508 - Five Questions Every Podcaster Must Answer Before Expecting Their Show to Generate Clients - Podcast Answer Man

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[00:01]
A
If you are expecting your podcast to generate clients, I believe that there are five questions you must be able to answer before expecting results. In fact, over the years, many people have come to me with the top two questions. Number one, how do I technically launch a podcast? What microphone? What hosting provider? All of the technical things. And the second most popular question is, how do I grow my audience? And neither of those questions are in the list of five questions that I believe you must be able to answer before you expect to generate clients. In fact, I would encourage you not to launch your podcast and or try to grow your podcast until you have the answers to these five questions. Chances are, though, if you are listening to this podcast, you probably already have a show. And I'm not telling you that you have to put it on pause or anything like that, but if you don't have at least two or three of these five questions answered with great clarity, I going for a pause for a little bit until you have some more clarity probably won't hurt you too much. Especially if you think, wow, if I could just gain more people's attention and they would listen to my podcast more, that might solve things. Maybe not. So what are the five questions? The first question is, do you have a validated product or service? And some people will, when I ask them that question, they say, of course I have a validated product or service. People are coming to me all the time. We're having this dialogue over and over again. They're asking me these questions. And I can clearly see that everybody has this problem that my offer is the solution to. Okay, so you have demonstrated that you are aware that you have a audience of people that you're in conversation with that have described a problem or pains associated to that problem, they're in conversation with you about it, and you have created a solution through your own product or service that is meant to help them with this. That, that's all wonderful, but that doesn't mean it's validated. So my question more succinctly, more clearly is, has someone actually paid you money for this solution? And that's where people. Well, not yet. And the thing is, I was hoping that by creating a podcast and growing an audience and consistently talking about my philosophy, my framework, my solution to people who have this problem will hear that I have a lot to share and a lot of value to add to this. And when they hear my call to action, then I'm hoping that somebody will come along and pay me for my high ticket coaching program or purchase my course that I'm going to create and all these other things. And to the point is that what I see is a lot of the people who are investing a lot of time and we're talking many hours a week, in some cases of their life, every week devoted to creating content for their podcast when they have not yet validated any product or service. And here's what I will tell you. This is the way that I describe validating a product or service. It is not one person has paid you money for this solution. It is a record of two or three people who have paid you for this solution and not only two or three who have paid for the solution. But if you were to survey those 1, 2 or 3 individuals and ask them on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are they with their investment to pay you for that, is it an 8, 9 or 10? This is what I mean by a validated product or service and helping thousands of people launch a podcast where a large number of those who hired me to coach them on the launch of their podcast, an overwhelming majority of them were on what I call the entrepreneurial path, which means that the desire for their future as it relates to the success of their podcast was to help them build a business that would generate some additional revenue outside of their day job so that maybe one day they could leave that day job and have a full time self employment journey through business ownership doing something that they feel more called to do in the world. And almost none of them had any validated product or service when they first launched their podcast. And if you do not have a validated product or service, you may have the wrong answer to the second question. And that is, do you know if exactly who your ideal client is? Can you clearly communicate exactly that specific person, the problem that that person is facing, what their desires are? What are the thresholds that they are facing? Where are they usually hung up? Where do they typically stumble? What obstacles are they facing? What transformation do they need to experience that your offer is designed to address? Do you know exactly how to clearly communicate who that person is? First to yourself? And then can you easily answer this question? Hey, if I were to look for people who might be a good fit for what you do, who should I be on the lookout for? Now for me, I can tell you very clearly that I'm looking to serve people who are on the entrepreneurial path. I'm looking for people who have a lot of experience and expertise, who have developed skills, talents and abilities that actually bring about transformation in the lives of others. They have had a history of doing this through a day job or increasingly they have had more people come and say, you know what, I'd like to hire you to help me to do this. And as a result of making some money on the side, they've developed a dream within to kind of elevate that into full time self employment. And they don't know what they don't know about business, business strategy. And also they don't understand the challenges that come along with the mindset of a business owner versus where they are, which is the mindset of an employee. So oftentimes they struggle to make decisions on should I go this route or this route and which one is going to be perfect and which one's going to be guaranteed to get me because I can't afford to fail at anything. Every