← Podcast Answer Man
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I have published thousands of podcast episodes over the last two decades, and I know the power of podcasting. I have preached the power of podcasting. And not only that, over the years I have spoken ad nauseam about the value of consistency in creating content. However, over the past two months, I have been increasingly evaluating a series of very important questions. And if I had to put the question into a single phrase, it is do the two podcasts that I am currently committed to publishing an episode for every single week still deserve the amount of my life that I'm giving to them? Let me set up the history, the chronology, if you will, of the decision to show up every single week without fail. Now, for those that don't know this, I started podcasting back in December 2005, and back then, showing up every single week to produce an episode made perfect sense. It wasn't something I really thought about in advance. I was podcasting with my wife about a television show that was on television every single week. And therefore our commitment was to after each episode, share our initial reactions, our thoughts about what happened in the episode, maybe some Easter eggs. We were watching the television show Lost at that very with that first podcast we did and we would share our thoughts about in theories about what was happening on the island and what was coming up next. And it just made sense to show up every single week without fail. And so that set the schedule you will for the publication, the publishing, the recording, the processing, the editing all of the stuff related to that audio podcast back in the days. Then at the end of the very first season that we podcasted live about this TV show about it went on summer hiatus as television shows do, they have seasons and those seasons come to an end. But we made the decision with that podcast to continue on because we had a cadence of a weekly rhythm. We also went and found other shows that we enjoyed, TV shows where we could do fan podcast content about. Then we did other entertainment venues such as books and movies and things like that. Some of our shows that are out there right now you could still find like lostpodcast.com, you could go to twilightsagapodcast.com, hunger gamespodcast.com we've my wife and I together have done more than 55 shows and it has been a wild ride, over 5,000 episodes. And most of those shows have been committed to on a weekly basis, no more, no less. Now it made a lot of sense in my early days to create that content because the content that we were creating, it seemed like everybody in the early days of podcasting, they were looking for a weekly piece of content to fill open spots within their routines, within their life. Back then, we didn't have all the social platforms that we have today. You might be old enough to remember that when we started our lost podcast, all of us content creators, us podcasters, at the time, our social platform was MySpace. And I don't even know if you remember Frapper Maps and what a Frapper map is. I'm not going to go into that. It's not the point of today's conversation. But the thing is, is that we lived in a very different world when it came to things that were calling for our attention. The smartphone hadn't really taken hold, like throughout the entire population at that time. So when people were looking for content at the time they were looking for audio podcasts. It's like, wow, I don't have to tune into live television, I don't have to tune into live radio. I can listen to content about subjects that I enjoy when I want, when wherever I want. And podcasting was this new technology that allowed for all of that. And so much of my feelings about the importance of showing up once a week, every week, no more, no less, has everything to do with what I experienced in probably the first decade and maybe even decade and a half of my podcasting journey. But a lot of things have shifted in the habits of the average person consuming content today. And I think it might be safe to say that chances are if you are somebody who used to listen to podcasts 10, 15, 20 years ago, you might be listening to less audio only content than you had previously. And certainly I know that my own consumption of content has shifted since the pandemic. And it shifted in a pretty profound way when everybody went over to Clubhouse for live interactions with other human beings outside of our Facebook physical spaces that we were confined to at the time. And during that period of time, the number of hours that I invested listening to audio podcast content probably went down to about 10% of what it was before. And I would say 100% of all of that open time that I would have spent listening to podcasts was spent on Clubhouse. And not only that, but a significant amount of time from other activities and behaviors got filled with Clubhouse. And then over time, I would say that TikTok took a pretty significant portion of my attention and time and YouTube picked up in a pretty powerful way. And when I don't know that things have ever fully gone back to normal, because I don't know what normal was at this point. Anymore. I think I'm so far removed from what normal used to be. But I do know this. I never return to my original content consumption behaviors and patterns. Now there are still the few shows that I subscribe to today. I've talked about these many times, but today I will tell you that in I As I look here, I know for a fact that every week there's going to be a new episode of Mac Break Weekly and a new episode of this Week in Tech. And I almost always listen to every episode of this Week in Tech. And I've never missed an episode of Mac break weekly in 20 years for this Week in Tech and in 19 years for MacBreak weekly. And my friend Father Roderick Von Hogan, for the most part, with very few exceptions, over the course of the last 20 years, I've almost, you could say probably about 94% of the last 24 years, there's been weekly content from Father Roderick and I've listened to everything he's put out in the few shows that have been consistent that I follow. And those are three pieces of content I don't miss. And there are one or two other shows that I listen to today that I don't like to miss an episode of and I will tune into them. However, if my schedule, my routine gets a little bit bent out of shape, if I'm for example, at a conference and I'm spending 12 and 14 hour days face to face with lots of people, I am absolutely changing my consumption behavior and some of those shows get put off and where I might have actually like been walking from a conference area to back to my hotel, I'm either walking and talking with people or if I'm by myself, I actually find myself flipping through TikTok, catching up on some of the content creators there that I follow and finding out kind of what's going on in the world more broadly rather than getting that next seven to 10 or 15 minutes of the latest episode of a podcast. Anyway, so my own concept of I really need people as a content creator to show up for me every single week. Those the the amount of spots that I currently have available to devote to consuming audio only content creation, all of those spots are filled. That's it. There is no room for me to pick up another piece of content that I discover that I'm going to listen to. And so for me, if I find something new and it is so compelling and I'm so interested in it, chances are I'm going to probably knock this Week in Tech off of the rotation for whatever period of time or one of the other shows that I may be into at the time, and eventually I'll