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Well, hello and welcome back to another episode of Podcast Answerman Cliff Ravenscraft here. And today I'm going to be answering the question, does every podcaster need to be on YouTube? Every now and then I wake up in the morning and I see that my friend Stuart Crane has sent me a text message with a link to a post or article related to podcasting, specifically related to things that I tend to talk a lot about as far as the aspects of the future of podcasting and the direction everything seems to be heading and all of those things. And well, recently I got another one of those links. And I want to read to you the LinkedIn post that Mike McAllen had posted on LinkedIn and that I was alerted to by my friend Stuart Crane. He says this Mike McCallan says YouTube just made another move that says a lot about where podcasting is heading. Again, I always love when people talk about podcast related news as if podcasting is headed, heading in some sort of direction. I'll get to that later. I'll tell you what I'll do. I have an outline that will share my thoughts and rather than giving you commentary as I read the entire post, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to read the entire post without commentary and then go through my outline that I created. So here, here it is without commentary. YouTube just made another move that says a lot about where podcasting is heading. The platform announced new premium features specifically for podcast listeners, including the ability for on the go mode for easier listening while multitasking, auto speed controls and podcast recommendations through Ask Music. And here's the stat that caught my attention. Okay, so this was written by ChatGPT, by the way, because I know. And here's the stat that caught my attention in a colon and then next line that I. I've been seeing that every day since I've been working with ChatGPT. But anyway, YouTube Premium users watched over 800 million hours of podcasts in April 2026 alone. 800 million hours of podcast consumption on YouTube in one month. Okay, it says here, as someone who works with both podcast production and social media strategy, I don't think this means that audio is going away. He says that. I think it means platforms finally understand that podcast audiences want flexibility. Sometimes they want to watch, sometimes they want to listen while driving, walking, or, or answering emails. I don't know that I've ever wanted to listen to a podcast while answering emails, but okay, I said I was gonna go without the commentary. We're gonna continue on though. Oh, gosh I so wanna give commentary anyway. The winners won't be the creators who pick one format over the other. They'll be the ones who make their content easy to consume however their audience prefers for associations and brands. This reinforces something I've been saying for a while. A podcast episode isn't just a podcast episode anymore. It's a YouTube video, an audio experience, short form social clips, newsletter content, and a blog post. One conversation, multiple touch points. My takeaway the future of podcasting isn't audio first or video first. It's audience first. And then he asks, how are you consuming podcasts these days? Mostly listening, mostly watching. A mix of both. Well, there you go. That was the post that Stuart had alerted me to and I went to ChatGPT and I read the post and I was giving commentary and as I was doing I'm like, I'm glad I'm doing this with Chat GPT rather than directly into the episode because I was a bit snarky as I was reading through this And I asked ChatGPT if it could create an episode spine, an outline for this particular episode where I could share my thoughts in a logically laid out way that still speaks the truth of what I believe, what I agree with, what I disagree with. And I'm going to go through this outline and if I don't feel like it conveys what's on my heart to share with you, then I'll go back to the original post and I'll share some of my snarkiness. I'll read it again with my commentary. But let's just see how this goes. First and foremost, let's start with the parts that I agree with. YouTube clearly wants to be seen as a podcast destination and as a result of that they are introducing new features and functionality that would be preferred for ease of use for consuming content. Podcast content while on the go without actually having to listen to it or actually watch it. The the playback controls are gonna be more customized and I would imagine they'll probably put some more podcast functionality into the app as time goes on. And one of the things that I realized is that I have been saying, hey, if you enjoy this content, you may want to subscribe to this podcast. Just look for the Cliff Ravenscraft show or Podcast Answer man or what are you creating or building a life and business together? These are all names of shows that I have, by the way, that I produce on a pretty consistent basis. And so I will say then just search for fill in the blank of the name of the show in your favorite podcast app of choice. And what I realize is that I guess because YouTube is doing so much to try to gain publicity, and there seem to be so many people pushing the narrative that YouTube is a podcast destination and a podcast app these days, that there are more and more people who