decision I make must be the right decision because I don't have room to learn anything the hard way. I just need everything to work out for me. If you know anybody who's in that particular stage of life, that's exactly who I love to serve through, for example, my momentum mastermind group, somebody who clearly has a vision of their future. They know where they add value to others, but they struggle to find that next aligned step and to take it consistently, not get in their own way and to roll with the punches when reality shows up at their front door. And the results to the actions that they finally get themselves to take aren't exactly the perfect results they were hoping for. How can I help them from giving up? This is what I do. I help people get back up and take what they learned from that last action, the feedback you got, and get back in there and discern what is the next aligned step and where's that going to go on the calendar. This is who I serve, this is what I do. I help them gain momentum. That's how I easily communicate it to myself. If I was communicating it to someone else, I would say do you know anybody who is out there trying to make it a go as a business owner, a full time self employed person, whether they're looking to leave the day job within the next six to 12 months, or maybe you somebody who's been a self employed business owner for the last three to five years, but they're still struggling to make a minimum of $10,000 every single month consistently? If you know anybody like that, I happen to have a lot of experience serving those individuals, helping them overcome the most common business strategy mistakes and also and more importantly help them develop the mindset of a business owner that's necessary for them to find the success that they're hoping for. So that's how I communicate it. And I know exactly who it is. I am able to identify the specific person, the specific problems they face. I can communicate it clearly to myself and to others. So do you have the answers to those first two questions? The third question is this. Is your positioning and language clear enough for that person to recognize themself? When they hear you describe the problem that you solve and the desired outcome of the clients you work with, do they immediately think, oh my gosh, this guy exactly understands what I'm going through. I'll give you an example of this. If you happen to be somebody who is my exact ideal client, I want to ask you if this makes any sense. Have you ever gone through a coaching program? Have you ever been in a hot seat in a mastermind group? Have you ever read a book? Have you ever gone to a conference and you clearly saw a framework, a strategy, a tool, some clear next step that if you were to implement on this, you know for a fact it would work? Or maybe you actually learned this a long time ago. You applied it to your best ability with what you had to work with, let's just say two or three years ago, and you saw some moderate success from it. But that success brought about the desire or the need, I should say, to serve those who responded favorably to that method, that strategy, that. That implementation. And then as a result of that, you were so overwhelmed by the response that you're serving all of those people. And then those contracts eventually come to an end. And it's been 9 months, 12 months, 18 months since you actually implemented that strategy, that gained all of that work, all of those clients, and you forgot about it. And now you're out there looking for some new technique to fill up the empty slots in your client roster or your coaching calendar or whatever it is that you. You have. You have the need to. To fill spots where clients are aging out of whatever product or service that you're offering them. And then I was like, oh, I got it. I know I'll go back and do that thing again. And have you ever done this? It's like, I know I will put that on the calendar from 2pm to 4pm on Thursday. And then you get there, and right around 1:35 in the afternoon, you all of a sudden receive an email and it is somebody who is a potential client and they're asking you a question. And that question in the email, if you serve them powerfully, might open up a window or an opportunity for you to maybe bring them back into one of your open spots. And so it's now 1:35. In 25 minutes, you're supposed to be devoting the next two hours to this thing, but you're looking at this and it's like, okay, I'm going to respond. And so the next thing. This has happened to me a number of times, so this is why I can speak from my own experience. I will devote the next 25 minutes to doing some research so that I can show up powerfully for this person. And then I will devote another 30 minutes after that to crafting my response. And then I might take some time to go through, and in the modern day of AI, I might actually get it cleaned up and polished a little bit. And then I might actually realize it's like, okay, that's too overly polished. I want this to sound like me. And so I go through and the next thing I know, it's about 2:30 in the afternoon and I send the message, now, was that a valuable use of my time? I believe it was. But was it what I had on the calendar from 2 to 2:35? I was supposed to be working on this thing that I had committed myself to. But no. 25 minutes before that time block started, I was already well into something that was unprepared for, wasn't planned in my day, it was not scheduled. But in my mind, it took priority, it took precedence. It's like, this has to be put above that. Now, the reality is, is that may or may not turn into a sale, may or may not bring that person back on board. One thing that I have discovered, as with the mindset of the business owner who's been doing this for two decades now, is I understand that if whatever I just did from 1:35 to 2:35, that entire hour of time, I would have gotten the exact same result. If I would have done that at 4:30 instead of 1:30, or I would have got the exact same result for that person. If I would have done it the next day and blocked out an hour from 9am to 