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00:00:01
He Made $90K With a Podcast No One Knew About
28 Plays10 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire sits down with Cliff Ravenscraft to unpack what it really takes to build a profitable business around your expertise. Cliff shares how he went from hobby podcaster and “Podcast Answer Man” to helping creators clarify their business model, overcome mindset barriers, and use podcasting as a tool for trust, distribution, and revenue. The conversation moves beyond generic podcast advice into practical lessons on validating offers, knowing your ideal customer, and creating niche mini-series that attract the right buyers instead of chasing vanity metrics.
Resources Mentioned
• Cliff Ravenscraft - https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/
• Podcast Answer Man - https://www.podcastanswerman.com/
• The Cliff Ravenscraft Show - https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/podcasts/the-cliff-ravenscraft-show
• Upgrade Your Peer Group - https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/podcasts/upgrade-your-peer-group-the-power-of-mastermind-groups
• Building an Online Business Workshop - https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/next-level-workshop
• Next Level Mastermind - https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/next-level-mastermind
Timestamps
• 00:01 - 13:42 | From hobby podcaster to Podcast Answer Man
Cliff shares the origin story behind his early Lost fandom, the blog post that crashed his website overnight, and how that momentum led to the launch of his first podcasts and eventual full-time business.
• 13:50 - 20:15 | When a podcast does—and does not—make sense for your business
Ken asks why someone should start a podcast today, and Cliff explains that podcasting only works well when the host already knows the problem they solve, the audience they serve, and the offer they want to sell.
• 20:15 - 29:10 | How to grow a podcast without wasting time on the wrong audience
Cliff walks through his audience-growth philosophy: deeply understand your first listeners, gather personal details in a spreadsheet or CRM, and refine the show before chasing bigger distribution.
• 24:52 - 32:58 | The mini-series strategy for discoverability and sales
One of the biggest tactical takeaways of the episode: Cliff explains why short, niche podcast series can outperform massive back catalogs, and how one mastermind-focused series generated high-ticket clients.
• 32:58 - 37:54 | Why most experts start with content too early
Cliff challenges the idea that passion alone is enough. He lays out the importance of identifying income goals, validating a paid offer first, and creating content only after the business model is clear.
• 37:54 - 42:05 | A practical path to building a profitable expertise-based business
Instead of vague encouragement, Cliff outlines the sequence he teaches in his course: clarify your why, assess your expertise, validate demand, and then create content using the real language of paying clients.
• 42:05 - 49:20 | Fast Five: vibe coding, the future of podcasting, and legacy
In the closing segment, Cliff talks about experimenting with AI-assisted software like PodBriefer, his take on the video-vs-audio debate in podcasting, and the legacy he hopes to leave through encouragement and service.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Ken Freire
You're an expert and you love to share your thoughts. However, you know that you're not able to just make money by just sharing your thoughts. You have to actually bring value.
00:00:12
Ken Freire
And that's where the rubber meets the road. You want to bring value, but you don't know how to do that and make a profit. Well, today i have Cliff Ravenscraft, who knows how to build a profitable online business around your expertise. And trust me, you're going to want to stay throughout this whole show because Cliff has been around the block. He knows a lot of the OGs in this space and knows what works and doesn't work.
00:00:36
Ken Freire
So Cliff, welcome to the show, my friend.
00:00:38
Cliff Ravenscraft
Ken, thank you so much. It is a an honor to be here, and I'm excited for this conversation.
00:00:44
Ken Freire
Yeah, absolutely. Before the show, we were talking about just all all the colleagues and friends that we've known and we've kind of been circling around each other for for years. And now we finally get to hang out and talk. And I'd love to just for you to share with people, what is it that you exactly do and how do you help them?
Cliff Ravenscraft's Podcasting Journey
00:01:02
Cliff Ravenscraft
Wow, what is it that I do? Well, I entertain, educate, encourage, and inspire people to fulfill the life of their dreams. That would be the quickest way I would describe it. Many people know me as the Podcast Answer Man. Since 2006, I have helped more than 40,000 people in the world successfully launch a great-sounding audio podcast.
00:01:25
Cliff Ravenscraft
And over the last eight and a half years, I've been helping those content creators overcome all sorts of challenges when it comes to building a profitable, responsible, predictive predictable generating income style business around their expertise, doing a lot of business strategy and mindset coaching. So who am I? i would say I've mostly known as the podcast answer man. and those who begin working with me sometimes think that they really enjoy working with me as the mindset answer man.
00:01:57
Ken Freire
I love that. Well, it it's funny because when you start podcasting, you actually realize how many mindset issues you do have, right? From like getting on the mic or if you're doing a video, right? A podcast, getting in front of a camera, learning to talk, learning to host, learning to get your expertise out there.
00:02:14
Ken Freire
I'm sure you see a bunch of mindsets, mindset obstacles that come about all the time.
00:02:19
Cliff Ravenscraft
Absolutely. And also the fear of what will people think of me? Who am i to put myself out there as an expert?
00:02:24
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:02:26
Cliff Ravenscraft
There are so many other people who know things more than I do. They have more experience than I do. Why would anybody want to listen? I mean, the the number of limiting beliefs that challenge those who are getting into either content creation and or building a business around their expertise.
00:02:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
that Yeah, it's a mind filled of of mindset issues.
00:02:47
Ken Freire
Yeah. what What made you decide? I'm sure you've had an amazing progression of now helping people with mindset. But what made you to decide to even get into the space of learning how to become the podcast answer man to now being the mindset answer man?
From Blogging to Podcasting Success
00:03:01
Cliff Ravenscraft
Sure. Well, it all stems back when I started podcasting as a hobby back in December 2005. I'd already been blogging for over a decade. i so and And after a decade of blogging, I had about 300 people around the world who would routinely come and read my blog, which was about faith and technology and anything else that I was interested in. It was kind of just a hodgepodge. I would just generally blog about anything and everything.
00:03:27
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I discovered podcasting as a consumer in the summer of 2005. And later, my wife introduced me to this television show called Lost. And as I saw the final episode of the first season of that show, I'm like, what in the heck is this show about?