see the new podcast that I brought in as a fad and then I go back to the. The old trustworthy staples because I some. I kind of missed that voice. And those shows, I listened to them for various different reasons and, and, and I like them. That's it. So all of this is easier for me to see in hindsight because what happened was well before the pandemic, I had already shifted away from commitment to creating content every single week. No more, no less. Not all of my shows have been weekly shows. Most of them have been. And for the first 15 years of my podcasting, if I had a weekly show, there were weekly episodes and I would not miss, I would. You would be able to subscribe to my show and you would know what day of the week it releases on and approximately what time, if not exactly what time of day you can expect it to show up in the podcast feed. That was the predictability you could expect. And like I said, certainly for the first 10 years and for most of my shows, even up to through the first 15 years of my podcast production, but then something shifted. It was right around, I would say, 2017. Yep, 2017. I had discovered a different way of growing my business and a lot of. And by this time, by 2017, my podcasting efforts were less entertainment based and more business focused. And there's nothing for me, as far as I'm concerned, as far as being ashamed about that. I mean, if it wasn't for the entertainment stuff, I wouldn't have the businesses that I have today. But man, I am thrilled with the businesses that I have today and the way that it allows me to do the work that I feel most called to do in this world. My wildest dreams of what I would devote my life to, being of service to others and the way that I would love to show up and be of value to others that is fulfilled with the work that I do today. And it is that entire journey of starting out as podcasting, as a hobby and doing all of this massive amounts of content just to be a source of entertainment and encouragement. But then finding a business model, and then actually finding not just a business model, but a true embodiment and integration of my lifelong calling to show up and do the work I feel most called to do in the world. I never would have. I dreamed 20 years ago that I could do what I do today for a living, which is do coaching and mentoring and public speaking. And being a source of entertainment. Yeah, but mostly education, encouragement, inspiration, helping people break free from anything that's holding them back from living the life they feel called to live or the life of their dreams. I get to do that today, and I do it mostly through coaching, conversations, public speaking, through some content creation, and also through mastermind, group facilitation. That's what I do. So I love it. I love what podcasting has brought into my life. And the thing is that I've learned through the podcasting angle related to using content creation to grow an audience and to have people discover you through that content, to come to know and like and trust you through that content and then. And to eventually, potentially, for some of them, not everyone, but for some of them to eventually become a client or a customer of yours, one of the things that I know is that podcasting is incredibly powerful. For all of those things that I just mentioned, it is a bit of a long game. I still today have clients that come on board each month, and when I ask them, hey, when did you first come across my path? And then, well, gosh, Cliff, I was thinking about that the other day. You know, I think I discovered you back in 2006 when I heard, you know, Dan Miller mention you at a coaching event that I was at, and he talked about something you said in a podcast episode that caused me to look up your podcast. And I've been listening to your podcast content ever since. And I'm like, wow, so you have been listening to my show for 20 years, and this is like, you and I have not had a single conversation, not a single direct message on social media, not a single comment that has come in from you on a social media post, and not a single email in 20. Yeah, I always figured you were busy and stuff like that, and I didn't want to bother you, but when you said such and such in such and such episode, that's what made me want to reach out. And I'm like, yeah, so 20 years later, that turned into a paid engagement with somebody who had been listening for two decades. Now, I have history and examples that I can share with you. Somebody who says, well, I just discovered your podcast two weeks ago. In fact, I will share with you this journey. And, gosh, should I share this? I'm going to share it now, and then I'll retroactively fit it into the chronology of how all of this came about. So, Megan Porta M E G A N Megan Porta from Eat Blog Talk Radio. She discovered me through Clubhouse. She heard me Leading a room on Clubhouse, she heard me mention that I have a podcast. She went and found the Cliff Ravenscraft show. And by that time I had already discovered this new method for growing my business called the Prosperous Coach Method for Creating Clients. It's based upon the book called the Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler. Amazing book, by the way. And when I discovered this book, I realized I wanted to devote more of my time, effort and energy towards having conversations with people, finding out what's going on in their world, being curious. And if I discovered anybody that was brought along, my path and our. Our paths of life had intersected with one another and where my coaching and or my mastermind group environment could be of powerful service to them in achieving more of what they want to achieve in life or overcoming an obstacle that they're currently facing, then I would invite them to experience that and potentially they might become a client. So I found that so successful that I decided, you know what? I want to not devote hours every week to creating the Cliff Ravenscraft Show. That was my main podcast at the time. You see, Podcast Answer man started out as Podcast Answer man for the or the Cliff Ravenscraft show started out originally as Podcast Answer man in December 2006. And I think the first 474 episodes, or 400 and almost whatever they were, podcast Answerman episodes. And then I transitioned, I transferred the branding. Why did I just say that? I rebranded the podcast from Podcast Answer man to the Cliff Ravenscraft show and then have continued the Cliff Ravenscraft show on. And then I brought back Podcast Answer man back in December of last year, 2025, for my 20th anniversary in podcasting. But at the time In November, November, July 2017, I was already doing the Prosperous Coach method for creating clients. And I also had found that I was only doing the Cliff Ravenscraft show because I had always done it, it had always been weekly. And I got to the place where I said, you know what? I still love creating podcast content. I was producing several other shows outside of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, but those were random, whenever I felt like it kind of episodes. But the Cliff Ravenscroft show was still weekly. And I asked myself, do I still want to commit several hours every week to producing the Cliff Ravenscraft Show? And the answer, increasingly was no. Sometimes I feel like I'm just phoning it in. And phoning it in for me just means that I'm only creating this piece of content because I said I would be here or because I'm used to being here. That's what's expected of me. It's what people have come to expect and it's just the way that I've always done things. And so I didn't like that feeling, that, ah, man, that, that episode. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate that about a 7. And if, if a podcast episode is an 8, 9 or 10, I usually don't feel good about hitting publish. So I made a decision back in 2017, I believe it was, where I said to the audience of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, I said, hey, from this point forward, I am never going to release a podcast episode unless I feel inspired to such a level that I can't not produce that episode. Now, I had stressed to people, I said, don't worry, I get inspired a lot. And if I had to guess, my guess is that there should probably never be a time when there's not at least one episode a month. And for the next several years, I had only ever produced an episode of Cliff Ravenscraft show when I felt inspired. Now, I looked back into the archives and I found that on average there were two episodes per month. There were a few episodes where there was only one episode per month. And there was over the course of, let's just say, a three to five year period of time. I don't remember what it was. It's been a while since I looked at this data, but there's only been two or three times where there were six weeks between episodes. So technically it went just over a month, but three times on average, once a year that happened, I would say, wow, okay, that was pretty wild. Here's the interesting thing, that for that three to five year period of time. Actually, no, for that five year period of time, because there was five years where I lived by the inspired content only philosophy for the Cliff Ravenscraft show. And during that five year period of time, every episode in the archives was an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10. And I would even say that most were a 9 out of 10. And I would say I was a pretty good track record of 10 out of 10 episodes. Not that there's not. I'm not saying the episodes were flawless or perfect, or that I didn't ramble and go off topic and all of the other stuff. I mean, they just communicated the essence with precision, exactly what I wanted to communicate about whatever the topic was. And it was great. So this brings back Megan Porta. Megan Porta discovers me during the pandemic period of time. She discovers me on Clubhouse, and by this time there's been three and A half years. Where. Where the only time I record an episode of the Cliff Ravenscroft show is if I am so inspired that I can't not publish that episode. So every episode is amazing. So here's what Megan Porta emailed me. She says, cliff, I discovered you two weeks ago on Clubhouse. You were hosting a room titled such and such, and in it you were talking with so and so, and you told them to check out this episode of your podcast, the Cliff Ravenscraft Show. So I went and looked it up. I listened to that episode, and I was hooked. Then I started to work my way back and I can't remember how many episodes, but I think it was like 20 episodes. My episodes on average at the time were about an hour in length. So within two weeks, she had listened to 20 hours of my most recent 20 episodes of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, where every episode was an inspired, high quality, amazing episode. Now she was able to listen to all 20 of them. She was just like binging everywhere. She had a free moment over the course of two weeks. She was not concerned about the fact that there might have been three to six weeks in between any of those episodes there. They were all instantly available. So it affirmed to me when Megan had shared this information with me, I'm like, wow, this inspired only format seems to be really working well and I'm going to lean into this. And for a while, I started to not try to convince other people of its value, but to explain why I found value with it. And so I just continued down that path of inspired content only. I loved the idea that I may not be there every single weekend to go on the weekend run with somebody because that's what they've been used to for the last however many years. But I am there consistently and I show up. And if my content's valuable and you like it, you'll stay subscribed. And if you were more along the lines of, you know, I really am looking for people who's going to consistently show up in my life, you might unsubscribe. And I will tell you right now, there is something valuable about showing up once a week, every week, no more, no less. When you do that, you will have a more loyal and faithful audience. And if you decide to, or with my content, my experience has been, and this has been true for others who dabbled with this inspired content only format as well. When you go to. Or when you go from once a week, every week, and then you say, you know what, I'm going to produce an episode, you'll have at least one episode a month, maybe every four, every three to six weeks you'll get an episode. If you kind of go with that, whether you say it or don't say it. And of course, if you're going to do it, then certainly mention it. Valuable in retrospect, it might be valuable for me at the end of those episodes if I would have said, hey, thank you so much for tuning in. It's been X number of weeks since my last episode and I will be back with the next episode by such and such date and let them know when they can expect that next episode. And who knows, I might show up earlier, but certainly let people know that this is when the next episode is. That way they're not like, well, I guess Cliff just kind of dropped off and decided this is no longer a priority for him. I don't know if he's coming back. And if you go two or three weeks without an episode and they don't know that you're doing that intentionally, you could lose a lot of subscribers. And I have historical evidence to show that that was the case with the Cliff Ravenscraft show over time. Anyway, so here's the chronology. I put some notes together and I want to share with you why Today I have two podcasts that for the last 32 weeks I've published an episode once a week every week with some exception. I'll share with you. So let me share with you what happened back in December of last year. I made a very intentional decision to get refocused with my branded content. I wanted to let people know that moving forward my public messaging in all of my social content, my public facing brand will be business strategy, mindset, entrepreneurship, technical expertise, speaking, mastermind groups. You know, just all of those things. The things that I was doing before the pandemic. I am going back to all of that in my public messaging. There was a season of life where I went very spiritual in my content production and I found that you know what? This is not necessarily doing for me, what I need the content to do for me as it relates to my business. There was a series of things that I had done. I told you I read this book called the Prosperous Coach. I was building my business using the Prosperous Coach method for creating clients. As a result of that I was meeting people. This is before the pandemic. I was speaking at about seven to 12 live events every year. Each year in front of thousands of people on stage, having tons of meetups, having tons of buying people lunch and buying group of groups of people dinner, inviting people to private gatherings, doing all of these things, and having personal hallway conversations with people one at a time. And as a result of that, my content was not necessary to produce incoming potential new clients. And that's why I had made the decision. It's like, listen. Every hour I devote to putting an episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show together is an hour that