← Podcast Answer Man
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What if the only thing you needed to do to succeed was, number one, get started, and number two, stay in the game longer than the others? That's what we're going to talk about in this episode of the podcast, Answerman. Well, hello, my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast, Answerman. My name is Cliff Ravenscraft, and this is the podcast devoted to helping me 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 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. In this episode, I want to try an experiment. Now, I have been hypersensitive lately of the use of AI when coming up with ideas that influence the direction of a show and or more specifically, the actual words spoken in a podcast episode. And I'm not going to go down that route. That's not the point of this episode. I may get into it in depth in a future episode, and I've certainly hinted at it quite a bit in the past. But I am using AI for this episode. And what I'd love to tell you how I came up with this idea is I was thinking about creating something that talks about staying in the game for the long term. You know, just sticking it out, showing up consistently. And it has been evident to me time and time again that I will come across people that say, cliff, you know, I'm making a decision to work with you over these next 12 months. And the reason why is because, well, I've been listening to you for more than a decade, or I've been listening to you for the last 15 years. And some people recently as just two months ago said, cliff, I've been listening to you since the beginning The Lost podcast 20 years years ago. And in some cases they're telling me this 10, 15, 20 years later, and it's the first conversation I've ever had with them, meaning that they have been out there as a. With the only representation that they exist in my world as a single number, a single digit on the number of downloads from for each episode. And I've taught myself a long time ago to stop looking at the numbers. I would say, if anything, the worst thing that ever happened was when I moved to the hosting solution that I have now for my podcast. When I go to publish a new episode. It has a list of all the episodes that are currently there and it's got the stats number right there staring me in the face. I Unfortunately for Podcast Answer man, every single week when I go to publish this episode, I'm kind of faced with that number. There's the total number of downloads for all of the previous episodes before this one when I go to publish this. But that's okay. I digress just a little bit because and I think this does fit into this conversation about what does success look like when you're a content creator. And a lot of it defines or is dependent upon how you define success. And I talked about that at length in the last three episodes. I'm not going to do another episode on the Measurement of success for your podcast. If you want to see that, just go to the episode right before this. It's over@podcastanswerman.com 488 Anyway, the reason why it doesn't bother me so much now is because I've conditioned myself to understand that that that number is not truly a representation of anything that matters to me. What matters to me today is the content that I'm creating aligned with the exact ideal person that I most want to reach with. The content that I'm creating is the content that I'm creating for that person resonating with them. Meaning that when they hear my voice, they're oh my gosh, this guy gets me. This guy understands my world. It feels like he's been reading my journal or my diary. It's like this guy has been talking to my spouse, cluing him in on exactly the struggles that I'm facing, the experiences that I'm having. I resonate with him. And the third way that I have conditioned myself to see success is asking the question and am I increasing the number of people that I have a deepening relationship with? As far as those who have already been attracted to the content that I'm creating, are people responding to my invitations to email me or to participate in any other call to action that I'm putting in the episode. My whole purpose for creating content is not to grow this massively large audience, but to attract the exact ideal person that I most want to cross paths with. For many reasons. Sometimes it's just a it's a service thing. I just want to show up and be a source of entertainment, education, encouragement, motivation, inspiration to help people feel like they're not alone and to inspire them to go create the thing they feel most called to create in the world. I also am a business owner, and so therefore I have business products and services that allow me to invest the amount of time effort and energy I do to create so much content for audiences without expecting anything in return financially. But I'm able to do that because I do have a business and I have created products and services that if I do successfully market and get in front of the right audience and those people have an awareness that they have this pain or problem or struggle or obstacle, that they're actively looking to overcome those obstacles. And I happen to have a solution that they're willing to pay or invest in to help them them along their journey to get beyond that obstacle or to get them further faster. And yes, because I have created aligned products and services for that exact ideal customer that allows me to have the time to create all the content. It's a circular pattern. However, none of this was mine when I first started. And that's my first point. I just got to tell you, if you haven't started creating content consistently, this is your call today to get started. And can you show up in such a way as your authentic real self, not your AI optimized and polished version of who you are, the one that has all of the answers, the one that has all of the solutions. But are you showing up in a way that reveals to them that you understand what they're going through? Because you've been there. I recently was checking out some podcasts of some new folks that I had just discovered through some referrals and other networking activities that I involve myself in. And whenever I discover that somebody has a podcast, I like to go and subscribe to the podcast. And one of the things that I do is I listen to their most recent one or two episodes and I'll go back and listen to their first few episodes. And I've noticed something with the folks who have been creating content since the advent of AI, and that is a lot of polished content. These are people who, let's just say 10 years ago, if they had started a podcast, they would have fumbled their way through their introduction. They would have sounded a little unsure of themselves. They would have told a little bit about their story and revealed a little bit of their hesitation or anxiety about getting started, but also the excitement for the vision that they have for what they want to create for that audience. They might have shared a little bit about their story, but don't expect me to have all the answers. And I'm engaged here and I look forward to building relationship with some of you who could help me along the way so that I can learn from you and maybe even give you credit for that. Because, you know, we're all in this together kind of thing. And those are the kind of first few episodes that really get the ball rolling for people. But what I've noticed a lot lately is right out of the gate. Well, hello and welcome to the very first episode of my podcast, a podcast devoted to helping you do this for this, so that you don't have to do this, this, and this and this. Today, I'm gonna share with you how you can overcome your problem of xyz. And I'm going to share with you five principles that are going to help you. And it's like, I'm the expert, you're the audience. And one of the things that I know is this person's pretty much new into that journey themselves. And yet there's no vulnerability. There is just assumed expert status based upon the words that they're sharing. Some of those people are good at masking