Podcast Answer Man

This episode of Podcast Answer Man is sponsored by Interview Valet.

My guest is Tom Schwab, founder of Interview Valet and someone I’ve known for well over a decade.

Tom and I originally planned to talk about why podcast guesting still works in an algorithm-driven world. But in the conversations leading up to this recording, we found ourselves drawn toward a much bigger idea. Authentic Human Authority in an age of synthetic content.

AI has made content easier and cheaper to create than at any point in history. We can generate articles, emails, videos, voices, scripts, and marketing messages at extraordinary scale.

But as content becomes increasingly abundant, Tom believes something else is becoming increasingly scarce. Trust.

In this conversation, we explore what happens when people begin questioning whether the person behind the content is even real, whether the ideas actually came from them, and whether the apparent expertise we’re seeing has been earned or manufactured.

Tom describes long-form podcast conversations as a kind of “proof of life.”

When you listen to someone think in real time, you hear the pauses, corrections, imperfections, stories, opinions, and experiences that are difficult to reproduce through polished synthetic content.

That led us into a conversation about something I’ve personally experienced.

There was a period when I became fascinated with using AI to help write scripts for my podcast episodes. The writing sounded polished, intelligent, and impressive.

Then listeners started telling me something I didn’t expect. They missed me.

They missed the imperfect Cliff who occasionally says the wrong word, gets the math wrong, corrects himself, wanders into an unexpected story, and thinks out loud behind the microphone.

That experience changed the way I think about AI and content creation.

Tom and I also talk about:

Near the end of the conversation, I asked Tom to explain how Interview Valet approaches podcast interview marketing.

Rather than simply booking clients on as many podcasts as possible, their focus is on finding the right audiences, preparing clients for meaningful conversations, helping them improve their interview skills, and getting more value from each appearance.

Tom also shared the three questions Interview Valet asks before deciding whether someone is a good fit to work with:

I appreciate that philosophy because it reflects something that came up repeatedly throughout our conversation. More is not necessarily better.

In the AI world that we live in today, the thing that stands out most is simply another human being willing to show up, have a real conversation, express what they genuinely believe, and allow people to hear them think.

Tom created a page specifically for Podcast Answer Man listeners with additional resources, information about Interview Valet, and a way to connect with him at https://interviewvalet.com/cliff

Thanks again to Interview Valet for sponsoring this conversation.

And thank you, Tom, for being the first person willing to participate in this new sponsored-conversation model for Podcast Answer Man.

In this episode, I'm sharing some of the ways I'm currently using artificial intelligence in my content creation process.

I've been watching several members of my Green Room Mastermind experiment with AI to automate much of their video production workflow. Seeing what they've been able to accomplish inspired me to explore what might be possible with audio.

That led to an experiment where I took a 33-minute episode of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show and used AI to turn it into a 10-minute narrative documentary, complete with a synthetic narrator, music, sound effects, and excerpts from my original recording.

I actually play the finished documentary for you in this episode so you can hear the results for yourself.

I also share how I've been using AI to transcribe thousands of episodes from my podcast archives and turn stories from nearly 21 years of content creation into new written articles.

Here are some of the things I cover:

I'm having a lot of fun exploring these possibilities, and I'm excited about what they could mean for the future of content creation.

Building a Life and Business Together, Episode 065: Making Room for the Work and Life We Want

This is the episode where Stephanie and I experimented with placing an AI-produced narrative at the beginning of our regular conversation. Click Here To Listen

My Mentor Called My $10,000-a-Month Mastermind Plan a Terrible Idea

This is the Substack article I mentioned near the end of the episode. The idea came from my automated Content Ideas process, which searches my podcast archives for stories that might be worth revisiting and sharing. Click Here To Read

The Cliff Ravenscraft Show, Episode 833: Experience Creates Confidence: What a 1,000-Mile U-Haul Trip Taught Me

This is the original 33-minute podcast episode that I used to create the narrative documentary featured in today's episode. Click Here To Listen

I'd love to hear how you're using AI in your own content creation process.

If you've been experimenting with something interesting, or if this episode sparks an idea for you, feel free to reach out.

