← Podcast Answer Man
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Well, hello and welcome back to another episode of Podcast Answer man and the Cliff Ravenscraft show combined this week. Oh my goodness. Things are going well and I would love to share with you an update on what's been going on in my world and some insights that I've experienced as of late that I think could be valuable for you. Now, let's see here. If I remember correctly, my last episode of Podcast Answer man was recorded from an Airbnb in Bowling Green, Kentucky last week. I was there to celebrate my daughter's graduation from college and I was using, I think it was the Rode Pod mic and a Zoom P4 next digital audio interface device going into my laptop computer and recording directly into Adobe Audition. And I even mentioned, I think that episode, the idea was, you know, hey, if you're going to have an entrepreneurial journey where you do lots of travel for speed, speaking engagements and other various things that you do for your work that would require travel and, or business and, or not just business, but personal things as well, then it may be a good idea, if you're committed to showing up on a weekly basis, to have gear that allows a portable lifestyle. So that was clearly demonstrated in last week's episode of Podcast Answer Man. This week I am demonstrating that you can even shift up your format. I am using a device called a Tascam Dr. 10L Pro digital audio recorder. Now, this device is a wired lav mic and I got a dead cat on the mic on my shirt that's clipped onto my shirt to protect you from all of the wind noise that's out here. I happen to be walking. The lav mic, which is wired, goes into this little tiny belt clip. I just realized that I said and became self conscious of it. That's interesting, by the way. Very. I just made a right turn and I'm facing directly into the wind, the way the wind is blowing. And that should give you a demonstration of how this dead cat, which is a little furry device on the lav mic, is keeping you from hearing that sound in the, in the microphone anyway. But the. If you've ever been a public speaker and they put a wired lav mic onto your shirt and then they plug it into a little transmitter pack that goes on to your belt clip. Or they might ask you to slip it into your pocket. It's kind of like that. But this is not a wireless transmitter. It's not transmitting anywhere. It's the device that would clip onto your belt or go into your pocket is actually a digital audio recorder. It's got A micro SD card in it. And one of the reasons why I like this particular device is it has 32 bit float, which means that it's capturing both high audio, low audio, and if there's ever any situation where audio gets clipped, it works out well in that I can go in and get the right audio levels in post production. That's usually never really a problem when I have everything set just right. But anyway, there's that. But the other thing, the main functionality that I love about this is that I could record for two and a half hours and it would be one uncompressed WAV file. Whereas with other digital audio recorders that have recording functionality built into them, like these wireless mics that you can hook up to your phone that are also transmitters, but they have built in recording inside of them, they typically will split audio files after 30 minutes and it can be seamless, meaning that you really wouldn't notice that that is taking place. However, with that being said, I have noticed from time to time when splicing those files together that sometimes it is noticeable. And also, I'm not always just using one of these devices solo like I am right now. I'm out here for a beautiful walk and I'm solo. So there's no need for me to match up this audio with the recording of somebody else's digital audio recorder. But my wife and I will sometimes use the Tascam recorder to record our Building a Life and Business Together podcast while we're out for a walk together. She has the same exact device that I have, and she has one on her, I have one on me, we both start recording, we clap a few times so that we can match that up and sync it in software and post production. But as long as hers is a continuous audio file and mine's a continuous audio file, if we talk for more than 30 minutes, I don't have to worry about any of that audio getting out of sync once I line up the recording of where we clapped multiple times to get that sink at the beginning. Anyway, that's enough of the technical talk. But I just wanted for the podcast answerman audience, I wanted to bring in, hey, another thing you can do to mix things up is you could go out for a walk. Another thing that I want to share with you is portable equipment. You can grab one of these little Tascam Dr. 10L Pro audio recorder devices. And this is not just for going out for a walk. I literally could just simply take this on the road with me. It's less than carrying around the Zoom P4 next. It's less than carrying around a dynamic microphone like the Rode Podmic. This thing literally could just fit in my pocket and I could carry it with me everywhere I go and I could record a solo hosted show in a hotel room. I could do it in any environment in a conference hall where I want to hand another one to somebody else and record, put one on them, put one on me and just sink, you know, do a couple claps for that post production sync and then record our conversation. There are options for trying to find ways to easily fit in your recordings for your content so that you can show up consistently for your community. If that's a desire of yours, there are ways to do it. And also one other thought here again is to just not lock yourself into a format I think more today than ever, mixing things up, going in less than stellar environments. Specifically, I'm speaking for or to the thought leader, the industry expert, the solopreneur who's sharing whatever it is that you're doing, somebody who's on a similar path to the path that I'm on. This