SPI 925: The Top Lessons from 20+ Years of Personal Branding with Cliff Ravenscraft

SPI 925: The Top Lessons from 20+ Years of Personal Branding with Cliff Ravenscraft

Cliff Ravenscraft: I remember there’s one guy, his name was Clint Schumacher. And this is a guy who had some big, audacious goals, and I’m thinking, how on earth am I going to help this guy? And so I just started digging in, and instantly I just had this question that popped up. And I asked him this one question, and all of a sudden he just went silent. And it felt like an eternity.

And then he says, “Oh my gosh, Cliff.” He says, “I know that you’re probably asking yourself, if I’m going to be able to get a return on investment. If we were to stop right now, I’ve already got my entire return on investment for this coaching package. And we’re not even 15 minutes into this call yet. “

And so ironically, I thought, there’s no way on earth I’m ever going to help this guy be able to accomplish this goal. Today, he lives that. It’s his lived experience. He was the very first client under that package and it would not have been possible for him had we not had that conversation and I asked him that one question that opened up everything.

Pat Flynn: Building a strong personal brand is going to be extremely important this year and into the future as things become more and more AI, as things become less and less human. The more human you can be, the more personable you can be with your personal brand, the better off you’re going to be. And today we’re talking with somebody who’s gone through an incredible journey, starting with one of the strongest brands that I ever knew about when I first started in business back in 2008.

Podcast Answer Man, Cliff Ravenscraft, the man himself, who’s been on the show several times before, but he’s been on in different ways. At first, it was Podcast Answer Man because he actually helped me start this podcast, this very podcast you’re listening to right now, but then he went into more of a mindset coach, and we talk about that journey, but then he’s now transitioning back into Podcast Answer Man.

We’re going to talk about why and how. And this is a great exercise for us to listen to this journey so that we can understand where our journey will go as well, as a personal brand, as somebody who wants to connect with other people and bring our zone of genius in. Our zone. Zone? Zone? Our zone of genius.

And Cliff and I talk about this quite a bit here in this episode as well. So dive in, get excited. This is going to be a great one here with my great friend, Cliff Ravenscraft. Podcast Answer Man. I’m so glad I can call him that again. Here we go.

Cliff, welcome back to the podcast. It’s been a few years, but I’m excited to chat about a lot of these amazing things that are happening on your end.

Welcome back, my friend.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Thank you so much, Pat. It’s always a pleasure. And I am honored to be a guest for the third time on the Smart Passive Income podcast.

Pat Flynn: Well, it’s interesting because the first time you were on, it was a very podcast answer man centric. conversation. In fact, I had given you credit and I still continue to give you credit on the start of my podcasting journey.

It was a lot of conversations that we had back in 2009 and 2010 and most of all, not just the tech stuff that was a trouble hole for me back in the day. It was a lot of the headspace stuff that you, you helped me wrap my head around. And today, now, approaching 1,000 episodes of the podcast, having now done the podcast for 16 years, very much as a result of you.

So thank you again for everything you’ve done to help get this show to where it is today.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Well, it is certainly my honor, my pleasure, and it’s such an inspiration to see how much you’ve done over the years. And I was just looking at Ask Pat with thousands of episodes in the feed over there. So and not to mention the fact of the number of people that you’ve personally been responsible for helping getting into the podcast space.

I often tell people, I’ve not always had the largest audience when it comes to my Podcast Answer Man brand, but one of the things that I’ve been very honored to do is to influence the people who will go on to influence a very large audience.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, same. We’re just paying it forward. Passing the baton as we go.

And there’s enough for all of us to enjoy the benefits of all of that. And I’m curious, cause we’re mentioning Podcast Answer Man. And for those who maybe have followed along for the journey for a while, might feel nostalgic about that name because it kind of went away for a while and you had come on as a big personal brand and you were doing a lot of coaching and helping people through finding success in their life, and you still continue to do that.

But you’ve recently went back to that brand, which had been gone for so long. Tell me about why you moved away from that brand, and maybe you could lead us into why you’re back. And I think it’s great that it’s back. It’s such a important name in the world of podcasting. And then we’ll talk about kind of what you’ve done and what that’s opened up.

But like, tell me about why you moved away from that brand and, and why you’ve come back to it.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah, so for those that don’t know, I started podcasting as a hobby with my wife about television shows in 2005. We quickly grew several audiences into the tens of thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands around TV shows like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives.

We went into other entertainment franchises like The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga podcast. We reached massive audiences around the world and grew communities around those shows. And the most common questions that were coming in were, Cliff, how are you producing so much content? How are you overcoming all these technical hurdles?

You’re doing more content in a single week than I actually am able to even do for a single show. How do you do all this? And so I was answering all of these technical questions about what I was doing to be able to produce so much at such a high level of quality. Eventually, people began to ask me, can I pay you to do this?

You’ve got to let me pay you for this. And I, and I remember the first few times I’m like, I feel like I should pay you to let me talk about podcasting. And nobody in my hometown, they could care less about any of this stuff. And so the fact that I get to talk about this thing that is such a passion of mine. Well, after a year of podcasting, I decided to launch Podcast Answer Man in December 2006.

And I said in that very first episode, Pat, I said, wouldn’t it be crazy if after doing this for a year, taking my thousands of hours worth of investment in what I’ve learned and helping you here with this podcast, what if instead of taking over my family’s business as an insurance agency that my grandfather started in 1937, what if instead of taking that business owner, I could make a full time career out of doing what I love behind this microphone instead?