00:03:45
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I discovered there were five other podcasts devoted to the TV show Lost. And I subscribed to all five of them.
00:03:54
Ken Freire
Awesome.
00:03:56
Cliff Ravenscraft
And little did I know, there were millions of people around the world who were obsessed with this television show. Most of modern television show today that's bingeable got its start from what Lost created.
00:04:11
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so the the actual... producers of the show had the official Lost podcast with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Hughes. And so I would listen to that. They had an online forum with all these Easter eggs and clues and that were hidden in the episodes. And I would listen to these shows and I would be the king of the water cooler everywhere I went. And I'm like, did you see this? Did you know that this was in there? If you zoom in on this book, it means this. And people would get really excited for about 10 minutes and they're like okay, Cliff, we're gonna go talk about we're gonna go talk about sports again.
00:04:42
Cliff Ravenscraft
So I had this passion for Lost and not an outlet for it. So I started blogging about it. When I started blogging, I recognized that all of a sudden I've gotten from 300 viewers on my blog per month to just over a thousand. And I thought I had made it, right? It's like, oh my gosh. At the time, i was an associate pastor as a part-time thing just you know that I had been doing for 10 years. I was also, at this time, in insurance for a decade as an insurance agent in an agency that was owned by my mom and dad, started by my grandfather in 1937. All of this is an important part of my story. And so here I am. I've got a very successful insurance career. I've got all of these other things. I don't need more things in my life.
00:05:27
Cliff Ravenscraft
But I discovered a theory about this TV show based upon everything I heard. I blogged about it And I'm like, the world has got to know I figured this out. So I recorded...
00:05:37
Ken Freire
Bye.
00:05:39
Cliff Ravenscraft
a three and a half minute MP3 audio file, and I sent it to Ryan Azawa in Hawaii. He had the Transmission podcast, which is one of those five lost podcasts.
00:05:51
Cliff Ravenscraft
He played my three and a half minute audio file that where I shared the theory. I set it up. I said, I have figured it out. I know the entire show's entire premise. I have documented everything with screen capture side by side. Go check out my blog. I have solved it.
00:06:08
Cliff Ravenscraft
I heard my voice in his podcast and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe my voice is in somebody else's podcast. This is so amazing. I woke up the next morning and I went to go check out my blog to see if I had any comments. And all I saw was a big, huge white screen and big, bold black letters. In capital letters, it says account suspended.
00:06:29
Ken Freire
Oh no.
00:06:31
Cliff Ravenscraft
Bandwidth exceeded. And it says contact billing department. And so what happened was the billing department says, well, Cliff, first of all, your site has had over a million views overnight and your images are 18 megabytes per image. And you have all of these images in your blog posts.
00:06:52
Cliff Ravenscraft
You owe us thousands of dollars. And I'm like, no, I can't afford thousands of dollars. So they actually wiped everything clean and they they taught me how to compress images.
00:07:03
Cliff Ravenscraft
So that was a learning experience. But the interesting thing was, is that, by the way, the Transmission podcast had about 20 or so thousand subscribers to it.
00:07:09
Ken Freire
Thank
00:07:13
Cliff Ravenscraft
One of them happened to be a creative director for Entertainment Weekly. And that person heard my podcast or heard my feedback on the show, went to my blog and said, oh my gosh, this guy has absolutely figured it out. He's convinced me and EW.com linked to my blog post saying this guy figured it out.
00:07:37
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so that's what happened. Long story made short, basically I had people say, Cliff, oh my gosh, you should create a podcast. You should create a podcast. And then I'm like, okay, well, that sounds interesting. I'll figure out how to hand code an RSS feed and with html or with a text editor and I'll figure out how to upload MP3 files to a server and put the media enclosure in there. And we had to do all this manually. There wasn't software for this back then.
00:08:04
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so I figured it all out, and I put my very first podcast episode.
00:08:06
Ken Freire
problem.
00:08:07
Cliff Ravenscraft
It was called The Generally Speaking Podcast. And I
Transitioning to Full-Time Podcasting
00:08:11
Cliff Ravenscraft
basically got... i was very timid. I didn't speak the way that I... a matter of fact, let me kind of just illustrate how it was. Hello, everybody.
00:08:29
Cliff Ravenscraft
I really like...
00:08:29
Ken Freire
and mo
00:08:30
Cliff Ravenscraft
it was It was just absolutely, it was a train wreck. But what I did is I said, I don't think anybody's gonna wanna hear me talk about Lost because everything I know about Lost, I learned from other podcasts.
00:08:41
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I don't think anybody, the only people who know about a podcast right now are tech people.
00:08:41
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:08:46
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so while I'm interested in tech, you're not you you'd get Most of what I know about tech, I learn from other people. And so I don't know if anybody wants to hear me talk about faith because there's all these Christian broadcasters who now have podcasts. So you know what? This is me generally speaking about anything and everything. So I thought I'd take the same approach with my podcast as I did with my blog.
00:09:07
Cliff Ravenscraft
Well, published it and to my surprise, 500 people downloaded that first episode and people started emailing me immediately. They said, Cliff, if you were to do a podcast every week devoted to your thoughts on the television show Lost, I would subscribe to this podcast instantly. But I don't care about what you have to say about faith and I don't care what you have to say about technology.
00:09:32
Cliff Ravenscraft
So I went to my wife who introduced me to the show and I said, hey, would you be interested in doing a podcast with me? And of course, as everyone you talk to about a podcast in 2005, what's a podcast?
00:09:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so she says, sure. She's thinking we'll do this for about two or three weeks and you'll lose your interest. Let's do it. So episode number two. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly lost edition of the Generally Speaking Podcast Network.
00:09:59
Cliff Ravenscraft
Because I knew then by episode two, i would have an entire podcast network of shows, not just this one podcast. because so now i And by the way, those five podcasters devoted to the TV show Lost created a blogger account, which also had an RSS feed.