are going to think of YouTube as their podcast app of choice. And the reality is, is that my shows, my podcasts, are not in YouTube. They have been in the past. When YouTube first began to integrate podcasting into their platform, I did not like how it worked and I took all of my shows off of YouTube. I'll get to that at the end of my sharing of the things I agree with and disagree with as it relates to this post, because it's important. But the thing is, this did lead me to think, you know what? I am going to start thinking about YouTube as a podcast app, which means that just like I would go and submit my podcast RSS feed into Spotify, I would submit it into the Apple Podcast directory and any of the other major directories and major apps out there that I want people to be able to find me on, it's about time that I go back to YouTube and submit my RSS feeds. So I do get that YouTube wants to be a podcast destination. And I as a podcaster understand that some people will prefer YouTube as their podcast app of choice. And I want to be there for them. So I strongly agree with that. I agree that many consumers want to use YouTube for their podcast. They don't want to have to go over to Apple Podcasts and or Spotify to consume content. The reality is that there are a lot of people who had never heard of podcasts until a YouTube podcast showed up on their algorithm in their feed and or they heard about it in social media. And some people have discovered podcasting first on YouTube and as a result of that, they're YouTube is their main content consumption platform of choice. And so the idea that they now need to go and find other podcasts that aren't in YouTube in some other app, that can be a hindrance. It can be a barrier for some people. So I understand that consumers, there's a lot of folks out there who think that, you know, I want podcast content and I think all podcasts should be in YouTube, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So. Okay. And again, I'll get to what that thought process led me to. Two hours down a rabbit hole this afternoon that I'll never get back, but we'll get to that. Some people enjoy watching podcast conversations. Well, you could always do that via video podcasts in the past, before YouTube. But some people will want to do it on YouTube. I certainly agree that people want to listen while they're driving, walking, working, multitasking, all the other stuff. And there's no doubt that YouTube can be a great discovery platform. I don't know how great it's going to be for an audio only podcast. I don't know if that's going to be something they're going to do. Recommendations for if the podcast does not have an accompanying live action video, if you will, humans showing on screen in real time. We'll see. Maybe, just maybe that Ask Music app, the audio first side of YouTube. I guess maybe they're gonna do some things. Maybe that article is about them going to be surfacing content from audio only podcasts more frequently. That would be nice. So those are all the parts that I agree with. But let me share with you what I strongly disagree with. The first thing is the implied statement that the winners will be the creators who make the their content available however their audience prefers. And so it seems to say that if you do not, if you have an audience who would prefer to watch your video instead of just listening to your video or to your content, then the winners are going to be the ones who do what the audience prefers. And obviously the opposite of the winners are going to be the losers. The losers. So in essence, this article says the losers are going to be the creators who hold doggedly to their own preference for audio only when their audience obviously would prefer to consume their content and video. Maybe it's a stretch, but that's kind of how I felt when I read this. The thing is, is I absolutely do not believe that every podcaster needs to create content that reaches every consumption preference out there. For example, I'm not turning all of my content into books. There are a lot of people who would much prefer to read a book that I would write than to watch a video and or listen to an audio only podcast. And so I'm not gonna go and write a book for them just because that's what my audience prefers. There's a lot of reasons why out of all of these years I've put out over 5,000 podcast episodes with my voice in them and have not yet once written a book. There's a reason why I've put out thousands and thousands of podcast episodes in audio only format and there's only a few hundred video versions of those. I don't like the complexity of video. So there's a whole lot of reasons why I'm not down with creating video content just because that's what an audience prefers. I don't think every podcast needs to be video. I don't think some podcasts are even served by video in any way, any meaningful way, shape or form. Other than if YouTube is a major growth strategy platform for them, then certainly you're probably going to do better with video than a static image of a podcast show artwork of an audio only podcast. But I really just don't believe that even most of those podcasts that are better served by audio only, I don't think their videos doing them a whole lot of service. That's not everybody, but there are several where I just don't feel like the video is doing much for