← Podcast Answer Man
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone. This is Michael Hyatt from MichaelHitt.com you're listening to the man who has trained more people to podcast than anyone else on the planet, my friend Cliff Ravenscraft. He is the podcast answer man. Well, hello and welcome back to another episode of Podcast Answer Man. My name is Cliff Ravenscraft. And this, my friend, is the original POD about podcasting, helping you take your message, your business, and your life to the next level. That's right. It doesn't matter if you are brand new to this online content creating world or if you've been creating content for many years. There's something we can all do to take everything we do in life to the next level. And taking her life to to the next level is exactly what Laura McClellan has been doing for over 12 years now. Laura is a lawyer, she's a wife and a mom who took my Podcasting A to Z course just over 12 years ago, and she almost never launched her podcast. She talked herself out of it for six whole months. And when she finally pressed that publish button on that very first official episode, she did it from a closet with a handheld digital audio recorder and a little bit of fear. Today, she has released more than 500 episodes of her podcast out into the world. And she has built a community of listeners whose lives have been changed by something she almost never shared. The conversation that I'm about ready to share with you is actually a part of a series of conversations titled where are they Now? Where I sit down with people who took my Podcasting A to Z course and I ask myself where are these people today as it relates to creating content more than a decade, 10, 15 years later, are they still creating content today? At the end of this episode, I'll tell you where you can find some of those other conversations. But if you're thinking about launching a podcast, or if you have one sitting on pause, or if you're currently producing content and wondering, is it still worth the effort? I want you to hear this conversation with Laura right here. Laura, this month celebrates 12 years since you graduated from the Podcasting A to Z course. I looked recently and saw that you have published over 500 podcast episodes in the last 12 years. When I discovered that you've continued the Productive Woman podcast after all of these years with a bit of a hiatus in June, and we'll get into that. I want to tell your story. How does one get to over 500 podcast episodes? And what has that journey been like? Laurette, why did you first ever decide you want to create A podcast.
- [03:32]
B
I had discovered podcasts because of someone whose blog I followed years ago, and he launched a podcast. And I thought, well, what's that? So I started listening to his. And from his, I learned about yours and various others and started listening to others, and I started thinking it might be something I would like to do. I had. I had tried doing a blog, but I never had the discipline or the time or whatever you want to call it to sit and write blog posts. But I thought I could do that. I could talk. And I was actually looking for something to do that had nothing to do with my day job. I started thinking about doing this a podcast. And I learned about your podcasting a to Z course and got brave and decided to sign up and. And start the process that way. But it was really just something. A way. Something to do that wasn't related to. To my rather stressful day job, that I could feel like I was doing something creative and. And maybe contributing something to the world.
- [04:40]
A
And your day job, was that a lawyer? Is that correct?
- [04:43]
B
It's still. It still is a lawyer. Yes. I'm a. And. But I'm. I'm not the. I'm the good kind of lawyer. I'm a lawyer. I'm actually. I do commercial real estate law, so I don't go to the court room and. But it's still a very stressful job. And it's interesting that I took your podcasting a to Z course in December of that year. December is a notoriously busy and stressful time for real estate lawyers. So I don't remember how I was able to actually do the course in the midst of all that, but I did.
- [05:17]
A
You did. You successfully launched your podcast. So when you decided to do this, you did not do this so that it could boost your awareness for your brand that you do professionally. This is something. It was a creative outlet for you, and you wanted to do it unrelated to the stressful work that you do as a lawyer.
- [05:38]
B
Yes, absolutely. I did not want to talk about legal stuff.
- [05:42]
A
And so you created the Productive Woman podcast. Am I correct that the theme of that podcast is personal development, time management, how to get things done, how to organize your life so that you can do the things that matter most to you. Is that the main emphasis of the show?
- [06:04]
B
Yes. It's a podcast about productivity for busy women. And the idea is all about figuring out ways to better manage our time, life, stress, and stuff so we can accomplish the things we care about and make a life that matters as we each define that for ourselves.
- [06:23]
A
What made you decide to go with that as a topic when you launched your podcast? And were you contemplating any other potential topics?