You can email me at [email protected].

I'm also a Master Business Strategy & Mindset Coach. I work with accomplished founders, business owners, creators, and leaders who have already built something significant and are navigating important decisions about what comes next.

If you could benefit from having an experienced strategic thinking partner in your corner, I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level!

The phrase “creator economy” gets used everywhere these days.

But what does it actually mean to be a creator?

Is a creator someone who earns money directly from YouTube views, sponsorships, Patreon supporters, advertising, or brand deals?

What about the entrepreneur who creates content for an audience of only a few hundred or a few thousand people, but uses that content to build relationships that lead to clients, customers, products, services, speaking opportunities, or other forms of business?

And what about the person who simply has something meaningful to say and feels compelled to put it into the world?

In this episode of Podcast Answer Man, I’m joined by my longtime friend Matt Mundt for a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to create today.

Matt has spent more than 20 years working in Christian radio, music, digital marketing, and content creation. More recently, he has been creating on his own behalf, experimenting with YouTube, building projects with his son, and helping cultivate a growing community of creators in the Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee area.

We start by talking about how Matt defines the creator economy and why people choose the creator path in the first place.

From there, the conversation opens up into a much bigger discussion.

We talk about the difference between creating content that becomes the business itself and creating content that supports a business you already have.

I share why some of the most financially successful creators I have known over the past 20 years never needed massive audiences. In some cases, a relatively small audience of exactly the right people can create an extraordinary business.

Matt and I also explore what happens when someone starts creating simply because they love it, suddenly begins making significant money, and then has to figure out how to think like a business owner.

We get into outsourcing, teams, managers, agencies, sponsorships, platform revenue, products, services, and the psychological transition from “I make things” to “I am running a business.”

Matt also shares the story of his own YouTube experimentation and why changing formats helped him discover the kind of content that actually made him come alive.

One of my favorite parts of our conversation is the story of Kid Intern, the YouTube project Matt is creating with his 11-year-old son. Together, they are exploring different careers while his son learns communication, storytelling, editing, working with adults, and what it means to create something for an audience.

We also talk about something both Matt and I have experienced repeatedly over the years:

The greatest value of a creator conference often isn't what happens on the stage. It is what happens in the conversations between the sessions.

That leads us into two upcoming creator events.

Matt and I are both heading to VidSummit, an event focused heavily on YouTube, video creation, audience development, and the business of online video.

If you're an audio-first podcaster who has no interest in video, Matt makes a good case that VidSummit probably isn't the first event you need to attend.

But if you're already experimenting with video, or you're serious about understanding that world, there is a tremendous amount to learn there.

Matt is also one of the people behind the GodMade Conference in Franklin, Tennessee.

GodMade grew out of a local community of Christian creators who began gathering regularly to share ideas, encourage one another, and help each other grow.

The conference is designed for creators who want to develop their craft, connect with other creators, and think about their work through the lens of purpose and faith.

Stephanie and I are planning to attend, and one of the things that interests me most is the relatively intimate size of the gathering.

Even if every session isn't directly related to the type of content you currently create, being in a room with other thoughtful creators can open doors to ideas, relationships, and possibilities that you would never encounter sitting behind a microphone or a computer by yourself.

Toward the end of our conversation, I ask Matt what encouragement he would give to the creator who has been doing the work but may be discouraged by the numbers.

His answer is worth remembering.

Stay curious.

Keep developing your craft.

Don't allow vanity metrics to determine the value of what you're creating.

If 50 people are listening, imagine 50 actual human beings sitting in a room.

If 1,000 people are listening, imagine standing in front of 1,000 people.

We live in a time when an individual person can create something and reach another human being on the other side of the world without asking anyone for permission.

That's an extraordinary opportunity.

Ask yourself this question.

What am I here to create, who is it for, and what could become possible if I keep showing up?

VidSummit 2026

GodMade Conference 2026

Podcasting can be a surprisingly lonely activity.

You can spend hours sitting alone behind a microphone, creating something that reaches hundreds or thousands of people, while having very few people in your everyday life who actually understand what you do.