10am the next business day, it would not have changed that outcome. But what I also recognize is that because I went in and did that thing during that block of time, now it's 2:35. I look at my calendar, I'm like, oh man, I'm already 35 minutes in. I'm kind of wiped. You know, that took a lot of emotional, mental, cognitive energy to process all of that. I think I need A little bit of break, I'm gonna go upstairs and, and maybe go out for a little bit of a walk and stuff like that. And by the time it's like, oh, there's only an hour left, I really don't have enough time for this. And then at 4:30 I have this thing on my calendar. You know what, I will just take that two hour block of time and I'll push it off to some point in the future. And that continues to happen over and over again. Now let me ask you this. Do you recognize yourself in that story? Is there any part of that that sounds familiar as almost like I understand exactly what you experience in your day to day life as a business owner? Well, it's because my positioning and my language is so clear that you can recognize yourself. So my question, the third question for you to consider if you want to expect clients to be generated from the content that you create. My question is, is your positioning and your language clear enough so that the people who you are meant to serve, can they recognize themselves? This is the question. There is a fourth question and that is, is each episode that you produce intentionally created for that person? Are you speaking to a clearly defined listener and helping them move towards some better decision or some, in my case, a new belief or a meaningful next aligned step that's going to help them get more of what they want to experience in life? Now I'm not suggesting that every single episode that you create needs to sell your services. I don't think that you need to turn every episode into an infomercial about what it would be like to hire you. I don't think that would be compelling content by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that every episode should be. It should be increasingly more logical that you are the right person to seek out to help solve the issues that they are facing. That is every episode that you create creating that environment where it's intentionally created for that specific person who you know is experiencing the this very set of problems, pains, desires, all of the transformation that everything you know so clearly about that particular type of person is. Is every episode designed to speak to that person? The fifth question is, do you believe deeply enough in the value of what you offer so that you can confidently invite people to purchase from you? How confident are you when you tell the right person who is listening to your show that what you offer matters and what they should do next so that they can work with you? On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you? And if you're not an 89 or 10, then there may be some work to do in this area. What I can tell you is if you have a favorable, meaningful, clear answer to these five questions, it won't matter how many people are listening to your show because depending on your business model, you may only need 20, 30 or 50 clients each year. Heck, if you truly have a high ticket offer, you may only need five or ten clients each year. And so it's not important to know how do I massively grow my audience? The question is, do I have better answers to these five questions? I'll put these in the show notes for you so that you can go through and my recommendation, take some time, journal through these, reflect and ask yourself, do I genuinely have meaningful answers to these questions? And if you find yourself struggling with any of them, I want to invite you to email me personally. My email address is cliffliffravenscraft.com tell me which of these questions you most struggle with, what answer have you come up with and let me know. I would love to help you get some more clarity. I'll ask you some clarifying questions. I'll probably start things off in an asynchronous email back and forth with you if you're open to that. It's how I like to do things when first getting to know someone. If you're somebody that I've worked with in the past, chances are I might speed things up and be willing to jump onto a call with you just to discuss it further. But no matter what, if you don't have the answer to these five questions, I can assure you, if you don't already have a podcast, I would not suggest you go launch a podcast yet. And if you already have a podcast and you do not have amazing ANSwers to these five questions and you are expecting your podcast to generate clients for your business, I will tell you it's going to be an uphill battle until you have these answers. I look forward to hearing from you. If you have these answers and you want to share them with me, I'd love to celebrate that with you. Tell me what the name of your show is, give me a link to your podcast and and send me the answers to these five questions. And maybe, just maybe, I might know somebody who's a great fit for who you are and what you do and what you offer. And maybe, just maybe, I might do a future episode where I refer back to this episode and I read a few responses of what people's podcasts are and their answers to these five questions. I would like that. And again, more importantly to those of you who who are struggling to answer any one of those five which one is the one you struggle with the most? Email me and let me see if I can't be of some support and encouragement to you. That's all I have for you here today, but I can tell you right now, out of all of the answers I've ever given in the past 20 years of helping people with podcasts, if you can answer these five questions and your desired outcome is to generate clients with your show, this may be the most valuable podcast episode I've ever produced. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level and my email address is in the Show Notes podcast and some man.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Answer Man - Episode 508