I'm taking away from taking all of these relationships that I've just formed with all of these people at these live events and engaging and following up with them and nurturing those relationships and finding. Finding out who here has some sort of threshold that they're facing in their world where my services might be of value. And that's why I made the decision to say, you know what, it doesn't make sense for me to create a 7 or a 6 out of 10 episode just to meet a deadline. And it was kind of a slog to do it, and took two to three hours to produce that. And I could have, during that two to three hours, moved through the needle forward on nurturing a relationship with as many as 10 to 15 people during that same block of time. And the way that I approach these relationships is not that I'm trying to convert every relationship into a customer, but to actually figure out who that I have met already is a customer that I just don't know yet, that they have the needs that are perfectly aligned with the solutions that I provide. And I'm like, this didn't make sense. And so that's why I moved basically the focus of the intention of my content for the Cliff Ravenscraft show off of client creation and more of a. You know what? It is an outlet for me to speak about the things that are on my heart that I care about, to communicate the things that I'm learning, the things that I want to share with the world. And it was to be more. It kind of went back towards an entertainment, educational kind of thing, encouraging and inspirational, but with no thought whatsoever into how is this episode of the Cliff Ravenscroft show going to potentially move somebody closer to. To becoming a client if what I do is a good fit for them. But then the pandemic happened. And when the pandemic happened, all of a sudden I, first of all, during the first 18 months of the pandemic, for a year and a half, I was. My business income was like, through the roof, way above and beyond what I knew needed to make in the business. And the reason was, is because of all the relationships that I had established and built and Nurtured leading up to the pandemic. And then through the pandemic, so many of them said, hey, okay, Cliff, I didn't think I needed mindset, but boy, I'm dealing with some pretty difficult things right now. Tell me, how does this work? And so just the onboarding of clients during those 18 months was very high. However, as you may remember, if you lived through the pandemic, there were no live events for a few years. And so the place where I met new people to establish new relationships, to reconnect and be top of mind with people year after year, because I went to a lot of the conferences, about four or five conferences every year were the same conferences. And so I'm like, wow, you know, I. Those are gone. And then as people kind of got through their thresholds and they had been served. Well, I don't know about you, but as a coach, I find that not everybody is meant to be a coach. Client relationship for the rest of their life, they've moved through a challenging transition. They've successfully, and let me say that again, I'm not going to edit this. They have successfully, is what I wanted to say, navigated a significant transition in their life. And as a result of that, they are incredibly thankful. They become potentially a referral person, but a lifelong relationship for sure. Just amazing the change and transformation that I've been able to witness. But what happened was as clients off boarded, I didn't see the same onboarding number. It was starting to be offset. And so within about three and a half, four years after the pandemic, I noticed that I had not yet returned to speaking on stages and or attending a lot of live events. And as a result of that, my top of funnel, if you want to just use language that describes what I'm talking about. The input valve of people into knowing who I am had kind of been dried up. There was nothing coming through at the top for people to come and discover me and there wasn't a lot of things happening. Top of mind put me there. And of course the people who were still subscribed to the Cliff Ravenscraft show, those people are still loving the content and those people are still, some of them might still be working themselves through the process of where they discover my content, listen to it for a long period of time and whether it's two weeks later, like Megan Porta, or 20 years later like the other person I was just telling you about, that's the long game of content creation for generating clients. But I recognize it's like, wow, during this time when I was doing very well financially and yet I had a lot of free time on my hand, I began a lot of spiritual exploration, like I said, and I started to focus a lot of my content in that direction. But then by the time that I started to notice, it's like, wow, I don't have a significant influx of new people into my sphere of influence. And the content that I'm creating now really isn't something that leads people into the products and services that I'm known for, that I validated that I know people will pay for. And for a specific period of time, 18 months, I even went and said, okay, I'm just going to go all in and see if I can't maybe see if people want to hire me more in the spiritual direction kind of route. Let's go to the deeply, the deepest layers of some of the things that you're facing. And I thought it was validated because a lot of my existing clients had gone there. They were dealing with a lot of significant questions that went down to the spiritual layer. And we had some powerful conversations. But one of the things that I noticed is that no new clients were coming in under that premise. And I also realized that, wait a second, while I've had some incredibly powerful, deeply spiritual conversations with my existing paid clients, if I were to be intellectually honest and ask myself this question, would any of them ever have signed up for a one year coaching agreement if that were the basis of the agreement? Like, that's what they came into, the agreement and the arrangement or the commitment to that one year coaching relationship? And the answer was no. Now, in hindsight, they said, you know, knowing what I know now, yes, I would have. I would, and I will renew. However, I can tell you right now, without having gone where we've gone, no, I wouldn't have. And I realized back in December of 2025, it's like, okay, well, 18 months I have gone all in and I've recognized I'm going to go back to the things that I know, work and meet people in the marketplace where their felt needs are. And so since December, I've been back at the business strategy, the mindset, the mastermind groups, and it has been phenomenal. Now, in episode 801 of the Cliff Ravenscraft Show, December 1st, I shared that. Then I mentioned right around mid December, it was December 16, 2025, I celebrated my 20th anniversary of podcast podcasting. And to celebrate, I had this idea. I know what I'll do. I'm gonna bring back my podcast Answerman brand. Now, I did a lot of episodes. If you wanna find out why Podcast Answer man is back, there are two episodes I would encourage you to listen to. The first one is Podcast Answer Man Episode 475, titled Podcast Answer man is Back. And then I would encourage you to listen to the Cliff Ravenscraft show episode 802, titled why Podcast Answer man is Back. All right, so those are two different episodes. They will give you two different kind of perspectives on why Podcast Answer man is back. But there's certainly some overlap. But what I will quickly tell you is that I had discovered that one of the reasons why I shut down