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If you're listening to this podcast, there is a very high likelihood that this is not the only podcast you listen to. In fact, you may have been listening to multiple shows for many years. And that is certainly true for me as well. I have been listening to podcasts going all the way back to the summer of 2025. And I'm going to admit something to you. In all those years, 20 years of listening to podcasts, many, many, many thousands of episodes, there's probably only been about 15 to 20 times that I've reached out to the person who creates. That said, you have had a profound impact in my life. Now, the great news is that the ones that I am still listening to today, that I was listening to all the way back to 2005, I have done that and on more than one occasion. But I'll admit that there have been a number of content creators who have added a lot of value to my life, who had never heard from me, who never knew I listened to their show and listened consistently and gained tremendous value. That's what I want to talk about in this episode. The fact that one piece of feedback could potentially keep a creator going for six more months. This whole idea for this particular episode happened because I was listening to a podcast Produced by Matthew McLean from Scotland. He has a brand new show called Audio Indies. He was interviewing Sarah Golding. Now, Sarah, I happen to recognize her voice because she was an audio drama character, narrator in a audio drama, a fiction, audio drama series that Matthew MacLean had created several years ago and produced over the course of multiple years, a podcast called a Scottish podcast. Wonderful show. If you can tolerate a lot of language, I can. And so I love it. But I mention it just for those of you who are a little bit more, you know. You know, if you are, if you shy away from lots of language in a show, then this show may not be for you, but it is a wonderful podcast. It's called a Scottish podcast. And then I'm so thrilled that Matthew is interviewing other people who are in the audio industry as independent media creators. And so he was having this conversation with Sarah Golding. And in the podcast, Sarah was asked something about feedback. Have you ever received feedback that really, you know, meant something powerful to you? And she did talk about the fact that you would think that we would get more feedback than we do. You see the number of downloads that come through, and you imagine that there are people out there listening. But sometimes you can go a very long stretch without ever hearing anyone. And some content creators maybe never do. In spite of the fact that many of them might ask for it as a call to action at the end of the show. And she says that, you know, when a piece of feedback comes in and it's something that shares a message of gratitude, she says, sometimes that can be enough. That will fuel me for the next six months. You see, there's this common assumption that certainly established content creators who have been creating content for so long, they must be hearing praise all the time. And I want to tell you that for 20 years, I've worked with many thousands of podcasters, and that is not the case. In fact, the number one private concern most content creators have shared with me is that I simply don't seem to be able to get much engagement with my audience. I ask them to share feedback with me, I ask them to write in, I ask them to reach out to me, and it's crickets. Now, some of them, they do get a few pieces of feedback, and they undervalue that. That's not what this podcast episode is about. But there are some. Some who simply just don't get that feedback at all. And I know this from the conversations I've had. And so a podcast, it doesn't matter if they have hundreds of downloads or thousands of downloads. And I'm going to tell you, I know many of my peers who have tens of thousands of listeners, and yet you would be shocked to hear how little direct human feedback they receive. The reality is that podcasting is a medium where people consume silently on their own. They're also appreciating the value they're receiving silently and alone. Their lives are being impacted, and they're learning, and they're doing that alone. I will tell you that I can remember at least five times immediately off the top of my head, right here in this moment, because this is the topic I'm thinking of where I've been driving in the car and I listened to something, and it was so profound that I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need to reach out and share my appreciation with this content creator, convinced that when I got to my destination, I would do that. But for whatever reason, by the time I got to that destination, that thought had escaped my mind. Maybe the end of the content came around and I started listening to something else that took me down a different path of thought. Maybe I was driving down the road and. And somebody cut me off in traffic, and it just completely threw me out of that line of thinking, and it slipped my mind. For whatever reason, it's happened a number of times where I fully intended to reach out to a content creator to tell them how much what they just shared has radically transformed my perspective on how I'm looking at a particular thing, and that it's going to have a powerful, profound and positive impact in my life. And yet to this day, that content creator, those content creators, never knew I listened to the episode. Another thing that happens in the minds of these content creators is that they see the downloads that are there, but without seeing those messages that said, this helps me, or I used your advice, or wow, thank you, I needed to hear this today. Or you know what? I have been listening to you for the last seven years, and something you said today is going to change the trajectory of my life. You know, just every now and then, one of those messages is all it needs to continue to fuel the fire for that content creators production of that show. I've had these conversations with lots of