Podcast Answer Man

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...

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 experie...

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. Wh...

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 writi...

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...

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 a...

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...

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...

What happens when your work has evolved, but the market still associates you with an earlier version of your professional identity? In this episode, I explore how to use the content you create to intentionally change what people know you for, especially when your current work is profitable enough to keep postponing the work you most want to become known for. This episode was inspired by a powerful...

Many people begin podcasting with the goal of launching a show and growing an audience. But after observing thousands of podcasting journeys over the past two decades, I have become convinced that the podcast itself is rarely the true desired outcome. What people really want is what they hope the podcast will help them experience. That might include more fulfilling work, meaningful income, greater...

Does every podcaster need to be on YouTube? That is the question I’m answering in this episode of Podcast Answer Man . A recent LinkedIn post, sent to me by my friend Stuart Crane, talked about YouTube’s latest podcast-focused features and the growing amount of podcast consumption happening on YouTube. The post suggested that the future of podcasting is not audio-first or video-first, but audience...

Last week, while attending a social media conference in Lima, Ohio, I heard a speaker recommend something I had never seriously considered before: Submit your podcast to IMDb. The idea was that IMDb has become a highly trusted source that AI tools and search engines often reference when gathering information about people. If that's true, having an accurate IMDb profile and podcast listing could in...

I recently came across a LinkedIn post that made a strong case for podcast hosts getting to the point more quickly. The idea was simple: if your episode could be ten minutes, don’t stretch it into forty-five. Respect your listener’s time. Say the thing. And honestly, I get it. If I’m reading a book, listening to an audiobook, or sitting in a conference room while someone gives a presentation, I us...

Welcome to episode 500 of Podcast Answer Man. This milestone episode gave me an opportunity to reflect on what podcasting has meant to me over the past two decades, how the podcasting space has changed, and why I still believe so deeply in the power of this medium. There is no shortage of commentary today about whether podcasting is growing, shrinking, oversaturated, being disrupted by AI, replace...

In this episode, I share the thinking behind my new live streaming and video content strategy. For the past several months, I’ve been very clear that Podcast Answer Man is an audio-only podcast, and that is still true. I remain a strong advocate for creating audio content that is designed first and foremost for the person who will listen later, away from the screen, in the flow of their real life....

A question came up while I was preparing for my podcasting workshop at Social Media Marketing World: Does the world really need another podcast? It is a fair question. There are already millions of podcasts out there. Many industries feel crowded. A lot of topics have already been covered. AI has made it easier than ever to create average content. And with so much short-form video competing for at...

In this episode, I recorded while out for a walk using a small wired lavalier recorder clipped to my shirt. It was not a studio setup. It was not polished. It was not carefully produced. And that is exactly the point. The recorder I used for this episode is the TASCAM DR-10L PRO - https://amzn.to/4d9vEHd In a world where AI is making it easier than ever for content to sound clean, refined, and pro...

I missed an episode last week. It was the first time since recommitting to a weekly publishing schedule for Podcast Answer Man that I failed to release an episode on Friday morning at 12:01 a.m. And you know what? The world is still spinning. In this episode, I talk through what happened, why I made the conscious decision to miss the week, and how I’m thinking about consistency, commitment, grace,...

This episode came from a pattern I’ve seen over and over again. So many people come to me asking for audience growth strategies. They’ve been podcasting for a while, they feel like they’ve hit a plateau, and they believe the answer is getting in front of more people. In this episode, I challenge that assumption. I share my own experience of going from a tiny audience to tens of thousands of listen...

In this episode, I share something I’ve been seeing over and over again in conversations with people who are on the verge of launching a podcast. There’s this belief that you need to have everything figured out before you’re allowed to speak, teach, or share your voice. I challenge that idea directly. I talk about the fear of not being experienced enough, not having the right credentials, or not f...

Over the years, I’ve told my origin story in podcasting many times. I’ve shared how I got started, how things grew, and how this work eventually became my full-time career. But what you’ve almost never heard is this story told alongside Stephanie. Recently, Stephanie and I were invited to be guests on the Our Family Invests podcast with Mike Neubauer. And after the conversation, we both agreed. Th...

In this episode, I’m sharing a conversation with Heather Bayer who was one of the first people in her industry to launch a podcast. She didn’t wait for permission. She made a decision about who she was and who she was there to serve. More than a decade later, she’s still showing up every single week. She now has over 650 episodes, a global audience and a business built through relationships that s...

In this conversation, I sat down with Jason Cabassi, someone I had the privilege of helping launch into podcasting back in 2011. Since then, Jason has gone on to produce more than a thousand episodes and build an entire podcast network centered around the shows he loves. We talked about how it all started with a fan podcast for The Walking Dead , the unexpected opportunities that followed, and how...

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a replay of a conversation I had two years ago with Alex Freeman on the UpFlip podcast. When that interview first aired, it quickly became one of the most significant entry points into my world. For several months afterward, people were reaching out to me saying they had discovered my work through that interview. Many told me they had listened to the episode multipl...

In this episode, I share one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from more than twenty years of podcasting and content creation. Success in this space, more often than not, comes down to two simple things: getting started and staying in the game longer than everyone else. I talk about how my own definition of success has evolved over the years. I’ve learned to pay attention to resonance and...