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♪ Got to sort of tell 'em ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. - Today on Radical Personal Finance, I bring you an interview with the podcast answer man himself, Cliff Ravenscraft. Listen to this show even if you're not interested in podcasting, 'cause it's not about podcasting.

It's about business. And it's about the personal financial preparations and the commitment that over time can make a huge difference in your entrepreneurial journey. (upbeat music) Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me today. This is another interview from podcast movement.

I recorded a total of 16 while I was there, so you can expect many weeks of interviews. And this is a great one. I really, really, really loved doing this interview with someone who's been a huge encouragement to me and a huge help, as you'll hear in this interview today.

(upbeat music) One of the things that I love to do is bring you stories of entrepreneurial success, stories of lifestyle design, and try to get behind the scenes a little bit and dig in. It's one of the cool things, I think, that we have the opportunity to do in this type of long format media where we're not constrained to a three minute human interest segment on the local news or on whatever the NPR, you know, seven minutes that NPR is able to devote to it.

Rather, we can dig into things a little bit better and hear people's stories. And I've been looking forward and working to try to interview Cliff Ravenscraft for a while. It happened perfectly and beautifully there in Texas for the Podcast Movement Conference because he has such a cool entrepreneurial story.

And I wanted to bring it to you how he went from basically having a high paying career in insurance to building his lifestyle business around podcasting, which included having a really, really tough first few years, and now has resulted in him being widely renowned as a leader in the podcast space and having a very healthy business.

He doesn't mention this in the actual interview that I recorded, but since he mentioned it in his – publicly in his talk that he gave at the Podcast Movement Conference, I'll go ahead and repeat the number here. But last year his business generated over half a million dollars of gross income.

So when you're listening to him share the story of the difficult early years, just recognize that his business has grown and it's doing very well now, which is exciting. And I'm excited to see where he's going to go in the coming years. This year, 2015, he pulled back from the majority of his business pursuits, cut his income substantially to focus on his health, which is one of the unique opportunities that you have when you're an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur.

But he's changing that now and getting ready to pour it on even more. So I'm excited about the future that he has laid out and the possibilities that are laid out in front of him. But the key factor for you to pay attention to is recognize the impact that proper, prior, personal financial planning made on his entrepreneurial success story.

No matter what you think, it's very difficult to wander out into the world of entrepreneurship without having put a good foundation in place. Here we go. Cliff, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Joshua, I am so glad to be here, my friend. I've been looking forward to getting this interview done, but you're a busy man, and I'm glad we got it done.

I invited you on the show, Radical Personal Finance. We talk a lot of financial planning every day, but financial planning has multiple components. There's the technical side of financial planning, but then there's also the personal side of financial planning, the actual story involved of financial planning. And I'd love for you to share with me a little bit about your story, especially as it relates to finance and the different ups and downs of your journey over the years with regard to your own finances.

Sure. Well, let's see here. So you want to start with the financial stuff. All right. So basically when I-- You're right. Go ahead and share a little bit of your story, the overview, and then we'll jump into the finances. Well, I'll start back in the early days. So basically when I started in college, I got my first credit card, and I took my friend out to eat dinner, and I walked out my very first Discover card that I had just got.

And my friend refused to let me buy him dinner. He says, "No, credit cards are evil. You're going to find yourself wishing you would have never had that thing, and I will not let you buy me dinner." So he didn't let me buy him dinner that night, and one thing led to another, and eventually I got to the place where by the time I got married, I was probably about $50,000 or $60,000 in unsecured debt.

Wow. Wow. So basically, here I am, gosh, 18 years ago, 18 and a half years ago, I got married, and starting off, young married life, as a guy who's already $60,000, $70,000 in credit card and other personal loan debt. What was that like? It was insane, because obviously at the time, I was an employee.

Even though I had a decent job, I was making decent money compared to most other people that I knew, even making $18 an hour, $20 an hour, stuff like that. No matter what, it just seems like with that much debt, I always was living paycheck to paycheck. I would cash the check, I would deposit it, and we would try to write out our budget and stuff like that, but the reality is that by the time we paid all of our bills, the money was gone.

It just seemed like we would never get out of debt. So we tried at times, and then other times, it's like, you know what, we would fall into old habits. What we'd pay off, we would get back into further debt and stuff like that. What were you buying? Oh, just going out to eat when we couldn't afford it.

I was buying--now, I will tell you this. Interestingly enough, I could say that it was a really bad decision, but one of the things that I continued to buy is every 18 months, I would have to have the newest and latest processor for computers, so I would go to Micro Center, and I'd buy the newest, fastest computer.

It was a hobby of mine, of course. It had nothing to do with whatever job I was in. It's just in 1996, I wanted to start creating a blog, and I wanted to actually have faster processors to do more impressive things with technology. There was this thing, it was called Microsoft-- I can't even remember the name of it.

It was the Microsoft version of what Skype is today, but it was before Skype was obviously-- Skype is now owned by Microsoft, but back then they had-- I can't even remember the name of it, but it was a software solution that I could, by audio, call other people around the world, and I just thought that was the most incredible thing.

I've always been into technology, and I mean literally taking computers apart, putting them together, playing with them. Looking back, I'm glad that I made those really stupid financial decisions, because I learned a lot then that really has impacted my life for its success today. But I would literally take out personal loans to buy new computers.

- Did you go to college? - I did. - Studied anything tech-related? - I did not study technology in college. I was studying to be a history teacher. - Really? - I was a history major and a theater minor. - And that led to life insurance, which led to tech.

- Well, what happened is it led to me getting to the place where I was finally a junior and not knowing exactly what I want to do, and I didn't think that being a history teacher was the thing, and so I kind of dropped out of college and said, "You know what?

I just don't know what I'm going to do. Why should I keep taking these classes?" So I got out of there, and of course I did have some student loan as well, because my parents paid for the first year of college, and then when I dropped out the first time, not knowing what I wanted to do, then they said, "You're on your own if you decide to go back." So when I went back to become a history teacher, then I was on my own for that, so I took out even more debt there.

But anyway, when I got married, I was working at a call center for Staples, and I was one of their customer service reps, so if you had an issue with your catalog order and you needed to replace something or return something or something was wrong with it, I would be the guy probably on the end of the line helping you get that resolved.

- Wow. - And my parents owned an insurance agency, and it's been in the family since 1927, and they said, "Listen, if you want, you can come work for us." And I'm like, "There's no way. I have no interest in insurance whatsoever." And they said, "Well, if you come work for us, we have something.

You won't have to do insurance. There's this stuff called this agency management software that we have to get, and we don't know anything about computers, and we need to have somebody who can come in and hook these computers up and network them together, whatever that means." And, of course, obviously being a computer geek, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

This was back in Windows 95 days. And so they hired me to come into the insurance office and network their computers together, setting up TCIP addresses and everything. And so I did that, and once I got-- of course, it took me about three months until it was all up and running.

I was like, "Now what do I do?" And then I became this extremely high-paid file clerk, right? And it turns out that they needed help learning how to use quoting software because before they were using rate manuals, but now there's software for it. So I hooked all of that up.

And what happened was I started doing quotes for my dad. He's got all these clients calling in, and I'm taking their information. I'm putting it all into the computer, and the computer is printing out on the printer what their quotes are, and then I hand it to him. And what happens is my dad just takes that, picks up the phone, calls the person back and gives them the rates, and that person comes in, signs a piece of paper, and my dad makes this major commission on this ongoing, right?

And so my dad says, "You know, you should get your license." And I said, "I don't really want to get my license." And he says, "But if you got your license, you realize you're doing all the work. All I'm doing is giving them the price. If you had your license, you could be making extra money." And so it didn't take too much to twist my arm.

I went and got my license, and after getting my license, I started to earn commissions on every single time I used that computer to do a quote for somebody, and that was pretty sweet. And fast forward 11 years into it, I was making $87,000 a year with two full-paid vacations anywhere I want to go to in the world every year.

That's fantastic. And about seven years into it, I think--yeah, about seven years into it, I had discovered Dave Ramsey. Obviously, making more money progressively as I went on, I eventually became licensed for auto, home, life, health, business, and commercial insurance. But anyway, as I was making more money, we were actually doing better financially.

It seemed like there might be light at the end of the tunnel. But we still were struggling with these credit cards. It just seemed like, "How do you get rid of this?" And my friends would start talking about Dave Ramsey. And so this whole-- Isn't that annoying? Yeah. And they seemed like these crazy cultic fanatics.

So I tuned into his radio show one day, and he's like, "Where debt is--" Debt is dumb and cash is king. Yeah, debt is dumb and the paid-off home mortgage is the status symbol of choice. Exactly. And I'm like, I listened to it. It's like debt-free living. And, of course, that whole concept was alien to me.

I even remember talking to some people about it when I started to just communicate it to others. And they're like, "You don't ever live debt-free. There's a couple things in life that are true. You'll always be in debt," or whatever. And so basically I started listening to Dave Ramsey.

I got a little bit excited about some of the possibilities that what would life be like if we didn't have debt. I talked to my wife, Stephanie, about it. She seemed a little bit interested in stuff like that. But when I started to talk to her about setting up a budget, she got to the place where she hated Dave Ramsey.

She wasn't too crazy about him. Dave is a four-letter word in many households. Exactly. So, yeah, she had some not-so-kind words to say about Dave Ramsey. Well, anyway, I convinced Stephanie to go to a live event back when he was doing the Total Money Makeover live events in Louisville, Kentucky.

We went to that. And she saw Dave on stage, and he did his presentation that he's done so many times. And he had the chains and the walking. The four-foot scissors. Yeah, and he did all of that stuff. And it just clicked for both of us right then and there.

It's like, "Okay, we're going to do this." And so we decided to take baby step number one. We're going to come up with that first $1,000. And then we decided after we came up with that first $1,000, then we were going to start the debt snowball. And literally within two years of learning of Dave Ramsey, we had paid off 100% completely all of our unsecured debt.

Wow. Actually, everything except for our mortgage. Wow. And so that was--let's see here. Actually, so we were debt-free. You know what? I found out about him nine years into working in insurance because it was 11 years that I stayed in insurance. So two years after that, yeah, it had been--you know, it's now 11 years into insurance and now I'm debt-free.