And one year later, Podcast Answer Man, the brand, allowed me to do just that. To leave my career as an insurance agent after 12 years and pursue a podcasting full time as a hobby so that I can entertain, educate, and encourage and inspire people around the world. But it was Podcast Answer Man as a podcast coach and consultant that allowed me to earn enough income to do this.

And there was such a demand for it. And I built a reputation and I had some very exciting things that just happened to put me at the top of this industry. And what happened was I loved it until I didn’t. And what I mean by that, I loved serving people. I loved creating the content, but at one point I recognized there were deeper levels at for which I was serving people, creating even more value than answering, what’s that buzzing noise in my audio.

Hey Cliff, I bought everything you recommended in your equipment package, but I got this audio interface instead. What cable do I need? And I was just answering those kinds of questions about six to eight hours a day every single day. While meanwhile, I had people over here on this other end saying, Hey Cliff, I’m really struggling with getting behind the microphone.

I’ve got an awesome sounding podcast. It rivals any FM radio broadcaster as far as quality is concerned, but I’m struggling with my mindset, and then I had people who I recognized wanted to do what I did, leave their unfulfilling day jobs and create work or a business around what they love and what their passion is, much like I did.

And they were struggling with pricing and so many other things that I struggled with during the first few years of my own business journey. And what I also noticed is there was even people who were willing to pay much more for that and have an ongoing relationship in this business strategy and mindset side of the work, whereas in the technical consulting, it’s one and done almost.

And so for me, I began to see Podcast Answer Man as a bit of a distraction from what I felt most aligned to do as far as the work, how I wanted to serve people. This was about eight years into my journey as the Podcast Answer Man. And so I began to ask myself, I wonder what life would be like if I could do this for a living instead of the Podcast Answer Man stuff. Ironically, 10 years earlier, I was asking, I wonder if I could do Podcast Answer Man instead of the family business. And what I mean by this is I wonder if I could make a living just inspiring people with mindset, helping them with business strategy, and I took two years to validate products and services that people would be willing to pay me a substantial amount for work that is not related to technical questions about podcasting.. And once I confirmed that, once I validated that product and service, I then went cold turkey. I read the book, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and he talks about this thing called the Zone of Genius. What I thought of in my own mind about my role as the Podcast Answer Man, that’s all technical, that’s all zone of excellence. I’m really great at it. I’m pretty much the best in my field or at the top of my field in this area, but it’s not fulfilling. It’s not life giving. A lot of this, looking back, I didn’t know it then, Pat, was a lot about how I was framing it in my own mind, but because of how I was framing it, I decided I needed to break up with this identity.

I feel like I’m being painted in a corner, I’m being typecasted as the go to guy for your technical questions, and I didn’t like turning people down when they asked me questions. And so I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could just stop all the questions coming and go from Podcast Answer Man to Mindset Answer Man?

So, that’s my answer to that question.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, we’ll get into how you came back to Podcast Answer Man now that you’ve set this up beautifully, but there’s a few things you mentioned that I want to pull out because I know the audience and myself are curious about. How you did these certain things. So you said you spent a couple of years validating this new potential direction for, for yourself.

Tell me exactly how you did that and what made you confident that you could move away from this sort of pigeonhole, the area that you had put yourself in.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah, this validation process is so important and vital in the entrepreneurial journey. So I had gotten to the place where just before making this transition, the year that we built this house, we did some pretty wild things.

And I got to the place where we made three quarters of a million dollars as Podcast Answer Man brand in one year. And when I say we, it’s just me and my wife. And so it’s a very small business, very little overhead, had lots of income. And we don’t, as far as we’re concerned, we don’t need that much income to consistently live our lives.

But what I did say is, you know what? I. I refuse at this point in my life to make less than $240,000 a year. And so the very first thing that I did to validate this is I needed to know what’s the minimum target that I need to verify to validate I can earn this much. So 240,000 a year was an easy revenue goal for me to figure out, and that, that came out to a very simple 20,000 a month, and so I began to ask myself, what are some ideas as far as business model that I could pursue that would generate 20,000 a month that would require no technical aspects of podcasting to be a part of my services?

The first idea that I came up with was weekend workshops. Actually, no, that’s not true. The first idea that I came up with was a paid mastermind group, and the idea would be to facilitate two different mastermind groups where each group had 10 members paying 1,000 a month. These were, one group would be for established entrepreneurs who feel isolated, who would benefit from being in a group where everybody else is committed to your success, sharing your education, your experience, skills, talents, and abilities. You know, you and I have been in a mastermind group together every week since 2010. So I want to facilitate that for other established entrepreneurs. But then I also wanted a separate mastermind group for the aspiring and early stage entrepreneur.

And if I could fill both of those groups with just 10 people each, that’s a thousand dollars a month times 10, times 2, that’s 20,000 a month. That would just be hosting two 90 minute meetings a week for 50 weeks out of the year is all I would need to do, and that’s my entire income. So that was ideal number one, and I put that on the board.

Ideal number two was weekend workshops. What if I were to host weekend workshops where I had 10 people come to our home, because we built our home with a studio workshop classroom space in it called the Next Level Studio. And the idea was, what if I can get 10 people to pay $2,000 for a workshop on building an online business, for example, or a thriving marriage workshop for entrepreneurial married couples, those kind of things.

And if I was to do one of those per month, for 12 months, that would be 240,000 a year just by itself. So the first thing we did was validate the weekend workshops and that successfully sold out over and over and over again. The third idea that I had was an annual conference. What if I actually had 300 people attend an annual conference where the average ticket price was $1,000.