Title: Five Questions Every Podcaster Must Answer Before Expecting Their Show to Generate Clients
Host: Cliff Ravenscraft
Date: August 7, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Cliff Ravenscraft distills two decades of podcasting and coaching experience into a powerful framework: the five questions every podcaster must be able to answer before expecting their show to generate paying clients. Cliff challenges common assumptions about what drives podcast-business success, shifting the focus away from technical details or audience growth hacks, and toward foundational clarity in business strategy and client attraction.

This episode is an essential listen for podcasters seeking real business outcomes from their content—especially those hoping their podcast will attract clients but struggling to see results.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Wrong Initial Questions

Cliff notes that most new podcasters focus on launching logistics (“Which microphone?”) or audience growth (“How do I get more listeners?”), but these are not the foundational questions for business success.
Quote:

"Neither of those questions are in the list of five questions that I believe you must be able to answer before you expect to generate clients." (00:36)

2. The Five Essential Questions

Question 1: Do You Have a Validated Product or Service?

Validation isn’t about intentions—it’s about transactions and outcomes.
Validated means at least two or three people have paid for the solution, and, if asked, rate their satisfaction an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10.
Many aspiring entrepreneurial podcasters skip this, investing massive content-creation hours with no validated offer.
Quote:

"Has someone actually paid you money for this solution? ... Not just one person, but two or three, and—if you were to survey them—are they rating it an 8, 9 or 10?" (02:36)

Question 2: Can You Clearly Identify Your Ideal Client?

You must vividly define who you serve: their problems, desires, obstacles, and transformation needs.
Cliff demonstrates with his own ideal client (experienced professionals seeking to quit their day job and go full-time in self-employment).
You should be able to clearly describe this person both to yourself and to others.
Quote:

"Can you clearly communicate exactly that specific person, the problem that that person is facing, what their desires are? ... I can tell you very clearly that I’m looking to serve people who are on the entrepreneurial path..." (07:12)

Question 3: Is Your Positioning and Language Clear Enough for Your Ideal Client to Self-Identify?

When your ideal listener hears you, do they think, "Oh my gosh, this guy exactly understands what I’m going through"?
Use specific stories or scenarios so people recognize themselves.
Cliff shares a detailed anecdote about “time block” distractions as an example.
Quote:

"Is your positioning and your language clear enough so that the people who you are meant to serve, can they recognize themselves?" (17:00)
"Let me ask you this. Do you recognize yourself in that story? ... Well, it’s because my positioning and my language is so clear that you can recognize yourself." (23:15)

Question 4: Is Each Episode Intentionally Created for That Ideal Client?

Every episode should move your specific audience toward a better decision, new belief, or next step—not be a general infomercial, but always strengthen your fit as a solution provider.
Quote:

"Every episode should be... increasingly more logical that you are the right person to seek out to help solve the issues that they are facing." (25:42)

Question 5: Do You Believe Deeply Enough in the Value of What You Offer to Confidently Invite Sales?