00:10:09
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:10:19
Cliff Ravenscraft
And there was a way to turn an RSS feed from blogger into a podcast feed. And they all shared this account and they called it the Lost Podcast Network. By my third episode, and my wife and i are second together, they invited us to join the Lost Podcast Network. And because of that, when you can take all of the subscribers to that network, plus the subscribers of my own feed, we hit 27,000 downloads for our third episode.
00:10:49
Cliff Ravenscraft
And that's how all of this got started. And then eventually my wife and I started a podcast for Grey's Anatomy fan podcast, Desperate Housewives fan podcast. Over the years, we've done the Hunger Games podcast, the Twilight Saga podcast. We've done Family from the Heart, Business Tech Weekly, Help I Got a Mac, Social Media Serenity. I could go 55 over 5,000 episodes in the last years.
00:11:15
Cliff Ravenscraft
But to answer your question, how did Podcast Answer Man get started? In the first year of podcasting, remember, I'm a full-time insurance agent, I'm an associate pastor, and in my free time, I'm producing 7 to 15 podcast episodes a week, at least an hour each.
00:11:35
Cliff Ravenscraft
And people were emailing me saying, Cliff, I have one podcast. It's 45 minutes each week and it takes me about four to six hours per episode. How are you producing seven to 15 episodes every week in your free time? And I'm like, I'd love to get on a call and find out what you're trying to waste all your time.
00:11:55
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so remember, people didn't want to talk to me about Lost, right? They like, Cliff, I'll give you five minutes of my time about this water cooler stuff about Lost. They wanted to give me zero time locally to talk about podcasting. And so people said, said Cliff, oh my gosh, I just learned so much from you.
00:12:14
Cliff Ravenscraft
i just got back from a conference. I invested probably about $5,000 in this conference, spent the last four days out in California. I got more value in 35 minutes with you on this call than I did in that entire event.
00:12:28
Cliff Ravenscraft
You have to start charging for this.
00:12:28
Ken Freire
Thank
00:12:30
Cliff Ravenscraft
So in December, 2006, after hearing that about 20 times, I launched this little show called Podcast Answer Man. And I said in the very first episode, guys, my name is Cliff Ravenscraft. I've been podcasting for a year. I've already got several thousand hours invested in this. I produce seven to 15 podcast episodes a week. And the most common questions I get today is how do i do things related to podcasting? And so I created this podcast. It's called Podcast Answer Man. It's not because I have every answer, although with the amount of experience I have, I have a lot of answers. I learned a lot of things along the way.
00:13:05
Cliff Ravenscraft
Happy to share all of that with you. But anytime you have a question I don't have the answer to, you'll be hard pressed to find somebody who's more passionate about podcasting than I am. And I know how to go get answers. So this is the Podcast Answer Man.
Strategies for Podcast Success
00:13:16
Cliff Ravenscraft
And the next phrase I said,
00:13:19
Cliff Ravenscraft
Wouldn't it be cool, and I'm just dreaming here out loud, wouldn't it be cool if one day, maybe five, ten years down the road, instead of taking over my family's insurance agency, wouldn't it be cool if I could make a living from being a podcaster behind this microphone instead?
00:13:35
Cliff Ravenscraft
And little did I know that 12 months after that, I would leave the family business and become full-time self-employed as the podcast answer man.
00:13:44
Ken Freire
Wow. And that umm I'm sure has been a fun rollercoaster ride of growing your business. But you've done a lot of fun stuff in those 20 years of growing it. And that's what we're going talk about in in this next part of our conversation is there are a lot of people today who would say, I know podcast is important. I know growing my expertise is important and growing my business is vital.
00:14:07
Ken Freire
I just don't know how to do it with a podcast. And it seems like everybody and their mom has a podcast. Why should I start one?
00:14:15
Cliff Ravenscraft
Well, that is a very good question. And and also, i i would it's a good question. Should I actually start a podcast is where I would start. Because there are a lot of people say that you should. And some of my favorite clients I ever worked with are people who paid for me to teach them how to podcast through my four-week group training program back in the day called Podcasting A to Z. They paid $2,000 to go through a program. And ironically, the i was able to successfully talk a few of of them out of launching a podcast because they weren't ready.
00:14:49
Cliff Ravenscraft
They had no clear picture of success. They had no idea who what they would do with their podcast, why they wanted to have a podcast. They just knew that they wanted to leave a soul-sucking day job, and they thought this is the path to do it.
00:15:01
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I'm like, well, let me ask you a couple of questions about your experience, your what it is that you want to be known for.
00:15:01
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:15:07
Cliff Ravenscraft
let me ask you what you're passionate about. Let me ask you how many people have been coming to you asking for your advice in this area, and what are your products and services, and how much are you going to charge?
00:15:18
Cliff Ravenscraft
And they're like, It was just like at a deer with headlights blinding it. is They were stunned. And I'm like, oh, well, here's what I will tell you. You can absolutely launch a podcast. It will sound amazing as far as the technical aspects of it.
00:15:34
Cliff Ravenscraft
But my experience has been that you will, if you go into a podcast without knowing the answers to these questions and your desires to leave a soul-sucking day job and and be known for something as a thought leader, and you can't answer these things, you will grow an audience. And then you will eventually try to find a way to ask yourself the question, what does this audience want from me? And then you will probably be 18, 24 months into creating content. You're reaching hundreds, if not thousands of people, and you're making no money. This is exactly what happens over and over again.
00:16:13
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so first, what you need is you have to know what problem you're solving for a specific type of person. And realize that I'm going off of your question. Your question is, why should I start a podcast? you know but But the thing is, is if you already have a very clear picture of who your ideal client is. You know what problem you solve for them. You've already validated that these people are ready to pay you money for it. The only thing that you're missing is more people to become aware of who you are. If that describes you, then a podcast is very likely a very good step for you moving forward.
00:16:56
Cliff Ravenscraft
And why should you consider a podcast among all of the other things? Well, you're right that there are tons more people who have podcasts today than there were 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.