That would obviously come out to 300,000. And of course, I had already done the research, the type of conference we would want to do, the level at which we would want to do it, the location where we would want to do it, and who we’d want to do all of the tech stuff. That would be a $60,000 investment. So therefore, 300,000 minus our expense of 60,000.

The income would be once a year, just with one event, we could earn $240,000. So those were the first three ideas that I had. And before I even did that first weekend workshop, I still needed to dip my toes into the water to make sure that I felt confident that the first In person workshop would go well.

And that is, I went to my Podcast Answer Man audience and I said, guys, I want to test something. I’ve been very authentic and transparent to tell you guys that really the deepest work I do is this mindset and business strategy. And sometimes I feel like I’m answering technical questions gets in the way.

And so one of the things I want to do is I want to validate a new coaching offer. I know that many of you who are listening to this podcast are on the entrepreneurial journey. Maybe you’re just getting ready to start your own business. Maybe you’re in the early stages of it, trying to figure out your pricing and your business model, or maybe you’re struggling with the ups and downs in the predictable income path.

I’d like to let you know that I’m going to do six one hour sessions for $6,000. And so if you’d like to hire me, I have this six session coaching package for $6,000. And you can use that once a month for six months. You could do it once a week for six weeks, however you want. But within six months, you get six sessions for $6,000.

So I was basically asking myself, would people pay me $1,000 for six sessions? And here’s the caveat. I said, the only thing is, Ithe whole reason why I’m doing this is to verify, will you hire me for business strategy and mindset only? We will not discuss the topic of podcasting at all during any of these sessions.

So I said, this is only available for 10 people. If you’re interested, let me know. I put that podcast episode out and within one week, all 10 slots were full. And I remember there’s one guy. Pat, his name was Clint Schumacher. And this is a guy who had some big, audacious goals, and I’m thinking, how on earth am I going to help this guy?

And so I just started digging in, and instantly I just had this question that popped up. And I asked him this one question, and all of a sudden he just went silent. And it felt like an eternity. And then he says, Oh my gosh, Cliff. He says, I know that you’re probably asking yourself, you know, if I’m going to be able to get a return on investment.

He goes, if we were to stop right now, I’ve already got my entire return on investment for this coaching package. And we’re not even 15 minutes into this call yet. Wow. And so ironically, what I thought, there’s no way on earth I’m ever going to help this guy be able to accomplish this goal. Today, he lives that.

It’s his lived experience. He was the very first client under that package and it would not have been possible for him had we not had that conversation. And I asked him that one question that opened up everything. And so I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I fulfilled all of those 10 coaching packages and I came back and I’m like, okay, let’s see if it was a fluke.

And so I came back, Pat, and I said, Hey, I’m doing a special second run of this coaching package, again, only for 10 people, but it’s $6,000 for three one on one sessions. So effectively what I wanted to see is would people pay twice the amount per session. I just wanted to test the waters here. So I put it out.

And lo and behold, it sold out within, it took about 10 days to fill all of those spots. And then all of a sudden, I got the same sorts of results. It’s like, okay, now I have the courage. Actually, I had the courage to ask people to pay me that much for these things. But then I had the confidence to ask people to pay me after doing that.

But then I had the courage to go do the workshop. Which, I will tell you, I still had a little bit of a struggle with my mindset asking people to travel all the way to Northern Kentucky to pay $2,000 to spend a day and a half here for building an online business, because I’d not done it before. But when people came for that first workshop, and then they said, oh my gosh, this has changed my entire outlook, I’m going to go triple my income because I’m going to ask people to pay me more when I’ve been undervaluing myself.

People are telling me, it’s like, oh my gosh, my income has quadrupled. This is amazing. I’m like, oh, this is awesome. And so that’s how I got progressively further and further into this. Until finally, when I read the book, The Big Leap, I had already done lots of one on one coaching with no podcast consulting involved.

I’ve done lots of these weekend workshops. And I, when I read the book, The Big Leap, I’m like, okay, I’m ready to instantly shut down Podcast Answer Man and immediately start promoting the Next Level Mastermind, which I did in November 2017. And in the last five and a half years, that’s produced over a million dollars in revenue just on its own.

Pat Flynn: How did you prepare yourself to transition from answering podcast related questions, stuff that you have a zone of excellence in, to now coaching and mindset? Because you didn’t you have formal training on that and you know, you were helping people with podcasting. How did you get that courage and get that bravery to do that?

Did you do any training? How did you ensure that you could deliver on those promises?

Cliff Ravenscraft: So it depends on what you would consider to be formal training. So one of the things that’s a part of my story is I began getting involved in ministry from the time I was 18 years old. So from the time I, I’m 53 now and since I was 18 years old I had been leading small group Bible studies for young adults at the age of 18, and I did that every week, all the way up until about 2010, 2011. And there was a time when I spent 10 years as an associate pastor. So pastoring a church, preaching some Sundays when our head pastor was out of town, leading small groups, but then leading leaders of small groups.

And so there’s lots of coaching and life that happens there. Also, I was an insurance agent for 12 years and the type of insurance that I sold was auto, home, life, health, and business. And I was often the first person that somebody would call or one of the first people somebody would call when their daughter was just killed in a car accident or a house just burned to the ground or somebody’s husband just passed away and they need to how does this life insurance work. You talk about real life, deep conversations with people, both, you know, inside a ministry setting, but then inside of a business setting, one could say that I’d been training for this my entire life. And then as the Podcast Answer Man, what I recognized is that when I launched Podcasting A to Z, my four week group training program, what happened is Made me start to think, oh my gosh, I could maybe really do this Mindset Answer Man thing. I could do this, this business strategy mindset coaching, was a guy named Rick Lindberg.