may not fit the brand marketing standards and quality of a corporation that has a very specific feel and vibe for what they're trying to put out into the world as a demonstration of their quality and all this other stuff. But when it comes to somebody like myself, a solopreneur who is out here looking to show up and be a meaningful presence in the people's lives that are on a similar journey to my own, where they want to hear the behind the scenes of what's going on as far as it's related to how I'm growing and building my my business, how I'm what systems am I using, what am I learning, what are, what is all of this stuff that's going on in my world, it doesn't matter if I'm on video with multi camera shoot and a professional studio setup or if I'm audio only speaking into my own sound treated room or if I'm recording on portable gear at the end of a bed in an Airbnb or outside for a walk with nothing more than a lapel mic clipped to my workout t shirt while I'm out here for a lengthy walk. I love the fact that there is freedom in format, gear and everything in between and it doesn't have to be polished, it doesn't have to be perfect. And in fact what I was going to before as I wait for these cars to pass by me before I cross the street here. Okay, I think I'm good. So what I was getting at before is that today more than ever, I've always done this kind of content. I've always switched things up. I've always incorporated different things. But I will say there was a season a few years ago where I did less and less and less of this. This authentic just showing up raw. The less polished, less professional, less performance, just less of that. Let me try to create content that impresses others. There was less of that over the last several years, not the last three years, but before that, because it seemed like, man, it's like this is what I have to do to raise up to the quality of all these big corporations who are pouring massive funds into big equipment and big teams of production quality to keep up with them. And then what's happened with AI is that everybody's starting to sound polished, everybody's starting to sound perfect. Everything is so cleansed, so sanitary, so polished that it's all starting to sound the same and it's all starting to look the same. And there's a lot of people who have invested heavily into incredibly expensive studio setups, incredibly expensive teams of production staff to create all this content. And today, their content is no longer seen as a standard of quality to live up to. It's almost just like everybody else's content out there. And AI is making it easier for so many people with just a couple of monthly subscriptions to a couple of services to make their content look just as professional, just as good, just as polished as everybody else. And all of these people, both the people who can create content like that without a team, and those who have the large team and budget with all of their equipment, I find a lot of them are asking their questions themselves. The question, are we even being seen anymore? Do we even stand out anymore? And what I love is that over the last several years is this return that I have felt to the unpolished, unperformed. You know, I'm not performing to impress. I am simply showing up to be a presence to showing up wherever I can, whenever I can, doing the best I can with what I'm currently working with. And so in recent episodes of both Podcast Answerman and the Cliff Ravenscraft Show, I've been talking about the fact that I'm in the fullest season of my life that I've been in since the Pandemic. Now I've been in fuller seasons than what I'm in right now. Before the Pandemic. And back then, I recorded a lot of content from the road, and there was A lot of stuff that was going on like this, but since the pandemic, this is more of a return to that. So for those who may not have, or if you have not listened to the most recent two episodes of Podcast Answer man and or the most recent two episodes of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, I would love to just catch you up to what's been going on in my world. Two weeks ago I went to Anaheim, California for an entire week. I had the honor of speaking on a stage in front of nearly 400 people about podcasting for 90 minutes. And during three days of that event working practically 16 and a half hour days, all three days in a row, I connected at a very deep level with 116 people in the hallways. And thankfully I had a process for recording and documenting what I learned about each of those 116 human beings. And I have a system in place to track all of that and to keep up with the people that I met there and to take that initiation of a relationship and build it into something that could be incredibly meaningful and in some cases maybe future clients for my Mastermind group and or my one on one coaching. So I went in with a lot of intention. As a speaker I got to connect not only on stage with an audience, but I also got to connect with fellow speakers who are at the top of their game, who are industry experts by every account in their own field. And that was amazing to have speaker dinners and speaker only parties and other things that were there for us to interact and engage with one another. Then following that event, it happened to be hosted by my friend Mike Stelzner who is in my green room Mastermind and he and I have been very close personal friends for more than 15 years. He is the person responsible behind everything that's gone on in social media marketing world, which this year was their 13th year of doing the event. It was my ninth or it was my 11th time attending the event. I missed two events post Covid, but it's my ninth time speaking at the event or 11th time attending the event and ninth time speaking the event at the event and on the day after the conference, myself and Mike Stelzner and Leslie Samuel, another member of my Green Room, Mastermind, our friend lou Mongello and three other individuals. We hung out for 16 and