I remember what that felt like during the early years of podcasting. Before there were large industry conferences, some of my favorite experiences were the smaller PodCamp events happening in cities around the country. You could drive a few hours, walk into a room filled with people who understood podcasting, and immediately feel like you had found your people.

I miss that.

In this episode, I talk with my friend Brad Miller about podcasting, community, and the value of bringing people together in smaller, more intimate environments.

Brad has been podcasting since 2012, but his first show had a very personal purpose. His son was playing on a new high school lacrosse team, and Brad started a podcast where he interviewed the players and coaches. It gave him a way to become more involved in something that mattered to his son while building relationships throughout the team.

That theme of connection has continued throughout Brad's podcasting journey.

We talk about his background in radio and ministry, the different podcasts he has created over the years, how podcasting helped expand his relationships far beyond his existing circles, and why attending podcasting conferences became so important to him.

Eventually, those experiences led Brad to create PodINDY, a one-day regional podcasting event in the Indianapolis area.

Brad saw enormous value in major events such as Podcast Movement and Podfest, but he also saw room for something smaller, affordable, accessible, and intentionally relational.

That led us into a conversation about something I believe is easy to overlook.

Podcasters need community.

There is something different about sitting across the table from another creator, sharing what you're working on, hearing what they're learning, and spending enough time together that real relationships can develop.

Brad talks about the people who return to PodINDY year after year because they want to reconnect with the community that has formed there. We also talk about the sense of belonging that can happen much more naturally in a room of 25, 50, or 100 people than in an event with several thousand attendees.

That conversation brought back a lot of memories for me from the early PodCamp days.

I'll be speaking at PodINDY this year on Saturday, November 7, 2026. Stephanie will also be speaking, and Dave Jackson will be there as well. John Lee Dumas is contributing a video presentation.

If you're within reasonable driving or flying distance of Indianapolis and you've never experienced a smaller podcast-focused event, this could be a great opportunity to experience one.

PodINDY - https://podindy.com

Use promo code CLIFF for $5 off your PodINDY ticket.

Brad Miller's Cancer and Comedy Podcast - https://cancerandcomedy.com

Brad's Daily Bible Refresh Podcast. - https://voiceofgoddaily.com

Contact Brad Miller - [email protected]

At the beginning of 2026, I committed to publishing a new episode of Podcast Answer Man every Friday morning at 12:01 a.m.

I kept that commitment for months.

Recently, I decided to let it go.

In this episode, I want to take you deeper into the thinking behind that decision because this has become about much more than how frequently I publish a podcast.

I've been asking myself a larger question.

What forms of creation deserve my life energy now?

Audio podcasting has been one of the most important creative mediums of my life. I've produced more than 5,000 podcast episodes across more than 55 shows over the past 20 years. I'm certainly not walking away from audio.

But I no longer want an arbitrary weekly publishing schedule determining where several hours of my creative energy go every week.

Going forward, my commitment to Podcast Answer Man is that there will be at least one new episode every calendar month. There may be many more when I'm inspired. I'm giving myself the freedom to create those episodes when there is something I genuinely want to communicate.

One major reason for this change is that I've rediscovered my identity as a writer.

Before podcasting entered my life in 2005, I had spent years writing online. I recently rebuilt an archive containing hundreds of my old blog posts, and going through that material reminded me how much I used to enjoy writing.

For years, one of the biggest disadvantages of written content was simply the amount of time it required. A long-form article or newsletter could consume anywhere from two to eight hours of my time.

AI has dramatically changed that equation for me.

Today I can begin by talking through an idea, transcribe those thoughts, use ChatGPT to help me organize what I've said, explore relevant stories from my archives, develop an outline and then work with that material until the final writing genuinely sounds like me.

A piece that once might have consumed most of a working day can now often be created in roughly the same amount of time I would spend producing a podcast episode.

There is also a significant difference in potential reach. I have thousands of people on my email list, nearly a thousand subscribers to my LinkedIn newsletter, a much larger network across LinkedIn and Facebook, and I'm now intentionally building on Substack.