So I had successfully made as much money as I had ever made before. And it seems like there's no end to how much more I'm going to make. And we finally got debt-free. And at this point in time, this is 2007, yeah, late 2007. I'm at the place where my mom and dad are talking about retirement.

There are papers in the process of being made, documents for me to take over the agency. Basically, if I wouldn't have left there, I might be making about half a million dollars a year right now. Yeah. And I'm not there anymore. Did it have any impact on your marriage relationship when you got out of debt?

Well, financially, I mean, there was less stress. I mean, it did basically get rid of a lot of fear and anxiety around the paycheck. I mean, it was kind of--it was nice to not have arguments about not having money to do this or not having money to do that.

So it freed us up. Did you start spending more? Did you save more? What did you do when you were out of debt? Well, we started our--as soon as we got out of debt, we started our bigger emergency fund. So we started instantly going towards three to six months of our income and putting that into an emergency fund and a savings account.

What was the story in the podcasting? So basically, what happened was--and this is where it overlaps a little bit. So it was December 2005. We had pretty much at that time--we had maybe just a couple months into the Dave Ramsey plan at this point, right? So December 2005, I decided to podcast as a hobby.

I had already been blogging, and my wife and I were watching the TV show Lost. I had been listening to a lot of podcasts and absolutely loved it. And basically, I did a blog post--or a couple blog posts about the TV show Lost. And there were a couple of podcasts devoted to this TV show Lost already.

And what happened was I would blog about my theories, and then I called one day into one of the voicemail feedback hotlines of a podcast. And I shared with them what's called the Thomas Theory. And they played that in their podcast. And first of all, I'll never forget the time when I heard my voice played in an audio podcast.

It reminded me of when I was a kid and I would call into the radio station to call in a request, and I'd hear my voice on the radio. And I got that same feeling. And knowing that literally this podcast had tens of thousands of listeners around the world, and my voice, my message just got out there.

My blog readership ballooned up like crazy. Eventually, I got picked up by Entertainment Weekly on their website. And so that was incredible. What happened was as a result of that is I had people say, "Cliff, I absolutely loved hearing you on Ryan's podcast." And Ryan even said to himself, "You should create your own Lost podcast." And I'm like, "Yeah, okay.

It doesn't take too much to stroke my ego." He's like, "I like technology." So I went to Best Buy, and I picked up a $35 pair of headphones that had a microphone off to the side. Now, this is just before USB was taken off. Now, they had USB ones, but those were like $120 at the time.

Today, you can pick them up for $9, right? But it had a 1/8-inch plug for the microphone and 1/8-inch plug for the headphones. I had a laptop already. I downloaded free software for Audacity, plugged those things in, and I recorded my very first podcast, which, by the way, was not devoted to Lost because I realized there were already seven other podcasts devoted to the television show Lost.

Why would anybody want to hear one just for me? And I didn't even think--I mean, who's really going to listen to this, right? There are already so many technology podcasts, so why would anybody listen to me talk about technology? There were already radio broadcast ministry programs from around the world that had podcasts.

Why would anybody want to hear me talk about my faith, right? So, my very first podcast I launched was called Generally Speaking, and I figured it's going to be me every episode just generally speaking about something that I love, something that I'm passionate about. And what I told my audience is that I'm typically--I'm most passionate right now about the TV show Lost, technology, and my faith.

And I realized that not everybody's going to like all three--to hear me talk about all three of those. So, what I'll do is each episode will be limited to one topic, and the title of the episode will start with Lost, Faith, or Technology. And if you are only into Lost and you see the other ones, just delete them.

You don't even have to listen to them. And after I explained all of that, then I proceeded with my first episode to talk about the TV show Lost. Not thinking--I mean, 50 people maybe are going to listen to me, right? And I had over maybe a couple hundred people, maybe 300 people that listened to that first episode.

And people started writing to me, begging me, "Cliff, will you please keep this podcast only devoted to Lost?" And I'm--I mean, we're talking like 10, 15, 20 people email me the same thing. Right. That was--I was blown away that 15, 20 people wanted to hear me talk about anything.

And then they're begging me, and some of them are like, "I care less about your faith." "And I have no interest in technology, but please talk about Lost." So I recorded--the next week, I recorded the second episode, and I said, "Hey, everybody, welcome to the weekly Lost edition of the Generally Speaking Production Network." Because I knew then that I was going to have to create other shows to talk about those other things.

And so that started the Lost podcast. And this was the time when iTunes from Apple had just added the television show to iTunes, where you could buy the episode the next day if you missed it on TV. And this is before we all had DVRs, right? DVR functionality was there, but it wasn't mainstream.

And not only that, but just months before, they had just added podcasts to iTunes. So now iTunes and Apple is putting in billions of dollars into--well, millions of dollars into advertising. You can now get Lost the next day. Millions of fans around the world, and people were going to iTunes searching for Lost.

Just that one term. And it had soundtracks for Lost, episodes for Lost, and podcasts for Lost. And I was right there, the number one podcast for Lost. Perfect timing. Had about 27,000 subscribers by the third episode. Wow. And it just went--it skyrocketed from there. And that was awesome. And what happened was, you know, it was exciting to have a worldwide audience.

I was an idiot back in the day. You too? Yeah. I let it go to my head. My ego was much bigger than it needed to be and all this other stuff. And as a result of that, I got a lot of flack from many people who listened to the show.

But there was still this core audience that just got who I was. And by the way, the second episode, I brought Stephanie with me as my co-host. So we started doing the show together. And that's how it got started, as a hobby, just playing around. And then what would happen was about three months into podcasting, the TV show is like broadcasting episodes like Tabula Rasa, which is all about having a clean slate.

There is Every Good Cowboy Has Daddy Issues. That's another episode title. And so we had the opportunity to talk about all of these different themes from our perspective as a husband and wife. And every now and then I would get an email from somebody who would say, "Hey, actually I remember specifically one email that says, 'I hope you don't mind or get offended by this, but I listened to you and your wife talk about the topics and stuff like that.

But do you mind if I ask, are you guys Christian?'" And I would write back and I would say in the email, "Well, yeah, we are Christians. Thank you so much for listening," and stuff like that. The person wrote back, and if I would have printed it out on paper, it would have been about a five-page email pouring his life out to me about his experience in the Christian church and how he's left God behind because he couldn't stand all the judgment and all this other stuff.

And he was just so inspired to know that there was a Christian married couple who could actually enjoy a secular television show and have as much fun as you guys do. And he ends it by asking me, "Can you tell me more about your faith and why you believe?" and stuff like that.

And so we started these conversations, and that's just one email. But we had so many other things, and people started asking us questions. And I realized I'm starting to get a lot of the same questions over and over again. So I created a second show that today is called Pursuing a Balanced Life.

And I brought my wife in with me on that most of the time, but sometimes I did solo shows. And people would send me an email, and I would say, "Do you mind if instead of me spending the next two hours responding to you with an email, do you mind if I put my thoughts together, record a podcast episode, and I can then tell you that it's available and you can go listen to it, and it will not only help you, but when somebody else asks me the same question, I can point them to it as well." And that started my second podcast.

And a lot of questions would be related to debt-free living or husband and wife issues, parenting. So that's a lot of the things that we were talking about in that other show. And then we had one lady. Her name was Kim. She specifically says, "Cliff, I have no idea how on earth you can believe in God, but I want to understand, can you tell me how you came to faith?" So she basically asked me to share my story of how I came to faith.

And I said, "Do you mind if I read your email?" And it was a pretty personal email, the way that she had written it. And I said, "If you'd like, I won't share your name." And she goes, "You can use my name." And so that episode was called Kim's Email.

And so I read Kim's email, and I responded to it, and I gave my story of how I came to faith in Jesus. And I published that episode online. And three hours later, I get an email from her saying, "Cliff, I've got to tell you, I listened to your episode as soon as you sent me the email saying that it was live.

I had to leave work because I was crying uncontrollably. I want you to know that I've just given my life over to Jesus, and I need to know what are the next steps." And I'm like, "Okay, this is incredible." And we're talking--this is like six months into podcasting, right?

And people are literally pouring their lives. And one thing that I haven't talked about, because it hasn't come up in the question, but outside of my love for technology and outside of my career as an insurance agent, one thing I haven't told you is that when I got married in 1996, I felt the call to ministry.

And so I became a--I started studying for full-time ministry, thinking that one day I was going to become a pastor. So I was a district minister or pastor in the Church of the Nazarene in a small little Nazarene church in northern Kentucky. And I had done that as associate pastor for two years, and then I left that, and then I went on to a big non-denominational megachurch doing small groups pastoring, kind of doing that for free on the side, but thinking that one day maybe there's this opportunity to do ministry full-time.

And so by this time--and now what I just did is I just jumped back eight years, now we're back to the 2005, 2006 time frame. And what happened was people were emailing me these questions, and I realized that after all these years of ministry, which basically was babysitting people and all this other stuff and just trying to convince people that this is what you need to do, this is what you should do, and it wasn't really having any lasting, eternal impact in anybody's life, I didn't feel.

Like all the years of ministry that I was trained for and that I was doing, it just didn't seem like what I was reading about in the Bible. But here I am with this podcast having powerful, positive impact in people's life. And all of a sudden I start to ask myself, "Man, what if I could do podcasting full-time?

What if I could make podcasting my career?" And of course that's a really stupid thing as a husband with three young kids to think about. My wife says, "Stay at home, Mom. She doesn't work outside the house." And here I have this job, and I just told you that at this time the paperwork's-- I'm going to be making lots of money as an owner of an insurance agency.

Why would I want to leave all that to do technology and stuff? But it's what I felt called to do. And so I started to talk to my audience and say, in pursuing a balanced life, I said, "What if I could do this full-time?" I know that's a crazy dream.

Maybe I'll just wait till my dad retires, and when he retires, instead of taking over the agency, I'll then pursue my dream. I'll just hold out for as long as my dad needs me in the office. And that helped me build up a nest egg or whatever and stuff like that.