a half hours at Disneyland. I think, I think it might have been 16. I'm pretty sure I started at 6am that 7am that morning and then I got home. Yeah, it was another 16 and a half hour day. And then following that Was a whole day of travel home. It was just nonstop book stuff. And then I came home, had three days, three work days to get caught up. No, that's not right. I had three days to do work within my business. I had already filled my schedule with coaching calls. My mastermind groups are set on my schedule at all times already. And so I did those in the afternoons and then I had in the morning. I did as much as I could to use what I or to work what I call my invitation engine. This is my relationship engine inside of my business that I've built, which I think I will talk about here in just a little bit. But anyway, so had three days to work in the business and then Thursday of last week, 1 week ago it was travel to Bowling Green for my daughter's graduation. So all of that was amazing. I recorded the episode late Thursday night last week and then Friday was her day of graduation and man, what an incredible day that was. Fully present with my family. Then Saturday was basically still down in Bowling Green. Slowly rolling ourselves out of Bowling Green, then traveling home and then four hour drive back home. I had one hour or an hour and a half. I can't remember what it was. But on Friday of last or I don't even remember Saturday of last week I had a concert with my wife. So scheduled to go out with my dad. And it was an incredible time. We had a wonderful experience. But it was, it was a lot to be incompressed into that same day. Sunday had a lot of other things associated with it with Mother's Day. Trying to figure out how do I engage with my mom on Mother's Day, making sure that my wife is engaged with Mother's Day. We have a Japanese student who was coming to our home to be hosted with our family from for a week while before he travels home to Japan. It's a friend of my son's who's in college. Anyway, a bunch of stuff. And then once again this week I had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to work in my business. So my normal rhythms and routines have been disrupted. My normal access to regulating my nervous system and to processing and releasing. So much that I've been carrying over the past two weeks just has not been there at the same level. And so I shared very openly and authentically in the last episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show about how that showed up. You can find that over@theclifferavenscraftshow.com and just look for the episode right before this one. All right, so now that kind of gives you an idea. Of the last two weeks, but and then this week being the third week in a row of this full season. I had coaching calls filled on my schedule. I did as much as I could with the connections and the invitation engine and the relationship engines that I've created for my business. Again, I think I'm going to talk about that in this episode as well. But I did everything I could with the amount of time that I felt was appropriate to allot for it. And I yet even made time most days, not every day this week, but most days I made time for rest to take a nap in the middle of the day. And I feel like I did the right things at the right time with obviously I did not in the past two weeks or past week and a half, I have not reconnected or followed up with 116 people that I connected with at Social Media Marketing World. But that's okay because I think I'll get back to that in just a moment. But today is Thursday. Today at noon, my daughter, my oldest daughter is going to come and pick myself and Stephanie and Makena up to take us to the airport. And at 2 o' clock this afternoon we will board our flight to Fort Worth, Texas. And from the 12 o' clock time slot all the way through until Monday morning, my goal is to not get into my business over the next couple of days. To not see this as time away from my business, but actually to see myself fully present with the lifestyle for which my business was created to afford me. That's very important. So many people have come to me over the years for coaching around their entrepreneurial journey. They want to talk about business strategy, but so much of it is about success, is having the right mindset and really having a lot of a much clearer picture of what this business is all about. So many people have turned the pursuit of earning income from their business into this thing that consumes all of them. I have been guilty of this in the early stages of my business and in various different seasons along my 20 year journey. But what I will say is whenever I have gotten clear about really why did I actually pursue this business in the first place, what is the lifestyle that I hope that this business, or that not even hope that I intend for this business to create as an opportunity for me to live, every time I get clear about that, the decisions are easier. There's no decision fatigue, there's no getting stuck without clarity. Because the actual picture of my end result of the life I want to live brings the clarity to each of the decisions. So the more clear I get on the destination or the outcome, the more clear I am on every decision that comes my way on a daily basis. And so I'm very clear about the fact that, hey, over the next three days, I do not intend to do anything related to my business, which includes I do not intend to get into Dallas, Texas tonight and record another episode of Podcast Answerman. There was not room in my schedule this week to record an episode of Podcast Answerman. There was a potential for it yesterday, but I chose to do something. Instead of taking a nap and creating that content, I chose to do something that came up that was far more important in the moment. And I'm like, what does that mean for Podcast Answer Man? I will know the next aligned move. That was the whole episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show last