- [06:32]
B
Well, I mean, I thought about various things, but productivity was. I'll just say I've been a productivity nerd since I was about middle school age. I, I used to, in middle school and high school, a fun Saturday for me was to go to the library and pull all the books about time management and organization and stuff like that off the shelves and sit and read them and take notes. And I loved doing charts and calendars and lists and things. And so all, all my life I've been interested in and learning about that stuff. And then as I got older, I married very young. My husband and I were 18 when we got married and 20 when we started our, when we had our first child. So all the stuff I had been learning and practicing and trying up to that point became kind of survival mechanism as a young mom, ultimately with, with five children. And so all my life it's been something I've been interested in, I've explored and learned about. And as I got older and even as I became a lawyer, which I did later in life, you know, I would have young women in my office talking to me about how do I manage all of this? How do I get stuff done? So it was something I talked about and thought about and, and, and blogged a little bit about anyway, so it just seemed it made sense for me to, if I was going to do a podcast to talk about those things.
- [07:57]
A
So were you into the Franklin Covey planners or whatever those things were in the days, or did you have other tools that you preferred to use?
- [08:08]
B
I have used all kinds of, of planners and different things like that over the years. Definitely Franklin Covey and, you know, just all the, I tried them all because, like I said, I'm a productivity nerd and I love that kind of stuff. And so my husband will tell you to hit, much to his chagrin, how much money I've spent over the years trying different planners and, and notebooks and all the books. I have them all.
- [08:35]
A
When you launched the Productive Woman podcast, what was the format of the show and did it ever change? And by format, I'm talking about solo hosted, guest interviews, panel discussions. What was the format you decided to start the show with, and has it ever evolved over the years?
- [08:53]
B
Well, it has evolved a little bit, but I started out as a solo show. I was always shooting for about 30 to 45 minutes in length because I thought that's about the length of time that people Might be on the treadmill or on their commute or something. So it seemed like a good length to shoot for. And I started out thinking I'd like to have a guest maybe once a month or so. And that's kind of how it went over the years. Sometimes I'd have more guests in, you know, more often than once a month, but primarily solo, with a guest once every three or four weeks. I've done a couple of sort of panel things. One where I had a couple of other women who were productivity podcasters who joined me and we talked about our different approaches to things. And another one that I hosted, the women who were in one of the Mastermind groups that I had hosted, and I had them all on at the same time. That's. That's the biggest group I've ever had. On an episode where we talked about community and how women can support each other in. In making a life that matters. But that's. It's a format that has worked for me pretty much over the years. My original guests were not necessarily experts. For the first couple of years, I looked for women from different walks of life, different professions, different ages and stages of life, not as experts, but to talk about how are they making a life that matters, what's working for them in terms of managing their time and so on. What's not working? Just sharing ideas, because I think we can learn from each other. The last couple of years, more of my guests have been kind of in the expert in some area of productivity, whether it's time management, money management, organization, different kinds of things like that.
- [10:55]
A
What has been your experience as far as feedback from your audience? Have you received any communication from somebody that says your podcast has had an incredible impact on their life?
- [11:06]
B
I have, and the fact that I got feedback at all surprised me. I will admit. When I decided to launch the podcast, I really thought, you know, I'm not a celebrity. I didn't have any sort of public platform at the time. I'm just a lawyer and a mom and a wife. And I thought, well, my mom. Mom will probably listen because she likes me. But there was no reason to expect anybody else necessarily would. I was just doing it as an outlet and just going to put the stuff out there. And, I mean, I could tell you a story about how I almost didn't launch it. We can talk about that if you want to, But I never promoted it. I didn't try to publicize it. I just started putting episodes out there. I did a little short one saying, this is what this is. Going to be about. I'll be back next week and just started doing that and within a fairly short period of time. And I'd have to go back and look, I'm starting to think, well, I don't know, is this a waste of my time? And I got an email from somebody who said, I found your podcast. I really appreciate what you have to say here. You were talking about this and it really made a difference for me. And it was at just the right time so that I felt like, okay, I can keep doing this. It as it's. It meant something as long as it meant something to one person, you know, it helps one person. That was enough for me. And over the years since then, I've just been so fortunate and I. It's hard for me not to get emotional about this, that a community built up around the podcast. I started a Facebook group, a private Facebook group that any woman who listens to the show can join. And people started joining it and they would jump in there and talk about questions that they had or talk to each other, which I thought was great. But I would get emails, I would get voice feedback because I can't think of what's the name of that plugin you can get on your website where people can speak pipe. Speak pipe. People would leave voice messages. I eventually, because of questions people asked, I launched productive woman mastermind groups, which are a group of no more than five women plus me, who meet once a week for 12 weeks and support. Support each other in productivity type things. Some of those groups still meet from time to time without me, but the feedback I've gotten has been just, you know, I don't even have words for how much it means to me to hear that something I put out there was helpful to someone. And this is from women literally all over the world.