He’s from Stockholm, Sweden. He took my Podcasting A to Z course, and during the four weeks of the course, he had all sorts of questions technically. But he had even more questions on the mindset, the overcoming fear and, you know, who am I to put my voice out there and all this other stuff. And he found so much value in the business strategy and specifically the mindset stuff that when my next course came around four weeks after the end of that one, I noticed my email had another $2,000 payment charged to his credit card. And I immediately freaked out. I’m like, oh my gosh. I wrote him an email. I said, hey, Rick, I am so sorry that your credit card has been charged a second time. I promise you I’m going to get to the end of this.

I will find out what happened. You’re going to get a full refund. I promise you. He said, no, don’t refund me. I did that. I want to take part in your Podcasting A to Z session again. And I said, what are you talking about? You’ve already successfully launched your podcast. It sounds amazing. He goes, I know, but you said that during the course, we get unlimited access to ask you an unlimited number of questions about anything.

I’ve got so much more mindset and business related questions. I would love to take the course. By the way, He has since taken that course, he took the course three times, and he was the first ever member of the Next Level Mastermind, and he was a member of the Next Level Mastermind for six and a half years.

Pat Flynn: So that was also another form of validation, just the types of questions that you were being asked during the podcast.

Cliff Ravenscraft: That’s exactly it. So all of that, Pat, is to answer that question. How did I have the courage to, to go into this kind of coaching when I hadn’t been formally trained, and what I realized is that because of my experiential training, and by the way, I did go to do some Bible college and I did some communication courses in college, and I mean, so I have a lot of formal training, but I also did a lot of ministry and pastoring and I would call that a form of coaching as well, life coaching before it was known as life coaching.

And so, I’d been doing so much of that. And what I recognize is like, wow, this truly is my zone of genius. I am a coach. I didn’t think back then our mutual mentor and friend, Dan Miller was doing this program, his own workshop called Coaching with Excellence. And I’m like, ah, you know, and I remember in the early days, I never really thought of myself as a coach, but looking back, I’ve been a coach since I was 18 years old.

And so to answer your question, of how did I have the courage to do that? It’s just, I recognize that’s just who naturally, it’s naturally what I’ve been doing. It’s what I’d been drawn to. And I won’t say that I was always excellent at it. I wasn’t always great at it. I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way, but it is something that I’d always progressively been building as my skill in every decade of my life.

Pat Flynn: I’ve personally seen you continue to grow and get better at that over time. I mean, we feel it from you in the Green Room Mastermind every single week and out of all the people in that group everybody is amazing, you seem to always have a way of repositioning the troubles and the struggles that we are going through in a way that allows us to come up with answers for ourselves.

Any good coach will ask questions first before just telling us what to do and you’ve always done that very very well. And that’s probably the biggest difference between what I imagine life was like as Podcast Answer Man and then Mindset Answer Man, right? I mean, hey, which button should I push in which cord should I put in?

Well, why are you trying to put the cord inside of this box? And you know versus the repositionings that you you do are just are just genius and and you that is that is something you are very good at Cliff and thank you for the continued support that you offer us and the other gentlemen in in the mastermind group we are in.

I’m curious, at what point were you saying goodbye and you were like totally okay moving forward and away? Was there a moment in time where that happened? I remember a very specific moment in my life where I was kind of hanging on to two identities. My identity as an architect and my identity as now a new entrepreneur and there was a very specific moment when my boss called me and gave me another opportunity to come back into architecture and I said no and it was the easiest to know ever that that’s when I knew this was my new path and I could fully let go. When did you fully let go of Podcast Answer Man?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Well, I will tell you that the journey of letting go of Podcast Answer Man was about a two to two and a half year journey. So I let go of it in November 2017, but I think it was the first few weeks of 2015, I even titled the first two episodes of Podcast Answer Man for that year was called The Year of Identity, because I was very authentic.

I tell, I’m like, guys, I’m going through an identity crisis here. This is who I see myself as. This is my reputation in the world. And seemingly they’re at odds with each other. And so, uh, I went to a Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event in June of 2016, and I came away from that weekend event after walking on fire for the first time.

That was awesome. And I’m like, okay, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go launch my paid mastermind group, you know, and of course, I don’t know what happened, but I just got it back into the rhythm and the routine of doing what people expected of me. And I just continued to go on and just dreaming of leaving the Podcast Answer Man identity behind. Dabbling is what I would call it. I’m dabbling in the Mindset Answer Man side of things. And oftentimes saying, well, who am I? It’s like, okay, I’ve already left a career and guaranteed success, or not guaranteed success, but guaranteed job security and all that.

I’ve already done that once to pursue something that I love. Who am I to do it again? I had to overcome some of that. But it really was The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks that convinced me. It was, there was, so what happened is I read that book and I remember my wife was at a doctor’s appointment. I turned on my camera and did a live stream on YouTube and I got, I said, guys, I want to tell you what I just read in the book, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

And I was just so fired up and I’m like, okay, this is what the four zones of work are. Your zone of incompetence, your zone of competence, your zone of excellence, and your zone of genius. And this is what it means to stay inside of your zone of excellence. And here’s what’s at risk. And here’s what the zone of genius is.

And here’s my zone of excellence. And this is my zone of genius. And I’m going to tell you right now, because of this book, I am committing right here, right now, these next 12 months are the last 12 months you’ll ever hear me call myself the Podcast Answer Man. So within the next 12 months, I am moving out of this identity into this identity.