week. It's like, this is the next aligned move right here. And I'm sure that I will find a way to commit to Podcast Answering Man. But here I am Thursday morning, before I decide to shut off my connected to business brain and to be 100% fully devoted to being present with Stephanie and McKenna Brain for the next three days. I'm like, there's an opportunity for me to go for a walk, to throw on a digital audio recorder. And instead of recording Podcast Answerman tonight, Thursday night before that deadline of 12:01am and instead of also recording a call Sunday evening after a day of travel back from Fort Worth, Texas, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to record a single podcast episode this week that will go out both in Podcast Answer man and the Cliff Ravenscraft show. And I will do that before I leave for this three day trip. And that's why I'm here. So I sat down and I, by the way, I have in front of me, let me share with you. So I have the, the lapel mic clipped to my shirt. I've got the little wire going, running all the way into my workout shorts where that little digital audio recorder is just sitting there in my pocket recording all of this audio. In my right hand. I happen to just be holding my iPhone and on the back of it is my Plaud Note Pro, which I've been talking a lot about lately. And I'll probably talk about quite a bit more in the days and weeks and months ahead because it's one of my new favorite gadgets for the life that I am enjoying living, especially when it comes to being very mindful, present in the moment, reflective and also recognizing patterns, areas for growth, and all sorts of other things, but that's just a teaser for what's to come. To make sure that if you are not subscribed to the Cliff Ravenscraft show, which is where that will mostly show up, make sure you subscribe to the Cliff Ravenscraft show over@thecliffravenscraftshow.com or in your favorite podcast directory of Choice. Unless it's YouTube, then I encourage you to choose a different favorite podcast directory of choice. Yeah, I said it and I don't regret it. Anyway, in my left hand are two 3 inch by 5 inch index cards and they are college ruled on both sides. College ruled. For those that don't know, it's a reference to lined paper that you would use in college that are thinner than normal rolled paper and they are double sided as far as the lines on the cards and I have writing on all four sides and I just wrote down a couple of statements here and I have not thought out anything other than these statements of what I would share in this episode. Pretty much everything that I've shared up until this moment has just been off the top of my head. None of it was prepared ahead of time, but I'm now going to switch into looking at these cards. The first thing that I have written down is that most entrepreneurs struggle with never feeling complete. And I have been there myself many times. But it's something more than often than not. I actually have conversations with people on the entrepreneurial journey who are still facing this today. And I will say that it's very easy for me to recognize it in others because it has been so much of an issue for me. So here's what I mean by that. Most entrepreneurs struggle with never feeling complete because they're always just one action item completed. From feeling responsible, from feeling like they're not lazy, from feeling like what they're doing matters, from feeling like they matter. Most of them never feel fully complete because they feel like there's just this next thing. If I could just accomplish this next task, if I could just accomplish. If I could actually realize this next goal, if I could just get to this next step, if I could just get to this dollar amount, then I will feel complete. But most entrepreneurs struggle with ever feeling complete because they always think there's that next action item, that next thing to tick off the list. It could be and here's some of the language that has been tempting to me. One more follow up from feeling safe financially, or one more post, one more podcast episode. Just one more proposal. Let me just send one more dm. You know, if I could just send one more strategic touch point just to show up and be present in somebody's life. Then I will give myself permission to live fully the life for which I created this business. To give me. Yeah, that is a very real moment in my life where I'm recognizing, wow. I believed I had gotten to the other side of this, that I've actually felt complete. I've actually felt like I'm living the life for which I've created. Created a business to create for me. And yet, as I shared very transparently in the last episode of the Cliff Ravenscroft show before this, there's been a lot of fullness in my life and the typical rhythms and routines and strategies for regulation of my nervous system. I'm still carrying a lot of what I've picked up along the last two and a half weeks. I am not caring at all. I have done a bit of meditation. I have done a bit of afternoon naps. I have done a bit of reflective journaling. But it is like 30% of what I typically experience on a weekly basis. And so not everything has been fully processed. Not everything that's been rolling around in my mind as been fully released. And so a lot of that is just still inside of there. And I'm okay with that. I'm giving myself grace. I'm giving myself awareness. I'm recording, reflecting. And also, after I get back this Sunday evening, I anticipate the next several weeks, all the way up and through. I think it's August before my next speaking engagement. So I will have two months. Let's see. All of this is. I don't even know what month this is. Yeah, it's May. So I have all of June, all of July, and the first half of August without any travel that I currently know about. There's a little dog over here to my right, and he's got a bright green tennis ball in his mouth. And he's a brown husky dog. He's cute as can be. Hey, buddy. How are you? I love dogs. Have a good day. Are you