people and it's been true in my own life. I will tell you, there have been seasons of my life where it's time to sit down and plan out the next episode and ask, does this actually really matter? Is there anyone listening? I mean, I see the downloads, but even in spite of the downloads, if there's a long stretch, even myself 20 years in, sometimes the question creeps in, should I keep going now? Thankfully for me, I've been very blessed over the years to receive a lot of feedback. And the reason for a lot of feedback happens to do a lot with the fact that I've created over 5,000 podcast episodes, over 55 shows, and in total over 20 years. I've reached hundreds of thousands of people. And I've also been very proactive in meaningful calls to action. In fact, there were times with certain shows where we would give out a P.O. box and say, if you'd like to send a postcard of where you live, here's our P.O. box. And people would send us these. And I have so many handwritten documents, so I have lots of this positive feedback from people over the years. And there have been times, in fact, I want to share with you one personal experience. This was with my very first podcast that I was producing with my wife. It was called the Weekly Lost Podcast. And in the earliest days of my podcasting journey, I did not yet even know of this term or phrase, emotional intelligence. I don't know if that phrase was actually even used back in 2005 and 2006, but even the concept still would be something many people would know of, even if the phrase was not used back then. But I can tell you right now, back then, I had very little emotional intelligence. A lot has shifted for me over the years, and quite frankly, a lot of my growth in my emotional intelligence has come from feedback from that particular podcast and some others, but mostly from my early days with that podcast. And it wasn't all positive feedback. Today, when I find somebody who's afraid that they might be judged if they put their voice out into the world, and they come to me with a hope that I might encourage them, that that's certainly not going to happen, they're a little shocked to hear that. I say if your fear is that if you put your voice out into the world in a podcast, that somebody might criticize you for the way that you show up, that somebody might judge you, that somebody might leave you positive that somebody won't like what you're doing and that they'll be. They'll tell you about it or they'll tell others about it. They'll say negative things. If you are wanting me to tell you that that won't happen, I'm going to tell you right now. If you say anything meaningful, I can assure you it will happen. If you have character flaws, if there are anything shortcomings that you have, there are people out there who are so easily triggered by seeing inadequacies in the other, in someone else that mirrors their own inadequacies that they feel compelled to reach out to complain to you about yours so that it takes the weight off of their own hurt people. Hurt people. And guess what? There's a lot of hurt people in this world. So I will oftentimes take somebody who is having this conversation with me. They're like, cliff, certainly you don't have negative feedback. And I'm like, oh, certainly I do. Let me show you. And I always love to go into the Apple Podcast directory and look up the weekly Lost podcast and then show them that particular show's feedback. And so if I go to lostpodcast.com actually, you know what? I don't have my Apple listing there. So weekly. Let's do Weekly Lost Podcast, Apple and see if it shows up. Yeah, Weekly Lost Podcast. Here it is. Cliff and Stephanie. Wow, something's wrong. It's 4.0. It's got a 4.0 rating and two reviews. So there's something certainly wrong there. Something's got changed. Something's got erased. Because I will tell you that there was a different listing for that podcast and it had lots of negative 1 star reviews. I don't know what happened there. Okay. So I did not anticipate for that to happen, for me to not be able to pull that up on the fly. But I will share with you that I had a ton of one star reviews that talked about how much of an ego I had and just how unprofessional I was in the way that I produced the show. Now, there were people who loved my content, and thankfully, I had those people writing to me. But what I experienced as a content creator back then, for every. Let's just say 50 people who sent me positive feedback saying how much they loved my podcast at the time, it only took one person with some pretty heavy criticism to knock me down and question everything. And there was eventually, in that particular podcast where I remember receiving a particular piece of heavy criticism, and it was followed or it was preceded by a number of other criticisms. And I got to the place where I said, you know what? I don't think I can handle this anymore. And right in the middle of a podcast episode, while, you know, reading comments and things of this nature, I said, I think we're done. And I literally broke down into tears. This is how bad it got. And I said, guys, I think I'm done. I think. I think this is the end. And I thought I would throw in the towel, and I genuinely meant it. It wasn't some sort of, you know, rallying cry. Is there anybody who likes me out there? Please let me know. But the response that I got from my community was an outpouring and a flow of feedback in the positive direction that changed the trajectory of my life. You see, this happened probably about one year into my podcasting journey, or maybe nine months into my podcasting journey. I was still podcasting as a hobby. And had I stopped when I did, and I genuinely believed I was done, it's like, I just don't know that I can handle this much criticism. And quite frankly, the reason why it's hitting me so hard is because there's so much truth to it. And it echoes how I feel about some of my own shortcomings. And it's just like, it was hurtful, it was painful, and the way it was communicated was not constructive at all. It was destructive, and it just hurt. And there's a