them anyway. Also, I definitely do not believe that every podcast needs to be clipped into short form video content and blasted all over the social media platforms. I'm not against those strategies, but the idea that you have to do it, nah, you don't. I believe that a podcast episode can simply still be an episode. It doesn't have to be syndicated in any way, shape or form. You don't have to turn it into a blog post, an email newsletter, social media posts and all the other stuff. You could just create a podcast because you like creating podcast content. And those who like consuming podcast content can choose to consume it. And if they don't, they don't. It just is not required. I think that there is a lot of false pressure that creators are feeling these days. And this is why I brought back my podcast Answer man brand to be a voice for the creator who is not wanting to go along with this narrative that the future of podcasting is video. The future is in video. The Future is in YouTube. If you're not on YouTube, you're not relevant. All of those narratives, if you have been burdened by those, you this is why I'm here. I want to encourage you. I'm not against YouTube, I'm not against video. For those of you who are listening to me right now, I'm actually on YouTube with live streaming at this very moment. In fact, there are 17 people watching me anywhere between YouTube, LinkedIn, the X platform and on Facebook right now. So I'm not anti video, I'm not anti YouTube. But what I'm doing is I'm creating a behind the scenes version of what I'm doing. I'm actually doing something on the YouTube screen that makes sense for it to actually be video. I'm letting them see the outline of my talk or of my episode. I'm letting them see the Adobe Audition software recording my voice. As I'm recording, I've got a little picture of me, a thumbnail of me on the screen doing my craft. This is a behind. I'm creating something that I think is compelling video content, but it's me making an audio only podcast episode. So I'm not against it. However, I don't think that you have to do video. I do not think you have to do shorts. I don't think you have to do a newsletter. You don't have to turn it into blog posts. You don't have to be everywhere. And I will tell you right now, it's that kind of pressure that kills the joy that made so many people get excited to get into podcasting in the first place. The whole idea was like, you mean I can just sit here and talk into a microphone and record what I say, and I don't have to be corrected every time I use the wrong grammar, every time I use a comma in the wrong place, and I've got the space after the comma after multiple things? Is it the Oxford comma that people go by? Just all of the grammar stuff? Back in the days when I used to blog and write, I would write for hours trying to get something written for a blog post and then publish it, only to have people leave me comments and say, oh, my gosh, you totally got a typo here. You got a typo here, you got a typo here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You misspelled this blah, blah, blah. And I go in and I'm editing and I'm editing and I'm editing, and it goes on and on and on, and so much so I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need to proofread this five or six or seven times. And it took hours to write a single blog post. And when I finally had the opportunity to just sit behind a microphone and just speak like I normally would in conversation with anyone. You know, the last time I had conversation with somebody at lunch, not once did they say, hey, Cliff, do you know how many times you said, Nobody once said, you get the idea. Nobody complained in conversation with me about how I just communicate off of the top of my head as I'm speaking, what's on my mind with them. And also, there's so much more that can. Can be communicated with the voice, the tone, the speed at which you speak, that all of these, the. Your cadence, all of it. There's just so much that the voice carries. Yeah, there are some of us who got into podcasting because there was so much less friction. The technical hurdles of recording an audio podcast are not nothing for those who are new to the platform. But once you get over the very small amount of technical complexity related to creating an audio only podcast, you're off to the races. But as soon as you start adding video to the mix and live streams and cameras and all of the other things, and people will tell you, well, gosh, Cliff, there's so many AI tools that can edit your videos for you these days. It's like, yep, there are. Still don't want to sit there and do a camera all day, every day, every week. You know, I mentioned that I am streaming this live. The idea was that I would stream this live two times a week, every week. I would do podcast Answer man livestreamed, I do the Cliff Ravenscraft live streamed. But even for me, I have a level of mastery over live streaming. I have produced probably close to a thousand hours, maybe even 2,000 hours of live stream content over the last 17 years. And I still sometimes just don't feel like turning the camera on. Sometimes the extra steps of turning the camera on kills the mood, and I don't want to do it. And that's what I'm saying is this pressure that many content creators are now, if you are a content creator and you've moved the