True confidence in your offer allows you to make sincere, powerful invitations to work with you.
"If you’re not an 8, 9 or 10 [in confidence], then there may be some work to do."
Quote:

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you? And if you’re not an 8, 9 or 10, then there may be some work to do in this area." (27:12)
"If you have a favorable, meaningful, clear answer to these five questions, it won’t matter how many people are listening to your show." (28:00)

Memorable Moments & Quotes

On Skipping Validation:

“Almost none of them had any validated product or service when they first launched their podcast... and if you do not have a validated product or service, you may have the wrong answer to the second question.” (05:18)
On Clarity of Ideal Client:

“If you know anybody who's in that particular stage of life, that's exactly who I love to serve through, for example, my momentum mastermind group...” (11:02)
Real-World Relatability:

“Have you ever said you’re going to work on something at 2pm, but get sidetracked by an urgent email that feels like it could fill a client spot—so you devote your energy to that instead, and by the time it’s done, your planned task never happens?” (19:30)
Why Audience Size Isn’t Everything:

“It won’t matter how many people are listening to your show... you may only need 20, 30 or 50 clients each year. Heck, if you truly have a high ticket offer, you may only need five or ten clients each year.” (28:11)

Actionable Takeaways

Reflect & Journal:
Cliff urges listeners to write out their answers to each of the five questions, deeply and honestly.

“My recommendation: take some time, journal through these, reflect and ask yourself, do I genuinely have meaningful answers to these questions?” (29:02)
Get Support:
Cliff offers personal encouragement and feedback—invite listeners to email him directly with the question they most struggle with.

“If you find yourself struggling with any of them, I want to invite you to email me personally... I would love to help you get some more clarity.” (29:23)
Share Your Story:
Listeners with strong answers are encouraged to share them—and their show info—with Cliff.

“Maybe, just maybe, I might do a future episode where I refer back to this episode and I read a few responses of what people's podcasts are and their answers to these five questions.” (30:36)

Timestamps for Important Segments

00:36 — Why common questions about gear/audience growth aren’t enough
02:36 — What it really means to have a “validated” product or service
07:12 — Defining and clearly articulating your ideal client
17:00 — Positioning and self-recognition for the listener
23:15 — Cliff’s “time block” anecdote and the power of clear positioning
25:42 — Creating each episode with intentionality for your client
27:12 — Confidence in your offering and inviting client action
28:00 — Why audience size is far less important than clarity on the five questions
29:02 — Concrete next steps for listeners: reflect, journal, reach out

Summary Statement

Cliff concludes that crystal-clear answers to these five questions—not tech tools or viral growth tactics—are the true foundation for generating clients through podcasting. Without this strategic and self-assured groundwork, podcasters will face an uphill battle. This episode is both a challenge and an invitation: do the real work of business clarity before expecting your podcast to deliver real business results.

Contact:
Cliff invites listeners to email him at cliff@cliffravenscraft.com with their answers or struggles regarding the five questions.

Podcast Answer Man: “Take everything you do to the next level.”