Podcast Answerman in the first place is because I was getting bored of the tedious questions that came in related to the technical aspects and questions of podcasting. And I discovered as a result of buying this piece of equipment called the podtrack P4 next. When I first got it, I was so excited about it. I did a piece of content on it and it went wildly popular. Questions started rolling in technical questions. Because I had AI, I was able to instantly go in and ask AI to generate an answer to those questions. But because of my experience and expertise, I knew when AI was making something up and when it was accurate, and I knew how to actually validate all of the information. And then I was able to easily formulate responses and send them out in such a way that people are, like, blown away. It's like, wow, when I asked that question, I never would have guessed I would have gotten this level of depth of a response, wow, thank you. And then I was able to then ask them some questions about what's going on in their world. What's, you know, what do they hope to accomplish with their podcast? What do you, you know, what, what is it doing for them? And over time, I was able to eventually have a number of people who never heard my name before, saw this video about this PodTrack P4 next, little audio recorder, mixer device, podcast studio in. In a box for $149. They had never heard my name before, found my YouTube video. And then what happened was we're engaged in conversation, and then over the course of three to four weeks, I'm eventually inviting them into a conversation one on one with me. And then they reveal something that's going on in their world. And I ask them if they'd like to have a full coaching experience with me. And then we have a coaching experience. And I discover that, wow, this person's got a lot of things going on. And I think that my coach could help. And I invited them back to a second complimentary coaching experience. And then all of a sudden they're like, this has been powerful. I've done more in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years. And sometimes it's in the last two months, but most of the time I've accomplished more in two weeks than I have in the last two years. And some people say I've actually accomplished more in the last two weeks than I have in the last two decades. I then ask them if they'd like to become a client, we work together for the next year or I invite them into my mastermind group, which I now have a mastermind group that's only a three month commitment for $1,500. You can learn more by the way, over at next. Actually. Cliffravenscraft.com Momentum it's called the Momentum Mastermind Group. Again, cliffravenscraft.com momentum Anyway, by the way, there's a comment that's on the live stream as I'm recording this today and it's Whis Lockman on YouTube. He says, I've listened to your show for a lot of years. I used to do podcasting and then quit. I'm just getting back into it. I bought the new zoom podtrack P4 next. Well, Whis Lockman, thank you so much for your comment and for watching the stream live as I'm recording this today. So anyway, that got me to thinking. It's like, oh wow, I am going to bring Podcast Answerman back. I'm going to bring the brand back. Because one of the things that I know that I want to do is I want to get back and speak at conferences again. And I already know that there are a ton of podcast related conferences that if I was to bring back my podcast Answer man brand with the fact that I've actually helped more than 40,000 people in the world successfully launch a podcast, I have a lot of credibility. A lot of people who are significant influencers who own their own events. Many of them got their start directly being trained by me and or they were trained by somebody who I trained. And so I have all of this credibility in this space. And so I brought back Podcast Answerman, instantly was invited to speak at PodFest, instantly was invited to speak at another podcast indie event that I'm going to do later this year. I was invited to speak at Social Media Marketing World in Anaheim. I'm going to be speaking at a bunch of other events. It's like instantly turned on the Ability for me to get up on a stage and talk about podcast related topics, experiences, wisdom, knowledge, gear, whatever, and put me in front of people who may have never heard my name before. And then I get into the opportunity to have a conversation, find out who they are. I am easily able to figure out who are these folks that are. Let's get you signed in. It says here Loom says Loom is trying to get me. Anyway, sorry, I got a little distracted by my computer here, but it got me to be on all of these stages. And as a result of getting back on all of these stages, I'm now starting to experience the prosperous coach method working again. I have this influx back in and one of the things that I decided back in December was if I'm bringing Podcast Answer man back, I carried this mentality of the old Podcast Answer man philosophy that if you're going to create podcast content, if you were to ask me what do I think is the best frequency for a podcast, I was basing my information on old information. And that was I would actually recommend that you create an episode once a week, every week, no more, no less. And I became so, you know, known for sharing that. And then if I'm like, okay, if I'm bringing back Podcast Answerman and I'm asking people to commit to this, if they want to be serious about podcasting, well, if I'm serious about podcasting, I should probably do it myself. And so what happened was on December 12th, it was the next Friday after episode 475, I said, podcast Answerman is back. I released that on Friday, December 9th. So the next Friday, I'm like, you know what? I am back. And not only am I back, actually, no, that wasn't December 9th, was not on a Friday. I think it was a couple days earlier. But on December 12, which was a Friday, I'm like, listen, okay, I am back. And I am actually going to demonstrate that I believe what I say when I say that consistency is key if you want to succeed with the podcast. If you want to have a loyal audience, you need to show up at least once a week. I would recommend no more than once a week, because with more than once a week, you're overfeeding your audience. And then all of a sudden I started doing that weekly. And then I came to another podcast, the Clefravenscraft show. And I'm like, you know what? I've been doing this only when inspired. And I do see the value of having two separate shows. There's a reason why I have Podcast Answerman. It reaches these people who are looking for content creator, podcast related thought, leadership, information, insight advice, content creator stuff. Then there are people who are going to listen to the Cliff Ravenscraft show for the business strategy, the mindset, the way Cliff thinks about life in a. In a bigger picture kind of way. Be well beyond the world of just topics related to content creation. And so I wanted to have an avenue for both. And I also wanted to treat both audiences with the same level of commitment. And so with episode 802, December 16th of 2025, I said, I'm actually going to do an episode every single week. And actually that's not true. That was when I actually mentioned it. Oh my goodness, I'm all over the place here. You know what? I'm still not going to edit this episode of Podcast Answer Man. In fact, this episode of Podcast Answer man is actually going to be the greatest example the whole thing. By the way, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm already going to tell you this episode is a filler episode. This episode