- [13:55]
A
As you share that story, one of the things that I just want to point out to somebody listening or tuning into this conversation, if you have a podcast that you love and it's having a profound impact in your life, and if you've not reached out to the host of that show to share how positive your experience is with that content, I promise you it will have an impact. You'd be shocked to learn how few people engage with the hosts of the shows that they love. And I'm thrilled that that piece of feedback came in at just that right moment for you to hear that, gosh, what I'm doing is making a difference in at least one person's life. And one of the things that I've learned over the years, Laura, is for every one person who sends an email like that, there were at least 10, 20, 30 other people who have thought about sending you that message but just never got around to it. Which is, by the way, one of the reasons why they're listening to the Productive Woman podcast. Because they keep dropping the ball on things that they've been wanting to do.
- [15:11]
B
It's pretty amazing. And I agree that it's important to reach out to people who touch your life in some way, even if the impact is just. It's so entertaining. You made me laugh on a day when I needed to laugh or whatever. When, when you host a podcast, it's especially a solo show, but it's easy to feel like, you know, am I. Is this meaningless? I'm. All I do is sit in and talk to myself for, you know, half an hour, an hour once a week in front of a camera or in front of a microphone. To hear from listeners is the value to us as hosts is just. You can't even calculate it.
- [15:53]
A
So you made a little slip there. But I'm curious now that you said what you said, do you sit in front of a camera when you're recording the episodes of the Productive Woman podcast? Have you been using the video element to use on video platforms in addition to the audio podcast?
- [16:11]
B
I haven't yet. I've thought about it. I'm not a big fan of being in front of a camera, so you had to think about it when you asked me to come and talk to you. Not because I didn't want to talk to you, but I thought on camera. Camera. I'm a 65 year old woman who is, you know, not a model or actress or anything like that. So. But I've thought about doing a video component. I actually set up like a YouTube channel, but I've never put anything on
- [16:38]
A
it yet as I've brought back Podcast Answer man, my most recent few episodes. In the feed, there's a significant amount of me talking about the popularity of the advice that people are giving that if you really want to be serious about podcasting, if you want to be taken serious seriously as a podcaster, you have to be on YouTube. And I'm not a fan of that advice. I'm a fan of YouTube. I'm a fan of using video in multiple platforms if it's the right fit for you. I mean, I'm using video right now, obviously, but I very much believe in a audio first strategy for podcast content. And I often am an advocate and a user of Audio only content. So I don't think of what I'm doing right here as a, as a podcast episode. This is a live stream conversation that's happening on multiple platforms. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X platform, whatever. Now I do anticipate that I will take the audio of our conversation today and I will publish the audio of that into a specific interview only format podcast that I do called what are you creating? And so at some point this will become an audio podcast. But when I think about my most recent content for podcast, Answerman and the Cliff Ravenscraft show, the last five to 10 episodes, there's been no camera anywhere in the production of those shows. It's audio only. And there's a lot of freedom in making sure that you're not, you don't have to look your best in audio. And, and yeah, so I totally get it, Laura. Don't feel like you need to add the video component.