video to video and you started adding video and you're enjoying it, I think that's amazing. But I'm speaking specifically on behalf of those who felt the pressure to go to video, and they've lost that joy, they've lost that loving feeling. You see, my core belief is, is that podcasting has no rules. It is the wild west of content creation. In fact, there are things that I could do in a podcast that I can't even do syndicated onto a YouTube channel. There are times in my past where I may have included 30 or 45 seconds of a song that wasn't necessarily properly licensed for podcasting. And so let's just say I may have done that in 30 or 40 episodes of podcast Answerman. For example, this is episode number 503. The last time I included my podcast Answerman podcast feed into YouTube, I had several episodes rejected. It says, we're gonna delete this out of your feed. Why? Because YouTube says, Nope, can't do that. You're not licensed, blah, blah, blah, we're gonna delete this, you know, and all this stuff. And I'm like, fine, Also, I noticed that Spotify began doing that as well because they also have content matching and stuff. And I didn't do like an entire song here and there. It's like I would have. There was an episode where I played it's so Hard to say goodbye, the opening of Boyz II Men to what we had. It's just like. It was just a little bit of. It was just a little clip of that, and it was saying goodbye to something that was coming to an end and just little bits and pieces. It's the Wild west. And I've never encouraged anyone to ever use professionally licensed music in their podcast. I would strongly discourage it, but I have done it before and it's never been an issue until I put the RSS feed into Spotify and I put the rss feed into YouTube and they're like, sorry, we're going to delete those episodes. And who knows, maybe one day Apple will start saying, we're going to delete those old episodes out of your archive if you don't go in and edit out that 45 second section of audio that has that licensed music in it. Which I'm not gonna go do that. Are you kidding me? No way. Just go ahead and delete it from my feed. The people who find me on your platform can get what they get, and most of my content's not gonna be flagged like that. So we're all good. However, the cool thing is, because I'm a podcaster and I have an RSS feed, there are those of us who understand we don't need YouTube or Apple or Spotify to gatekeep what we can or cannot consume that was created by a content creator. Because I have an RSS feed, you could actually subscribe directly to my RSS feed using a number, I would say maybe even 100 or more different podcast apps out there that you could subscribe to my RSS feed in a podcast app out there that will give you access to all of my content and none of it will be deleted out of your podcast app because it's a direct relationship between me as the content creator and you as the subscriber. That's what I love about the RSS feed, and that's why I don't like the idea of just handing over. YouTube is now the go to place for podcasting. I think I am about ready. I am, as of this episode, saying, I believe that YouTube is a place where every podcaster should consider submitting their podcast, even if it's audio only. This is the first time in 20 years that I've said that statement, and I do believe it. But I don't think that we should send our audiences when we meet people. Hey, subscribe to me on YouTube. Look for this audio podcast. Now. I'm going to tell people still probably subscribe to the content. You know, look for this in your favorite podcast app of choice. And the great news is, at some point in the near future, if somebody's favorite podcast app of choice is YouTube, they'll eventually be able to find me. They won't right now, as of Wednesday, July 1st at 6:41pm because my shows aren't yet there, even though I know exactly how to do it. And I devoted hours to. To trying to make it happen today, and it just isn't happening today. And I'll explain that in just a moment. But my core belief here is that podcasting has no rules. It is the wild west. There is no gatekeeping. People don't approve you or disapprove you. You don't have to get permission. You don't have to do any special format. There's no special length. It could be audio first, it could be video first. You can do what you could if you want to. You could be audience first. However, I even want to say this. You could choose to be creator first. You could be purpose first. You could be invitation first, you could be expression first. The idea is that you get to choose why you're creating content. And not all of us are creating every podcast that we produce so that we can grow a massive audience. There are shows that sometimes I would record and publish episodes even if there was no audience. There are podcast episodes that I've produced. That quite frankly, just the fact that I spoke out loud, what I said in that episode. I'm an audio. An audio processor, an audible processor, whichever way you want to say that. I'm a verbal processor. I like to speak out loud. Sometimes I don't know what I actually think until I say it out loud. So there are many times when a podcast episode is like, wow, that one was for me. And if somebody else listens to it and they benefited from it, that's great. But, man, I'm glad I said that. I'm glad