Well, I had people email me and offer to get on the phone with me and talk to me and coach me about the opportunities and possibilities that they saw possible for me to make money. And so I took a lot of those calls and got some great advice. And next thing you know, I'm sharing all this stuff with Stephanie, and everybody's telling me, "Cliff, you could totally make a living doing this.

You could totally make a living doing this." Oh, by the way, one year after I started podcasting, I created a podcast about podcasting. So I had already been having people pay me. It was Podcast Answer Man that early? Podcast Answer Man. It started in December 2006. So I had been already teaching people how to podcast for free.

And people began to ask me to teach them one-on-one, and I did. People began to beg me to let them pay me, and so I did. And then all of a sudden, all of this comes together. There's been some income that's come in. There's been all these other little hints and signs that this could actually financially happen.

And Stephanie and I were talking about it every time I had these conversations. And then what happened is one day I came home from a really horrible day at work, and it was like one of the worst days ever. And my wife says, "You need to quit your job.

You need to quit your job tomorrow and tell them that you're going to do podcasting full-time." That was in September of 2007, and that was just like maybe six months after we became completely 100% debt-free minus our mortgage. Wow. And then what? I mean, there's so much. It's fascinating just to hear the details.

And the timing is remarkable to have everything lined up with -- just the timing is remarkable. If you think about it -- let me just tell you what -- because I've told this story so many times I can say this part really fast, but here's the deal. First of all, I thought my dad was going to blow a gasket when I told him I was going to leave this guaranteed income to pursue this hobby that I've been doing as my full-time career.

I thought he was going to go crazy. But the thing is, one thing I didn't tell you is that when my mom and dad hired me to come and hook up their computers, I made them promise me, number one, that you'll never make me get my insurance license, which they never made me.

They offered, and they incentivized me, which I took them up on that. And I said, number two, if I'm ever offered an opportunity to go into ministry full-time, no matter how little I might make, you won't judge me if I decide to go do that. And so I should have known that it wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

But anyway, I thought for sure my dad was going to talk me out of it. So Stephanie and I made the decision that night we were going -- I was going to quit. The first thing we did, hit record on the recorder, and we told the world that I was going to go -- >> That night.

>> That night we told the world that I was going to go in the next day and quit my job. >> Does anybody tell you that it's on the one hand really inspiring, but also on the other hand really uncomfortable how much you share about your personal life? >> That's just who I am.

>> I love it. Like, it's -- I enjoy it. But sometimes I cringe, I guess, as I just think of me and my wife telling someone -- the public a decision right when we've just made it. >> Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that was our natural instinct, right? >> Right.

>> You know, it's like, how can we not -- we've got to tell the world. You know, this is big news. People want to know. So we did. So the next morning I go in, I'm like sweating. And you know what? I wonder if there was even a part of me that was hoping that my dad would talk me out of it.

>> Right. >> And then I could -- that way I could blame him if I don't pursue it. So I went in and I told my dad. And you know what my dad told me? I've been waiting for months for you to come in here and quit. Because your heart isn't here.

And a couple other things that he said is he said, number one, I want to tell you something, you've got to do this. You've got to follow your heart because that's what's most important. You don't want to wait until 20 years down the road and then say, what if I would have done it?

He says, number one, I want to tell you that if you leave and it doesn't work out, you can always come back here. There will always be a place for you here. So know that first and foremost. Number two, you'll never come back here again. He says, I know you, I know what you've been doing.

I don't understand it. But I know the heart you have for it and the experiences that you tell me about and the reaction that you're getting from people. I know and I'm confident that you will end up -- and he says, you know how much money you'd make if you stay here working in insurance, right?

And he said to me, I know you'll end up making more money doing podcasting than you would have ever dreamed of making here in insurance. >> That's no, right? >> Yeah. And so I'm like, boy, I wish I had as much confidence as you. But -- >> Did you have a plan, like a business plan?

>> I had no business plan. >> Did you have an idea? >> I had ideas, yeah. Because I mean, so from December 2006 all the way through this time in 2007, I mean, I'd been trying to make some side income. And, you know, I was making somewhere around $3,000 or $4,000 a month, you know, pretty consistently.

And that's literally just doing it in any free time that I had, right, outside of my full-time job. So I had some money that was coming in, and I had ideas on how I could drastically increase that. And if I could do it full-time, imagine what more I could do.

So I went in the next day, I gave him my 90-day notice. Those 90 days were the most insane days of my life. I don't think before that I had ever experienced depression and anxiety before, but I had never experienced so much depression and anxiety as I did during those 90 days.

And I'll never forget the last two weeks. It was, you know, Christmas time, right around New Year's. January 1st is, you know, my first day on my own. And we were at Christmas, and literally I'm having a good time, and then all of a sudden just like instantly it's like I was just shot with some kind of chemical that sucked my will to live.

And I'm like, "What am I doing? I'm the biggest idiot in the world. This is the most irresponsible thing. I have no clue if I'm going to make it. This is completely--I have no business experience. I have--who am I to do this? What am I doing to my family?" And, of course, it was my wife's idea.

She was on board, which is a huge reason why we pursued it. But what am I doing? This is insane, you know? And so we decided it was the right thing to do, and I shared those thoughts with Stephanie, and we moved forward through all those times. But I had literally panic attacks.

There was one night I specifically remember that I did not go to sleep because I felt--I had heart palpitations and everything. I felt like if I went to sleep, it was going to be the story of one of those guys who went to bed and never woke up. And I stayed up all night long because I had that kind of anxiety.

But we made it through it. And here's the deal. January 1, 2008, I got up, and I was like--I felt alive like I had never been alive before. This is like, wow. And not only that, not only was I alive, but I felt like a free man. I felt like I just--I felt like I was a man who had been in prison for the last 20, 30 years of my life, and now I'm free.

And that felt awesome until I discovered that with great freedom comes great responsibility. And the thing is I had always had the confines of employment to set my discipline. And so I learned that I needed to really work on becoming more self-disciplined. I needed to learn about marketing and how do I market it myself and how do I price.

As an employee and you're being paid hourly, you think, wow, all of a sudden-- I remember trying to charge $50 an hour. And in my mind, $50 an hour is way more money than I ever dreamed making as an employee. And so who's going to pay me $50 an hour?

And so I had a mental block on who would ever pay me $50 an hour. And so what happened was I was trying to get people to hire me, and when they asked me for my price, you could tell that I wasn't confident in what I was asking for.

And I think my lack of confidence in my pricing communicated my lack of confidence in my ability to help them. And so a lot of people didn't hire me. You'd think that's crazy today knowing how many people follow me today, but the reality is I really struggled. And here's what I'll tell you.

In 2008--so prior to 2008, when I left my career in insurance, I was making $87,000 a year plus two all-expenses paid vacation. I had all the benefits you could have, health insurance, all that. 2008, my total income personal from my business written to me as a paycheck, $11,000. Bit of a difference.

$11,000 is all I made in personal income. But you were making three to four on the side, you said. Yeah. No, here's the deal. What happened? Well, the business was profitable that year. The fact that it paid me $11,000 is actually a pretty cool thing if you think about it.

So basically, yeah, the business actually continued to make $3,000 or $4,000. Every now and then I hit that $5,000 mark, right? The thing is you've got a CPA, you've got software expenses, computer expenses, internet expenses, and the biggest cost, health insurance for my family. So we did have health insurance.

We had all of the businesses paying all of those things, but the business month to month for those first several months, there was no money there to pay me a paycheck. I was able to pay all of the phone bills, all the other stuff, but when it came once all the business expenses had been paid, there's no money for Cliff Ravenscraft, no money for salary.

So here's what happened. December 2008--or no, January 2008, I lived off of my final paycheck from my December 2007 income. So I only allowed myself to get paid once a month because we did our bills monthly because we did the Dave Ramsey plan, right? So I would get all my paychecks, and at the end of the month I would cash them, and that's how much money we have to spend the next month.

So in January we lived off of December income. February 2008 we lived off of my $1,000 Christmas bonus. I'm not kidding you. You went out to eat every night that month. Yeah, exactly. And then March, April, and May of 2008 was fully funded by my tax refund from 2007.

Wow. And then we were really struggling. Joshua, I don't tell many people this, and more recently I've been a little bit more open about it. We were struggling so bad that we did the one thing that I've never felt more guilty about in my entire life, and we signed up for food stamps in 2008.

And that was like--I felt like the scum of the earth, right, signing up for this. And, in fact, I had a business advisor. I had a group of ten guys who were my business advisors, and I shared with them. And they were all in an email list, right? And I shared with them that I was thinking about doing this.

One of them scolded me for it and told me that I needed to quit this and give back to insurance. I was being irresponsible. And that's pretty much how I felt. And I felt very condemned by him, but I was already self-condemning myself for the decision to do this, to put food on the table.

You know what the other nine guys in my group said? What? We all unanimously agree you need to kick that guy out of your business advisor group because he knows nothing about what he's talking about. Go do this. This is exactly why that funding is available for people, and everybody else is the ones who are abusing it.

The reality is, Cliff, you are going to succeed. We all believe in you except for that doofus. And, of course, he's in the group and getting this. Because he had poured it on heavy on me, and they poured it on heavy on him. And they said, "Do not listen to him." I mean, this is all nine other guys.

Absolutely, do not listen. You are going to make so much money that when you see how many taxes you pay in the future, you will have no guilt for having ever been the recipient of that. And the funny thing is--well, it's not funny--but the thing is we were on assistance for six months.

And when we went in for renewal at our six-month point to see if we could go for the next three months, they had changed some wording on something, and they asked me about-- "Go ahead and sign this form. Check here. It says that you don't have a pension." I said, "Well, I do have a pension." They're like, "What?

You have a pension?" I'm like, "Yeah." So the original time when I signed up for the first time, they never asked me if I had a pension. They just asked me, "Do you have any savings?" We're debt-free, but all we have is $1,000 in the bank as an emergency fund, and we're working towards building a bigger one and stuff like that.

So they said, "Okay, well, it's no big deal." But they never asked me if I had a retirement account or anything like that. The thing is I did. I had $120,000 in a retirement account. Well, as soon as they learned that six months in, they turned it in, and they actually put me in for fraud.