very real likelihood that I could have actually just stopped podcasting. And today I. I would not have the business that I have today. I would not have gone on to create Podcast Answer Man. I would have not gone on to train more than 40,000 people how to launch a podcast. I would not have done all of the things I've done over these past 20 years, it was the influx of profoundly positive impact or feedback from people's lives who reached out to say, cliff, this is why you must continue. Sure, we all notice some of the imperfections, some of the character traits that are being pointed out to you and stuff like that. But you know what? We love your content. We love how authentically you are you. And they begged us, myself and my wife, to continue to create content. And thankfully we did. And their feedback actually kept us going now for a whole additional 19 years and going on. So that's just one example. The other thing I will tell you is in my own journey, and this is if you're a content creator, I encourage you to think about this. If you want to give people a way to send you physical mail, there's nothing more powerful than a handwritten thank you card, greeting card, postcard, or even just a handwritten letter on some stationary or a couple of sheets of paper all folded up and put in an envelope and addressed to you and sent to your P.O. box. I have a stack of that kind of mail, and every now and then I like to pull it out and read it just to remind myself to stay grounded to why I still get behind this microphone. And I also have a digital version of this. You know, I've been using Google Mail for my entire email journey, going all the way back to whenever Gmail first became available. And so while I moved over to the business, Google Apps side, all of my email, every piece of email I've ever received to any Google Email address, which is for more than 20 years now, I have it in my archives of this one inbox. I love it. And there are labels and there's this one label that I created called Praise and Encouragement. And I am looking right now. I just clicked on it inside of my box. I have 290 emails that warranted that label now, not just every. Hey, Cliff, I really enjoyed your episode. I needed to hear that today. That doesn't get the praise and encouragement email label. It's usually a little bit more than that. Like, let me tell you how what you shared speaks to exactly what I'm sharing in my life. And it's usually a story about, you know, some sort of trial or obstacle that they're facing and how something I said in an episode, like, changed everything and what they're going to do differently as a result. And sometimes the email comes in after they've made those things. And just the story of the impact, it's like wow, this is fuel for a long. I have lots of fuel. The key importance here, for those of you who are the content creator, when you receive feedback that praises you for the work that you're doing, for the impact and influence, I encourage you to find a place to put it in that rainy day location that you can go to, so that when you start questioning, is anybody listening? Does this even matter? Why am I doing this? That you can go to one place, or in my case, I have one place for the physical, one place for the digital, but one place you can go to reconnect with those people who reached out. So my experience has been pretty profound. And I know other people who decided not to give up because of a single piece of feedback from a listener. I know somebody who produced a show for two years straight, had no more than 60 downloads per episode. Their goal, by the way, was to have over 10,000 downloads per episode by that time, but they never reached more than 60 people, but they produced one episode a week, every week. And. And at two years, they had decided that at the end of two years, if I am not over, let's just say the first thousand downloads per episode, I will stop producing this episode. This is just ridiculous. But before the end of their two years, they had a piece of feedback. They forwarded that feedback to me and they said, wow, how many more of the people out there are being impacted like this that I'm not even aware of? And they told me if I never gained another subscriber, but if I'm having this kind of impact with this person and maybe one or two other people, this has all been worth it to me. And they're still podcasting today. So one thing that I want to share with you is a couple of people that have had a profound impact in my life. These are content creators. The first two are content creators that I've been listening to for more than 20 years. The first one is Leo Laporte. If it wasn't for Leo Laporte, I don't know when and. Or if. Well, actually, I know if I would have, but I don't know when I would have learned about podcasting. But I got in way ahead of the curve. Right time, right place. And so much of it came as a result of Leo Laporte, who I first discovered through a cable television show called the Screensavers on Tech tv, which was originally zdtv. And I remember just loving tuning into his show and learning about the latest in technology. I've always been an early adopter of technology. So when he was no longer with that cable network, I would listen to bits and pieces of his radio show called the Tech Guy. He would publish those sometimes where you could hear it on his website. I would follow his blog because he had always been a voice that I really loved in the field of technology. And one day I was reading his blog and he did a blog post about podcasting. He says, hey, I just want to let you know I've heard about this thing called podcasting. This is what it is. And from now on you will be able to subscribe to my radio show via podcast. And I figured it out how to subscribe via my Google Reader. And lo and behold, every time he had a new episode, it was right there in my RSI process feed and I clicked play and it played. I was able to download it and listen to it and I loved it. And I found other shows and eventually I launched my own. But Leo laporte has been producing multiple shows a