Tom Martin has spent forty years inside other people’s stories.
He spent twenty of them as a network television news producer, working for Charlie Rose, Charles Kuralt, Diane Sawyer, and Charles Gibson. He produced for Good Morning America during 9/11.
In his later public relations work he has secured coverage for clients across hundreds of outlets, including NBC’s Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Oprah. He spent a week filming Tony Robbins. He sat across from Jane Goodall and Paul Simon. He had coffee with Jay Abraham in his own office and described it like trying to drink from a fire hose. By any measure, the man has a track record. And the thing he wants to talk about is not the big names. It is the shy kid he used to be, and the people who still feel like that kid every time they think about being seen.
In this second half of the conversation on the Rise From The Ashes podcast, Tom walks through the quiet belief that stops most people before they start. The belief that says: who am I to put my voice out there? An industry this crowded does not need my two cents. Someone smarter already said it.
Tom does not argue with the feeling. He has been doing this long enough to have watched it sink a thousand good ideas. He just refuses to let it have the last word. He told a story he picked up from one of his old teachers. When we are born, nobody stamps “worthy” or “not worthy” on our foreheads. The stamp was never coming. So the waiting is the trap.
He talked about the cost of holding back. He brought up Jay Abraham’s idea: if you overhear someone getting bad advice and you have knowledge that could help them, staying silent is not humble. It is a disservice. Tom carries that into how he sees ordinary people with a message they keep swallowing.
He was honest about his own starting wound. Shyness. As a journalist he had to walk up to strangers’ doors and go inside. During 9/11 he sat with grieving families and felt the weight of it personally, not as a man above the story but as one more person inside the same shock. He credits the work for slowly burning the shyness off. He never felt arrogant walking into a studio. He felt the human pull of the story, and that pull was bigger than the fear.
The turn in the conversation comes when the question gets flipped. Instead of “am I enough to be seen,” Tom and Baz put the harder version on the table. What if you stay invisible, and the one person who needed your story never finds it? Measured against that, the fear gets small fast.
That is why Tom built a low-cost group he calls Ignite Your Media Influence. Not a money play. A place to stand next to people, hand them a real step toward their first interview, and tell them what they have been waiting to hear from anyone: your life has weight, and your story is worth telling.
Questions listeners ask
Why do successful people still feel like they are not worthy of being seen?
Because the feeling was never tied to evidence. Tom’s point is that nobody is born stamped “worthy.” Achievement does not deliver the stamp either. So even people with strong track records keep waiting for an external sign of permission that is never coming. The fix is not more proof. It is deciding your experience has weight and acting before you feel ready.
How do you overcome shyness or fear of putting your message out there?
Tom’s answer is that he did not wait for the shyness to leave first. He took work that forced him toward people, and the pull of the story grew bigger than the fear over time. The shyness burned off through doing, not before it. Action came first. Confidence followed.
Is it arrogant to share your knowledge when an industry is already crowded?
Tom uses Jay Abraham’s frame. If you have knowledge that could genuinely help someone and you stay silent, that is not humility. It is withholding something useful. A crowded field does not cancel your specific story. The right people are still looking for the exact way only you can say it.
Watch the full conversation on the Rise From The Ashes YouTube channel and subscribe so the next story finds you:
https://www.youtube.com/@risefromtheashespodcast
Learn more about Tom at https://tommartinmedia.com, find him on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/tom-martin-3470981, or reach him at tom@tommartinmedia.com. He runs the Ignite Your Media Influence group.