I shared that. I'm glad I processed that out loud. There was a podcast that I produced for over three years called the Train with Cliff Audio Journal. Never had more than, I don't know, I would say, on average, somewhere between 50 to 65 downloads per episode. Now, people paid for this. It was invitation only. But the thing is that that was the smallest audience I've ever had, and I did well over 300 podcast episodes for that audience. There are a lot of reasons why I would want to create a podcast that's not appealing to a mass audience. I might create a podcast that's only for paid clients. There are. You can do anything. There are no rules. You don't have to be on YouTube. But as of today, I do recommend it. I want to speak to this statement that was in the article about this. You know, the ones who win are not going to be audio first, they're not going to be video first, they're going to be audience first. And I want to say that not every show has to be audience first. I've already talked about all of the things that could be other reasons for which you feel led to create something. You want to say something out loud. You want to speak only to a specific group of people. But there are some times when you simply need an outlet to express what's on your mind in a way that is uniquely authentically you. And the way you do it may not be what your audience wants. Do you know that there was a time after, I think it was 400 and. Oh, no, 389, I think. I can't remember. After hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes of Podcast Answer Man, I decided I no longer wanted to talk about podcast technical things. Like, I no longer wanted to review the latest equipment options that were available. I no longer wanted to answer technical questions about buzzing noises and software tools and all these other things related to podcasting. After so many years, after a decade and a half, I kind of got burned out on that stuff. And what I found is there were a lot of people over the years who said, I really enjoy you sharing your online entrepreneurial journey. I love that you have built a business around what you do. I love the fact that you get to speak into people's lives. You influence how I think and what I do. And I feel so motivated and inspired by the things that you share. And eventually I got to where it's like, wow, I want to share more of those types of things. And eventually Podcast Answer man was rebranded to the Cliff Ravenscraft show, which, by the way, the Cliff Ravenscraft show is still going. So if you go over to. Let's see here, TheCliffRavensCraftShow.com it's on episode 827. But the original first several hundred episodes were Podcast Answer Man. I chose intentionally to shift that content from Podcast Answer man and rebrand to the Cliff Ravenscraft show because I no longer wanted to create the content that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of other people loved. If I was audience first, I would have kept doing Podcast Answerman all of those years ago. For those that don't know this, I just brought Podcast Answerman out of retirement after more than eight and a half years. I brought Podcast Answerman out of retirement in December of 2020. And I brought it out of retirement on my 20th anniversary of podcasting because I saw so many people that I helped launch a podcast back in the day lose their heart. They lost their passion for podcasting because they felt the pressure to add the video. And when they added the video, it added the complexity. It took away their spark of joy. And when I think about creating content, I don't think about creating content that the audience wants. And I know that this sounds crazy, but it's not how I think about the content that I create. There is a quote by a man named Howard Thurman that speaks to my philosophy of what it is that you decide to create in this world. Howard Thurman said, don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And here's what I will say. There are so many people out there who come alive behind a microphone, who come alive in audio only content. And as soon as you turn the camera on, as soon as you add all of the extra complexities, all of a sudden they're no longer as alive as they once were. And their audience may prefer it. They may actually get more discoverability if they do it. But something about the spark of joy of creating that audio only experience has gone to the wayside. And so for me, I say, do what makes you come alive. Now here's the situation. I'm still putting my content on YouTube. In fact, this is not a anti YouTube episode. I already told you that. This is the first time the podcast Answer man is going on record and saying that. I believe that if you have a podcast, you, you. Oh gosh, I'm going to say this word. You should submit your podcast, even if it is audio only, to YouTube. I know some people are thinking, has it truly frozen over in a certain locale? You know, I never, never in a million years thought I would ever recommend that you would ever hear me that says, I never thought I would say, if you have a podcast, you should submit it to YouTube. But here's the thing. I am not saying you should create a video version of your podcast. I'm just saying that YouTube I think is now a another. It is another destination for audio podcast content. It is a podcast app of choice for many people. And