- [18:24]
B
Well, and to me, the value of an audio podcast is for the consumer is you can listen to it anywhere, doing anything. Video is great. I love YouTube. I can go down a YouTube rabbit hole for hours, but you're stuck in front of a screen. You can't really be doing anything else if you're watching a YouTube video, whereas a podcast. I started listening to them because I had an hour to an hour and a half long comm and I could listen to them while I drove or while I was on the treadmill. So I'm a huge fan of audio podcasts and I kind of, I'm not sure I, I feel like something that's on YouTube is a podcast. That's, it's, it's something, it's something valuable. But that's not what I think of when I think of podcasts.
- [19:12]
A
Yeah, well, our thoughts are in alignment on many of those aspects. Let me go back to something else you said. You said I almost didn't start the podcast. Tell me a little bit more about that.
- [19:22]
B
Yeah, so I had signed up for your course and I think that, I think I took it in December of 2013.
- [19:30]
A
That's correct. Yeah.
- [19:32]
B
And your course was designed to start from an idea and a title and take you through in, in the month to having a recorded episode, you know, and you, it did such a great job of kind of taking you step by step through everything we needed to do to launch a podcast. And so I took the course, I did the, all the stuff, I did my homework, did all the lessons, got the equipment. I rated. My husband is, well, he's an engineer by trade, but He's a lifetime musician and audio engineer. So I rated his gear closet to get a really good microphone and all the things I needed. I. It was all set up so that by the time I finished the course, I had, you know, I had an episode, a sample episode to start with, and the goal or the intention was to launch in January of 2014. And then I didn't because I chickened out. I. I just, I kept putting it off, thinking people are going to think I'm. I'm silly people, nobody. You know, why, why would anybody want to listen to it? I just talked myself out of it for nearly six months. I stopped listening to podcasts because I. Especially yours, because I felt so guilty that I had spent this money and time and all of this and then not doing anything with it. And sometime in late June of 2014, I turned on an episode of your pod of podcast Answer man by just, I don't know, on a whim or whatever. And you were talking about basically giving yourself grace and, you know, if you took time off or. I can't even remember what it was, but I cried through the whole episode and, and I think you talked a little bit about not letting perfectionism wear you out, etcetera, you know, deter you. And so after I got through that, on July 1st of 2014, I took my. I had my little, whatever that little digital recorder was that, you know, that you had recommended back then. I'd bought that, took it into my walk in closet because it would have sound stuff, recorded a five or ten minute episode about who I was, what my podcast was going to be about, and said, and I'm going to be. I'll be back next week with a full episode and immediately uploaded it to what was, you know, itunes at the time, because I knew if I took it out somewhere to edit it, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything. So I, without editing it or anything, I just uploaded it and held my breath and went off and then said, okay, I. I said I was going to do one next week. I got to come up with an episode for next week and the rest is history. I think that episode zero is still in there in Apple podcasts now. It was pretty bad and pretty tentative, but it was the way in for me.
- [22:41]
A
My very first episode, Laura, is terrible as well. And not only is my first episode terrible, but my first 25 to 30 would make me cringe today to listen to them. But like you, eventually I, you just put it out there and you improve over time.
- [23:00]
B
That was my Goal was, you know, I'll just. I'll try to do better every time. And my first many episodes, I edited myself in GarageBand and, you know, would put them up there. I'm fortunate. Now I've. My techie, sound tech, recording guru husband now does all my editing for me, and so all I have to do is record it and hand it off to him, and he makes me sound good.
- [23:27]
A
That's amazing. You are so blessed to have him in your life to do that work for you. That's great. Okay, so you sat in your closet with your handheld recorder, recorded that episode, said, I'll be back next week. Then you were on the hook to actually deliver. Did you stay with a weekly cadence from that point out?
- [23:48]
B
Yep, I think always. I have released new episodes on first thing Wednesday morning, and I think that was from the beginning. It just seemed like a good time of the week to put them out there.
- [24:01]
A
And, yeah, there was something you said earlier. You're like, oh, my gosh. I was surprised that anybody would listen and that I got feedback from anyone back in those days. As I was looking recently at the listing of your show in the Apple Podcasts Directory, one of the things that I noticed is that you have 506 episodes in the archive of the productive woman. You also have 446 ratings and reviews in Apple Podcasts, and that is almost as impressive as over 500 episodes because it is an incredible challenge technically for a listener to actually figure out how to rate and review a podcast in the Apple Podcast Directory. And I know this because I have just relaunched the feed for Podcast Answerman, and I've asked a handful of people who I know are incredibly technically literate people, and they're like, cliff, okay, I've been sitting here for the last 35 minutes, and I've tried to figure out how to leave you a review, and I can't figure this out. And these are people who are online entrepreneurs. And so the fact that you have 447 ratings and reviews speaks to the value that you're adding to those people's lives that are listening to your show. Congratulations on that.