Loading summary

Transcript1 lines

[00:01]
A
If you are expecting your podcast to generate clients, I believe that there are five questions you must be able to answer before expecting results. In fact, over the years, many people have come to me with the top two questions. Number one, how do I technically launch a podcast? What microphone? What hosting provider? All of the technical things. And the second most popular question is, how do I grow my audience? And neither of those questions are in the list of five questions that I believe you must be able to answer before you expect to generate clients. In fact, I would encourage you not to launch your podcast and or try to grow your podcast until you have the answers to these five questions. Chances are, though, if you are listening to this podcast, you probably already have a show. And I'm not telling you that you have to put it on pause or anything like that, but if you don't have at least two or three of these five questions answered with great clarity, I going for a pause for a little bit until you have some more clarity probably won't hurt you too much. Especially if you think, wow, if I could just gain more people's attention and they would listen to my podcast more, that might solve things. Maybe not. So what are the five questions? The first question is, do you have a validated product or service? And some people will, when I ask them that question, they say, of course I have a validated product or service. People are coming to me all the time. We're having this dialogue over and over again. They're asking me these questions. And I can clearly see that everybody has this problem that my offer is the solution to. Okay, so you have demonstrated that you are aware that you have a audience of people that you're in conversation with that have described a problem or pains associated to that problem, they're in conversation with you about it, and you have created a solution through your own product or service that is meant to help them with this. That, that's all wonderful, but that doesn't mean it's validated. So my question more succinctly, more clearly is, has someone actually paid you money for this solution? And that's where people. Well, not yet. And the thing is, I was hoping that by creating a podcast and growing an audience and consistently talking about my philosophy, my framework, my solution to people who have this problem will hear that I have a lot to share and a lot of value to add to this. And when they hear my call to action, then I'm hoping that somebody will come along and pay me for my high ticket coaching program or purchase my course that I'm going to create and all these other things. And to the point is that what I see is a lot of the people who are investing a lot of time and we're talking many hours a week, in some cases of their life, every week devoted to creating content for their podcast when they have not yet validated any product or service. And here's what I will tell you. This is the way that I describe validating a product or service. It is not one person has paid you money for this solution. It is a record of two or three people who have paid you for this solution and not only two or three who have paid for the solution. But if you were to survey those 1, 2 or 3 individuals and ask them on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are they with their investment to pay you for that, is it an 8, 9 or 10? This is what I mean by a validated product or service and helping thousands of people launch a podcast where a large number of those who hired me to coach them on the launch of their podcast, an overwhelming majority of them were on what I call the entrepreneurial path, which means that the desire for their future as it relates to the success of their podcast was to help them build a business that would generate some additional revenue outside of their day job so that maybe one day they could leave that day job and have a full time self employment journey through business ownership doing something that they feel more called to do in the world. And almost none of them had any validated product or service when they first launched their podcast. And if you do not have a validated product or service, you may have the wrong answer to the second question. And that is, do you know if exactly who your ideal client is? Can you clearly communicate exactly that specific person, the problem that that person is facing, what their desires are? What are the thresholds that they are facing? Where are they usually hung up? Where do they typically stumble? What obstacles are they facing? What transformation do they need to experience that your offer is designed to address? Do you know exactly how to clearly communicate who that person is? First to yourself? And then can you easily answer this question? Hey, if I were to look for people who might be a good fit for what you do, who should I be on the lookout for? Now for me, I can tell you very clearly that I'm looking to serve people who are on the entrepreneurial path. I'm looking for people who have a lot of experience and expertise, who have developed skills, talents and abilities that actually bring about transformation in the lives of others. They have had a history of doing this through a day job or increasingly they have had more people come and say, you know what, I'd like to hire you to help me to do this. And as a result of making some money on the side, they've developed a dream within to kind of elevate that into full time self employment. And they don't know what they don't know about business, business strategy. And also they don't understand the challenges that come along with the mindset of a business owner versus where they are, which is the mindset of an employee. So oftentimes they struggle to make decisions on should I go this route or this route and which one is going to be perfect and which one's going to be guaranteed to get me because I can't afford to fail at anything. Every decision I make must be the right decision because I don't