask anyone questions about things he doesn’t know, either. He can find all the information he needs in SweetProcess.
As the company’s owner, Tom no longer needs to sit around to manage the operations. He has more time on his hands to do other important tasks, such as traveling and spreading the word about his business.
The Next Step to Streamlining Your Operations
Speaking from his experience, Tom advises that the next step to take in streamlining your business operations is to get your team’s buy-in by sharing your vision with them and providing them with the tools they need to help you achieve your vision.
“Get the right tool for the right job, and one that’s scalable. That’s one of the things that one of our clients taught us. Think about where you want to be six months from now, a year from now, and make sure you’ve got the systems to implement it because if you don’t have the time to do it now, when you’re twice the size, you won’t have the time because all you’ll have is twice the problems,” Tom says.
Your Chance to Transform Your Business
Tom’s business transformation began with acknowledging the problems in his operations and then seeking ways to resolve those problems. Are you experiencing setbacks in your operations? Would you like to resolve those setbacks? This is your chance to do so.
Take a cue from Tom by checking out SweetProcess. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and use it to streamline your operations. Since you don’t need a credit card for the trial, you can simply walk away if you aren’t impressed with SweetProcess by the end of your trial.