00:17:10
Cliff Ravenscraft
However, when I started podcasting, 5% of the population knew what a podcast was. 5% of people in above the age of to a podcast at least once a month Today, 55%
00:17:28
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:17:30
Cliff Ravenscraft
of all Americans above the age of 13 listen to podcasts on a monthly basis, and the number of people who are listening on a daily basis is growing exponentially.
00:17:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
So while, yes, there is a lot more voices out there creating podcast content, that the number of hosts of shows has not outpaceds has outpaced the number of consumers of content.
00:18:01
Ken Freire
That's it.
00:18:02
Cliff Ravenscraft
And this is why you know you got some of these big huge shows that are done by so people who are already celebrities and then they go and launch a podcast and they get millions of people who are listening to their shows.
00:18:15
Cliff Ravenscraft
That's all great for us because now those are millions of people in many cases who really didn't know what a podcast was before. And in some cases, there are a number of them because they're introduced to that person's podcast as a YouTube channel.
00:18:30
Cliff Ravenscraft
There are many of them who are under the impression that a podcast is video. and and But yet, over time, people start getting more and more value from podcasts and they realize, wow, there's more content than just these A-list celebrities. And then they realize, oh my gosh, you mean I can listen to an audio podcast in my car wherever I go?
00:18:53
Cliff Ravenscraft
This is incredible. And so the number of people who could consume your content to come to know, like, and trust you is incredibly powerful. So why should you consider like launching a podcast? Because you already know you've got a proven business model. You just need more people to come to know, like, and trust you. And as far as I'm concerned, an audio podcast, there's nothing wrong with video for an added discoverability.
00:19:19
Cliff Ravenscraft
But give people an audio version of your podcast and they'll listen to you with headphones on and they will listen to you not just click play and watch the first three minutes of your piece of content online.
00:19:32
Cliff Ravenscraft
They'll click play, go for a walk, go for a jog, walk their dog, drive the car, listen to or do the dishes, all of this. They will listen to your entire 40-minute, one-hour episode from From beginning to end, and if they really like your content, they'll binge listen to the archives.
00:19:53
Cliff Ravenscraft
This is the most incredible way to get people to, number one, discover you. And once they discover and they're the perfect fit for who you know you serve, they'll resonate with your content and they'll instantly come to love you.
00:20:08
Ken Freire
As you think about podcasting, you and I both love podcasting. We've been doing podcasting for for years. You've done it a lot longer than I have. i I know one of the biggest challenges people have is discoverability and distribution where they're like, I'm passionate. I'm excited about this. And you're right. You're like this people can indulge in it. Right. Or binge it.
00:20:30
Ken Freire
but it's getting people to listen. What have been your strategies to help people grow their podcast from like the 20 downloads to 100 1,000 downloads to 20,000 downloads? And people yes, in.
00:20:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
So the first thing that i attempt to do is help the person understand that until your show has been dialed in, doing anything to grow your audience is kind of a worthless cause. So it does no good for for you to reach another thousand or ten thousand people only to come and discover your show and then to listen to an episode and bounce.
00:21:05
Cliff Ravenscraft
Okay, so a couple of things that I would recommend is when you have, let's just say you've been creating content for about 13, 14 weeks, and you have about, let's just say 70 downloads per episode. So 70 people are listening to your show pretty consistently.
00:21:21
Cliff Ravenscraft
The first thing that I would encourage you to do is to get out a spreadsheet, open up a spreadsheet, and open up columns and name them name, email address, personal detail number one, personal detail number two, personal detail number three. And make it a goal to learn about 20 or 30 of those 70 people everything you can in that spreadsheet. So you want to know three personal details of at least 30 of your 70 people who are listening to your show. That means get really good at communicating to that audience that you're wanting to engage with them. Invite them to provide feedback to you. Ask them to email you. Jump on a call with them or engage with them in conversation and dialogue. Ask them to DM you on social media, whatever. Ask them questions and fill out this information.
00:22:14
Cliff Ravenscraft
The more you get to know your audience, what's going on in the world, what they're struggling with, so many times we have the curse of familiar, especially of those of us who are experts in our fear in our field.
00:22:26
Cliff Ravenscraft
We've forgotten some of the things that we we just take for granted, the things that we know. We assume everybody knows these things. And i I'm reminded of this, the time that I had a woman, she was 73 years old and took my podcasting A to Z course. And she goes, Cliff, I love your tutorials. I got to tell you, up till this point, every single time I've had a question about something to ask you, if I just went five more minutes into the or into your tutorial, you answered my question. But I just got to tell you, there's one tutorial I'm just stumped. So you you it's the one on the digital audio recorder.
00:23:04
Cliff Ravenscraft
You said insert the
Audience Engagement and Feedback
00:23:06
Cliff Ravenscraft
SD card. so But you didn't show what an SD card is and you didn't show how to insert it. So if you don't mind, Cliff, what is an SD card and how does one insert it?
00:23:13
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:23:17
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so it's it's it's getting to know... who these people are. And by the way, because I had that engagement with that person, the next time that course was launched or was launched again, guess what?
00:23:30
Cliff Ravenscraft
I actually inserted a picture of an SD card and showed myself inserting an SD card. Now, is that overly simplistic for people who obviously know that? Yes. But now my tutorial has answered yet another question. So when you get to know your audience, they're like, oh my gosh, this guy, he must be reading my journals or my diary. This guy knows what's going on in my head.
00:23:53
Cliff Ravenscraft
and And also, if you can get to know those first 30 people, in your audience, start speaking to them. Ask them for permission to say things that inspire you about them. Begin speaking to them and about them in your show. And who else out there loves to hear themselves praised in public, right? And you might be surprised how many times it's like, oh my gosh, listen to this podcast. This guy's awesome because obviously he's talked well about me. And also if you are communicating at such a level that, man, you're just meeting need after need after need. The idea is like, man, I just shared your episode with a friend of mine.
00:24:32
Cliff Ravenscraft
When you start getting this kind of engagement, when you start getting this kind of connection and you're hearing people share your show, that's when you are ready to start growing.
00:24:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
And the strategies I would use there, number one, I would become a guest on other people's podcasts.