- [25:28]
B
Thank you. I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful for anybody who gives up their time or some of their time to listen to me talk. It surprises me every time, every time I hear from someone and hear that it's been meaningful to them. I'm just incredibly grateful for that.
- [25:50]
A
What would you say to somebody who is thinking about creating a show and they hear somebody like you who has produced over 500 episodes. But their concern is, what if I run out of things to say? Have you ever had that fear?
- [26:04]
B
Yeah, I, I have. That was part of why I, I went. I took a sabbatical for a period of time to just give myself time to think about it. There are lots of ways to come up with new ways of talking about even the same topics. And for me, part of it, part of the way I've done that is ask my listeners. What would you like to hear me talk about? What would be helpful to you? What questions do you have? And I can ask them in, in the Facebook group or I ask them, you know, on a show. I'm planning episodes for the next few months. I want to make sure what I'm putting out here is useful to you. What would you like to hear about? What, what would be useful and helpful to you? When I started, I thought, well, I'm pretty sure I can get a few months worth of topics out of it because I've read so much and learned so about this. It surprised me that I got to 10 years, 12 years and you know, 500 and some episodes.
- [27:08]
A
So you mentioned sabbatical. I know that you took some time off in I think June of this year and you're getting ready to launch back the show again here soon. Have there been other sabbaticals before this one?
- [27:23]
B
Well, yeah, I've been on kind of an extended sabbatical. It actually started last year. Toward the end of last year I decided and I was only going to take a few months off through the end of 2024. In November of 2024, while on a camping trip with my husband, I had a stroke and that sort of derailed things for a little while. I'm very fortunate and blessed that I don't have any residual effects of it. And it was, you know, I, if you have to have a stroke, the way things happen to me, I guess are, are the best possible outcome. But I had to scale back a whole bunch of stuff under doctor's orders for a period of time. So the sabbatical went on longer than I intended to and I started, I did a few episodes this spring and then had to continue kind of extend the sabbatical. But I am hoping, planning, not hoping, planning to launch new episodes in the new year. So I've, I've got a bunch of, a bunch of outlines pulled together. I don't script my episodes, but I do outline them because I need to be efficient. I have a full time job as a lawyer and so I Don't have a lot of time to sort of sit in front of the microphone and try to come up with something to talk about. I need to know what I'm going to talk about so I can record efficiently and get it done. And so that's what I've been working on the last few weeks.
- [29:03]
A
I would love to hear how you went about the sabbatical. Did you give any personal detail about your medical condition? Is that something you shared with your audience? Did you choose to just let people know you're taking some time off, or did you just stop producing content? I'm. I'm curious about how you decided to handle that.
- [29:23]
B
Well, when I decided to take this sabbatical to, to give myself the sabbatical, I did do an episode. A lot of the solo episodes that I do are centered around things that I'm investigating in my own life. I don't. The, the Productive Woman podcast has never been me positioning myself as an expert on productivity. I'm a fellow traveler and so a lot of the topics and, and talk about come from my own experience and the things I'm noodling with my. For my own life. And because I was. Had decided I thought I was going to do a sabbatical, I did some research into sabbaticals and I did an episode about sabbatical. And then in that episode I announced that I was going to be taking a sabbatical myself. And I talked about that. You know, I've got 500 episodes in the archives that you can look at and I'll be around. Send me an email, you know, etc. And so I told them that. But I really intended, and I think I said in that episode that I would, it would be just through the end of that year and then I would resume in the beginning of this year. Then I couldn't because of the stroke and, and dealing with the after effects of that again. I was very moved by the fact that I started getting inquiries. People from the community were asking, sending me emails or posting in the Facebook group. Has anybody heard from Laura? She hasn't come back yet. Our new episodes coming, anything going on? So I did come back in. I forget if it was May or somewhere around there and came back and said here's, here's where I've been and here's why I haven't didn't come back. My sabbatical went longer than I anticipated so I, I have communicated with the community some, some of you know what happened and kind of where I am.