gonna bark for me? You gonna say hi? Have a good day. Yeah, say hi. Hey. Yep, there you go. Have a good one. He's. Oh, he went back to get his tennis ball. He's cute. Anyway, what was I saying? Let's see here. Wow, I totally dropped that one, didn't I? That's okay. Now, that is how you release a thought and just like, you know what? If it's important, it'll come back. But I'm gonna have a good season after this. Oh, I know where I was. See, if it's important it will come back. And it did come back. So here's what was I was saying just before I took time to be present with the dog that I was passing and giving him the acknowledgment that I believe he deserved in that moment. So what I was saying is as far as I know, I don't have any more travel. But hold on a second, where am I going over the next three days? I'm going to Fort Worth, Texas. Why am I going there? Sure, I'm going to be touring Texas A and M law school campus with my daughter and my wife. But the primary purpose is not that tour. The primary purpose is to go apartment shopping for my daughter because she will be moving to Texas for a law school that will start in the fall. Now when is that? Probably in either late July, maybe early August. I don't know, I really, I have no clue. But I would assume maybe sometime before then. And by the way, I happen to have a driving trip to North Carolina in August. So there could be another season coming up. But not only that, we're not talking a two and a half hour direct flight to Fort Worth, Texas in the fall. Oh no, we're talking about a four hour drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky. A day of filling up a large U haul and packing up a car on a little trailer behind the U haul and then a road trip from Bowling Green, Kentucky. And let's see how much this is. Can you tell me how many hours does it take to drive from Bowling Green, Kentucky all the way to Fort Worth, Texas? And this is, my phone is going, it's 759 miles and it would take 11 hours. So an 11 hour drive to Fort Worth, Texas and then maybe a direct flight home. But so you know, there are seasons, you know, but I'm not projecting out right now. I'm not thinking about that. It just came to me as I was talking out loud. But after this week I am going to get about two months of back to normal rhythm, back to normal routine. And this is the first time I've had this full of a schedule traveling since the pandemic. And as a result of that I am going to go down this other road here. I'm noticing that my Average pace is 19 minutes and 51 seconds per mile. I want to actually pick up my pace after I cross the street here. Bear with me as I wait for all these cars to cross. Okay, I'm safe to cross the street here anyway. But this is the fullest my schedule has been since the pandemic and I have made this decision that I am going to turn back on my speaking focus, my conference focus. I'm turning on that inlet of new relationships in my business. Is that my wife Stephanie walking here towards me with the dog or is that somebody else? I can't tell. Okay, that is not Stephanie. That is somebody else. Anyway, so I am going to definitely pick up my pace here because I want to make every step count during this walk. Not just for content creation, but also for my physical activity today, because I'm going to be sitting in airports, sitting on an airplane and all the stuff. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, so busiest season. But what I'm doing during this season is a lot of capturing how this season is going and checking out new systems that I've developed. I am now going to transition into a completely different line of topic. So now I'm going to transition completely away from what would normally be Podcast Answer man material and I'm going to go dive deep into the Cliff Ravenscraft show type of material. For those of you who are checking out Podcast Answer man, the Cliff Ravenscraft show is more along the lines of the behind the scenes look of my life as an entrepreneur and what I'm doing in my business, what I'm experiencing. It's very much something that would resonate with somebody who pursues the life more along the lines of the solopreneur. Somebody who's not looking to scale or to find an exit strategy from their business. Somebody like myself who actually created a business because they love what they do and they have a hard time distinguishing their work from their play, which can be a huge benefit. But it can also create real struggles in relationships. If that's not something that you're consciously aware of. Or that's if it can create issues for me if I'm not consciously aware of just how much I'm playing in my business, let's put it that way. Alright, so a couple of episodes back I talked about the fact that I had a very intentional method or strategy for how I would connect with people at Social Media Marketing World and I will simply give an overview of it. So there is a Whova app that is available for large conferences and several large conferences use this particular app. I call it Hoover. I've heard other people call it something else, but it doesn't matter. It's W O O V A and I just call it Hoover anyway because I'm a speaker in the app. It has a Special speaker hub functionality built into the app. And as a speaker, my session is listed in the agenda for the overall conference. And anybody who is attending the event can go in and see the agenda, see the schedule, and anybody who wants to can click the button to RSVP for a session. And then it reminds you it actually creates your own calendar for what sessions you said you wanted to attend. Now, people can choose to RSVP for more than one session. That's at the same time slot. So knowing that, I decided, hey, I want to capture the potential of really touching each human who saw the title of my workshop and hit the RSVP button. Now, there were two other workshops happening at the same time as mine, and I knew there's a potential that many of those people who had hit the RSVP button might have also