have room to learn anything the hard way. I just need everything to work out for me. If you know anybody who's in that particular stage of life, that's exactly who I love to serve through, for example, my momentum mastermind group, somebody who clearly has a vision of their future. They know where they add value to others, but they struggle to find that next aligned step and to take it consistently, not get in their own way and to roll with the punches when reality shows up at their front door. And the results to the actions that they finally get themselves to take aren't exactly the perfect results they were hoping for. How can I help them from giving up? This is what I do. I help people get back up and take what they learned from that last action, the feedback you got, and get back in there and discern what is the next aligned step and where's that going to go on the calendar. This is who I serve, this is what I do. I help them gain momentum. That's how I easily communicate it to myself. If I was communicating it to someone else, I would say do you know anybody who is out there trying to make it a go as a business owner, a full time self employed person, whether they're looking to leave the day job within the next six to 12 months, or maybe you somebody who's been a self employed business owner for the last three to five years, but they're still struggling to make a minimum of $10,000 every single month consistently? If you know anybody like that, I happen to have a lot of experience serving those individuals, helping them overcome the most common business strategy mistakes and also and more importantly help them develop the mindset of a business owner that's necessary for them to find the success that they're hoping for. So that's how I communicate it. And I know exactly who it is. I am able to identify the specific person, the specific problems they face. I can communicate it clearly to myself and to others. So do you have the answers to those first two questions? The third question is this. Is your positioning and language clear enough for that person to recognize themself? When they hear you describe the problem that you solve and the desired outcome of the clients you work with, do they immediately think, oh my gosh, this guy exactly understands what I'm going through. I'll give you an example of this. If you happen to be somebody who is my exact ideal client, I want to ask you if this makes any sense. Have you ever gone through a coaching program? Have you ever been in a hot seat in a mastermind group? Have you ever read a book? Have you ever gone to a conference and you clearly saw a framework, a strategy, a tool, some clear next step that if you were to implement on this, you know for a fact it would work? Or maybe you actually learned this a long time ago. You applied it to your best ability with what you had to work with, let's just say two or three years ago, and you saw some moderate success from it. But that success brought about the desire or the need, I should say, to serve those who responded favorably to that method, that strategy, that. That implementation. And then as a result of that, you were so overwhelmed by the response that you're serving all of those people. And then those contracts eventually come to an end. And it's been 9 months, 12 months, 18 months since you actually implemented that strategy, that gained all of that work, all of those clients, and you forgot about it. And now you're out there looking for some new technique to fill up the empty slots in your client roster or your coaching calendar or whatever it is that you. You have. You have the need to. To fill spots where clients are aging out of whatever product or service that you're offering them. And then I was like, oh, I got it. I know I'll go back and do that thing again. And have you ever done this? It's like, I know I will put that on the calendar from 2pm to 4pm on Thursday. And then you get there, and right around 1:35 in the afternoon, you all of a sudden receive an email and it is somebody who is a potential client and they're asking you a question. And that question in the email, if you serve them powerfully, might open up a window or an opportunity for you to maybe bring them back into one of your open spots. And so it's now 1:35. In 25 minutes, you're supposed to be devoting the next two hours to this thing, but you're looking at this and it's like, okay, I'm going to respond. And so the next thing. This has happened to me a number of times, so this is why I can speak from my own experience. I will devote the next 25 minutes to doing some research so that I can show up powerfully for this person. And then I will devote another 30 minutes after that to crafting my response. And then I might take some time to go through, and in the modern day of AI, I might actually get it cleaned up and polished a little bit. And then I might actually realize it's like, okay, that's too overly polished. I want this to sound like me. And so I go through and the next thing I know, it's about 2:30 in the afternoon and I send the message, now, was that a valuable use of my time? I believe it was. But was it what I had on the calendar from 2 to 2:35? I was supposed to be working on this thing that I had committed myself to. But no. 25 minutes before that time block started, I was already well into something that was unprepared for, wasn't planned in my day, it was not scheduled. But in my mind, it took priority, it took precedence. It's like, this has to be put above that. Now, the reality is, is that may or may not turn into a sale, may or may not bring that person back on board. One thing that I have discovered, as with the mindset of the business owner who's been doing this for two decades now, is I understand that if whatever I just did from 1:35 to 2:35, that entire hour of time, I would have gotten the exact same result. If I would have done that at 4:30 instead of 1:30, or I would have got the exact same result for that person. If I would have done it the next day and blocked out an hour from 