is not inspired. This episode is not an episode that I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't not create this episode. This episode is only being created on Thursday, August 13, because I have currently a commitment that I will release this episode by 12:01am, One Minute After Midnight tonight. That's the only reason this episode exists. I have already poured in about maybe an hour worth of just thinking about what topic do I want to create for this episode? And then I'm like, I know. How about I create an episode that talks about how for the last several weeks I have contemplated, and maybe even the last couple of months is like, why am I committed to creating two shows every single week and is it still important? And maybe that's going to be the episode. And then I went back and forth with ChatGPT and then I started going in and I'm like, okay, well let me do some research on this. And I've been recording. I'm literally 49 minutes into this thing. And it is. I already know this is going to be less than a 7 out of 10 as far as overall value, I could actually make this a 10 out of 10 episode if I wanted to. It would require a significant amount of editing. It would probably, if this thing ends, let's just say being one hour in length, it would for me to get this from, let's just say a 6 out of 10, which is where I think it's gonna land for me to get it from a 6 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. It would take either an hour and a half to two hours worth of editing and or a complete reset, erase everything, re record from the beginning, stick to the point. And having already said it all once, knowing what I should have said, what I shouldn't have said, how I should have stayed on point, how I shouldn't have gone down this rabbit trail of clubhouse. And Megan, that's just all those things. If I just did this, this, this, this, this, and this, all of a sudden I'm like, okay, that probably would be a 10 out of 10 episode. However, it certainly wouldn't have the heart of everything. And it's certainly still not a topic that I'm like, passionate about. Yeah, I don't know. Here's what I'm getting at. I made the commitment that I believed as the Podcast Answer man, bringing back Podcast Answer man, that I was operating under the old philosophy that I had, that I left unquestioned, that the right frequency for a successful podcast is once a week, every week, no more, no less. Then I made the commitment that I'm going to do it. And eventually, by the beginning of this year, I had made the commitment not only for Podcast Answer man every week, but I also did it for the Cliff Ravenscraft show every single week. And I basically said, you know what? I'm going to prove to you that you could produce a high quality audio podcast and every single week without needing an enormous team or allowing the show to consume your life. Now, I'm also going to show you that it's possible to not just do that with one show, but that I can actually do it with two shows every week. And I can tell you that the shows have not consumed my life, but they have consumed far more of my life then I feel they're worthy of consuming. And what I mean by that is the show does not deserve the amount of time, effort and energy. When I think about the purpose for why the shows exist, somehow I had come up with this mind that it's important for me to have. One of the key elements is that I have such a loyal group of people out there that just absolutely look forward to Friday morning and they're not going to have the same pleasant weekend if they don't have my voice to carry them through with a new episode of Podcast Answer man on Friday. And the same would be true of the Cliff Ravenscraft show that there are going to be some people, their entire week is going to be thrown off if they don't start the week with the Monday morning release of the Cliff Ravenscraft show with my voice. And you know what? That's not the purpose. When I think about it, that's not what I want to create. It's not the purpose for creating these shows. As I think back along the last 32 weeks, here's what I will tell you. Since January of this year, there has been exactly 32 weeks. I have published 31 episodes of the Cliff Ravens craft show. I've only missed one one episode of tcrs. And since the beginning of this episode, this year, this, this episode right Here is the 31st episode of podcast Answer Man. Now, technically I have missed two episodes of podcast answerman. That is 62 episodes, including this episode that I've produced of these two shows this year and outside of these shows, I've produced 80 other pieces of content across my email newsletter, my YouTube channel and various social media posts. And I don't consider like a short little post a social media post. I'm talking about a very long form social media post that is meant to get engagement with my audience about deep thought, meaningful things in their lives. During these 32 weeks, there's only, like I said, I've only missed one episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, two episodes of podcast Answer Man. Both of them, by the way, I missed because I was at live events, which by the way, I was at all of these live events because I brought Podcast Answer man back. So did Podcast Answer man and bringing it back fulfill the purpose for bringing it back, reintroducing the or re tapping into the built up stored credibility and recognition in the industry of podcasting such that I would be able to instantly have an avenue to get back on stages at podcast related conferences and events. The answer, hands down, yes, it has worked. Now if I look back and I ask myself this question, could I have been invited to be back on every single one of these stages? Could every opportunity and there have been a lot of opportunities for me. We're talking not just being on stages, but being invited to come speak to people's private mastermind groups, their high value or high ticket offer communities that they have and doing all these things. I recently had somebody who invited me to teach a private workshop for their community. I offered a what's called a limited series podcast work session where I'd help them plan out a work series podcast. I did that for free for four people and one of them has already become a 12 $12,000 paid in full client for the next year. So all of that, so bringing back Podcast Answerman has absolutely done everything I hoped it would do as far as bringing back opportunities to be on stages, to be at conferences, to be in front of communities of people where they've never heard my name before, and also allow me to build rapport and trust and learn about these people and discover who among them could be served by my mastermind group or my coaching and then become clients. It has been happening for the last 32 weeks beyond what I could have hoped for. It has been amazing. But the question is, did I need to produce 31 episodes over the last, over these 32 weeks? And the answer is no, absolutely not. I did not need to show up every Friday morning at 12:01am to receive this. In fact, I am absolutely 100% confident that every opportunity that has been afforded to me bringing back my podcast Answerman podcast, into regular production, all of it, would have been available if I actually committed to creating this episode or this podcast at least one episode every month, maybe more, if I feel inspired. But I promise you, I will force myself to be inspired to create an 8, 9, or 10 episode for you at least once a month. So what I can tell you is this. Every week for the last three months, I'm looking at the time blocks on my calendar, I see that I'm scheduled, and