clicked one of those others. But I figured, hey, if I personally reach out to this person and build some rapport and trust with them before the conference even starts, and I started this about a week and a half to two weeks before the event, then chances are, when it comes to that time slot and they see that they've chosen two of the three sessions to attend, and they see my name, they're like, oh, well, of course I'm going to go to Cliffs. He's already invested so much into me. That's my mindset. That's exactly what I was looking to create. And so prior to the event, there was well over 100 people who had RSVP'd to my workshop. There were room. There were seats in the room for 400 people. And what I did is I reached out to each person and I mentioned them by first name. And then I pasted a message that I sent to everybody who RSVP that says, hey, I noticed that. So, hey, your name. And then comma. And then I pasted, hey, I recognize that you have RSVP'd for my 90 minute workshop on podcasting. First of all, I'm honored that you've chosen to attend my session. That language was very intentional, by the way, that there is a strong indication that there is, at some level an intention to attend that session. But there could be a similar equal intention to maybe check out another. But I'm making some leap of presumption here, and I think it's safe to do it. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that made sense. And I'm like, hey, as I am wrapping up the final preparations of my talk, which I always do right up to the moment I get on stage. I'm curious, is there anything in particular that you're hoping to discover about podcasting that you hope that my session will cover? I would love to make sure that my session is as valuable as possible for you and what you're seeking to learn. It was not that exact words, but it's very close to that. And over 100 people. I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head here. I don't have those notes in front of me, but over 100 people responded to that message, sharing what they were hoping I might cover. And there was one person who shared what they were hoping. And I looked at it and I'm like, well, that is definitely not in my talk. And given the 90 minutes I have and who's going to be in the room, that's such a unique thing that I don't think there's going to be time for that. Not even in the Q and A. I'm going to stop talking while I pass this guy with his mower. Okay, so what I did when that person responded to me, I immediately took that person's question and created an outline and I hit record and I recorded an episode of Podcast Answer man specifically addressing that question for 45 minutes. And then after I published that podcast episode, I sent her a link to it saying, hey, this topic that you're bringing here is so valuable, it's so important. I have a lot to share on it. This is not going to be included in my workshop, but because I wanted to give you the thoughts that are in my head related to what you've shared. Here's a podcast episode that was inspired by your question and technically it's just for you. And then I shared what is going to be covered and why. I hope that she'll stick around for those particular things. Imagine that level of engagement with all over 100 people that responded to my question about what do you hope to get out of it? Now, I didn't do a podcast episode where for every single one of them, but I did personally respond with carefully thought out, personally crafted answers to some of the questions that they had and then alluded to how I will make sure to even go even deeper in my session. And I began to write notes to myself on three by five index cards. And so when I got on stage, Social media marketing world, which by the way, I think it was nearly 200 or just over 200 people by the time of the event who had RSVP'd and I kept all the. I kept up with These messages, literally up to one hour before I was on that stage, adding to my index cards what I had written to myself as notes as to what people wanted to be covered that were not in the slides that I had prepared. And then I got on stage and I used the slides as main points, but I pulled out my index cards at certain points because I'm like, huh, there's a question here, there's the topic here. And I nonchalantly found a way to look down at my notes, and I addressed the questions as they came along. The response that I got from all of this was just. It was so much more. It was so much more responsiveness than I could have even dreamed of. And it just blew me away. And I'm so thankful I had my Plaudnote Pro, which is a little digital audio recorder device that's mag safe to the back of my phone. And after every conversation I had with somebody in the hallway, I took a moment to hit the record button, say their name, and just list off everything I could possibly remember that they just shared with me. And in some cases, they were sharing something and they were specifically asking me to follow up with them. They were specifically saying they wanted to connect with me. And if that happened, I said, hey, do you mind if I record a note to myself? And I would pull out my PlaudNote Pro, that's MagSafe, to the back of my phone, and I would hit record. And I said, hey, it's this time of day. I'm talking to this individual. I would mention their name, and then I would recap what we'd already discussed. And I said, do you mind if I continue to record? And they're like, that's perfectly fine. So I captured 116 of those, and when I got back, I took all of those 116. Actually, there were more than 116 recordings because over three days, several people came up to me multiple different times on different days. But I took all, let's just say, 130 of those audio recordings, and I merged them into a single transcript. Actually, I merged them into four different transcripts, four different audio files. But that's technical detail information you really don't know, but I sometimes like to include anyway. I had all of these