Really? Yes. They filed it under fraud, and they said, "Don't worry. We have the documentation." You didn't sign any form. So you're the one person who got accused of fraud on Food Stamps. Yes. I had a fraud case brought up, and of course it was all dismissed and stuff like that.

But guess this. I had to pay all six months' worth of assistance back. Every single penny of it I had to pay back. Don't you feel great? The one guy who was using the system for good purpose, and you were the one accused. All of that because I had $120,000 in a pension.

I didn't know anything about this stuff, and they didn't ask me, and it wasn't holding it back. And I was always told you can't touch a pension. So we got all of this stuff going on. So we're now--we don't have the tax refund anymore. What are we doing? And I'm thinking I need to go get a job delivering pizza or whatever the case may be.

And I decided, you know what, this pension got us into this problem. I'm not going to the bank to take out a business loan. I'm not going into debt. I'll go out and get another job if I have to just to pay some bills. But even if I do that, I'm not going to make enough money to really move the needle.

Stephanie was willing to go get a job if she needed to. But, you know, I said, you know what, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take some money out of my pension. I'm going to take $14,000 out of my pension. And, of course, I knew I'd pay $4,000 of that.

I had to set aside to pay the penalty for early withdrawal and the taxes on that money. So that gave us $10,000, and that's how we lived for, what was it, July, August, and September. That's how we made it through that. And then by the last three months of the year, my business was able to pay me a paycheck for the last three months.

And the total net was $11,000. So the timeline then--okay, so from January to August is when we had to get through--excuse me. So the first nine months of the year, that was basically going on savings. And then by the end, you were able to get things profitable and wind up with $11,000.

My paycheck started to roll in October, November, and December of the first year. And since then, things have gotten progressively more abundant. Progressively better. 2009 started out a little bit better, and I started to be more confident. I raised my rates to $95 an hour, then I raised my rates to $150 an hour.

Ironically, the higher my rate was, the higher my success rate was of landing clients. Even all the way up to the end, when I say the end, I don't do one-on-one right now. But I was at $300 an hour, and I was still getting too many clients, and I was working too many hours of doing one-on-one, keeping me from creating things that would actually bring a greater return overall.

And so I went to my mastermind group and I said, "Guys, I'm at $300 an hour, and I need to know, do I raise to $600 an hour or $1,500 an hour?" And my mastermind group says, "You need to stop doing hourly." And that's when I quit doing one-on-one.

So how did you figure out how to create a business behind a hobby? So for me, it all developed organically. I started podcasting as a hobby, and one of the things that happened pretty much out of the gate, my audio quality was not that great because I had very cheap equipment.

I had a lady say, "Cliff, you had mentioned that you were saving up to buy some new equipment." And she says, "How much would that be to get that mixer and those microphones that you're talking about?" I said, "Probably about $400 or $500." She says, "What's your address?" And she wrote me a check for $500.

I was like, "Wow, that's amazing." And people started sending in little donations here and there, and it started turning out to be a pretty significant thing. In fact, in 2008, one of the things that I had done is created this thing called Plus Membership, where we would actually create more episodes and new podcasts.

And whatever we were doing already, we would give you for free for the lifetime. We're going to continue to do that. You'll always get this free. But if you want more from Cliff and Stephanie, we're going to create $10 a month. And we're going to give it access to every episode of every show that we do.

And that built itself to where it was making like $28,000 a year. So, we knew that people were interested in contributing, and so that was a way that we knew we could make money. We had already been approached by DirecTV and Time Warner Cable and some other advertisers. So, we knew we could make some money advertising, having advertisers on our show.

We had a great relationship with Mardell Christian Bookstore for eight years. As a matter of fact, our only personal debt was our mortgage, right? Well, for four and a half years, Mardell Christian Bookstore paid our mortgage. That was nice of them. They didn't write the check to the mortgage company, right?

But we knew how much our mortgage was, and the sponsorship of one podcast covered our mortgage for four and a half years. That was the only personal debt we had. All we needed was enough money to pay for expenses of utilities and our grocery. When did you start the group coaching, or the group classes?

Because that's your primary business, right? Yeah, so that started March of 2011, and it's very interesting. So, how much more time do you have with me? Go for it. As long as that battery on my phone doesn't die, we're good to go. All right, man. If you're good, I'm good.

All right, good. I've waited long enough to get you on the show. This is fun stuff. These are the kind of things I love to talk about. So, one of the things that I decided to do is start selling equipment. I had some one-on-one coaching clients that were paying me, and this one guy bought a big, huge set of equipment.

I looked up this company online, and I called them up to ask them some questions. And he's like, "If you're going to order this, will you call me back? Because if it comes into my sale, I get a credit on it, right?" He's a sales rep. And I said, "Sure." And so I called him back, and then I called him back the next day for a small order for another client, and then I called him three more times the next week for all these people who wanted equipment.

He says, "Cliff, would you be interested in becoming an official reseller? What's all this stuff? Tell me what you're doing." And I told him. And he's like, "Man, that sounds incredible. I would love to be your personal rep, and what I will do is you tell me what equipment you get.

I will give you really, really low prices. You'll pay just a little bit more than what we pay, and then you can sell it at whatever cost you want to your client. And we'll ship it blind to your client. So, Joshua, if you were to buy a package from me, you're going to pay me whatever I've charged, and then I'm going to give you a paid receipt that shows that you paid me for that, and it's going to have everything on your end.

I'm going to take the money that you have, and I'm going to keep it in my account for a little bit. I'm going to send your order to my supplier, my account rep, Scott, and he's going to then have his warehouse ship the equipment to you. But inside the equipment, it'll have a list of all the equipment that's inside the box, but no prices.

It's completely blind. And it looks like it comes from me, right? And then they turn around and send me the invoice, and I have 20 days to turn around and pay them. But that's no problem because you've already given me the money. I'm holding that in escrow, waiting for that to come in.

I get to keep the difference. And the profit margin is really good on a lot of it, really good. And so what happens is that I started to see that as a really great income opportunity, especially since my one-on-one consulting--we're going back again to when it was hard for me to land clients, right?

It wasn't hard for me to land clients at all when I offered to talk to them for free to talk to them about the equipment that they need. And my hope would be that if I give you 30 minutes to an hour and help you figure out all your equipment needs specific to you for free, I hope you'll buy the equipment from me, right?

And I never forced anybody to, but that was the unspoken expectation. And I would say nine out of ten people that spent 30 minutes with me bought equipment from me. And individually, I was coming up--I was drawing wiring diagrams and all the-- I mean, you didn't have to worry about knowing anything about what cables are, mono, stereo, insert cables.

You didn't have to--I would do all of that for you. I drew diagrams. I priced it all out. And I sent you the invoice. You paid it, and now you do it. I got to the place where I was making about $4,000 to $5,000 a month every month-- That's great.

--in profit on equipment sales alone. That's awesome. It was awesome, I thought, but it wasn't. So what happened was, 2009, things start really taking off. Have you ever heard of Dan Miller before? Yes. So Dan Miller, very close personal friend with Dave Ramsey--I had heard about Dan forever. Dan's like this dream come true.

Let me send you a book. My friend Dan Miller has written a book called "48 Days of the Work You Love." Oh my gosh, is this my water? It is. Wow, I've had a full glass of water, and I thought I drank it all in one. So anyway, interesting thing.

Dan Miller, to meet him and to just tell him how much his book, "48 Days of the Work You Love," has had an impact on me, that was a dream come true for me. Did you read the book as part of the transition? Yeah. No, I wrote it after I made the transition.

So I'm now trying to live out the work that I love. I don't need a transition plan. I need to know what the mindset is to do this. Honestly, you remember I told you I had a hard time charging people money. I really felt like I was doing the wrong thing because I was getting paid to do something that was fun.

I just got off the phone with somebody for an hour. I just had the time of my life. You're a techno nerd. Exactly. I was just glad somebody wouldn't hear me talk about geeky stuff. And now I'm going to ask them to pay me to have all that fun?

My old mindset was you get paid based upon how much you hate what you're doing. And the more you hate it, the more money you should make. The more difficult your job is, the more money you should make. That was my old mindset. And of course, that doesn't make a lot of sense because then garbage collectors would make half a million dollars a year.

So 48 days was what changed? 48 days helped me change. Dan's big message is you're going to find greater levels of success when you're working with things that you are passionate about rather than trying to take something that you despise and hate and try to make as much money as you can out of it.

Following work you love is always the key to greater income and wealth moving forward. So you said $45,000 a month was great, except it wasn't. Except it wasn't because I told on Pursuing a Balanced Life, I went to my audience and said, "Guys, I just read a book about setting goals.

And now it tells me that these are the steps to achieve any goal that I want." And one of the things it says is believe it's possible. Number two, write it down. And number three is tell other people about it. So I've already set this goal of meeting Dan Miller and talking to him and telling him how much he's meant in my life.

And also if we're just going to make that next step, that next leap on this gigantical, to have Dan Miller as a guest on my podcast. So I've already believed it's possible. I've written it down. And now I'm telling you guys that this is my goal. I published that episode.

Forty-five minutes after I published it, I get an email from this guy named Andy Traub. Andy Traub says, "Cliff, I listened to your podcast. I just want you to know I'm a close personal friend with Dan Miller. Dan already knows who you are. We've been talking about you for months now." And Dan never--he says, "When he hears that this is your goal, he goes--let me do the introduction.

Within seven days of recording that episode, I'm on the phone with Dan Miller doing an interview for my podcast." Wow. PodcastDancerMan.com/DanMiller, by the way. It's still there. So I do the interview. After the interview, Dan Miller says to me, "Cliff, can I set up a consulting call with you?

I want to talk to you about my audio of my podcast." I didn't know this, but Dan had no desire to talk to me about consulting whatsoever. He wanted to fill me out about how I handle myself as a consultant and a coach. Right? He was kind of--it's kind of like secret shopper kind of deal.

Right. The reality is Dan Miller helps people launch new careers and people who become self-employed. And those people have businesses, and those people need to market. And they listen to Dan's podcast, and they're always asking Dan, "How can I start a podcast?" Dan's got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who follow him who want to create a podcast just like he has.