00:24:46
Ken Freire
Thank
00:24:50
Cliff Ravenscraft
That way you don't have to ever educate somebody who you're just getting out there and and meeting for the very first time what a podcast is. When you're a guest on somebody else's show,
00:25:01
Cliff Ravenscraft
They're already listening to that show in a podcast app of their choice. And so you can say, hey, where's the best way to find me? Well, the first thing I would encourage you to do is check out my show, Podcast Answer Man.
00:25:12
Cliff Ravenscraft
You can find it in your favorite podcast directory or podcastanswerman.com. And from there, there's all sorts of things you'll see on my website. And and and that's the that's the number one way you're going to grow your show is it to a new audience is find people who already consume content in that way.
00:25:31
Cliff Ravenscraft
The next thing that I would do is I would actually have a show that is an ongoing weekly show. This is like podcast answer, man. I think I'm on episode 480 of that. The Cliff Ravenscraft show, I'm on episode 803 of that. So just keep producing every single week. Show up consistently. Same time of day, same day of the week, every single week.
00:25:55
Cliff Ravenscraft
and be there consistently so that people can make you a part of their life. However, the more episodes you have in your feed, the less appealing it is for somebody to come in and try to binge listen to everything you've done. If anything, they' most people will...
00:26:11
Cliff Ravenscraft
Listen to the most recent episode and see, oh, you know what? I'll just go ahead and archive the 802 episodes before this one, and I'll just start listening from here. Unless that episode really resonates, and I do love it.
00:26:24
Cliff Ravenscraft
I just recently had a voicemail come back from somebody named Mike Hill who says, Cliff, I just but started listening to Podcast Answer Man again, and I got to tell you, i've I've been listening to probably about four or five episodes a week every week for the last six weeks.
00:26:39
Ken Freire
Thank
00:26:39
Cliff Ravenscraft
and And so some people will binge. But the second strategy to grow your audience above and beyond being a guest on other people's show is to go launch other podcasts, not weekly ongoing shows, but what I call a mini series.
00:26:55
Cliff Ravenscraft
I'll give you an example of this. I have a podcast called Upgrade Your Peer Group, the power of mastermind groups. If you go to UpgradeYourPeerGroup.com, you'll find that there are only six podcast episodes for that show.
00:27:09
Cliff Ravenscraft
There will never be a seventh episode. The entire thing is meant to be just like an online course in six audio podcast episodes of everything I would want to share with you about mastermind groups and how you could benefit from being in one.
00:27:13
Ken Freire
Thank you.
Focus and Business Strategy in Podcasting
00:27:24
Cliff Ravenscraft
And if you have if you don't know how to go and join one, how to start your own. And so I put that podcast out, never really marketed it. However, people are looking for mastermind groups on our books on mastermind groups in Audible.
00:27:40
Cliff Ravenscraft
And because podcasts are available in Audible, you can put your podcast in their directory. People are looking for audio books on mastermind groups. They find that there aren't really in many in there, if any at all.
00:27:51
Cliff Ravenscraft
But the results show Upgrade Your Peer Group, the positive mastermind groups. And because of that, I earned $90,000 within 30 days of publishing that podcast episode just from people who found it in Audible.
00:28:06
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so that's another way. And then all of a sudden somebody finds your podcast related to a niche topic. Imagine there are only six, seven, eight or nine episodes on that topic, but every single episode is a 10 out of 10 in quality, amazing value and direction and transformation.
00:28:24
Cliff Ravenscraft
So they go and they binge listen to every single episode. And by the end of it, your call to action could be check out, if you think this is good, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what I'm sharing. Check out my show, The Cliff Ravenscraft Show, that has over 800 episodes in the archives as of this date.
00:28:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
And here's how you can find it over at thecliffravenscraftshow.com. Those are the two best ways for discoverability. Be a guest on other people's shows and create mini series that speaks to to niche niche audiences who are looking for content related to problems that they're looking to solve.
00:29:01
Ken Freire
Okay, you just gave a masterclass and I love it because there's so much that we could dig into it and I'm sure it's in your course. So if you guys are interested, go check out Cliff's stuff. Cliff, when it comes to the mini series, one of the objections i could hear people say is why start a mini series versus just putting it in the Cliff's Ravencraft show?
00:29:21
Cliff Ravenscraft
Sure. So, Ken, let me ask you this. Okay, so let's just say you wanted to know about email strategies for growing your email list. Would that ever be appealing to you to hear seven seven valuable pieces of content where you get seven different strategies?
00:29:39
Cliff Ravenscraft
Imagine I tell you, you know what? There's a friend of mine. His name is Cliff Ravenscraft, and he's got a show. It's called The Cliff Ravenscraft Show. I remember, gosh, I think it was, I can't remember if it was 2018, 2019. Somewhere in his archives, he did seven episodes on email strategies. I know the email strategies was in the title of the episodes.
00:29:59
Cliff Ravenscraft
You should go check it out. It's over at thecliffravenscraftshow.com. Just subscribe to it and scroll through the 800 or so episodes and see if you can't find that. Okay, now, realistically, on a scale of one to 10, how likely are you going to go do that?
00:30:14
Ken Freire
If there's hundreds of episodes that I got to go through, I'm out.
00:30:17
Cliff Ravenscraft
Exactly. Now, imagine, hey, Ken, you know what? There's this guy, his name is Cliff Ravenscraft, and he did a podcast called Seven Proven Strategies for Growing Your Email List for Online Business Owners. It's over at sevenprovenemailstrategies.com.
00:30:34
Cliff Ravenscraft
Go subscribe. There's only seven episodes. They're the best, most concise, most valuable episodes on email growth strategies you'll ever listen to.
00:30:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
If you never take an online course related to it, listen to those seven episodes. It's over at 7provenemailstrategies.com, which by the way, that's not a real domain. But if anybody wanted to go and create it, guess what?
00:30:54
Ken Freire
yeah
00:30:57
Cliff Ravenscraft
Let me ask you this. On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to go do that?