Meanwhile, I have more than 5,000 podcast episodes in my archives, many containing evergreen ideas that thousands of people heard when those episodes were originally released, but tens of thousands of people in my current network have never encountered.

I'm very interested in what happens when some of those ideas become written-first content.

I also talk about something I'm experimenting with in this very episode. This single recording was created simultaneously as an episode of Podcast Answer Man, an episode of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show and a long-form YouTube video.

I'm continuing to think about each medium differently. Audio should work as audio. Video should work as video. Written content deserves to be intentionally crafted as written content.

My video strategy is still being figured out, which is one of the reasons I'm heading to VidSummit soon.

Toward the end of the episode, I share a story involving my PLAUD Note Pro that illustrates another principle that has become central to the way I approach problems.

When something happens that I don't prefer, I eventually ask myself, "What is my desired outcome?"

Then I start looking for the available paths toward that outcome.

In this particular case, that process somehow resulted in three brand new PLAUD Note Pro devices. 

Affiliate disclosure: If you purchase a PLAUD product through my affiliate link, I may receive a commission.

In 2011, Gary Takacs joined my four-week Podcasting A to Z course with an idea for a podcast specifically designed to serve dentists.

Gary was certainly not new to his profession at the time. He had started his own dental practice management consulting firm in 1989 after spending the 1980s learning his craft with two larger consulting organizations. His marketing model consisted primarily of writing articles for dental publications and speaking at conferences around the country.

Then he discovered podcasting.

Gary saw the potential for audio to give him an ongoing way to share useful information with dentists beyond the people who happened to be sitting in the room when he was speaking.

That decision changed his business.

The Thriving Dentist Show now has more than 760 episodes and has reached dentists in 188 countries. Gary shared that he has published weekly for 748 consecutive weeks without missing a single week.

Even more significant is what happened to his business as a result.

By 2012, Gary says the number one reason dentists contacted him about his coaching and consulting services was because they listened to his podcast. The podcast also became the number one reason he was invited to speak at conferences. Eventually, those opportunities expanded into an international speaking career.

Gary explained that meeting planners could listen to the podcast and essentially "sample" his thinking and communication style before taking the risk of putting him on their stage.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation had nothing to do with downloads, clients, or revenue.

Within the first year of producing the show, Gary realized that he would continue podcasting even if nobody listened.

Creating the podcast made him a better thinker.

It caused him to read more, develop his ideas more deeply, clarify his perspective, and continually work on his own professional development.

That is a benefit of podcasting that I believe is often overlooked. Sometimes the person who benefits most from creating the podcast is the person behind the microphone.

Gary told me that he has now watched more than 70 podcasts launch within the dental profession after encouraging others to share their own perspectives.

His nickname within that community?

The Podfather.

And when someone recently asked him whether she was too late to start a podcast, Gary's response captured the spirit of this entire conversation:

Jump in. The water's warm.

The Thriving Dentist Show and Gary's work: https://thrivingdentist.com

Email Gary: [email protected]

Text Gary: 602-321-1778

Gary specifically invited listeners of this episode to reach out by email or text, so if something he shared encouraged or inspired you, I encourage you to let him know.

I'd also love to hear what this conversation stirred up for you.

If you've been thinking about starting a podcast but have wondered whether you've waited too long, or if this episode reminded you of something you want to create, send me an email: [email protected]

I thrive on hearing how the things I create are making an impact in your life.

Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level.

For the past 32 weeks, I have been committed to publishing a new episode of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show every Monday and a new episode of Podcast Answer Man every Friday.

I made that commitment because I believed strongly in the value of consistency, and because bringing Podcast Answer Man back was part of a larger strategy to restore visibility, reconnect with the podcasting industry, get back on stages, and create new relationships and business opportunities.

That strategy has worked. Podcast Answer Man has reopened doors, created speaking and community opportunities, and contributed to new client relationships. But after publishing 31 episodes of each show during this period, I found myself asking a different question: did I really need to produce this much content to get those results?

As I worked through that question in real time during this episode, I realized that weekly publishing is no longer the minimum effective dose for what these shows are designed to accomplish in my business.