And they flood him with questions. "How do I launch a podcast?" And he has nobody to send them to. Wow. And he wants to send--he's thinking about sending them to me. He hasn't told me this. Right. But that's the whole thing. So get this. Dan and I, a week afterwards, we get on a call, and so he says, "So Cliff, tell me what you think about my podcast." And he was just seeing how it would handle--I mean, Dan's a coach.

He teaches people how to coach. And so here I am. Okay. I said, "Dan, you know how much of a fanboy I am, right, and how much it means to me that I even have this opportunity." I said, "But do you really want to know what I think about your podcast?" And I said, "Because here's the deal.

I'm willing to be honest with you and talk to you about it, but I realize at the risk of being honest, I may jeopardize any friendship or relationship that you and I might have." I said, "On a scale of 1 to 10, your podcast is about a 3, and it's actually really bad." I said, "I can tell you that I've sent thousands of people--thousands of people--to buy your book and read it, and I have--like almost every single person would tell me they absolutely love your book.

And I've told those same thousands of people to check out your podcast, and about 9 out of 10 of them tell me that they just can't listen to it because the audio quality is so horrible." He says, "Cliff, I've got to tell you, I thank you for telling me that you--we get that feedback quite often ourselves." He says, "What can I do to change it?" And so I talked to him about different equipment.

He says, "What do you have?" He says, "Tell me what equipment you have in your studio." And I told him, he goes, "So you sell all this, right?" And I said, "Yeah." He says, "How long does it take to order?" I said, "Well, I could have it in with three days." He goes, "Three days?" He says, "What are you doing next weekend?" And I said, "Why, what do you need?" And he says, "Well, Joanne's going out of town to visit some relatives and a friend in Colorado.

I'll be here by myself. If you want, put all that stuff in a box, come down to my place and spend the weekend with me. You can stay in my guest room. I'll take you out to a show in Nashville and we'll spend the day and you can hook up my new studio." Wow.

And that started something like I never dreamed would be possible. And what happened was I did all of that. His podcast audio quality has been top-notch ever since. Actually, another ironic story. So he starts talking to people on his podcast, right? And he had somebody else that was doing the production of his podcast, post-production.

And so I had fixed him. He's got all new equipment. And his podcast literally went from a three out of ten, it jumped all the way up to like a seven out of ten, right? But it wasn't a ten. It was a seven out of ten. And the reason why is because his podcast helper who was helping him, it wasn't his full-time career.

He just helped him as a friend, right? He just figured out how to do it and helped Dan get him set up and launched as a podcast. Well, he was recording in Audacity and he was using the Lame Encoder. And he was recording it as a very low bitrate file so that it would transfer via FTP faster.

And as a result of that, it was crunching the crap out of his audio quality. And his podcast still sounded terrible. Even with great equipment. Even with amazing equipment. And for me, that's a seven out of ten. But he's got this equipment. It shouldn't sound like this. And he was telling everybody how excited he was.

And my audio sounds so much better because I'm working with the podcast. And I said, "Dan"--I wrote to him an email. I said, "Dan"--or actually, no, I called him. I said, "Dan, will you do me a favor?" And he says, "What?" I said, "Will you do one of two things.

Number one, would you either let me do the post-production of your podcast? I won't charge you a penny. I'll do the post-production of your podcast every single week. Or if that doesn't work out for you, because I know you have a relationship with the guy that's helping you now, would you stop telling people I'm helping you with your podcast?" Because I don't want that kind of publicity.

I said, "Dan, I pride myself in audio quality." That's a double whammy. You've got to tell him twice. I know. And he goes, "Cliff, take it over, my friend." He says, "The guy won't be heard or anything. Yes, he's a good friend, but the reality is it's not his area of expertise." And here's the deal.

I don't do post-production for anyone. I've never done post-production for any client ever. But I still do Dan Miller's podcast every single week, and I've done it since 2009. Wow. Well, that's why it sounds great. Yeah. I was in Europe with my family for two weeks, and I'm processing Dan's podcast while I'm in Europe.

Wow. And here's why. I set up Dan's studio. He's telling people. He's talking to his community all the time about me. And within the first 30 days, I took on 25 new clients. Wow. All right, so I'm going to get back to why it wasn't a great deal to make $4,000 to $5,000 a month selling equipment.

Because at that time, my rates were $150 an hour, and I had everybody coming to me. Dan told me about you. I want to hire you one-on-one. I want to hire you one-on-one. And how much is it? $150 an hour. Great. Sign me up. When can we start? About three weeks from now is when I can do it.

Why? Because I have all of these hours all day long I'm taking these equipment calls, and I'm spending all of my time creating these custom diagrams. I'm doing that stuff. And the thing is, is the profit margins are good on a majority of them, but some of them are not as good profit margin, and there's a lot of time.

There's not just the time on the call, but how much time I'm putting in. I mean, I'm going way above and beyond by giving them wiring diagrams and all this other stuff. Right. I'm sending them audio recordings of our call so that they can go back and listen to it.

And the thing is, is that I was not able to take on these new clients because I had all this equipment. And I couldn't just shut down selling equipment because I'm making $4,000 to $5,000 a month, and that was a majority of my income. Right. That was where my income was, but yet there was this, and it's like, but how long is that going to come, right?

So I was sharing -- guess what I did? I went to my podcast, Pursuing a Balanced Life, and I told my audience. I was like, I got all these new clients. I used to get Dan Miller on the show, so I now understand why you do it. So I went to my audience and I said, guys, I am just so stressed out.

I've got all these new clients, but I have no time for them because I have this and stuff. And of course, you know how transparent I am, right? So I have one listener, David Dufour. Yeah, no, David Doucette. David Dufour is a Podcast Answer Man listener. David Doucette was a Pursuing a Balanced Life listener.

David Doucette emailed me -- or no, yeah, gave me some audio feedback. And he says, Cliff, I'm going to share three words with you that will forever change your life. Stop selling equipment. He says, those three words, stop selling equipment. Here's the deal. Cliff, you are so transparent. I already know all the details.

I know how much money -- you make $4,000 to $5,000 a month, every single month consistently. You've even in your episode, when you were talking about it, you said how many hours a week you're putting into it. Did you realize you make $1,750 an hour? You make $1,750 an hour selling equipment.

And you're saying yes to selling equipment. You're saying no to $150 an hour clients so that you can say yes to $1,750 an hour. Stop selling equipment. So the next day, I stopped selling equipment. And the next thing I know -- You don't mess around. You take action. I basically instantly started saying no to every single person who wanted to hire me to help them with their equipment.

And I said, I can't help you with equipment sales, but what I can do is offer you my consulting. I charge $150 an hour, minimum of one hour, and you can ask me any equipment stuff that you want. But here's the deal. You don't have to buy from me.

There's no expectation that you'll buy from me. In fact, I don't even sell equipment anymore. But if you want me, you can -- And a lot of those people wanted the free advice, and they were going to get the equipment anyway. So I didn't get as much of that, but I started to be able to take everybody Dan was referring to me.

And the thing is, people Dan referred to me were referring other people who were referring to me who were referring to me. And next thing you know, I'm booked solid. My income tripled as a result of that. That's awesome. Two months later, I started selling equipment again, but I only sold one thing.

And it was the number one thing people wanted. They said, "Cliff, what do you have?" And I said, "I have this, this, this." And they said, "Everything you have in your studio, put it in a box and send it to me." Same thing Dan said. And so ever since then, I've sold the Podcast Answer Man equipment package.

One package. If you email me and say, "Cliff, I don't need that big of a mixer," there's links below where you can buy it from an affiliate, all the stuff all on your own. But if you want -- the only thing -- I don't make exchanges. I only sell this one package.

It's an automated process. And so now I -- guess what? I still make $5,000 to $6,000 a month in profit on the one equipment package. That's awesome. So, yeah, that's the story. That is amazing. It's just so neat to hear how -- a theme that I talk about a lot on the show and, frankly, that I'm doing myself is just move.

A lot of times, I think -- we're sitting here at Podcast Movement in a long hallway. And a lot of times, we want to see -- we want to be able to open up all the doors and look through and then pick which one we get. But the reality is -- the metaphor that works for me is you're standing at the end of a long hallway, and you can't see any doors, but you start walking down the hallway, and then there's a door.

And then you can open that door, and you can say, "Oh, do I want to go in here?" And if not, close the door and keep going. And then at some point, as you walk, you start to see the doors emerge. And you can do it prudently. And what I appreciate about your sharing all those details is that you can do it prudently and carefully.

But at some point in time, you've got to start walking before the opportunities emerge because you never would have had that opportunity with Dan Miller if you hadn't been already podcasting. And if you hadn't had the opportunity with Dan Miller, if you hadn't been selling equipment, you wouldn't have been known as a consultant.

And it just works over time. And then you look back and see the plan. Yeah. So, that didn't answer, though, the class. I know. I was realizing. Where does this class come from? So, now I'm doing all this coaching and consulting, right? So, let's fast forward to where I'm actually making $300 an hour.

All right? People are paying me $300 an hour to work with them. And I had four coaching clients one day, two hours each. So, they were each paying me $600, two in the morning, two in the afternoon. All four of them hired me that one day for the same thing.

"Will you teach me how to use Adobe Audition? I have no idea how to use the software." So, two hours, I took somebody who had no idea how to use Adobe Audition. And by the end of the two hours, they knew what they needed to know. 30 minutes break.

And then I start from the beginning. And I teach somebody how to do it. That's mind-numbing. Same questions, everything. And then I went to lunch, came back, started from the beginning, went all the way through. And then I--fourth time--and then I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is exhausting." It's true.

It's like that was great. I helped four people. They got what they paid for. I made $1,200. That was nice. Actually, no. I made more than that, didn't I? $600, $600. So, I made $2,400 that day. Woo! Yeah. I'm exhausted. Right. Like, this is going to kill me if I do this again.

And so, what I decided--it was October of 2010. I had decided to start a mailing list. I'd heard about creating your mailing list for years, but I never got around to it. October 2010, I decided, "Yes, I'm going to do a mailing list." So, from October to December, I had 200 people on my mailing list.