week, every week for more than 20 years. And there have been two podcasts that I've been listening to since their inception. One is called MacBreak Weekly. It's all Apple Computer related technology news. And the second show is called this Week in Tech. In fact, it's the original show. And I've listened to both of those episodes and I still listen to them every week. The most recent episode of this Week in Tech was just over three hours in length and they're routinely somewhere. Both shows are routinely over two hours in length and I listen to them every week, week. And because of what I learned from them, I am up to date on the world of technology and it's added tremendous value in my life. Now, I'm very thankful to say that I've told this to Leo laporte multiple times over the years, and I've developed a great relationship with him over the years. And in fact, I even had him come out and do the keynote for social or for Blog World New Media Expo back in the day when I was director of podcasting there, interacted with him at a number of live events, went out to his own studio in Petaluma, California and had dinner with him. It's just. It's such a blessing. So anyway, Leo laporte, probably the single most influential podcaster in my life. The second one I will tell you about, I've known just as long. In fact, same week that I discovered Leo's podcast, I actually, a couple weeks after I discovered Leo's podcast, he was talking about father Roderick Von Hogan, who is a Catholic priest in the Netherlands. Now, over the years he's done a number of different podcasts. I've probably listened to more than 20 or 30 different podcast shows that he's done. The Catholic Insider, the Break, the Daily Breakfast. Now I'm listening to the Walk. I've listened to his premium podcast. I've listened to listened to his Harry Potter series, his Lord of the Rings show, and countless other podcast productions. He's done on various different pop culture things. I love Father Roderick Von Hogan and I've developed a very close personal friendship with him. So much so that when our family went on a two week trip to Europe, we chose to end our two weeks in the Netherlands so that I could personally spend a day with Father Roderick, one on one, hanging out with him in his hometown at the time Amersfoort in the Netherlands. And then on the second day in the Netherlands, he traveled all the way to Amsterdam and was our personal tour guide for our entire family for that day. And since then he's invited me to come and do the opening keynote address for one of his conferences and we've partnered on a number of things together. I brought him out to the United States to speak at Blog World New Media Expo. Just our relationship has we are, I would say, dear friends and we both listen to each other's content. He is probably almost as influential in my life simply because of the amount of hours over 20 years I've just listened to his way of being in the world and I still love him every single week talking about whatever it is he wants to talk about. Then I will share somebody who I'm listening to currently that I am listening to weekly and that is Brian and Liz Deekle. They are a couple who are originally from the uk, then moved to New Zealand and they are world travelers and they have a podcast called It's a Drama and I think you can go to it's a drama.com Anyway, I have been listening to Brian and Liz Deekle every single week for the last several years and these three content creators are the three people I still listen to every single week today. Nobody else am I listening to like every single episode as it comes out by the end of the next week, before the next episode comes. These are the content creators today. Now there used to be a time when I would listen to five or seven or eight podcasts content creators. But those were in the days before scrolling through TikTok, which I am a fan of TikTok. I find some wonderful content here and there, but a lot of the Time that I used to give to podcasts has been given over to some of that short form content. And I certainly do a lot more reading these days than I did back in those old days. So right now, two different shows, a total of, let's just say, five to six hours a week of Leo laporte, about an hour every week from Father Roderick. There's been times when it was two to three hours total among multiple shows, but right now it's about an hour a week. And then Brian, Liz, about an hour each week. So that's about as much content as I'm consuming consistently week after week. But I want to just give a shout out. These are the people and you want to know. So Leo laporte, what I really appreciate is just all his voice. I love his, his just his personality may not always agree with his politics, but certainly not offended by it. But I just, I just love his energy around technology, something I care about. And yeah, there's just something about his voice that resonates with me. Father Roderick, I just love his childlike astonishment with the world and his experience. I love his authenticity, his transparency. I love his desire to show up and be of service. I love his heart for ministry. I love his heart for his community. I love his passion for growth. There's so much about Father Roderick that I love and also the fact that he's also a prolific content creator. And then Brian and Liz, I just love this married couple who is so authentic and real. They keep it real all of the time. And I also appreciate living vicariously through them through their podcast as they travel the world. And sometimes when they're not traveling for months, I love hearing about their travel to the local coffee shop and their excursion on a beach and all the other stuff. So those are the. I'm publicly expressing my gratitude for those content creators here. And one of the things that I'm doing is not just gonna give them this feedback in writing. I'm literally going to send each of them a link to this episode. So there you go. And then honorable mention that I want to give to These are people who are not creating content on a consistent weekly basis