the number of people that it will be their podcast app of choice, even for audio podcasts is only going to grow. All right, now with this being said, I will say that YouTube has made it easy to import your audio only podcast feeds into YouTube. However, it's not necessarily intuitive as to how and where you should do it. So what I'm gonna share with you is what the experience was for me when I first uploaded. I think I put like seven or eight of my active podcasts via the podcast import functionality inside of YouTube when they first introduced podcasting and it destroyed my YouTube channel experience. You see, I have had a YouTube channel that has been a YouTube channel even going back before Google bought YouTube. So I've been creating content on YouTube for quite some time. And I have over 2,800 and some odd videos on YouTube. By the way, only about 6 or 7 or 800 of those are publicly viewable. I used to use YouTube videos as private video messages I would send to people and I would send them as unlisted YouTube videos anyway. But the thing is, is I am a content creator. I am a video content creator now I'm an audio podcaster, but I'm also a video content creator. As I said, I'm live streaming right now. But sometimes I'll even do content that's not even live streamed. I will record it locally. I will do edits. I used to vlog every day. I used to do like a life vlog every day for months. There's been all sorts of different things that I've done with video. First content, never as a podcast. Well, that's not true. I've done a lot of podcasting. I've done a few hundred episodes where there have been me doing a video version of the audio podcast. I hate it, I despise it, I don't like it, but I've done it. And so, but what I'm doing now is a good mix. But here's what I'm Getting at my YouTube channel, YouTube.com cliffravenscraft it is a video channel. When you subscribe to it, I want you to only see videos and specifically videos designed for a video platform. And what happened was they, you would go into your, let's just say your YouTube studio account and there is, you click on content and there's a little tab Or a column up there that says podcasts and you click a button that says create a podcast and you have the ability to manually create episodes. Create a podcast and manually add episodes. I would not personally go that route for myself unless I was a video first content creator. I'm not. So because I'm an audio first content creator and I prefer to have everything automated and come off of my audio RSS feed for my podcast. You go in and say create a new podcast import from RSS feed, you put in your RSS feed and boom, boom, it does its magic. And what would happen would be that how YouTube would do this, they would take your MP3 file, upload it onto their server, and then they would wrap that into a video file and they would take for the video the entire. Let's just say you have a one hour podcast episode, you have a one hour video now, and the video portion of the file is nothing more than the static image of your square podcast artwork. But it, but your files there, people would click play, they see this static podcast artwork image, but they hear your audio in its full glory. Now the thing is though, is that when I put these shows in, they were uploading all of these videos as the most recent videos. Now you could go in and list those videos as unlisted, but then the question is, is do they get notified if people subscribe to the podcast? I don't know how all of that works. So all I know is that by uploading my video or importing my RSS feeds, I personally, my experience was I uploaded, I think eight different shows. There were about 3,500 podcast episodes. And just imagine that if you subscribe to my YouTube channel and you were to look at the videos feed, you would literally see thousands of non video content, audio only content. And anybody who was new to my YouTube channel, if they went to my channel and they looked at my most recent content, you would not be able to find my video content. Now that could get all pushed down if I continued to create video content. And then for me, I'm producing anywhere between any given week, might have two audio podcasts or as many as seven or eight or nine or maybe even 10 audio podcasts. So even if I put out two or three videos for my video YouTube channel each week, which I don't, I probably maybe do right now I've been averaging maybe one a month or so. Because I'm not a video first content creator. Like by default, I'm an audio first content creator. I'm a podcaster. I love audio Only content. But the thing is, is even if I was regularly producing videos, they would still be overflowed by all of these audio podcast episodes that are being imported automatically from the podcast feed. So what I did is after I saw all of that happening and boy did I get so many emails of people like, what the heck's going on here? Why are all of these non videos coming up? I mean, it's like every morning I seeing this because it takes several days for these all to get imported when you have a lot of content in your back catalog. Anyway, it took me about a week and a half to go through and decide exactly how to handle the situation. Finally, I found ways to bulk delete all of those uploaded videos. I deleted all of the podcast feeds and everything out of my at Cliff