Now, I didn't do anything like, "Sign here for my free gift that I give you." No. My mailing list opt-in form says, "Please give me your name and email address if you would like to be notified the next time I have a new product or service to sell you." You're a brilliant internet marketer, obviously.

So, that's exactly--I mean-- That goes counter every bit of advice from the gurus. Yeah. So, it's like, "I only want you on my list if you're interested in me emailing you when I want to sell you something." Right. Otherwise, don't sign up. That's exactly what--that was my approach. So, I had 200 people on my mailing list.

So, it's December 2010 is when this happens, this four things in a row. And it occurred to me, "Why don't I create digital video training tutorials where instead of just going through it off the cuff, why don't I take what I just did and take all those questions I know that they have and why don't I create a video tutorial that's two hours and I'll sell it for $100?" That's one-sixth the price.

Right. The thing is, I'd actually have to not do consulting calls to create that digital tutorial. So, it's going to cost me money to create the product. And then I thought to myself, "What if I could get people to pay me to create the product?" So, I'll create an online webinar and sell access to the webinar.

It's like, "Listen, I'm going to create a webinar where in two hours I'm going to show you everything you need to know about Adobe Audition." Right. And by the end of the two hours, you'll have learned all this stuff. And not only that, but you'll get it at one-sixth the price for $100 instead of $600.

And unlike my consulting clients, you're going to get a high-definition video recording that you can watch over and over and over again. And not only am I going to do that for Adobe Audition, but I'm going to do it for Audacity, for GarageBand. I'm going to show you how to install WordPress.

I've got the seven most popular things people hire me for. I'm doing a webinar for every one of them. So, I send an email to my mailing list and say, "Listen, this is exactly what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it. And here's the deal. You can sign up for any one of these at $100 a piece.

Or if you sign up for all seven, you'll get it for $595." I made $16,000 in 10 days. 200 people on my mailing list. That is awesome. $16,000 in 10 days. And not only that, that was $16,000 to spend the next couple weeks building the product that I just sold.

I didn't have the product yet. They prepaid for the product that was coming. And so, I did--it was the Podcast Answer Man Boot Camp webinar series. And so, I did all seven of them in a two-week period of time. And I recorded them. And they were high-definition and everything.

And instantly, I emailed all those people. And guess what? I started to make those all available for sale for $100. And now, people said, "Cliff, I'd like to hire you for one-on-one." So, I'd get on the phone. And during that consulting call, they would say, "Can you teach me about Adobe Audition?" "Yes, I can actually spend the time with you now or for $100 after this, I'll just add it to your invoice for our call today.

For an extra $100, you have a two-hour tutorial for me." They said, "Yeah, put that on there. That's great. I'll watch it tonight." And so, I started selling it one-off. I put them on my website for sale. And I started--and also, not only that, but I set up my electronic shopping cart to send a notification to my phone.

And I had my phone set up to where every single time I got a notification that I had made a sale, it goes, "Cha-ching!" I love it. Literally, my phone during the day was going, "Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!" And then at night, I had to put it on, you know, "Do not disturb." But while I was sleeping at night, "Cha-ching!

Cha-ching! Cha-ching!" It was like, "Oh my gosh, this is incredible!" Right. "This is amazing!" And I was still--so, that's how digital products got started. That's how my tutorials got started. And then, what happened was--it goes back to Dan Miller again. It was--let's see, that was 2011. So, it was--yeah, it was 2010.

So, the first--it's January now of 2011. And it's time for me to go on this cruise. Dan Miller asked me to come on his No More Mondays cruise to actually speak about podcasting to his community who had paid to join this cruise. He's like, "You and your wife want to join us?" And I'm like, "Sure." And the thing is, it was still--you know, even though with that money, it was still a little bit tight, and I was wondering how things were going to be financially.

Things hadn't completely taken off at that time. And I called Dan up, and I said, "Dan, would it be crazy if I--instead of bringing my wife and kids, if it was just me?" He says, "Well, we're going over Valentine's Day, so it probably wouldn't reflect as well on you." I sit there, and I said, "Well, Dan, I'm committing to coming, but I'm also bringing my kids as well." So, not only did I commit to the cost of what I was concerned about paying for Stephanie and I to go, now I'm paying for all three of our kids to come with us because we couldn't figure out the childcare and stuff.

So, all five of us decided we were going to go on this cruise. So, this was in--the cruise was February of 2011, and what I--the problem was is I needed to actually figure out how was I going-- you know, there was a--we needed to drive to Florida, so I needed to figure out a week preparing to leave, a week, you know, basically of the cruise, and then there's two days of travel both times, and then a week to recover from getting back.

That's going to be an entire month without any income. Right. And so, what am I going to do for income for that month if--because most of my income was relying on my one-on-one consulting. And so, I went to my mastermind group, and I said, "Guys, this is what's going on." And Pat Flynn had recently done a five-week training course for $800 with a friend of his, and he was talking about it.

And I'm like, "Five--a training course. Hmm. I wonder if I could do that." And then we talked about it, and they said, "You should--you should so do that." And I said, "Well, I need--you know, I need $16,000 is what I need." And I'm like, "Okay." So, here's what happened was I decided I'm going to take all of my video training tutorials, and I'm going to put them in a sequential order over a course, and it's four weeks.

Each week, I'm going to give them a list of which tutorials to--I'm going to assign them those tutorials for that week. And as you go through these tutorials, I'm going to give you unlimited access to ask me any questions you have along the way. And for the entire four weeks, you have unlimited access to ask me anything, and I promise you I'll answer every question you have.

And then every Friday of this course, I'm going to do a weekly webinar, a coaching webinar, showing you video answers to any of the video-related questions that might be necessary. And so, I said, "This is podcasting A to Z, and it's $800." And that was--that's what I was going to do.

And so, I need to sell, you know, $16,000. I need to sell 20 of these. And so, I said, "God, this is what I want to do." I set it as a goal. I wrote it. I believed it was possible. I wrote it down. I started telling everybody about it, and I basically put it on sale.

And next thing you know, cha-ching, you know, $800, $800. And before we left on our road trip to Florida to get on the cruise, there was eight people who had signed up. Stephanie is driving most of the drive because I'm in the passenger seat with my Wi-Fi hotspot, processing people's questions about the course, and I'm selling them via email on this course.

And, you know, 15 minutes after I respond, cha-ching, okay, got that person. By the time we get to Florida, we have like 13 or 15 people signed up. On the cruise, I signed up three people on the cruise. And then we get back, we drive back, and it's a week before the course is starting, and I think there are 17 people signed up, and I'm like, "Guys, I need three more.

You know, I just need three more." And here's the deal. I just trust it's going to work out. The Monday the course started, the 20th person signed up. Boom, right there. And that's how Podcasting A to Z began. And that was back in the day. And basically, it was unbelievable.

After the first week, most everybody said, "I've already gotten more than $800 worth out of this." And everyone told me, "You should charge double this." And I waited three more sessions before I heard it over and over again, and then I changed the price to $2,000. It's gone up since then, right?

No, it's currently still $2,000. And that's the primary--so the cool thing about it is that over time, as you've built these out, you've actually achieved the dream of multiple streams of income and a diversified base, which is awesome. Yeah, and people contact me all the time now, and they say, "Cliff, I'd like to hire you for a one-on-one.

I hear you're the go-to guy." And I said, "Unfortunately, I don't do any one-on-one coaching and consulting outside of my four-week training course, but here's a link to my course that shows you all the details, and I guarantee you this is the best way. If you want to work with me, it's the only way you can work with me, but it is the best way that I work." And the first thing that I recommend that you do, click on the link to the sales page, but just go straight to the bottom and read the testimonials first.

Because if you do that, you'll understand that this is not just any ordinary online coaching course. You are literally having me as your coach for four weeks. And, of course, some people say, "I want to have somebody work with one-on-one." I say, "That's wonderful. I have two people that I know and trust.

I've taught them how to podcast. They now, today, are full-time podcast consultants, and I can gladly refer you to them." And every time I refer somebody who doesn't want to take my course to them, I make 35% commission on anything they do for the first 90 days. Awesome. So I want to shift gears to advice and to introduce it.

I'm going to tell you a story. You may or may not know this about me. And because the cool thing about your story is it demonstrates how it is possible over time to take a hobby and turn it into a business and to do it with podcasting and other forms of media.

And even though you don't publish a monthly income report, you've done well. And you've built things slowly, organically over time, but you've built a really solid business that supports your family comfortably. So you may not know this, or you may never have connected these dots, but I emailed you in July of 2013.

Okay. And, excuse me, July of 2013. And so the story behind Radical Personal Finance was I got sick and tired of listening to other people share their opinions, which I knew were wrong. Yeah. And I would listen to people, especially in the field of finance, and I would think about this person has such a massive stage.

They got all these people listening to them, and they're wrong. They're not, you know, most of the time they were just ignorant. And I had spent a lot of time studying financial planning, and they were unintentionally ignorant. They were no meaning ignorant. And I thought somebody out there, because I have a deep background in financial planning and the science, the technical side of it.

So I thought somebody should create a podcast that incorporates good personal finance advice with a technical depth. And so I said, "Well, maybe I could do it." So I started looking for resources, and that was when I found Podcast Answer Man. And I listened to a couple of episodes, and I went on the website, and I found your free course and whatnot.

And I said, "Okay, let me try it." So I had a $15 voice recorder, digital voice recorder, which I had gotten with my Dragon Naturally Speaking purchase. And I sat down in the middle of my bed, and I said, "Well, I'm going to record the show." And that's still episode one of Radical Personal Finance.

And I just talked. It was 30 minutes, and I said, "Here's my vision for a show. Somebody should create this. Nobody's doing it, so I'm going to do it. And here's what I think it'll look like, and here's what makes me angry about most finance advice." And then I figured out -- I started a WordPress blog.