every single week. That shows up in my feed that I listen to all the time. My dear friend and mentor who passed away a few years ago, Dan Miller, he had the podcast 48 Days Online Radio show. I used to listen to that show every single week nonstop for probably nearly 16, 17 years straight, all the way up to his passing. And he already knew how much. And he was a dear friend Like I said, and close personal mentor of mine. So he knew before he passed exactly how much impact and influence he's had in my life. And I miss my time with him, but I think so much of his influence continues to live on in my life. Michael Hyatt, this man's still around today. He's still creating amazing content today. But there was one podcast that I listened to over 100 episodes of, or maybe just 100 episodes of. I think he might have rebranded and went in a different direction after 100 episodes, but it was called this Is yous Life with Michael Hyatt. I loved that show. Every episode was so spot on to my journey in my personal and professional growth journey. So much of my life has been impacted and influenced. So many ways of reframing experiences that I was having on this entrepreneurial journey were spoken to through the content that Michael Hyatt had created. Michael Hyatt became a client of mine. I helped him launch that podcast, and also he's been a dear friend, very close friend, and personal mentor in my life as well. And then honorable mention, that goes out to the Ray Edwards. The Ray Edwards Show. Ray Edwards is one of my best friends in this world. And I will share with you that he's not currently consistently showing up every single week with an episode of his podcast. But, man, in the early days when I first met Ray and he was doing the Ray Edwards show, that he spoke weekly on powerful tips and strategies related to online business. And he had segments related to tools and apps and resources of the week. And I'm like, ah, that's exactly what I needed to hear. I'm gonna go check that out. And I just loved his approach to that show. And so much value. So many different things he spoke about on business frameworks and strategies that had profoundly impacted my own business journey. So, Ray, I know that you'll probably listen to this, and I just want to say how much I've enjoyed your show over the years. And I love that you're back out there creating content when you're able to get it into the feed. I am always interested in listening, so that's what it's like. Just imagine me taking that and I could write it in a handwritten letter and ship it off to them via the post mail if I want, or I could take some time to write things out and send them an email or a direct message if I'm connected on social media, or maybe comment on one of their posts and say it publicly. But this would be my challenge to you. What about before the end of today? You think of one creator who has had a significant amount of impact in your life in a positive way, and you send them some feedback. And I would encourage you not to say, hey, that was a really great episode, but to tell a story. And if you want bonus points, avoid the use of AI just for this. And yeah, I'm not saying suggesting that you can't, but don't. What if you do use AI to kind of put your thoughts together? Avoid this. Avoid taking their most recent podcast episode transcript, having it transcribed, and asking AI to pull some personal details from the episode and include it in the feedback. I would really encourage you to avoid the use of AI altogether. Just bring the full human experience, human to human, listener to creator. What do you think? Will you take me up on that challenge? The practical takeaway for this episode is just don't assume that your appreciation is obvious. Your expressed gratitude has the potential to change the trajectory of the life of another content creator. And that message that takes you three to five or ten minutes to send may just carry that person through what's necessary to fuel the next six months of their content creation. Not just for you, but for those who are going to come behind you. You know, there's another side to this that I give a lot of thought to, and that's the fact that sometimes we need feedback. Simply somebody saying, you know, hey, I love what you're doing. It really is making a difference in my life. It's really making a difference in the lives of other people. Man, we're. Whatever you do, just keep going. This is important work that you're doing. But sometimes there are seasons when we do need a little bit more than encouragement. You know, there are times when we need honest reflection. Somebody who can point out some of the things that we're not able to see ourselves, somebody who can ask us questions that we haven't even thought to ask ourselves, and somebody who can see the things that we don't see because we're just too close to it. And maybe, just maybe, you might be in a place where you could benefit from being in a room where you can safely say, this is who I am. This is where I am. This is where I want to go. This is where I'm currently stuck. Is there anything that you see that I may not be seeing? This is exactly why I created the Next level mastermind group called Momentum. Momentum is a weekly mastermind environment for entrepreneurs who want greater clarity in their life, honest reflection, strategic feedback, who want to know what are the next aligned steps forward and who are open to the kind of relational accountability that helps them turn insight into committed, calendared action. I have been loving what has been going on in this brand new Mastermind experience that has been happening in this room every single week. And if you are in a season where you need more clarity or perspective or more feedback, and a room where people who are committed to helping one another move forward, I want to invite you to check it out. You can learn all of the details over@cliffravenscraft.com Momentum. You can go ahead and click the link in the show notes and until next time, I encourage you to take your feedback to the next level podcast and some man.