00:31:01
Ken Freire
Oh, way more likely. As soon as you said it, I'm like, oh yeah, I'll take, if I'm listening to podcasts already, I'm going to go do that.
00:31:07
Cliff Ravenscraft
That's exactly what I'm saying.
00:31:07
Ken Freire
Because I know it's
00:31:09
Cliff Ravenscraft
And not only that, if you go there and you do it, I almost guarantee you if you like any of the episodes, you will listen to all seven. And by the end of the seventh episode, you may have never heard my name before, but you will become a raving fan of who I am afterwards. And then you will be interested in going and listening to my other content that I promote throughout the seven episodes of that show.
00:31:34
Ken Freire
Okay, so when you do these mini series, do you end up doing like a campaign launch to like, or you just leave it out there in the ether for people to just start discovering organically?
00:31:40
Cliff Ravenscraft
Nope.
00:31:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
You can do both, obviously. But for me, i wanted to test this strategy without any promotion. And i just i will occasionally launch a mini-series podcast. I will do nothing to promote it just so I can actually see organic growth from people doing searches in different podcast directories and or Google.
00:32:03
Ken Freire
Okay. and then earlier you said you got about $90,000 in revenue from doing this strategy for one of the launches. Was that because audible paid you or is it because of the call to actions in.
00:32:14
Cliff Ravenscraft
The call to action was $15,000 to be a part of my paid mastermind group.
00:32:15
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:32:18
Cliff Ravenscraft
And so these people came through the podcast and by the end of this six episodes, they're like, I know I could start my own, but man, Cliff, you've been in business for so many years. I can hear the credibility, the stories you could tell, the things you've experienced. I'd love to be in a facilitated group with you for the next 12 months. Here's $15,000. And this is somebody who's never heard my name before. And just, it happened over and over and over again.
00:32:47
Ken Freire
Okay, so one of the things i could see also, and and you might have already answered this, but I know people might be listening to this and they they have a personal brand issue where they're like, Cliff, I have so many things that I'm passionate about. They're like, I'm passionate about faith. I'm passionate about business. I'm passionate about fitness and ai Can I have a podcast on all of them or should I have four separate podcasts? But then how do I promote that on socials?
00:33:10
Ken Freire
What should I do?
00:33:12
Cliff Ravenscraft
Yep. So that's the person who should not have a podcast. That's who I was talking about before. That person who is struggling right there, I can tell you right now, they they start podcasts all the time.
00:33:25
Cliff Ravenscraft
And they feed the statistic that after seven episodes, they they give up. And I've just seen it over and over again. And by the way, those who make it past the seventh episode, they sometimes get to 300, 400 episodes. And I talk to them every week.
00:33:43
Cliff Ravenscraft
People who have done 300 episodes of weekly content, and I ask them, what's your biggest struggle right now? You know what?
00:33:50
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:33:51
Cliff Ravenscraft
I'm just barely able to cover my expenses. Well, what are your expenses? $25 a month for the hosting of the show. You 30, you know, it did i I bring in about $170 a month because of my podcast. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you have no business model. And and so that's that's what I was trying to allude to. It's like, should I even have a podcast? If you're if you don't know...
00:34:17
Cliff Ravenscraft
exactly who your exact ideal customer is. Well, first of all, if you don't know how much money you must make every single month, don't do anything. So is that $10,000 a month? Is that $20,000 a month? That's where you start.
00:34:31
Cliff Ravenscraft
And then you ask yourself, what do I do or what do I know? What experience do I have? What problems can I solve? At what level can I get? Could I get one person, one client to pay me $20,000 month? people say no.
00:34:45
Cliff Ravenscraft
most people say no I say, well, can you get two people to pay you $10,000 a month for a product and sign up for the next year? And most people will say no.
00:34:55
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:34:56
Cliff Ravenscraft
Ironically, some people, you know, it's like, okay, can you find 10 people to pay you $1,000 a month? Yes. Okay. Or 20 people to pay $1,000 a month. I'm like, okay, well, there you go. That's your business model. what What is your product that you will charge $1,000 a month where you will $20,000? 20 people to pay you so you can make $20,000. Now you have to go find a ideal customer and that customer has to have five key ingredients. Number one, they have to be people with money.
00:35:23
Cliff Ravenscraft
They have to have a problem that they're aware of. They have to be willing to pay to have that problem solved. You have to have the ability to solve it, and you have to enjoy solving it.
00:35:34
Cliff Ravenscraft
If you don't enjoy solving it, but even though you can, you won't have a business long-term. You'll burn out. So you'll have to have those five key ingredients. You have to know how much you want to need to earn.
00:35:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
Then you find the problem and then you go find the customer and make sure you validate it before you ever launch your podcast. Make sure people are willing to pay you for that.
00:35:51
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:35:54
Cliff Ravenscraft
Then you start creating content to speak directly to the problems and pains and fears and struggles and obstacles of that person and that person alone.
00:36:08
Cliff Ravenscraft
And then it doesn't matter if you only have 300 subscribers because if five of them pay you $15,000 for the next year, you know, and then one of those subscribers out of your 300 becomes a business partner on some venture and then Two of them become outlandish referral people that are consistently sending people your way. it just this You don't need thousands or tens of thousands of people to subscribe to your show. You just need to know exactly who your audience is for. And when the right person finds it, they love it. And so it's never about growing the audience for me. It's always about knowing who my audience is and using that that clarity.
00:36:53
Cliff Ravenscraft
I want to make sure there's perfect alignment. I want to make sure that I'm leveraging every episode to meet their needs and to give them clarity of what I want them to do next. And then also building relational equity with them. And I do mean it. I i genuinely believe Still to this day, I have a CRM.
00:37:09
Ken Freire
Thank
00:37:12
Cliff Ravenscraft
Anytime somebody says, Cliff, I just found your podcast and I have a couple of questions for you, I immediately go to my CRM and create a new entry. and i And I ask them questions to learn who they are.
00:37:24
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I discern from that, is this person my exact ideal client avatar? And if they are, i continue an ongoing persistent relationship looking to say, how can I be of service to you?