I ask myself, what's on my heart to share this week? Nothing. Huh? Not good enough. Let's think this through. What could I share? What would be of value? And I frankly have gotten back to this thing that I didn't have, this felt experience, this resistance to, which is I'm creating content for the sake of creating content. So I asked myself a couple of questions and I'm going to ask them here out loud. I got this in my outline here. First of all, why did I make the commitment back in January to bring back both shows every single week? One just. I never really questioned my old philosophy of podcast Answer man frequency advice. Once a week, every week. No more, no less. I don't think there's as much evidence today to support that as a value today as there once was. I do think that if podcasting is your brand, if your podcast is your business, if your pod, if your personal brand is your business, like if you're literally trying to make your content, what makes you money, then, hands down, yes, it's still absolutely makes every bit of sense. But that is not my business model. My business model isn't that this show or the Cliff Ravenscraft show generates new clients for me. What I definitely realize is that wow. Wait a second. This show and the Cliff Ravenscraft show have two separate purposes, and they're still adding value. They are a part of a much larger and broader method of how I bring clients into my business. And there's something called minimum effective dose with medication. I heard about this principle many years ago from a mentor and friend of mine, Michael Hyatt, and it's one of the reasons why I made the decision back in 2017 to go to inspired content only. And the idea is that if somebody is a patient and a doctor wants to prescribe medicine, you want to give the patient the minimum amount of medicine that will bring forth the healing and. And no more than that. Any more than that, it can create a dependency, an immunity, you know, all. All the other stuff, blah, blah, minimum effective dose. But you got to be whatever the. Whatever that dose is, be faithful and consistent with that dose. But there's really not a lot of value, if any, of doing more than that. There may be some ancillary value of certain things, but the idea is minimum effective dose. And then I. And I got to think it's like, wow, I have developed some pretty amazing tools and strategies and systems in my business over these 32 weeks that I did not have access to before the pandemic. And I'm back out on stages. I went to, matter of fact, I still have over 100 people that I have not yet reached out to to continue nurturing relationships because I've been so heavily invested in nurturing the relationships that I have been investing. And I can tell you right now, this episode here, I'm already one hour into this, I already invested more than an hour outlining and preparing and researching for this. And then probably an hour. So this is already three hours. Let's just say this is about four hours. This episode. If I think about minimum effective dose, if I did not commit once a week, every week on Friday at 12:01am, I will be there with a new episode. Then I will tell you that I would not be here recording this episode. And whether I was here with this episode or not here with this episode in the long run, would not have made any difference whatsoever, people, if I was producing one episode a month, by the 15th of each month, then I will tell you that I would still have every opportunity. And in fact, I would say that probably because the archives would be filled with much higher valuable content that's not there for the sake of what am I going to talk about today? I think it would have been more powerful. I think every episode that somebody does find and consume in binges back into the archives a little bit if they're newer, you know, it's just. Yeah, that. Yeah. So why did I make the commitment in January? Because I was under the old impression that showing up, being a part of every single person's life on a weekly basis, they would look forward to it. And here's what I will tell you. I can give you the evidence of four people who are listening to podcast Answer man every single week and have told me that I can tell you that there are two people who are listening to the Cliff Ravenscroft show and listen to it every single week. Now, am I convinced that there are more people out there, hundreds of which who listen to it every single week? Yes. However, I think there's probably only about 15, 20, maybe 30 people where if I were to decide by the end of this episode that I am no longer committed to producing an episode every single week, I think they would still, I think the overwhelming majority of them would stay subscribed if I was to give them a commitment that I'm going to do. Matter of fact, I already have the answer. I did not have this answer when I started this. If it's not clear to you, I, I did not have this all thought out. I did some research to find out, you know, when did some, you know, when did I make these commitments? I went in, how many episodes have I done weekly? When did I miss? What was I, Why did I miss those weeks? And I know I was exhausted. I went to conferences and spent 12 to 14 hour days, several days in a row at conferences, talking to hundreds of people, and then came back from those conferences and prioritized starting the nurturing relationships. And I can tell you that after each of those two events where it's like, man, I coming back from that, it's like, okay, now I missed that week, I can't miss this week. And then hours would be devoted to creating a piece of content. And by the way, last several weeks I even thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start creating 15 to 20 minute episodes. I can keep my commitment. Let's just find something I'm noticing, get behind the thing. I don't have to have it all scripted out. I can just show it. And you know what that is? That's creating content for the sake of creating content. It very rarely, don't get me wrong, I can, I can be inspired in the moment and say, you know what, I just going to hit record and talk for 20 minutes. And that's a 10 out of 10 episode. That's a whole different thing if I'm inspired to do it versus the idea of I'm doing it because I've made a commitment. And hey, I didn't record this yesterday because this came up and I wanted to nurture these relationships. And I've got until I have plenty of time on Thursday on my calendar. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, let's get this done before midnight so I can get. This is. I'm. I'm done with this. No. Yeah. So let me. Did I answer this? Why did I start the commitment in January? Yeah, I thought that it was a part of what makes a successful podcast successful. This is not my full time career as far as Podcast Answer man is not my main business. It is a brand that has tons of industry level credibility and reputation and I'm able to consistently tap into that. And I know for a fact that I could continue to tap into that even if I were to commit. And in fact, I can already can tell you right now that my commitment moving forward is going to be I will create an episode of Podcast Answer man once a month, every month, by the 15th of each month. And I already know that I'm going to do the same thing with the Cliff Ravenscraft show. I'm actually going to create an episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show once a month, every month, by the first of every month. Yeah, that's what's going to happen. And my commitment is that there will be at least one episode per month. And I may also say that there may be more than one