- [31:29]
A
Yeah, you talk about that you are planning in the new year to bring the show back. Have you made any decision about the frequency coming back? Is it something you said you want to recommit to a weekly cadence, or are you thinking of maybe giving something with a little bit more margin in your schedule?
- [31:51]
B
Well, I'm still. Still noodling on that. I would like to go back to putting new episodes out once a week, but I'm trying to structure things so that I can record maybe more than one in a session so that I have them recorded ahead of time rather than recording every week. My normal protocol has been I record on Saturday morning, my husband edits it on Sunday. I handed it off for a while. I had a virtual assistant who would help me with show notes and stuff. I would hand it off to her, she would draft the show notes, I would look at them, tweak them, and. And then we'd publish the new episode on Wednesday and that. But with where my job is these days and other things going on with our family, that's not sustainable for me now. So my plan is to schedule recording sessions where I can get two or three at least, recorded and have them ahead of time so that I can do once a week at minimum. It'll be every other week, maybe to start, and then more often as I'm able to get episodes recorded ahead and kind of in the hopper, so to speak.
- [33:07]
A
You mentioned that when you first launched the podcast, it was a creative outlet for you, and the community kind of popped up organically over time, which is beautiful. What is it that has kept you producing content? How is it that You've got over 500 episodes in the archives? What is it about podcasting? Because earlier in our conversation, you said, well, I've had several attempts at blogging. Blogging could. You could argue that blogging could be a lot more simple than regular content production for an audio podcast. So what is it about podcasting, specifically, Laura, that that has kept you going?
- [33:46]
B
Well, I mean, what's kept me going has been the. The listeners, the community. I guess that's just my personality is such. I need it. It is important to me to feel like I need. I'm doing something good for other people. Podcasting is easier for me in a sense than blogging because I am, I don't know, an anal retentive perfectionist when it comes to writing and. Well, first of all, as a lawyer, as a transactional lawyer, most of my day, a lot of my day is spent typing and writing, you know, drafting contracts and stuff. But when I try to write blog posts. I get, I don't know, hamstrung by my own perfectionism, trying to say it perfectly. It's easier for me to talk than it is for me to write, Especially when I know I've got somebody who can edit out the goofy things that I where I mess up.
- [34:43]
A
I would say the same thing. I blogged for a decade before I ever launched my first podcast episode. And as soon as I learned that I could just speak into a microphone and create content and put it out into the world, my blogging days were pretty much done. I do recall there were at least three or four hundred episodes of content where the show notes. If you looked in the show notes on the website or in your podcast app, it literally said, I hate writing show notes. That was the actual show notes. Those were the days. Today, we're very blessed. Gosh. I record a podcast episode, I have the MP3, I throw it up into a tool that Transcribes it within 20 minutes and then I take an AI tool and say, hey, here's the transcript. Give me 15 SEO optimized title options. I picked the one that I think is the best. Now write an SEO optimized description of this podcast that has a compelling hook that is written in first person in my style of communication and share the insights that somebody is going to gain after they click the play button to listen to this episode. And so my show notes are much more thorough today than they used to be.
- [36:05]
B
It's amazing the different tools just in the 1012 years I've been doing this, the tools are so different and so much more useful and effective that are available to us AI, you know, whether it's chat GPT or one of the GROK or something like that. Amazing what they can do. I, I mean, you, you asked earlier about how do you come up with content ideas? Sometimes if I'm just, you know, you know, brain dead and can't think of anything, I can go into one of the, you know, chat GPT or something and say, I have a podcast about this, this and this, this, you know, this is what it's called. Etc. Give me 10 ideas of topics I could talk about for a 30 or 45 minute episode and it'll come up with things that often I won't use exactly what it suggested, but it's like, oh no, oh, but I could do this with that. And it's, it's amazing. That's a great tool for just for getting ideas that get you kind of off to the races.