Ravenscraft YouTube channel and I've just ignored it until today. Until today. I finally read this article and I'm like, okay, I get it. YouTube wants to be a podcast directory and even for audio podcasts. And some people today are going to think that all podcasts, including audio, should be available to them in YouTube. And if it's not, they're not going to bother going and getting a Spotify or an Apple podcast or any of the other tons of other podcasts apps that are out there. If it's not on YouTube, they're not gonna bother. And I recognize that that is going to be the mentality of several people, not only now, but even more as time goes on. And so because of that, today I decided I'm going to bring my podcast shows into YouTube. So the very first thing that I decided is I am not going to bring the the Cliff Ravenscraft show and import it as a new podcast under my YouTube.com cliffravenscraft channel. Instead. What I've learned that you can have under your YouTube or Google account, you can have up to 100 YouTube channels. And I already have a bunch of other channels for other brands that I have all video by the way. But I went in today and I went into my channels, view all channels, click add a channel And I added YouTube.com forward/@thecliffravenscraft show. Wonderful. I went and created a little profile image for it so that it would, you know, be the circle format. I gave it a little tiny description. I went into YouTube studio, clicked on podcasts, and then I clicked add a podcast. And then as soon as I hit import from RSS feed, immediately it says, hey, we need to verify your identity. There are a couple different ways. The easiest way is if you Take a six second video and we'll guide you through it. And so of course I'm like, okay, send me the QR code. I go through, I'm looking to the left, I'm looking to the right and all this stuff. And I hit submit. And then it says, thank you, we've received your video. It is under review. It usually takes 24 hours for your identity to be verified. So guess what? I have to now wait 24 hours before I can in that, before I can import my the Cliff Ravenscraft show into that new channel. No big deal. I'll get back to it sometime tomorrow, maybe this weekend, maybe next week. I don't know. It's not the highest priority, but it's what I'll do. But then I'm like, okay, while I'm waiting for that one to be verified, let's go ahead and get the other one's rolling. And so of course, what did I do? I went in and clicked View all channels, clicked add a channel, and I'm like, odcastanswerman. And it's like, this is already taken. I'm like, oh, of course it is. Because I have another podcast channel that I created that is YouTube.com podcastanswerman and that podcast channel doesn't have a ton of subscribers, but it absolutely does have a few videos with a significant amount of views. The only thing is though, is back in the day when I created that channel, I created it using my Google account. I don't know if some of you remember Google, but it was a social network that Google created. And that's what happened. Now when they shut down Google, by the way, I abandoned the podcast Answer man channel. I simply stopped publishing to it. But what happened was when they shut down Google, they shut down my access to that channel. But I went in and it took me probably about an hour of trying to figure out what a brand account is. And I also had to figure out how can I get this podcast that's under this brown brand account, associated and claimed under my main account that I use for my all of my other YouTube channels. And so I was going back and forth finding these, these support pages that try to show you how to do all this stuff. I'm following all these instructions. None of this stuff is working until finally, about two hours into this process, I finally get to a thing that says, okay, if you have not used your YouTube account prior to 2009, we have automatically created a brand account for you. And what you have to do is you go to this thing Gaia link or whatever and you click that once you're logged into your my account, click that and you can actually put in your YouTube account name and that YouTube account name's password and then click the claim button and it'll automatically be added to your list of channels that in your, in your main YouTube account. I'm like, wonderful. Only problem, I don't recall what the password is and do you know what their support article it says? It says if you don't remember what your password is, there is nothing that can be done to reset it or to recover it. Nothing can be done. So that is where I went. And by the way, I am actually using AI tools to guide me through all of these things and to read through all the support things. This is not the first time I've tried to recover that channel. It is the first time I finally got to a place that actually said, you know why this is under a brand account. And if you do this got something Gaia link, then you put. The thing is, and do you know what took me so long is I was going through LastPass and I was looking what were the passwords that I was using back in 2007, 2008, 2009. And I was trying every podcast or I'm sorry, every password under the sun and I just couldn't get it. So I finally put a community forum post out there to ask anybody to see if there's anything. I happen to have some friends that