Now two weeks later, I did another live stream. I said, guys, I’m even more excited about this zone of genius thing. And I got to tell you. Update. It’s not 12 months. You’ve got 90 days. Wow. There’s only going to be three more sessions of Podcasting A to Z, and then it’s done forever. And then Ray Edwards, our mutual friend and member of the Green Room Mastermind, came and spent a day with me because I do this thing called A Day With Cliff.

And he spent a day with me. And that experience was like amazing. And then we traveled to Franklin, Tennessee together for a conference we were both speaking at. And on the way to that conference from the car, Ray was driving, I did a live stream. Guys, remember I told you at first, a couple weeks ago, it was going to be 12 months.

You had, if you’re going to take Podcasting A to Z, you got 12 months. And then I told you a couple days ago, you’ve got 90 days. I’m sorry. This next session of Podcasting A to Z is my final session. And it’s like, within two weeks, you will never hear me refer to myself as the Podcast Answer Man, there will be no more podcast tutorials, no more podcasting A to Z, boom.

And it, it was just like, this is the right moment, and it’s when I broke up, and so that’s the story of how that happened.

Pat Flynn: And now you’re back.

Cliff Ravenscraft: And now I’m back.

Pat Flynn: So it wasn’t forever, but I know that you fully let that go, and I want to hear from you, what brought you back? And what does it mean? How is it different than it was before?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Let me tell one little story that I think is such an important part of this. There’s a book. Pat, have you heard of this book? It’s called The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler?

Pat Flynn: I have not.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Okay. This book is all about those of us who are building a coaching business. And it gives a wildly alternative view to the internet marketing, content marketing way of building a coaching business.

So, in fact, this book, one of the statements in it, says simply something like this, you could have an incredibly profitable, a wildly profitable coaching business without a website, without an email newsletter, without a podcast, without a YouTube channel, or a single social media account. And by the way, there is a book called Ultimate Coach.

I think his name is Steve Hardison. Anyway, he is a guy who fits this profile, by the way. Steve Hardison is, is wildly profitable. Have you heard of Steve Hardison?

Pat Flynn: I’ve heard of the name. Yeah.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah. He is the coach to all of the celebrity coaches in my world, if you will. And he has none of those things. So it’s like, it is true.

And he says, basically what you could do is one conversation at a time and based upon invitation and referral only, you could build a profitable coaching business. I discovered this book in July of 2019. And as a result of it, this is already, you know, almost a year and a half, close to two years of after shutting down Podcast Answer Man, which I then rebranded to The Cliff Ravenscraft Show, which was my kind of Mindset Answer Man side of what I’m doing personal and professional development.

And when I started reading this book, I became convinced I could grow a profitable business without content marketing. And at that time, I made a crazy decision, one that I look back and I don’t regret, but boy, have I learned a lot from it, and that is I made the decision to only produce episodes of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show when I felt inspired.

So it was going to be inspired content only. And I said to the audience, I said, don’t worry, I’m inspired often. And so it ended up to be where about once or twice a month, I showed up with a new episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show, but never to try to grow my business as a coach. Instead, I chose to see if I could do something really challenging, which is to say, you know what?

I will only grow my coaching business by invitation and referral only. I will not use my existing audience to market this. I will only go and build relationships with new people and see if this is possible. It’s just an experiment. And I did. And I did it incredibly well. And I was, it was very easy because not only was I hosting my own annual conference, I was speaking on stages, doing opening and closing keynotes for about 7 to 15 events a year around the world.

And so I’m getting on stage in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, and then all of a sudden I’m meeting all of these people, I’m connecting with them, I’m coming back, and these people are becoming my coaching clients, or they’re joining my mastermind group. And I’m like, wow. And then when the pandemic happened, and when the pandemic happened, as you know, there was no more annual conference for me.

There was no more me speaking on other people’s stages. And what happened was during the pandemic, because of my history as Podcast Answer Man, because of all of the things that I’d been doing in all of these stages, the pandemic itself was one of the most profitable seasons of my life because so many people needed mindset coaching. And so many people knew about me.

But after years had gone by, I started to notice that, wow, I’m not out speaking. I’m not out meeting people face to face. And I’ve not been consistent with creating content on an ongoing nonstop basis with the intent to let people know that they can hire me. And I’m like, oh my gosh, my pipeline of new clients has really started to slow down.

So that’s an important element to tell you to lead into why did Podcast Answer Man come back?

Pat Flynn: What was the name of that book one more time for people?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah, the book is called The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler. And it talks about the prosperous coach approach for creating clients.

And it’s four steps. You connect with people on a human level. As you get to know somebody, you might discern that they could be served well through your coaching. If so, if you discern that, you invite them into a complimentary one on one coaching experience with you. If that goes incredibly well, it resonates, and it still seems like they would be a good fit, you invite them to a second full complimentary coaching experience with you.

If they get great results from it and you still feel like they could benefit from your coaching ongoing or your paid mastermind group or whatever your high ticket offer is, then at the end of that session, you remind them that the two sessions you’ve done up to this point have been no strings attached, no expectation that you ever become a paid client, and you go to step four, which is propose, and say, hey, based upon that, I would still like to ask you a single question.

With no expectation, if you say no, I’m perfectly fine, but would you like to have a conversation right now about what it would look like for you and I to have a paid, ongoing coaching relationship? And then they either say yes or no, and then you make a proposal and they either say yes or no. And my experience is that, let’s see here, 52 percent say yes and 48 percent say no.