Both podcasts still matter to me. They still help me stay top of mind, share what I am learning, demonstrate how I think, build relational depth, and maintain valuable archives of content.

But I no longer believe that showing up every Monday and Friday provides enough additional value to justify the hours of time, attention, and energy it requires.

So I am revising my commitment. Going forward, The Cliff Ravenscraft Show will have at least one new episode every month by the first of the month, and Podcast Answer Man will have at least one new episode every month by the 15th, with additional episodes whenever I genuinely feel inspired to create them.

I also openly rated this episode about a 5 out of 10. I wandered, repeated myself, lost control of the chronology in places, and spent far more time creating it than I believe the finished episode deserves.

I know exactly what I could do to turn it into a much stronger, more tightly crafted episode, but I have no desire to spend another two or three hours editing or rerecording it.

That became part of the evidence itself.

Had there been no Friday deadline, this episode probably would not exist. And now that it does exist, I do not believe it deserves more of my life simply so I can make it better. That realization helped me see the difference between keeping a commitment and refusing to reevaluate one.

My podcasts still deserve my time. They just do not deserve as much of it as I have been giving them.

For more than twenty years, people have asked me two questions about podcasting more than almost any others:

“How do I launch a podcast?”

“How do I grow my audience?”

Those can be useful questions, but neither one appears on my list of the five questions you must be able to answer if your goal is to generate clients through your show.

Do not ask, “How do I grow my podcast?” until you can clearly answer what the growth is intended to produce, for whom, and why they would eventually pay you.

A larger audience will not solve an unvalidated offer, unclear positioning, vague messaging, or a lack of confidence in the value you provide.

Before investing more time, energy, and money into growing your show, I encourage you to reflect on these five questions.

Has someone actually paid you for this solution, or are you hoping the podcast will validate it for you?

Conversations, compliments, expressed interest, and awareness of a problem do not necessarily prove that people are willing to pay for your solution.

My definition of early validation is that two or three people have paid for the product or service and would rate their satisfaction with that investment as an eight, nine, or ten.

A podcast can help people discover and trust you, but it should not become a way to postpone the vulnerable work of asking someone to pay for what you offer.

Can you identify the specific person, problem, desire, threshold, or transformation your offer is designed to address?

You should be able to clearly describe:

You should also be able to answer this question clearly:

“If I were looking for someone who might be a great fit for what you do, who should I be on the lookout for?”

When you know exactly who you serve, your content becomes more focused, your language becomes more specific, and your invitations become more relevant.

When they hear you describe the problem and the desired outcome, do they immediately think, “He understands exactly where I am”?

Clear positioning does more than explain what you do. It allows the right listener to recognize their own experience in your words.

They should hear you describe their challenges, patterns, frustrations, and desires with enough specificity that they feel understood.

Vague language may sound professional, but specific language creates recognition.

Are you speaking to a clearly defined listener and helping them move toward a better decision, a new belief, or a meaningful next step?

Your podcast does not need to sell your service in every episode. But every episode should make it increasingly logical for the right person to want your help.

Your content can build trust, demonstrate how you think, reveal your values, clarify the listener’s problem, and help them see possibilities they could not previously see.

The purpose is not to turn every episode into an infomercial.

The purpose is to create content that consistently serves the kind of person your business is designed to help.

Are you willing to clearly tell the right listener what you offer, why it matters, and what they should do next?

You may have a validated offer, a clearly defined ideal client, powerful positioning, and relevant content. But none of those things will generate clients if you remain unwilling to make an invitation.

On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you in the value of what you offer?

If your answer is not an eight, nine, or ten, there may be important work to do around your offer, your evidence, your language, or your own belief in the transformation you provide.

Confidence does not require arrogance or pressure.

It means believing that inviting the right person into your offer is an act of service.

Depending on your business model, you may only need twenty, thirty, or fifty clients each year.

With a genuinely high-value offer, you may only need five or ten.

You do not necessarily need a massive audience.

You need the right people hearing a clear message about a valuable solution that was intentionally created for them.

Take some time to journal through these five questions.

Which one is the most difficult for you to answer?