are very high up into the YouTube space. I could potentially reach out to them at some point. So, you know, it's not a lost cause. But I will tell you, it's a lost several hours of my afternoon trying to do that. I could have, if I wanted to, I could have just created another channel and I could have just called it YouTube.com podcast answerman podcast and went on with my day and then done it for my other shows. The thing is, I want to create a, you know, I want to have the Cliff Raymond scrap show. I want to put Podcast Answer Man. I want to put. What are you creating? I want to put Building a Life in Business together, Cliff's Notes on Amateur Radio. I want to put. Let's see, upgrade your peer group, Cliffs Notes on profitable Coaching. I mean there's a bunch of shows that I want on there. I want to put some of our old entertainment based shows. We got the Twilight Saga podcast, we've got the Hunger Games podcast. I think there's some old. We've got the Lost podcast. There's a Lot of podcasts out there that still have a lot of evergreen life to them that I'd like to do. But again, the question is, is, am I going to have to go in and add a channel for each of them? The answer is I'm going to. Yes, that's what I'm going to do. I guess I could call, I could create a channel called Ravenscraft Productions, but I think having each show having its own own channel makes the most sense. And then the question is, am I going to have to do this video verification for every channel and wait for 24 hours? Now, the thing is, I could probably devote an hour and create all the channels, do all the verifications, and then wait until the next day and then devote another hour and then do all of the RSS imports. That's probably how this thing's all gonna play out. But I just wanted to share with you. That's the rabbit hole I went down today and all of that. To say this. I officially, for the first time in 20 years, will say this out loud. If you have a podcast, even if it is audio only, I do believe you should submit your podcast feedback to YouTube so that it has a presence in the YouTube ecosystem. I highly recommend that you do not import your audio only podcast into your video YouTube channel. I recommend it be its own channel. Those are my thoughts on all of this. YouTube is important. Video is powerful. I love video, but I'm not going to force my audio content to have a video version. I think repurposing content is very smart for those who could benefit from all of the things. But if it slows you down, if it removes your joy of creating the content, just recognize there are no rules. This is the wild west. There's no program director telling you out there what you have to do and where it all has to be. You don't have to create shorts, you don't have to advertise and market your content. You don't have to grow your audience. Those are all choices you could make. But don't make them out of fear of missing out. Don't make them out of the. Don't make the decision to pursue those things because you feel pressured or that somehow you won't be relevant, or that you're not credible as a podcaster. The one thing that you know, the future of podcasting, I think, is the same as the origin of podcasting. It is the wild west of content creation, where you get to decide what you say, how you say it, how long you take to say it, in what format you want to produce is all up to you. Does every podcaster need to be on YouTube? No, but I highly recommend it. I don't necessarily recommend that you upgrade to video. That is this episode of the podcast Answer Man Podcast Answer man hey, if you're still listening here at the end, I want to let you know that I have launched a brand new Mastermind group experience. If you are not aware, I've been facilitating paid mastermind groups going all the way back to 2012. Folks like John Lee Dumas launched his Entrepreneurs on Fire brand out of the podcast Mastermind that I created years ago. My friend Pat Flynn and I started a Mastermind group in October 2010. It's not a paid mastermind group, but it's a mastermind group that I facilitated every week since October 2010 with Pat Flynn, Michael Stelzner from Social Media examiner, and some other incredible people like Ray Edwards, Leslie Samuel, and our dear friend Mark Mason. I will tell you that there has been nothing in my life that has propelled me forward more than my experience of being in a room with other people who are like minded, business owners who are pursuing excellence, who are looking forward to each meeting where we share our gifts, talents, experience, abilities, skills, resources. We are there to support one another, brainstorm with each other, hold each other accountable to the things that we say that are important to us, that we're going to do. And there is a brand new version I've been doing, like I said, the masterminded group experience. It's been the most powerful experiences that I've ever facilitated for people hosting rooms where entrepreneurs rise to their level of influence into the world that they feel called to rise to. If you would like to hear more about this latest version, this newest iteration of a paid mastermind group experience, it's the most accessible version of a paid mastermind group I've ever facilitated. You can learn more over at cliffravenscraft. Com Momentum. Again, that's cliffravenscraft. Com Momentum.