That’s been my statistic ever since July 2019. So, the only thing is though, you need people in the pipeline. You need to be connecting with people. And I recognized all of my connection points had kind of slowly dwindled away as a result of COVID and as people started to age out of my programs, then all of a sudden I noticed that, hmm, I probably want to do something about this.

And I thought, okay, I’m just going to double down on my old style content marketing and things like that. Or maybe I’m going to double down on getting on speaking at stages and stuff like that. But then something very interesting happened. It was probably right around September or October.

I saw an ad for a Zoom PodTrack P4 Next. And this is a little handheld mixer, a little audio device. For those of us who are in podcasting, if you know what a Rodecaster Pro is, it’s basically a Rodecaster Pro that somebody took a shrink ray and shrunk it down to the palm of your hand. You can power it with two AA batteries, and you can plug in up to four XLR microphones.

It’s got sound boards on it so you can play your jingles. It’s got a built in recorder. It’s got compressor. It’s got all of this stuff, and it was only $179. And I’m like, there’s no way this thing could be any good, but as the Podcast Answer Man, I’m responsible for the sale of a lot of Zoom equipment over the years, and they’ve always had really high quality.

And this just didn’t make sense. So eventually, I ordered one, and in November of 2025, last year, I pulled this thing out of the box, and Pat, I didn’t even think about it. The first thing that I did was immediately turn on my live stream, as I do. And I’m like, guys, you got to see this device. Look how tiny this is.

And I just geek out about this. Two things happened as a result. And by the way, that live stream was not seen by tons of people. Let’s just say it was seen by 300, 400 people max, right? Here’s the interesting thing. I put my affiliate link for that device. I sold a hundred of them within seven days. A hundred of them.

All of a sudden, text messages with people taking selfies and saying, Cliff, I got mine today. And another thing happened. Lots of technical questions started to roll in. Lots of them. And there was a guy named Paul Spain. He is somebody who hosted a conference called the Asia Pacific Podcast Conference in New Zealand.

This is back right before I shut down Podcast Answer Man. He says, I know you’re getting ready to transition out of this, but can I beg you for one last podcast related thing. Will you come and do the opening keynote address for the Asia Pacific Podcast Conference? I will pay you to speak at the event. I will pay for all of your travel.

I’ll put you in a rental home that I own. I’ll give you a car for 10 days, and I’ll pay for your all expenses for anything you want to do while you’re here. And I’m like, let me think about that for a little bit. And then I’m like, yep, okay, I’m in. I mean, I’m being facetious. I was in as soon as he asked.

Pat Flynn: Right, right.

Cliff Ravenscraft: One of the best 10 days of my life, Pat. I mean, just, you talk about an incredible experience. And it’s important that I share that with you. It’s not bragging. It’s important that I share that story with you because on Facebook, I got this question on the live stream. Cause when I did the live stream, I live streamed it to all the social platforms.

And Paul Spain asked this question, Cliff, some of us have had the original PodTrack P4 for many years. How is this version different and do you recommend those of us who have the original upgrade? Now, if this was any other person, I probably wouldn’t have thought to answer that question in any detail.

But because of the reciprocity that’s built up with this gentleman, I’m like, of course I’m going to answer this. And so, I’m So, obviously what I did is I looked, it’s like, yeah, I’ve got the next four hours on my calendar free that I could answer this question because in my mind, I’m thinking back to 2017, I’m going to have to go get the original PDF of the first unit, this PDF, and do a side by side comparison, write down all the differences, and then come up with some thoughts on whether or not I think it’s worth an upgrade.

Because that’s how I would want to answer a technical, that’s the level at which I answer questions. And so I’m like, okay, I’m ready for the next four hours to do this. But without, again, even thinking, because we’re in 2025 at the time, I instantly go to ChatGPT and say, hey, ChatGPT, I want you to do deep research.

Here’s a link to a video and all the things I said about this. Check out the transcript. Here’s a question that came from Paul Spain. Copy paste. Got that. I want you to go and find the original PDF and the new PDF. I want you to do a side by side comparison and give me a recommendation for each item on whether it’s a worthy upgrade.

It did it in two and a half minutes. I copied it. I went over to Notion, pasted it, and I then went in and I checked each of the pages and I confirmed that it was all real because that’s one of the values that I bring is I know when things are right or ChatGPT is making it up. And so I confirmed it.

And so it took me about 25 minutes total. And so it took me about 25 minutes total. And I had about a five page document, if it was printed out on paper, and I copied it all, and I went over to Facebook and hit Paul, comma, paste, and enter. And you could just imagine being on his end, getting that response from me.

It’s like, now that’s the Podcast Answer Man, I know. And of course, there were so many other people who had asked the same question, because they didn’t look to see whatever, and so I just pasted that to them. On YouTube, lots of people were asking, how’s this any different than the original? Pasting a four page document to each one of them, and they’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve never had somebody go into such depth on answering a question before.

I’m telling this story in the Green Room Mastermind with you and the other guys, and I’m like, you know what I realized? As I’m saying this. It just occurred to me that if I had ChatGPT or these AI tools and also Notion as a knowledge base in 2017, I probably never would have shut down Podcast Answer Man.

And then somebody in the group, maybe it was you, I don’t know, Pat, but one of the guys said, does this mean Podcast Answer Man is coming back? And I’m like, hmm. I said, you know what? I’m about ready to celebrate my 20th anniversary of podcasting in December. Yeah. And that would be an excellent time to bring back Podcast Answer Man.