00:37:37
Cliff Ravenscraft
And eventually over time, a very high percentage of those people ultimately become paid clients.
Steps to Launching a Podcast
00:37:43
Ken Freire
Yeah, and Cliff, I just want to attest to people how much you value relational equity. Because even when I reached out to you, you know some people and were like, well, how'd you get Cliff on the show? i was like, man, i I just saw you post something on LinkedIn. i was like, Cliff, this is awesome. I noticed that we have the same connections would you want to be on the podcast together? And you were like, yeah, let's do it. you know And I was just like, oh, cool. like That's what I love about podcasting is the amount of networking you can do and and build those referral engines like you just talked about is is fascinating.
00:38:16
Ken Freire
Cliff, I know we could talk for hours, man. and I could pick your brain on it. But I want to start wrapping up here. As people are listening to you, they might be like, I'm excited. i think those five questions I can answer But man, I'm still just a little stuck.
00:38:31
Ken Freire
And i don't know how to make this predictable where people listen and then they buy from me. Like it sounds good, but there's no like practical how to's.
00:38:43
Ken Freire
What's a word of encouragement you can give them to help them go through that process and actually pull the trigger and and make things happen?
00:38:50
Cliff Ravenscraft
I'll tell you what, instead of a word of encouragement, how about I give them a free course that would normally cost $2,000?
00:38:57
Cliff Ravenscraft
I have a course, it's called Building an Online Business, and I've taught it several times live here in my home studio. We built a home with a a teaching workshop in it, a whole classroom here.
00:39:09
Cliff Ravenscraft
And it's called Building an Online Business, and it was created because all of these people who are creating podcast content for years and not earning a profit, I'm like, guys, you started with step number eight.
00:39:14
Ken Freire
Bye.
00:39:22
Cliff Ravenscraft
Step number eight is create content. You skip the first seven steps and if you could actually go through these first steps and and some of the first steps that stand out to me is number one, what is your why? What what makes you excited about life, getting up each day? What is what is it that you want to accomplish? What is your dream? What is your passion? And then what are your areas of expertise? What are the things that naturally people are coming to you asking for advice for? What is your experience? You build what's called an inventory of value. I'll even give you an assignment, which is six-question survey you can send to people that know you who will share things with you about yourself that you're not currently able to see as far as the value you're already bringing to people.
00:40:06
Cliff Ravenscraft
it It'll cut out so much of that imposter syndrome. And then we will develop, you know, you'll actually be encouraged to figure out how much income do I need to make? And then, okay, what are the types of products and services? And then you'll get into conversations and you'll, your whole obsession will not be to go launch a podcast. Your greatest obsession is can I get one person to pay me this amount for this thing?
00:40:31
Cliff Ravenscraft
And you just keep going after that, after that, after that before you ever record a single episode. And once one person has paid you, then your objective is to go get a second person. As soon as the third person has paid you for that product service, it's now validated. Now I would go create content and speak to those people. Everything you've learned about them, go speak directly.
00:40:54
Cliff Ravenscraft
to those people through the microphone and create a podcast and start answering their questions and bring in all of the language that you're hearing from these paid clients about how they're communicating. This is what my struggle is. I'm really stuck this week. And just listen closely.
00:41:10
Cliff Ravenscraft
Transcribe every conversation and ask your ai tool to pull out every limiting belief, every piece of language of problems and struggles that they have. and anonymize it and create podcast episodes to speak to those things.
00:41:27
Cliff Ravenscraft
And you'll be shocked at what you'll be able to accomplish.
Podcasting Trends and Future Outlook
00:41:31
Ken Freire
I think people, if they want that course, are going to be super excited. We'll put that all the all in the show notes as well. And just like you already gave like the quick synopsis of it.
00:41:39
Cliff Ravenscraft
Yep.
00:41:39
Ken Freire
But I want people to just be super excited. I mean, I'm walking away from this. My biggest takeaway was part of the distribution part of the process. But just even thinking, how can it be more clear?
00:41:52
Ken Freire
on who this podcast is for and what problems am I answering? So Cliff, I appreciate that. As I mentioned earlier, we're doing it the Fast Five. We're doing an expert-led business trend report segment. These are five questions. You just have to answer them real quickly. we just want to get to know you a little bit better. Question number one is, what's something in your business you're experimenting with right now?
00:42:12
Cliff Ravenscraft
Vibe coding. I have in the past six weeks created a podcast app that allows me to subscribe to over 200 podcasts and i am no longer overwhelmed by all of the podcasts that I'm not typically going to follow anyway.
00:42:29
Cliff Ravenscraft
So basically it allows me to follow the shows that are my shows to make sure that they came out right and then the shows that I actually follow every week without ever missing. But I've got hundreds of other shows I want to keep up with.
00:42:41
Cliff Ravenscraft
My peers, I've got current clients, former clients, and people who are potential clients in my CRM. And I've got over 200 of those shows and I built in what's called an inbox.
00:42:53
Cliff Ravenscraft
I've got a podcast inbox. And so I just open it up. Like right now I'm looking, there's eight podcast episodes that have come in since I had got podcast inbox zero last.
00:43:06
Cliff Ravenscraft
And I just simply triage it just like I do my email inbox.
00:43:07
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:43:11
Cliff Ravenscraft
Am I going to listen to this today? If not, Am I going to listen to it within the next couple of days? If not, archive it. And it instantly goes away. But I also, it's called Podbriefer. So it'll instantly, if I want, it's like, oh, I'm not sure.
00:43:24
Cliff Ravenscraft
So I can hit a transcribe button and it transcribes the entire podcast episode. And then I hit a button that says, summarize this for me. And it shows me a summary. And then I can actually do a follow-up question and ask it.
00:43:35
Cliff Ravenscraft
Say, can you give me more detail about what you mean when it they said this? And I'm like, And then I can decide, do I actually want to listen? Yeah, I actually do want to listen to this. Or i can say, you know what, here's i'm i'm I'm vaguely interested in this.