I figured out how to do it. I bought a Libsyn thing. You recommended Libsyn, so I clicked through, and I bought a Libsyn thing, a subscription to host my audio files. And I watched your -- I figured out how to set it up from all your free videos of, like, "Here's a media host," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I went ahead and set it up, and I started doing it. Then I figured out how to buy the call recorder software or something like that for my PC, and I figured out how to record an interview, and I reached out to some people that I liked in the finance industry and recorded those.

I didn't have an external microphone. I was using an onboard microphone for my laptop in a room that was tiled and a hard-surface desk. So you can imagine how great the audio quality is. But I did some interviews, and I actually was super excited about it. And I don't like getting up early, but at that time I was working a full day as a financial planner, and I was waking up at 5 in the morning, a couple days at 4 in the morning, excited to work on my show for 3, 4, 5 hours.

I'm watching Cliff Ravenscraft videos at 4.30 in the morning, cup of coffee. I'm trying to get this stuff done. And then coming back, I would go work a whole day, and then I would come back at night, and I was working on a show. I was just excited about it.

So I published 10 episodes in my first three weeks of the show. Now, here's the problem. I was a financial advisor, and as a financial advisor, you're not permitted to make any public-facing statements because it's considered to be marketing. So I never told anybody I was a financial advisor.

I just said, "My name is Joshua Sheets," and I talked about it because I had done research, and I thought I could do a certain-- I thought I could make these steps, and if I-- I thought, "Okay, if I take these certain actions, then my show will be fine because I won't mention my firm.

I won't mention I'm an advisor. I'll just be Joshua Sheets, just a random faceless guy with a financial podcast." And I had spoken with some compliance attorneys. I had figured out, "I think I can do this," but I wanted to see if I would like it. So I found out I loved doing it.

So then after three weeks, I went ahead and submitted the show to my compliance department for my firm, and immediately I was told, "Shut it down. Either your contract is done here today or shut the website down." And I was just floored because I had found something for the past three weeks that I felt like I loved doing this, and what had happened was I had posted the show.

I got 20 downloads, 30 downloads, and then I did a review on one of my favorite personal finance books, which was a book called "Early Retirement Extreme," and I just posted that review. I still remember it. I recorded it at 5 in the morning, and I'm sitting there just reading massive excerpts of the book, but I really loved the book, and I posted it, and then I didn't send it to the author or anything like that, but I was out of town on a business trip, and I wake up one morning, and I'm still at that time checking my stats every day, and all of a sudden there's a massive spike where from 20 downloads or 30 downloads to 600 downloads, and I'm like, "Whoa!

Look at this, 600 downloads." And so I remember I'm sitting there writing show outlines, and I'm just loving it. I pumped out, like I said, 10 shows in three weeks, and then I started getting emails, which was awesome, and then I had to shut the thing down, and I still remember I went home from my office.

I was devastated. I went home, and I got completely sick because, number one, I hadn't been sleeping enough. I'd been up early and down late, and those 10 episodes are still on the feed as the first 10 episodes, but then it stopped, and I had to take everything off, so I shut down the website.

I pulled all my files from the Internet. I shut everything down, which caused a few early fans of the show to say, "What happened to Radical Personal Finance? Where did it go?" And I was utterly devastated. I was sick for three days, and I remember just going home and crying.

Like, "Here's this thing that I love to do. I love to talk about this stuff," and it's given up. My wife was pregnant, six months pregnant or so. She was at home at that time, I think, so I was the sole income earner, and for the first time in years, I didn't really have any money because I had just bought a house recently, and then I had taken my family on an expensive vacation, and I had taken, with the exception of a small emergency fund, I had sunk most of my money into this house and some other expenses because I was planning to keep doing what I was doing.

And I remember it was 11 o'clock at night, something like that, and you could go and check the time stamp on the email, which is coming up in the story, and I was just devastated. I was like, "I don't know who to ask advice," and I was considering closing my practice just then because I was so enthusiastic about it.

I finally found something that I love doing, and I sat there and I said, "I don't know who to talk to." I had no idea who to talk to, and the only person I could think of was you. And so I sat down on that night, and I wrote you an email, and I said, "Cliff, here's my story.

I'm a financial advisor. I'm closing my firm," and I said, "How quickly do you think a well-run daily financial podcast could make money?" And I said, "Here's the deal," blah, blah, blah, blah, sent it off to you. Heard back from you a few weeks later, not because you're bad with email, but in the first line of your response, you said, "Joshua, I'm sorry I didn't respond to this more quickly, but I didn't know what to do with it because I had said, like, it's either this or my family stars, and Cliff, please help me." So that email was actually one of the emails that you did an episode of podcast, you read as part of your episode on Podcast Answer Man about how fast can I make money in podcasting.

Do you remember that show? Was that 315 episode at podcastanswerman.com/occupation? That's it. My email to you was that email. I remember that episode. Yeah, so you can, you go back and check after this interview. I sent thousands of people to that episode. You go back and check after that interview.

The email that you read was my email that I sent to you. Wow. And I was just desperate. On that episode, you made the comment and you said, "If I were going to go back and do it, I would just work another job so that I had time to podcast." And that was basically the answer I needed.

Because the problem was, I was confident, I said, "I know I could build a business." Like, there's nothing that, I know other people have had a head start, but I've got, I'm as smart as other people. I could figure this out. I believe I've got a message. And I had gotten some emails from listeners saying, "I like what you're saying.

This is really great." And then the spike of the 500 downloads, and then all of a sudden, downloads of a couple hundred downloads a day. I didn't know if it was good or bad or anything. But I said, "I bet I could do this." But I was stuck financially because of buying the house that I had bought, and all my money was stuck in retirement accounts.

And it's just, I couldn't touch it. And that's just, which was really frustrating for a financial advisor to not have a lot of money. I didn't know, do I need two months of income saved? If so, big deal, I can do that. Or do I need two years of income saved?

Big difference as far as how do I make this transition from working this job to this other, if I'm just going to go on income. And that idea of getting another job unlocked the door. Took me six months to decide, from July through December. And then finally, my wife and I said, "Okay, we're going to change." And it took me another six months to clear things out.

And in June 30, 2014, was my last day. I closed my financial planning firm, and I launched Radical Personal Finance on July 1, 2014, as a five-day-a-week show. And I was able to negotiate a new contract, which was enough to support my family. I actually considered delivering pizzas. I thought you could make $20 an hour.

I delivered pizzas for a week. Here I am, this super-credentialed financial advisor, and if you see my business card, it's obnoxious. Here I am, used to billing out hourly rates at a couple hundred bucks an hour, if I billed hourly rates. I'm a pretty established credentialed advisor, but I had to get out of the financial advice business to get free of the licenses.

So I delivered pizzas for a week. You don't make $20 an hour delivering pizzas. It was like 11. I was like, "I am not working for $11 an hour. This is absurd." So I quit that. I thought about going and selling cars. I didn't have any good idea. I was confident about making money online at that time.

And so I was able to negotiate a consulting contract in the financial services space, which was a behind-the-scenes thing. I didn't need to be licensed, but it used my skills and paid a far higher hourly wage, which was good. And so for the last year, I've done that 24 hours a week and then built Radical Personal Finance over the last year.

And at this point, the show is meagerly profitable. Primarily, I've focused on a Patreon account, which has $2,000 of gross pledges on Patreon, which after fees comes out to be about $1,670, something like that, and about 200 subscribers. And I'm building it as the business. And so I wanted to tell you that story, though, because what's interesting is there have been a couple other connections, but that was the reason why I wanted to have you on the show.

And I'm thrilled that we got to do it face-to-face so that I could tell you some of those details. I had no idea. I mean, we've been connected and I've been following you, especially since you've been picking up the Train with Cliff stuff online. So I never put the two and two together.

That was your email. I'm sitting here thinking, "Oh my gosh, at least I responded that way." You did. You're a professional. By the way, you are excellent with email. I'm stunned at how you do it. But Radical Personal Finance, we had just over a million downloads the first year, up to, best I can guess right now, 4,000 to 5,000 regular daily listeners.

Nice. And I'm right in that stage of having to figure out, "Okay, how do I build the business?" I'm right in that stage that you described of saying, "Well, there's a base. Listeners are sending me money because they appreciate the content. I'm establishing sponsorships right now, bringing on sponsors.

That's the first thing. And then I need to take the next step. I've got a book outline in my head, so I'm going to write a book outline." And it's interesting. By the time we're recording this here at Podcast Movement, I'll have announced it on the show. If not, I'll probably edit this out.

But when I go back, my wife and I are probably going to decide to sell our house, which will allow me--so I'm going to sell my house. I'm going to get all my money back out of the house, which will be nice. And then it'll also cut my expenses by another $500 a month, so I can continue building this business.

Because I'm pretty convinced that--and I think the evidence, not just convinced in my own mind, but the evidence demonstrates that I believe I can build something pretty cool. And whatever, if it takes five years or ten years or whatever, I believe over time it's going to work. And podcasting A to Z has been an inspiration to me because of seeing how highly regarded that is.

That might be something that might work for radical personal finance. I haven't figured out the details. It's always back to that value of how do I actually be confident? Because my goal is every time--I deal with money, so I want there to be a direct financial return. And my mental goal is anything that costs a listener or client money, I'd love to guarantee a 10x return.

And that's what I tell people. I say on Patreon, you take whatever money you save listening to my show, take 10% of that and send that to me. And do it voluntarily. So I appreciate you sharing your story because it has been helpful to me over time. And even just your personal work.

So it's pretty cool that I get to share that with you personally. That's awesome. I'm so glad. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Which leads us to a couple of questions here. Your story has been awesome. You have a unique perspective on the podcasting space. And I'd love for you--I've encouraged my listeners to become producers and thought leaders in their space no matter what it is.

And podcasting I think is appropriate for many people. It's very appropriate for me based upon my learning style, but it's appropriate for many people. You also encourage people to podcast and you're teaching people podcasting. How do you see podcasting fitting into many other people's plans? Is it a get rich quick plan that I can start a podcast and make a lot of money?

Why should people podcast? Well, first of all, if you ever think that you're going to get rich during a podcast, I encourage you to go to podcastanswerman.com/occupation where this random listener asked me how long before I can make a full-time career out of this. So actually, I think it fits into the plan of anybody who has a message that they want to share with the world.