episode per month. Yeah. So what did I hope to accomplish? I accomplished the. The main thing, which was showing up more consistently where people can expect it, but I don't necessarily know that there's enough evidence to support that. People are like standing by waiting for that next episode. And Brian, I know that you're out there traveling the world and I've been working out with you and trust me, reach out to me if you want to hear my voice and I'll always reply to your voxer message. I know the few of you out there who have expressed that you're listening and some of you are clients already and you're part of my world on a weekly basis anyway. And so I'll see you on Tuesday. Anyway. Yeah. The other question that I have here, what, if anything, does this communicate about my discipline? And this was something that I had to ask for myself. It's like, man, I have committed to this and am I disciplined enough to do this? And I think that I've demonstrated to myself that I can be faithful and disciplined to a commitment. But at what point does disciplining myself to a commitment that without being evaluated. There's another question in here that I asked. Am I continuing this because this is strategically valuable today or because Cliff Ravenscraft is someone who keeps his commitments? So that is a question. And I can tell you right now, this is not strategically valuable for my business today. For me to commit hours each week, and I'm talking anywhere no less than two and as many as four to five or six hours every single week to producing two shows, two podcast shows, it is not strategically valuable. Strategically, it is valuable for me to continue to keep both shows active and to be consistent in publishing them and to communicate what that schedule and frequency is. And I think that the strategic value is equivalent if I go to once a month instead of once a week. I'm absolutely convinced of that. The other question that I had written down in my notes is, is there a difference between keeping your commitment and refusing to reevaluate said commitment? And that's the key. I will tell you the whole idea of even bringing this up and re evaluating the commitment. I had refused to really sit down and go through this and make this decision. I have just. I've just willed myself to create these episodes. Not every episode out of the 32 or, what is it, 32 episodes, 31 episodes of each of these shows in the first 32 weeks, I would say that about 15 or 20 of them were a breeze. 15 or 20, that's half. And the other half are filler episodes that I forced myself to create. And as of today, I did not know this when I hit start on the record button for this episode. I did not know that this would be my outcome. But as I'm speaking it out loud, I'm a verbal processor. I have frequently questioned whether or not my commitment to publishing two shows each week is the right thing strategically for myself and my business. And I now know deep within my heart, within my being, that the more disciplined thing to do is to do the minimum effective dose of creating the outcome for which these shows are designed to create. I will be top of mind. I will be able to share what's going on, what I'm noticing. I will be able to go back to an inspired only format, which means that every episode is going to be something that I really genuinely care about. It's going to be more representative of who I am as a person, what I think, what I experience, what I witness, what I observe, it's going to be much more well researched. It's going to be every aspect of every episode is going to be better. So, yeah, that's it. That is my decision. So the question I came into is, does my podcast or do my two podcasts that I am committed to every single week for the last 32 weeks, does my podcast still deserve my time? And the answer is, not as much as I've been giving it. Now, this is my description of my own knowledge of what I know, the purpose and mission and objective of my own shows are. This is my description for you of my experience. It is not my prescription of what you should be using as your own evaluation of your own show. I would encourage you to be very intentional about choosing your commitments. And when you do make a commitment, I think it's important that we remain faithful to our commitments. But I don't think it's important that we never reevaluate them. One of the things that I bring up a lot in my coaching conversations is that most people are over obligated and under committed. And I have been at the edge of being over obligated and under committed to these two shows. In fact, I would say that I, you know, I haven't, I haven't gone over the edge of being over obligated and under committed in these two shows because there were three episodes. Two episodes of. What were they? I can't remember. I had it up here somewhere. Anyway, I missed, I missed three shows. Doesn't matter. What I do know is this episode is a train wreck. It's probably a five out of ten in my book. And you want to know something that I know is that if you're one of the people who listens every single week, this is probably your favorite episode you've heard in a long time. And even if you're not somebody who listens every single week, there's gonna be about 2 or 300 of you who listen to the show and it's your favorite episode. It's like, wow, I wish every episode was like that. And I understand that. But if I look at my values and priorities in my business, in this season of my life, ain't nobody got time for that. Yeah, that, that's, that's it. So what does this say for you? Again, don't let me impact or influence how, how you are choosing your own values. But the question is, is are you being intentional? And are you committed? And are you committed just because you said you were committed? Have you ever taken the time to seriously consider why? What was the reason I set out to do this level of consistency and have you evaluated to Is there enough evidence to support the reasoning that you chose for that commitment? Are you over committed and are you over obligated and under committed in every area of your life? Thank you so much for subscribing to Podcast Answer Man. I am so thrilled I've brought back Podcast Answer Man. By the way, I'm heading out Thursday to Empowered Podcasting 3 over in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you're going to be at Empowered Podcasting 3, I want to invite you to email me cliff@cliffravenscraft.com and let me know that you're going to be there. I'd love to make sure that we connect and have a meaningful conversation at this event. Mark Ronick is an incredible human being and I am so excited to be a part of his conference for the very first time for me and this community, and I look forward to the opportunity to standing on stage and sharing my experience. I think I'm doing the limited series podcast. Actually, I know for a fact that I am. So I'm doing my limited series podcast session there. And if you already have a podcast and you want to grow your audience in a way that I think is the second best way to grow your audience, it's by creating a limited series podcast. Come check out my talk over at Empowered Podcasting Conference 3. I'll put a link to the show notes or in the show notes to the event. And yeah, I hope to see you there. I will be back with the next episode of Podcast answer band by September 15th. From this date forward, I am revising my commitment. Podcast Answer man will be released once a month minimum and by the 15th of each month. And I may drop in bonus episodes here and there. Thank you so much. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level podcast and some man.