And I certainly, with the tools that I have today, I could entertain lots of questions related to Podcast Answer Man. So that’s why I made the decision to bring it back. And there’s so many powerful things that have happened and what I’ve learned since.

Pat Flynn: That is amazing. So the technology actually caught up to help remove the parts of that brand that you just really disliked.

And to have now podcasting, and I know this to be now the top of funnel way to bring people into your ecosystem, that questions will be answered much easier, maybe even automatically. I don’t know if you’re exploring things like CliffBots and things like that to just focus on the technical stuff so that you can get again, into your zone of genius inside of this space. That is amazing. And, you know, podcasting has changed quite a bit since Podcast Answer Man took a break. However, I also know that you have continued to be very adamant about audio only still, and I’m curious your thoughts on that because video of course has come big and the tech for that is easier.

What are your thoughts on your approach to now Podcast Answer Man and the world of podcasting today in this new era?

Cliff Ravenscraft: So I did make a decision when I brought back Podcast Answer Man to not turn on a camera, to have a camera involved in any of the production of the show. And it has a lot to do with being an example that you don’t have to follow the popular narrative that’s going on today.

There are so many people who are being told that you will not be seen as credible in the podcasting space if you do not have a video version of your show. And by the way, you said the phrase, you’re adamant about audio only. And I understand, and you and I have a deep relationship, but I want to be very clear for anybody who might missunderstand that.

I am a huge advocate for creating content in any way that feels natural and or feels aligned with what you want to do, and I have created thousands of videos over the years on YouTube. I love live streaming constantly, and there have been a number of times, I’ve got 55 shows and over 5,000 episodes, and there have been many where there’s a video version of the audio podcast. But I did intentionally, intentionally choose to not create a video version of Podcast Answer Man just to show people that I can actually have an incredibly influential brand and grow this audience once again without video and that discoverability is still just as possible today For audio only content creators.

And so it’s not that I’m opposed and you didn’t say this. I’m not opposed to video. I love video for people who love video and there are times when I love it, but there are times when, man, I’d rather not have to go and change what I’m wearing or, you know, just Pat, you know, I have a beard now, right? The number of times I’ve recorded a video and I’m like, man, that was a great video.

And I go to, it’s like, I’m going to just go clean up the intro and outro here and, and stuff like that. And I’ve realized there’s something in my beard. This whole thing is like. I can’t put this out.

Pat Flynn: Relatable. Relatable.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Oh, man. And so, anyway, to your point, though, is that, yeah, I think that video podcasting is great.

I love the things that are going on in the world, but if adding video is a stumbling block for you, for you, and I’ve actually noticed, and this is one of the things that I’ve recognized and what I’ve learned since bringing back Podcast Answer Man, I want to be an advocate for the audio first content creator, and I also want to be an advocate for those who choose to be an audio only content creator in the podcasting space, not opposed to the other, just an advocate for.

Pat Flynn: I love that. I love that a lot. So what is the big difference between, other than not having to answer technical questions in the same manner that you did before, what is the biggest difference for you in terms of what Podcast Answer Man means?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Well, this is the most important thing that I’ve learned is the power of the personal brand.

Because I’ve spent so many years building trust with this audience over the years. And even though I stepped away from Podcast Answer Man as the brand for eight and a half years, all of that trust that I built has compounded over the years. So for the very first time, I went back to my very first podcast industry conference.

I went to PodFest Expo in January. I ran into hundreds of people who I’ve never met before who said, Cliff, if it wasn’t for your show, Podcast Answer Man, I wouldn’t be here today at this event. I wouldn’t be speaking on stage. I wouldn’t have had this business. Thank you for all you did over the years.

And at this point, those people saying that didn’t even know that Podcast Answer Man was back. And they’re like, no way. And so that was fun. The other thing is, is, gosh, I, I forgot how much of a network that I have within the industry space. And so, all of the invitations that, as soon as Podcast Answer Man came back, they’re like, Cliff, we are so thrilled you are back.

Do you want to come speak on our stage? Even our friend Michael Stelzner is like, OK Cliff. If you’re ready to speak on podcasting again, do you want to do a 90 minute workshop at Social Media Marketing World this year? And I’m like, I’m in. Yes. Yeah. And so, so that’s been fun. The other thing that I’ve I’ve noticed is, and this is the big key for me, is the top of funnel has been turned back on.

For eight and a half years. What I’ve learned, and I’m trying to find a way to communicate what so many people have communicated to me, for prior to eight and a half years ago, before I shut down Podcast Answer Man, there were so many people who were consistently referring people to me because the topic of podcasting was coming up and they’re like, Oh, you need to talk to Cliff Ravenscraft.

And that was a constant thing. He is the go to person I refer everyone to. And when I shut down Podcast Answer Man, they’re like, I don’t have that person to send people to. And so when I brought back Podcast Answer Man, it’s like, Cliff, does that mean I can send people your way again?

Because there’s been a vacuum. There’s been a void. There’s lots of noise out there, but man, I would really love to be, can I send people your way? And it’s turned back on. And so remember, I told you that after COVID and the, the pipeline was starting to go, it’s like, wow, this was not even the intentional idea.

But now all of a sudden it’s the top of funnel, just people coming in for me to connect with, and then of course learn who they are and discern and invite in people in. It’s just turned things back on in a powerful way. And the other thing that I learned is I thought that I needed to bring back the same products and services that I had with Podcast Answer Man when I shut down Podcast Answer Man. So I also announced the return of Podcasting A to Z, my 4 week group training program. Well, I marketed it for the first 3 weeks after my return, and that’s not enough time to fill it out, right? But I noticed that when I got back from PodFest Expo, after promoting this for 3 weeks, nobody had signed up yet.