the transcripts that have been provided to them from AI. Some of them are not. But either way, what I'm recognizing is that there's a number of people out there who are getting started in the podcast game. And I can just tell you right now, I've been in this industry for 20 years. They're going to make it for somewhere between seven to 15 to 20 episodes and quit. That's going to be about 85% of them because nobody's going to listen to that show. It is not relatable. There's no human behind it. It feels like it's all manufactured information. And quite frankly, we could have all of the manufactured, formulaic information that we could ever want just by asking a single question to any of our favorite large language model AI tools that are available. These podcasts are not going to stay for long. Then there are going to be those who are in it for much longer. They're going to go for 100 or 200 episodes. But eventually they're also going to be in it for not the authentic relationship approach. They're going after the big numbers. My experience shows that those who chase the large numbers either find them pretty much right out of the gate or they never happen. Eventually, these two shall fade. It's not the person that has the most expertise, the most knowledge, the most experience. It's not those people who win in becoming a thought leader through the content they create. Instead, it is the people who are the most authentic, the people who resonate the most, and those who stay in the game the longest. I want to give you some encouragement today. Chances are, if you were to start a podcast right now, you're not going to be competing against somebody who has been creating content for 20 years. Sure, if you were to start a podcast in your industry today, there may be one or two voices out there that have been in there for the long game. And yes, there may, depending upon your industry, be a lot of other shows that have been launched. But if you start today, all you need to do is outlive all of those other content creators who will quit within the next six to 18 months. If you can show up today with true authenticity and genuine passion for your industry, and if you can stick it out for the next five years, you're already playing a different game than most of the other people who have a podcast in your space today. I want you to imagine with me for a moment. Let's just say in your industry, there are already two or three podcasters out there who pretty much dominate thought leadership in your space in your industry. They have no idea who you are, and you may feel quite inadequate that there's no way you're ever going to reach their level of status. Would you believe that when I started Podcast Answer Man In December 2006, that was exactly what I was facing? There was already a Paul Colligan out there. There was already a Jason Van Orden out there. There were a handful of people out there who were the go to authority in the area of podcasts devoted to the topic of podcasting. And back then, those guys had no clue who I was. And I wasn't the only person who started a podcast devoted to podcasting at that time. In fact, there are a number of people who started podcasts about podcasting. And today, out of all of those individuals, and I think there might have been eight or nine of them today, only one other person is still creating podcasts about podcasting. The rest of them faded away. And Paul Colligan, Jason Van Orden. They're in my Rolodex. If you're old enough to know what a Rolodex is. I just had one on one conversations with both, both of them on a zoom call in the past 30 days. It is simply the fact that I consistently showed up not just when it was hot, but through the twists and turns of the industry and through the ebbs and flows of people's attention and awareness of podcasting, I simply showed up. I focused on the people who were listening to my show. I wasn't concerned about comparing the number of people listening to my show to the number of people listening to their shows. I served my audience. I served them better. Than anyone else could serve them. I went deeper in the relationship than anyone else would be willing to invest in a relationship, and I consistently did it year after year after year. And eventually I got so great at what I was doing, and I had served so many people, and I had been doing it for so long, that my name began to echo in rooms that I was not in. And eventually those people who didn't even know who I was, who were the thought leaders, they're now peers reaching out to me, inviting me to partner with them on major projects, introducing me to the compounding audience that they've built over the years. It is simply outliving the enthusiasm in the moment of all these other content creators for you to stand out among the rest. I hear people all the time say, you know what? Podcasting just doesn't have the same gravitas that it once had. And they say that because it seems like everybody and their brother and their sister and now their grandmother has a podcast on just about anything and everything. And there's no doubt that the technology that we have available to us today has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry. And that means that, yeah, it makes it so much easier for more people to get started. And that should be an encouragement for those of you who have not yet started. But it hasn't changed the fundamental truth of human psychology that the majority of all creators who get started today, or who have been going for the last several months or maybe the last few years, these creators are going to stop before the true work begins to compound. If you are one of the few who could stick it out for the long haul, you will outlast the majority of the people who begin alongside you. If you start a podcast today, five years from now, you will either have five years of experience in your industry as a thought leader, or you will still be wishing you had started five years ago. Those are really the only two options. And for those of you who have been podcasting for the last 18 months, two and a half years, well, guess what, nobody plants a tree today and expects to sit under its shade tomorrow. But if you stick it out and you planted that tree a couple years back, the great news is it doesn't take 20 years for you to experience the best benefits of staying in the game. That's my encouragement to you today. It's the longevity of podcasting. Sticking it out, being consistent, going deep, serving the few, but making sure that the few that you are speaking to and serving are aligned perfectly with what you are looking to intentionally create in the world. If you would like to get more clarity about that, I would love to have a conversation with you. All you have to do is send me an email. Cliffliffravenscraft.com and if you happen to be one of the rare few who have been out there for several years now, building your business, serving your audience and consistently creating content, and you would like to be in a group of other people who understands what it means to stay in the game, to stay motivated, to keep showing up, to go deeper in the relationships with those you serve through your business. That is exactly why I created the Next Level Mastermind. An environment that will eliminate the feeling of isolation. It's a place where you can go each week to bounce ideas off of others who are doing the things that you're doing in the world. We share our education experiences, our skills, our talents, our abilities. We bring it all to the table for the success of every single member in the group. If you are interested in being a part of this environment and doing life with me as one of your mentors over the next 12 months or more, email me today cliffliffravenscraft.com and say, Cliff, okay. I want to talk to you about the Mastermind. Email me today cliffliffravenscraft.com and whether you are just starting a podcast today or you've been doing it for the last few years, I encourage you to take your view of your podcast, the longevity play of your podcast, the vision of what you're creating to the next level podcast. Add some man.