What answer have you developed so far?

Email me personally at [email protected] and tell me which question you are struggling with most.

I may respond with a few clarifying questions and begin an asynchronous conversation with you. If we have worked together before, I may suggest that we jump on a call.

You are also welcome to send me the name of your podcast, a link to your show, and your answers to all five questions. I would love to celebrate the clarity you have developed, and I may feature some responses in a future episode.

If your desired outcome is to generate clients through your podcast, answering these five questions may be far more valuable than finding another strategy for growing your downloads.

In 2016, I helped a student launch a podcast through my four-week Podcasting A to Z program.

For this story, I call him Bill.

Bill was 62 years old at the time. He wanted to create a library of leadership content that people could access on their own schedule. He also wanted to build a more virtual business that was less dependent on his physical presence with clients.

At a deeper level, he hoped this new way of working would give him and his wife more time together and greater freedom to choose where and how they lived.

By the end of our four weeks together, he had successfully launched his podcast. He continued producing the show for many years, but after that initial season, our direct interaction slowly faded.

More than ten years passed without a meaningful one-on-one conversation between us.

Bill remained on my email list during that time, but I have no evidence that he was regularly listening to my podcasts.

Recently, I noticed that he had clicked a link in one of my emails to learn more about Next Level Mastermind Momentum. Seeing his name prompted me to revisit our old conversations and reach out personally.

I was not assuming that Momentum was right for him. I was genuinely curious about how his life and business had unfolded since our time together.

He responded and told me about the impact his podcast had made over the past decade. He also revealed that he was now facing a meaningful threshold as he considered what doing more, becoming more, or entering a new season might look like at age 73.

Our renewed conversation prompted him to explore the work I am doing today.

While looking through the archive of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show, he found episode 819:

Why More Listeners Won’t Fix Your Business

That episode had been published several months earlier. By the time he discovered it, I was preparing to record episode 832.

He did not choose my newest episode.

He scanned the titles and selected the episode that most clearly spoke to what he was experiencing in that moment.

After listening, he told me that the message had hit him square in the face.

That older episode allowed him to experience the current version of my thinking, my work, and the way I help people today. It played an important role in opening the door to a deeper conversation, and Bill ultimately booked a paid 90-minute coaching session with me.

The exciting thing about this story is not simply that an older episode contributed to a paid coaching opportunity.

The deeper lesson is that an episode I recorded months earlier remained available in my archive until the right person encountered it at the right moment.

An episode may have a publication date, but its opportunity to create value does not necessarily expire.

Every meaningful episode you publish becomes an asset in your archive. It may reach someone days, months, years, or even decades after you originally recorded it.

You cannot predict:

What you can control is your commitment to continue publishing meaningful content.

You can also be intentional about creating titles that clearly communicate the heart of each episode, making it easier for the right person to recognize the message they need.

Your newest episode will naturally receive most of your attention today.

But it may be an episode you published months or even years ago that creates the greatest value for someone tomorrow.

Perhaps you have a desired outcome that you want to make part of your next season.

You may be clear about what you want and why it matters, but uncertain about the options available to you or the next aligned step you should take.

That is the kind of work I do through my coaching and through Next Level Mastermind Momentum.

Momentum is an environment where entrepreneurs gain clarity, receive strategic feedback, identify their next aligned action, commit that action to the calendar, and report back on the results.

Learn more at: https://cliffravenscraft.com/momentum

There may be a podcast you’ve listened to for years—someone who has taught you, encouraged you, entertained you, or helped you make decisions that changed your life.

But have you ever actually told them?

I’ve been listening to podcasts since the summer of 2005. Over those twenty years, I’ve listened to thousands of episodes from countless creators. Yet when I honestly thought about how often I’ve personally reached out to tell one of those creators about the impact they’ve had on my life, the number was surprisingly small.

This episode was inspired by something I heard while listening to Matthew McLean interview Sarah Golding on his Audio Indies podcast.

Sarah talked about how little direct feedback creators sometimes receive—even when the download numbers tell them that hundreds or thousands of people are listening. She shared that one meaningful piece of feedback can sometimes provide enough encouragement to fuel a creator for another six months.