transcripts. I had a very well crafted advanced prompt for ChatGPT, and I had it go through and create an entire document that has each person's name as a headline, a bullet point list of everything that I documented that I learned about them, including exact phrases that they said. And then I had the AI who knows my business, knows me, knows my objectives, knows how I show up, who I serve, how I serve, where people find value. And I asked it to give me, for each of the 116 people, follow up instructions based upon what it knows about my objectives of building relationships and rapport and trust and connection with these people. And this document, it is so mind blowingly awesome. And I have enough connections that for the next three or four months, there's no way I could, I could harvest all that had been planted in those relationships. That's how much is there now I will share with you. That is to come home from that, to have this available to me, but only three days to work in my business for the following two weeks after that. And having those three days, each of those three days already scheduled, full, before I even went to Anaheim. And all of the stuff that I'm carrying in the nervous system, all of the always on socially giving to others, it's just like, oh my gosh. And I'm like, okay, let's just. You know when you go into a buffet and I haven't gone to a buffet in a long time, but when I was a teenager, sometimes we'd go into a buffet and they have all of this food and there's so many different types of food that I would love. But the idea of going in to this buffet and just eating everything you love all at once in one meal, that's not even doable. It's not healthy and it's not good. It'd make you sick. It's a perfect metaphor of oh my gosh, this is the abundance of all the great things that I love about my business and relationships and connections. And I've got so much is available to me. But the great news is, is that I was able to really keenly understand that, you know what, this is not perishable. Within the next 24 hours. Much of this is more along the lines of planting seeds, waiting for some things to germinate, occasionally come along and water things with my presence, maybe drop a little fertilizer with a little bit more detailed attention and nurturing and harvests. From this will come 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, 6 months, 9 months down the road. In some cases, there'll be people that were a part of this process that were in the workshop. Like I said, There were nearly 400 people in the room. And as I think about all of that, I'm like, there's going to be a handful of people who 10 years from now reach out to me. So it'll be 2036 and they're going to say, cliff, I want to be in your mastermind group. I want to hire you one on one or I want to be a part of whatever I'm doing in 2036. And they're going to tell me, you know, I first discovered you back in Anaheim, California. It was my first time at Social Media Marketing World. I didn't know anybody there. I was a little nervous about attending this big conference with thousands of people with nobody I knew. And I'll never forget how you made me feel even before the event started and then at the event and the way that you've shown up in my life over the last 10 years. Wow. And that's why I finally, after following all of this stuff and I've gotten to this place and I've achieved so much, but I'm starting to remember things I've heard you say over the time. And you know what? I've achieved a lot. And I still feel isolated. I still feel alone. I still feel like that there's something that's missing and there's what I thought would bring me peace and fulfillment. I still don't feel complete. I feel like there's still one more thing I need to do. And 10 years from now, I'll have the opportunity to invest personally at the deepest level as a paid client as a result of what happened two weeks ago. So I've been using something called the Prosperis Coach Method for creating clients since July of 2019. If you want to learn more about that, I would encourage you to check out Cliff's Notes on Profitable Coaching, which is a separate podcast. You can find it@notesoncoaching.com there's only a select, very handcrafted number of episodes that are in that feed, and I would encourage you to listen to at least the first five episodes if you want to get a really good feel about how I've been growing my business as a coach and as a mastermind, group facilitator, as somebody who's a public speaker, this is how I've approached my business is the prosperous coach method for creating clients. And one of the things that I've experienced since COVID was that the things that I just talked about, the things that I've been doing at social media marketing, this is how I used to approach every conference I went to. Not at this level, never before at this level, but just naturally, I've just amplified with specific strategy using the Whova app and the Plod Note Pro to help magnify who I already was when I went to conference with the intention I already set. I used to, instead of recording voice audio notes to myself and using AI tools to summarize, I would just open up an Evernote file file and just write somebody's name down as a note and everything I learned about them and put a follow up date. And that was pretty much all I had. But over the years after Covid, I got out of speaking. I wonder why? Because there were no events to speak at, even my own annual conference. We couldn't host it anymore. So I got out of that routine, I got out of that way. And over time I would get to the place where I was like, I'm starting to notice that I need to fill some seats in my coaching and my mastermind groups. And I would turn back on this very organic relational approach to the prosperous coach method for creating clients. And then I would find that I would book myself solid and the invitation part of it would, would kind of slow down or come to a stall because I filled like 8 to 1290 minute coaching