9am to 10am the next business day, it would not have changed that outcome. But what I also recognize is that because I went in and did that thing during that block of time, now it's 2:35. I look at my calendar, I'm like, oh man, I'm already 35 minutes in. I'm kind of wiped. You know, that took a lot of emotional, mental, cognitive energy to process all of that. I think I need A little bit of break, I'm gonna go upstairs and, and maybe go out for a little bit of a walk and stuff like that. And by the time it's like, oh, there's only an hour left, I really don't have enough time for this. And then at 4:30 I have this thing on my calendar. You know what, I will just take that two hour block of time and I'll push it off to some point in the future. And that continues to happen over and over again. Now let me ask you this. Do you recognize yourself in that story? Is there any part of that that sounds familiar as almost like I understand exactly what you experience in your day to day life as a business owner? Well, it's because my positioning and my language is so clear that you can recognize yourself. So my question, the third question for you to consider if you want to expect clients to be generated from the content that you create. My question is, is your positioning and your language clear enough so that the people who you are meant to serve, can they recognize themselves? This is the question. There is a fourth question and that is, is each episode that you produce intentionally created for that person? Are you speaking to a clearly defined listener and helping them move towards some better decision or some, in my case, a new belief or a meaningful next aligned step that's going to help them get more of what they want to experience in life? Now I'm not suggesting that every single episode that you create needs to sell your services. I don't think that you need to turn every episode into an infomercial about what it would be like to hire you. I don't think that would be compelling content by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that every episode should be. It should be increasingly more logical that you are the right person to seek out to help solve the issues that they are facing. That is every episode that you create creating that environment where it's intentionally created for that specific person who you know is experiencing the this very set of problems, pains, desires, all of the transformation that everything you know so clearly about that particular type of person is. Is every episode designed to speak to that person? The fifth question is, do you believe deeply enough in the value of what you offer so that you can confidently invite people to purchase from you? How confident are you when you tell the right person who is listening to your show that what you offer matters and what they should do next so that they can work with you? On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you? And if you're not an 89 or 10, then there may be some work to do in this area. What I can tell you is if you have a favorable, meaningful, clear answer to these five questions, it won't matter how many people are listening to your show because depending on your business model, you may only need 20, 30 or 50 clients each year. Heck, if you truly have a high ticket offer, you may only need five or ten clients each year. And so it's not important to know how do I massively grow my audience? The question is, do I have better answers to these five questions? I'll put these in the show notes for you so that you can go through and my recommendation, take some time, journal through these, reflect and ask yourself, do I genuinely have meaningful answers to these questions? And if you find yourself struggling with any of them, I want to invite you to email me personally. My email address is cliffliffravenscraft.com tell me which of these questions you most struggle with, what answer have you come up with and let me know. I would love to help you get some more clarity. I'll ask you some clarifying questions. I'll probably start things off in an asynchronous email back and forth with you if you're open to that. It's how I like to do things when first getting to know someone. If you're somebody that I've worked with in the past, chances are I might speed things up and be willing to jump onto a call with you just to discuss it further. But no matter what, if you don't have the answer to these five questions, I can assure you, if you don't already have a podcast, I would not suggest you go launch a podcast yet. And if you already have a podcast and you do not have amazing ANSwers to these five questions and you are expecting your podcast to generate clients for your business, I will tell you it's going to be an uphill battle until you have these answers. I look forward to hearing from you. If you have these answers and you want to share them with me, I'd love to celebrate that with you. Tell me what the name of your show is, give me a link to your podcast and and send me the answers to these five questions. And maybe, just maybe, I might know somebody who's a great fit for who you are and what you do and what you offer. And maybe, just maybe, I might do a future episode where I refer back to this episode and I read a few responses of what people's podcasts are and their answers to these five questions. I would like that. And again, more importantly to those of you who who are struggling to answer any one of those five which one is the one you struggle with the most? Email me and let me see if I can't be of some support and encouragement to you. That's all I have for you here today, but I can tell you right now, out of all of the answers I've ever given in the past 20 years of helping people with podcasts, if you can answer these five questions and your desired outcome is to generate clients with your show, this may be the most valuable podcast episode I've ever produced. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level and my email address is in the Show Notes podcast and some man.