00:43:47
Cliff Ravenscraft
Can you give me three paragraphs of information that gives me the essence of what I most need to know as this person? and And then it's it's like, well, here's what it is. It's like, wow. i'll tell you what, can you give me three journal prompts to journal on this later?
00:44:03
Cliff Ravenscraft
Here's that. I paste copy and paste that into my journal and hit archive and I move on. But I'm also building into the tool that says, you know what? I really enjoyed this episode. Can you create some social media posts where I will tag somebody on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter or X platform? And and just I can copy and paste. like Hey, I really enjoyed Michael Stelzner's most recent episode of AI Explored with Lauren Bentley on how to create how to clone yourself with AI. and and And I just copy that and paste it over here and I tag Michael Stelzner and Lauren and Bentley. This is what's being built. I'm vibe coding it. Every little idea and thought that I have, I just tell replit.com and it creates it for me.
00:44:47
Ken Freire
I love it. I love it. I'm vibe coding is in my category for my goals for next quarter to start doing. So I might start reaching out to you like, Hey man,
00:44:57
Cliff Ravenscraft
Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:57
Cliff Ravenscraft
Reach out to me anytime.
00:44:59
Ken Freire
question number two, which part of your business keeps you up these days?
00:45:03
Cliff Ravenscraft
What part of my business keeps me up? Well, i I would imagine you mean like keeps me up, like worried about things. I don't worry about anything anymore. i had some major transformation in my life and and life is just hunky-dory and every day I'm above dirt is a great day. And even if I didn't wake up one day and they put me in the ground, That's fine too. I had a great life. So nothing really keeps me up in that way. But actually what keeps me up is just the excitement and passion I have to be able to do what I feel most called to do in this world. I wake up every day excited to get out of bed around 4.30 in the morning. It's like, man, I can't believe I get to do what I do today and I get paid well to do it. And so what gets me up in in my business is the excitement that I have to get to do what I do.
00:45:50
Ken Freire
Yeah, love it. All Question number three. What's a goal you're building toward this year that you're really excited about?
00:45:55
Cliff Ravenscraft
I just relaunched my podcast Answer Man brand after taking eight and a half years off. And so my goal is to get probably another 10,000 people in the next 24 months into the launch of a successful podcast. And when I say successful podcast, I'm not talking about with massive audience. I'm talking about podcasts that really help serve the people who are listening, but also that profits the people who are creating the content.
00:46:25
Ken Freire
All right. Question number four. Where do you see the industry, podcasting industry, shifting and how are you preparing for it?
00:46:33
Cliff Ravenscraft
Well, I'm seeing the podcast industry shifting to towards a perception that video is the next evolution of podcasting, and I disagree with it completely.
00:46:46
Cliff Ravenscraft
I do think that video is an expansion. it's It's an opportunity, but I'm seeing it crushing a lot of content creators because yeah Anybody can create an audio production that rivals the quality of any FM professional radio broadcasting company in the world within an hour or two or three each week. Whereas to be able to create a video production that rivals the quality of other video out there It requires many thousands of dollars worth of equipment, lots of specialized knowledge, lots of editing, and all sorts of other things. And by the way, I am not anti-video at all. I support money anybody who has the time, effort, and money to pour into those productions. The only thing is, is I've seen far too many people say, you know what, I'm
00:47:42
Cliff Ravenscraft
I heard people say that you're no longer credible as a podcast if you don't have a video version of your show anymore. and And as a result of that, I recently made the decision to stop creating video versions of my show just to prove people that that's not true.
00:47:56
Ken Freire
I love it.
00:47:56
Cliff Ravenscraft
So that's what I've seen going happening in the end industry. And another thing in This is too inside baseball, but for those who know, I will just say this. There's far too many people who are willing to give up on the definition of what a podcast is. And a podcast is defined as a media file, episodic media file that is delivered delivered to the audience via a enclosure inside of an RSS feed. And so when somebody says there are podcasts on Netflix, I say, no, there's not.
00:48:26
Cliff Ravenscraft
There is no such thing as a podcast on Netflix. Unless that show is available via RSS feed, it's not a podcast. It's a streaming show.
00:48:34
Ken Freire
Yeah. Oh, we we could have a lot of fun with that one. But I want to make sure I'm cautious of time. Last question. What's the legacy you want to leave behind?
00:48:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
i I've already, my legacy is already, here's what I will say. It is absolutely impossible for me to not leave a legacy behind. And as far as I'm concerned, my entire life, as far as back as I can remember, has been to be a source of encouragement to others. And as far as I'm concerned, if I die today, I've i've lived i've left the legacy I need to leave.
00:49:06
Ken Freire
Thank you so much for your time. If people are like, I want what you have, what's the best way to reach out to you?
00:49:12
Cliff Ravenscraft
Email me, cliff at cliffravenscraft.com. And I will say this. I am one of the most accessible people you'll ever meet. I've never... That's not true. I've said this a couple times lately. If you email me and pitch yourself as a guest on my podcast, and it's very clear that AI wrote it,
00:49:31
Cliff Ravenscraft
I just archive those. But if you actually email me and it's clear that it's a human being and you did not use AI to communicate to me some sort of standard message that was just sent out to everybody who has a podcast, here's what I will tell you.
00:49:43
Ken Freire
you
00:49:44
Cliff Ravenscraft
i i dare you. Email me cliff at cliffravenscraft.com and test me to see if I don't respond.
Closing Encouragement and Call to Action
00:49:50
Ken Freire
Yeah, that'd be great. And I'm pretty sure i know the answer to that one. Cliff, thank you so much for for being on the show. And for those listening, I would probably encourage you to listen to this episode twice because Cliff gave such great, valuable insights that you could you might miss if you just are driving. This is one of those episodes that you listen to while you're driving. You go home, you listen and to it again, you take some notes. And then the most important thing,
00:50:15
Ken Freire
take action. Even if it's imperfect action, you take one one baby step at a time. And sooner or later, you will find that you're getting one step closer to the dream you've always wanted. And that's a business that's finally growing profitable. And you have the time to go spend with the people you love.
00:50:32
Ken Freire
Hope you guys have a great day and God bless.