- [37:13]
A
Well, Laura, if there are people out there who were on the fence like you were, who are on the fence like you were back in 2012, they have been thinking about launching a podcast. They're kind of worried about what people will think, how people will respond. You know, who would want to listen to me? All of the technology that I have to figure out how to do all this stuff. Stuff. What encouragement would you give to them as somebody who has been in their shoes, but now has produced over 500 episodes 12 years later?
- [37:48]
B
Well, a couple of things. I mean, everything you talked about, I have felt. One thing I would say is if you go into Apple Podcasts or any podcast platform and just scroll through and look at all the. All the different podcasts that are out there, the different topics, there is an audience for almost anything. And if it's something you're interested in, there are other people who want to hear it. And the fact that even that there are other people who talk about what you want to talk about doesn't preclude you from having an audience as well, because your take on it is going to be different from anybody else's. That's what I learned. You know, I thought, well, there are other people who talk about productivity and who are much smarter than I am and more experienced or whatever, but I come at it from a different perspective than any of those other people. And there are, you know, however many millions and millions of people in the world, there are some of those who want to hear what you have to say. As far as the technology and stuff, you can learn that. Cliff can help you learn that. I mean, that's. That's how. That's how I learned. I mean, I've. Again, I have a husband who knows all the recording technology and stuff, but the. How do you actually record and edit and upload a podcast? Where do you host the audio where you know, all of those? How do you get the COVID art or what does it need to look like? All those sorts of things. You can learn all of that. And certainly for me, the answer to all of that was the podcasting A to Z course. And I'm really. He didn't ask me to plug his course, but that's. That's just the truth.
- [39:44]
A
Thank you, Laura. I appreciate that. Well, thank you for the content that you've put out into the world, the community that you're leading out there, the impact that you're having in the lives of others. When I think about the work that I do in the world, I look at somebody like you, Laura, and I think, man, I am so thrilled that I played any part of your journey in the value that you've added to the world. And so thank you for coming to share this story. I know that you're like, ah, I don't know, I guess I could get on a video zoom call and do a live stream. Cliff, wow. It's. It's a gift. Thank you so much. Laura, is there anything else that you would like to share that I haven't asked about or anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap up here?
- [40:32]
B
I guess just how grateful I am to have been able to do this, and I'm grateful to you for having, you know, all those years ago, have that place where I could learn how to do this. I don't think I could have done it on my own. I mean, there are ways to gather all this. I certainly learned a lot just listening to your podcast and other people's podcasts about podcasting. But it's been such an enriching experience for me to get to host this podcast and all that's come out of it for me, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's even thinking about doing it. It is. It's well worth the effort
- [41:21]
A
that, my friend is Laura McClellan. I'm gonna share a link in the show Notes to her podcast, the Productive Woman, so that you can explore her work and hear what more than 500 episodes of commitment sounds like in the show Notes. You'll also find a note about how to find the rest of these conversations that I've recorded in this where are they now Series over in my what are you creating Podcast. All of these conversations are people who took my Podcasting A to Z course 10 to 15 years ago, who have published between hundreds and in some cases thousands of podcast episodes and are still going strong today. And now I want to talk directly to you. You see, Laura almost never started. She had recorded that first episode with a little bit of fear in her chest and no idea where her podcast would lead her. And yet, after 12 years, her voice has touched thousands of people around the world. If you've ever been thinking about launching a podcast or relaunching a podcast that you've let go quiet, or if you want to bring new life to something you're already creating, my next session of Podcasting A to Z is just getting ready to start. This is the very same program that Laura and all of these other Podcasting A to Z graduates that I'm featuring in this series went through to successfully launch their podcast. It's the same program that I want to invite you to where you could have me as your personal coach, walking by your side, step by step, answering every question you have related to the successful launch of a great sounding audio podcast. You can find the details over at podcasting a to z.com My next session is coming up on January 26, 2026 and if you're listening to this afterwards, just go over to podcasting a to z.com the next sessions dates will be listed there. Podcasting a to z.com if there's something inside of you that keeps whispering, I think I meant to create something with my voice. This is your moment to listen podcast and some man.