sessions every week with potential clients, successfully landing clients, but slowly burning myself out along the way as far as energy is concerned. And then I would shy away from filling my schedule and I'd have the income for a while until I started to see some open season appear again. After people's one, two or three years in the mastermind group had came to its natural conclusion and they wanted to move on to some other investments in their personal and professional growth. And I would go through this process over and over again and I was talking about how I've built my invitation or my relationship engines in my business. And this all started about six weeks ago in my last hot seat in the green room. And I've shared this in prior episodes of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, but I've. I've built some really great systems for myself inside of notion and I've. Instead of just having one follow up date, I have three levels of follow ups. I've got people who have scheduled calls, I have presence check ins and then just your standard follow ups. I'm not going to explain all of this here, but just to say that I've modified and I've adapted my follow up system so that I can actually create a system where now every morning, Monday through Friday, two hours every morning is devoted to reaching out and nurturing relationships. That's the two hour. I don't do any coaching calls in the morning at all. Monday through Friday, it's Two hours of building relationships and rapport with people, not with any attachment to any singular outcome for any individual person. Just knowing that if I have enough presence and an intention of serving people, there's going to be a number of people who identify themselves as somebody who wants to go deeper in a paid relationship within my mastermind or my coaching. And that has proven to be true over the years. But what's different this time is that now I have a system for blocking out the first two hours of my morning. Not first two hours, but actually the a few hours every morning. Let's just say that. And I think I. I see another white dog and I'm not sure if that's Stephanie walking Leo. Anyway, I'm going to turn around and walk away from the house as I wrap up this episode. But all of this to say that I would get into a cycle, but I've built things into this season of my life based upon all of the things I've learned from burnout and cycles of saying, you know what, I'm going to do this at least five connections every single day and I'm not going to give up on this. And then I would get through with my coaching session and coaching slots and then I would stop doing all those seed planting, relationship building things. But what's different this time is I only do two coaching calls or two calls in the afternoon Monday through Friday. Actually only one on Wednesday. So that's 2, 4, 6, 8. I do nine 90 minute sessions a week. That's it. And they're all afternoon and every morning, Monday through Friday, as long as I'm not traveling in air quotes, I spend those two hours every morning doing my engine. And I was talking this week in the green room because I every six weeks I'm into the hot seat. And now that I think about it, it's actually was seven weeks ago because we did not have the green room when we were in Anaheim. But anyway, I was in the hot seat again yesterday and I was talking about all of this and somebody asked me, cliff, you know, it seems to me like you've had a system for this in the past. What makes you think that this is going to stick? Have you thought about how this. And I said, well, you know what, that's interesting that you say that because what I've had in the past was a CRM and I had a commitment to build relationships with people, a certain number each day. But what I didn't have back then was a system for using that CRM in a way that would be consistent and reproducible and sustainable over time. So that is the big difference here. And so what I explained is that now I know that I don't do coaching in the morning, I do planting of seeds and I don't do planting of seeds in the afternoon. I do coaching. And I'm committed to having those slots filled. And in any moment where I get into a 90 minute block of time that's meant to be coaching someone and somebody's not there, then I use that for planting seeds and, and making sure that that's not reproduced in another open slot and it's sustainable. And in spite of the fact that I now have a buffet of more than 116people because several people who are not in the hallway conversation notes, people who are in the session are actually emailing me and we're building relationships as a result of that as well. But I have this massive buffet of, of people that I could be reaching out to. And in these past two weeks since Anaheim, or this past week and a half since Anaheim, I have only been able to be fully present and connect with and follow up with about eight or nine people. But when I say eight or nine people, we're talking about deep level connection, we're talking about deep level stuff. And there's been a lot of processing and creating systems in place to make this more sustainable. But. But the thing is, is this, it's the field. I feel like a farmer who has an entire field out there where the crop has been planted. And there's going to be ample amount of time and energy over the weeks ahead to nourish the field with water and fertilizer and to witness growth and to bring in harvests here and there from the various different places this has come from. Anyway, those are my thoughts. That's this week's episode of both podcast Answerman and the Cliff Ravenscraft Show. If you found yourself listening all the way to the end of this episode, let me know where you heard about it first. Where you listen to Podcast Answer man as the podcast or the Cliff Ravenscraft Show. And tell me one thing, one thing that I said in this episode that most touched you. I can't wait to hear from you. My email address is cliffliffravenscraft.com Blessings to you.