That really stayed with me.

As listeners, we often assume established creators hear appreciation all the time.

The reality is that they often don’t.

People listen silently.

They learn silently.

They appreciate silently.

Sometimes they even make significant changes in their lives because of something they heard—and the person behind the microphone never knows.

In this episode, I share why analytics and download numbers can never replace genuine human acknowledgment.

I also tell a very personal story from the early days of the Weekly Lost Podcast, when harsh criticism nearly caused me to walk away from podcasting altogether. I genuinely believed I was done.

Then something happened.

Our community responded with an overwhelming amount of encouragement and honest feedback about what our work meant to them.

That feedback helped me keep going.

Had I stopped producing podcasts at that moment, my entire life might look very different today. There may never have been a Podcast Answer Man. I may never have trained more than 40,000 people to launch podcasts. So much of what followed over the next nineteen years might never have happened.

That experience taught me just how powerful expressed appreciation can be.

I also share a practice I’ve developed over the years: intentionally saving meaningful feedback. I have physical letters and cards that I’ve kept, along with a Gmail label called Praise and Encouragement where I save messages that remind me why this work matters.

When those inevitable questions arise—

Is anybody really listening?

Does this matter?

Should I keep going?

—I have somewhere to return and reconnect with evidence of the impact.

In this episode, I also take some time to publicly express my appreciation for several creators whose work has had a profound influence on my life.

Leo Laporte introduced me to podcasting in its earliest days and has been one of the most influential voices in my relationship with technology. More than twenty years later, I still regularly listen to MacBreak Weekly and This Week in Tech.

Fr. Roderick Vonhögen has been another voice in my life for more than twenty years. His curiosity, childlike astonishment, authenticity, love of service, and passion for personal growth have influenced me in countless ways. Over the years, our connection grew from listener and podcaster into a meaningful personal friendship.

Brian and Liz Deacle, creators of It’s a Drama, are another couple whose podcast I listen to consistently. I love their authenticity, their relationship, their adventures around the world, and the opportunity to live vicariously through some of their experiences.

I also give honorable mentions to three people whose podcasts have played significant roles in different seasons of my life:

My dear friend and mentor Dan Miller and the 48 Days Online Radio Show

Michael Hyatt and his This Is Your Life podcast

My dear friend Ray Edwards and The Ray Edwards Show

Each of these creators has contributed something meaningful to the person I am today.

Before today ends, think of one creator who has positively impacted your life and send them a message.

Don’t just write:

“Great episode.”

Tell them something specific.

Tell them what you heard.

Tell them what you learned.

Tell them about a decision you made or something you changed because of their work.

Tell them the story of the impact.

And for bonus points, consider doing this one without AI.

Just be fully human.

Human to human.

Listener to creator.

Don’t assume your appreciation is obvious. Expressed gratitude is different from felt gratitude.

The message that takes you three, five, or ten minutes to send may become the fuel that helps someone continue creating for the next six months—and their decision to keep going may ultimately impact countless other lives.

There is another side to feedback.

Sometimes we simply need someone to remind us:

What you’re doing matters. Keep going.

But there are other seasons when encouragement alone isn’t enough.

Sometimes we need honest reflection.

We need someone who can see what we’re too close to see.

We need questions we haven’t thought to ask ourselves.

We need strategic feedback, greater clarity about where we’re going, and help identifying the next aligned step forward.

Sometimes we need a room where we can safely say:

“This is who I am. This is where I am. This is where I want to go. This is where I’m stuck. What do you see that I may not be seeing?”

That is exactly why I created Next Level Mastermind: Momentum.

Momentum is a weekly mastermind environment for entrepreneurs who want greater clarity, honest reflection, strategic feedback, aligned next steps, and the kind of relational accountability that turns insight into committed, calendared action.

I have been loving what is already happening in this room each week.

If you are in a season where you could benefit from greater clarity, perspective, meaningful feedback, and a room of people genuinely committed to helping one another move forward, I invite you to check it out.

Learn more about Momentum at: https://cliffravenscraft.com/momentum