And I only had one week before the first session of the return, and I’m like, okay, I recognize people might sign up this week, but I came back with one of those post conference coughs and colds or whatever, and slight case of the flu myself, and I’m like, ah, I just don’t have the energy. And so I went in and I changed it and said, listen, this session’s not available.

Email me if you want to be notified of the next one. And Jackie Ulmer reaches out to me. Now, Jackie is a woman who had attended, you and I co hosted a meetup back in 2013 in San Diego at a pizza place. And so, Jackie Ulmer has been following my brand ever since then. And she came and she hung out.

She said, Man Cliff, I remember hanging out with you, your wife was there, your kids were there, Pat was there. It was incredible. And by the way, I’m so thrilled that Podcast Answer Man is back and, and she says, you know, I’ve got these three different shows that I’ve launched and I’ve taken the last year off because of some things that have been going on in my family.

I’m ready to get back into it. I was going to sign up for your Podcasting A to Z, but I see that it’s not available. I want to be a part of your next session, but I don’t need any technical help related to podcasting. Well, through one conversation, she’s now a member of the Next Level Mastermind. And then I realized also, Pat, that I went to Podcast Movement.

I connected with all these people, as I already told you, who said, Cliff, I already know who you are. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for this. I met all of these people who I met for the first time. They didn’t know who I was. And because of my reputation in the community, they were immediately interested in having a connection with me.

And I also recognize that 99 percent of all the people that I was connecting with don’t need any technical information on how to launch a podcast, but they all needed business strategy and mindset. And I’m like, I don’t have to teach the technical. I can still be the Podcast Answer Man. And you know what I love, Pat, is this is people can refer people to me for the technical aspects of podcasting and, and I’m happy to answer those questions in a conversation, refer them to somebody that I know who will actually walk them through every technical detail, but allow me to do that business strategy mindset stuff and also encourage them with the big picture overview of what they’re doing with their podcast.

It’s the best of all worlds.

Pat Flynn: I was gonna say it’s a blend of all the things that are best from all the things that you’ve, you’ve already done. That is incredible. I want to finish with something that I remember telling you at one point during a mastermind call and I want to hear your response to what this actually means to you and what you’ve learned from it.

And that is follow your energy.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Tell me what that means to you and how that might help others who are listening who might be on the fence between a decision and a yes or a no, or a personal brand and something else, or leaving their job and not, follow your energy. What does that mean?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Follow your energy, to me, means what happens inside of you. Is there an excitement of energy within you. When you think about and imagine and picture what it is that you’re getting ready to go do, it reminds me of the 2005 Stanford address from Steve Jobs, and he said he was told by a friend, he said, you should get up every single day, look in the mirror and ask yourself this question.

If today was the last day of my life, would I be excited to do what I’m about ready to do today? And if the answer is. to that question is no, too many days in the row, then it might be time to ask if there’s a different direction you should be looking at. And so it’s kind of like that. And it’s like, man, follow that energy.

Follow the things that light you up. And Pat, you’ve seen me over the years and you’ve seen times when my energy is kind of like, ah, and, and the funny thing is, is it has nothing to do with income. Cause there’s been plenty of times where the income is really high, but the energy is like, a little piece of me feels like it’s dying every day I continue to do this.

And this idea of following that energy is, it’s almost like, in my way, there’s almost this metaphysical, if God or the universe is just paving the path ahead, and it’s kind of like just my imagination or my vision and imagining that future. What lights up, it’s almost like a, it’s a position indicator of which direction I should go.

And so it, I love that advice that you’d given me. It’s, it’s very much in alignment with so much of my philosophy of life. Follow the flow of life. And I think the flow of life is that life energy that you get when you’re excited about what you’re getting ready to go do. Not that you’re excited every day.

I’m not. But like Steve Jobs, if the answer is no too many days in a row, then it’s time to check in. And there have been a number of times when it’s clear. It’s like, I need to go find where that energy is because it’s not here.

Pat Flynn: Amazing, Cliff. Congratulations on the return. And for people who want to follow and find Podcast Answer Man, where should they go to consume all your info?

Cliff Ravenscraft: Yeah, check out PodcastAnswerMan.com. I encourage you to ask me a technical question or any kind of business and strategy and mindset question related to your whatever. There’s a little ask a question on the sidebar or on the bottom of the page if you’re on mobile. And if you want to see the Mindset Answer Man stuff, I of what I do, I have a free opening keynote address to my, what was my annual Free the Dream Conference.

You can go to MindsetAnswerMan.com/free, and that is the All Beliefs Have Consequences talk. It’ll change your life forever.

Pat Flynn: I know that to be true. Cliff, thank you so much, Mr. Podcast Answer Man. He’s back, everybody, and check him out at PodcastAnswerMan.com. Thank you, my friend.

Cliff Ravenscraft: Thank you, pat.

Pat Flynn: Alright, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with the Podcast Answer Man, Cliff Ravenscraft.

Definitely check out his podcast or podcasts, check out his website, we’ll have all the links on the show notes. Of course, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session925, again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session925. Cliff, thank you so much for your time, your energy, and for being vulnerable and sharing exactly how you got to where you’re at today. It’s been a ride and amazing to be along with you on this ride. And I’m excited for the future for all of us. And that includes you, the listener. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. And check you out in the next episode. Hit subscribe.