And if the message that you want to share with the world is that you have a business that has products and services that add value to their lives and that's going to generate income for you if they come to know, like, and trust you as a result of not only hearing your voice every week, but actually getting to the place where they look forward to hearing your voice every single week and you become a point of influence in their life.

Just imagine somebody listening to you for hours a week or at least an hour a week. Then I would say that if that's your message, then podcasting is a great way to gain that audience and to get to the place where they come to know, like, and trust you.

If your message is, "I just want to encourage and inspire people out of the kindness of my heart. I'm not looking for money, but I just want to encourage people that they can become debt-free," or, "I want to encourage people how to enjoy wooden boats more than anybody else." I'm thinking of my friend Dan Matson who does Hooked on Wooden Boats because he's a wooden boat enthusiast.

He's not in it for the money, but he loves wooden boats and wants to— he basically wanted to actually become a thought leader in the world of wooden boat enthusiasts, and he wanted to be able to connect with all the most popular celebrities in that particular niche, and his podcast has helped him to do that.

Whatever it is, whatever passion you have, just imagine this. Here's the deal. Whoever you are, no matter what you do, I'm sure that whatever industry you're in or whatever passion you have, there are people who in that space are celebrities, the "untouchables," right? If you send them an email and say, "Hey, can we get on the phone for 30 minutes, and do you mind if I just pick your brain?" They're going to laugh at you.

I mean, they may not do it to your face, but they're going to laugh when they get that email, and then whether they respond to you or not, and what they say, but the chances of them actually saying, "Sure, here's my phone number. Call me on my cell phone on my way home from work." It's just not going to happen.

Chances are if you send them an email and say, "Listen, I'm going to be in your hometown. Do you mind if I take you out to lunch? I'd love to talk and chat with you while I'm in town." Here's what I can tell you. Two out of ten people will probably say yes, but 80% of the time you're going to get a no.

I mean, people just don't sit around waiting around to have conversations with you, especially when they're extremely successful and have large followings of people who are probably already asking them the same questions. But here's the deal. You create a podcast about that niche where they're the celebrity in, and you say, "Hey, I happen to have a podcast called such and such, and my audience would absolutely just be benefited to no end to be able to talk about you and the work that you're doing and what you've been able to accomplish." It's been a huge inspiration to me.

In fact, I just hope my audience just has the opportunity to hear about what I love about you. Would you be willing to be a guest on my podcast? And nine times out of the ten, even when you think there's no chance this person is going to say yes, nine times out of ten those people will say yes to you.

"Yes, I'll give you 30 minutes." "Yes, I will give you an hour of my time, and I'll be a guest on your show." And so those are ways that it fits in. That's what's exciting about it. It does, and the fact that we're sitting here right now is exactly part of that.

And when you can take it and you can go to your industry conferences-- Last year, podcast movement and FinCon was another conference. I needed to connect, and I came and was able to connect. And because of--on the financial thing, I slept in my car at the conferences so that I could get there.

But what came out of that was connections. And because of being able to invite people and say, "Hey, I'd like to interview you on my show," has resulted in many more opportunities that have happened over time. And the same thing can be duplicated in any industry, any interest, and who knows where it goes.

Financial benefits are good. They're only one of the many kinds of benefits. Three questions, and we'll wrap up. Number one, one theme I noticed in your story is that you had made the commitment-- and you still keep the commitment to be debt-free except for a mortgage? Yep, we're still completely debt-free except for our mortgage.

So that's remarkable because many people who start and get excited and pay off their credit cards don't follow through. I commend you on that. It's awesome. I will tell you this. I do have two credit cards for my business that I use. Dave Ramsey would not be happy. That's all right.

He'd be happy with the 90%. Here's the deal, though. I will tell you that I have lots of free airlines. It works when you start running a business and you start putting things-- a hotel stay and hotel reservations and all that stuff on credit cards. As a financial planner--not your financial planner, but a little financial coach, that's the best way to do it.

That is still one nice loophole in the tax code. Put all your business expenses on a business card and spend all your airline points on your personal trips. I use QuickBooks online. I have a fake account. It's called Fake Account Withholding. I go into my checkbook ledger. I go in and put all the credit card receipts in QuickBooks as soon as they're there.

I know how much "negative" my balance is on my credit card that I'll have to pay them when the invoice comes. I take that exact amount and I update it every time I make a new credit card charge. I go into my checking account ledger and I make a checking-- It's actually automatically in there all the time.

It's like three years into the future. It's like January 1, 2018. Who the check is written to is fake account withhold for credit card. The account that it comes out of is fake withholding. It's actually not pulling out of anything. Whatever my balance is that I owe the credit card is automatically taken out of my checking ledger as far as what it tells me at the bottom.

It's already "pre-spent." That's awesome. What stood out to me is because of the commitment to debt freedom, it forced you to get creative. The reality was you could have had a credit card and used that to fund your business. You could have gone out and gotten a loan of some kind.

I'm sure your dad or mom probably would have lent you money if you'd asked them. Because of that, it forced you to be creative and to figure out a way to get your business cash flow positive. Whether that meant food stamps or whether that meant starting a course or selling a product, you were forced to be creative because of that decision.

Comment on that. I can tell you this. The fact that we were committed to being debt-free and not using a credit card, that was absolutely mission critical. Matter of fact, when we made the decision to leave my career in insurance, that was the one thing. My wife says, "Listen, if we need to sell our house and rent somewhere, that's what we'll do." She says, "If you have to go out and get another job, if I have to go out and get a job, that's what we'll do." But we were both convinced that one thing we will never do again is go into unsecured credit card debt.

It is not an option that's on the table. Even a business loan was not an option that was on the table. We were not going to go into debt. It did. It forced us to say, "What can I do? What steps do I need to take to avoid going into debt?" There's also the benefit of just the fact that your payments were lower.

This is a thing I see with entrepreneurs. In working with financial planning, many people want to start a business. They want to go out and do something. But if you've already committed yourself to a high lifestyle, if you've already committed yourself to payments all over the place, it is much easier to make a business produce a few thousand dollars a month, three thousand a month, than eight thousand a month.

It's one of the themes that I have seen. You've coached a couple of podcasters to start them off on their journey who have gone on to enjoy pretty good success. But even the common theme I see there is that podcasting is a terrible short-term business. It can work well, but any business, most businesses are terrible short-term businesses, and you always win by lowering the expenses up front so that it puts less pressure on the business and you'll reap it on the back end.

That's exactly it. My cost of living was so low because my business was--I'm working from home, so I didn't rent an office space. My Internet connection was very inexpensive. The most expensive thing that I had was my health insurance for my family. And, of course, the biggest part of this is being debt-free.

We did not owe anybody. My favorite thing I remember from Dave Ramsey was on that live event that we went to. My wife and I both consider this to be the one thing we--it was the biggest thing--was what if you had a really terrible job, you hated your boss, and he was very aggressive and mean and stuff like that, and all of a sudden you've got all this credit card debt.

He's walking around with that chain, the big chain. The thing is you suck it up and you deal with it. And he says, "But just imagine this. You don't owe anybody anything." And, of course, he was even talking about your mortgage. "You don't owe a penny to anyone. What if you went in and that guy just berates you?

All you do is you walk up and you get out because you don't need him. That's what financial freedom is." And so that's exactly it. I mean I would have never been able to leave my career in insurance if I did not have the financial freedom that I had.

I would still be selling insurance today if I did not become debt-free minus our mortgage. That's awesome. In your story, it stands out to me how important various people were to you. Almost three groups stood out. Number one, the business mentors that you attracted to yourself early and that you asked for their advice.

Number two, you mentioned a mastermind group that you're involved in. And then number three, the Pursuing a Balanced Life audience. Comment for a moment on just the importance of those people in your entrepreneurial journey. Let me just say there's a fourth group of people that I would add to those.

And actually only one person from that group was mentioned I think in this. And that would be Dan Miller. And so basically it's other people who have -- that fourth group are -- I would describe them as -- it's a group of people who have a tremendous amount of online influence or at least a following of people who all of a sudden found out and discovered my brand.

They were the "the right people" that noticed who actually not only recognized that I was passionate about what I was doing, that I had a good story, but they could tell that I had a good heart and I really cared for helping and serving people beyond just the dollar figure.

And as a result of that, they grew a friendship and they felt like they would -- wanted to be my friend, which blew me away. These super extremely successful people. But I mean the fact that my friends, my close personal friends include the names of Dan Miller from 48 Days to the Work You Love, Michael Hyatt, and people like Ray Edwards and Pat Flynn and all of these other people.

And as a result of that, every single time I made one of those friendships. And it's not like I ever sought them out. You know, there was no formula of let me see how I can get on their radar and how can I get to the place where I win their confidence.

It's just God has blessed me with the exposure to the right people at the right time. So that is that fourth group of people that has been an incredible blessing. But yeah, plans fail for lack of counsel. But with many advisors, they succeed. I don't remember what psalm in the Bible that is, but it's been on my office wall forever.

But plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed. And that was the thing for me at the very beginning. I wanted to have that group of ten people that I knew that had more business experience than I did and that had more life experience -- success in other areas of life than I had.

And from various different backgrounds and walks of life, I asked those ten different individuals, "Would you be willing to be on a pesky email list where I can ask you questions and you're going to be inundated with every response from all other nine people? Would you be interested in being that?" And so that was my advisory board that dropped down to nine after a couple months.

So that group was essential to me. Are they still involved in your life? No. It was just first season. None of those original people are still involved in my life today, but I couldn't have gotten to where I am today if it weren't for those people. It was -- literally, they were there for me for the first 18 months where they were the people that I turned to when I had a decision to make or I was really struggling and didn't know what to do next.

And so those folks were there. Today, I still have relationships with those folks, but they're not the people I turn to for advice. Other groups came up. So obviously pursuing about that audience, I mean, that audience today, I have I think 680 episodes of Pursuing a Balanced Life, and there are over 1,000 people who have listened to all 680 episodes and have been there since day one.

Wow. So that is an incredible group of people. Just to give you an idea, one of those people found me -- well, actually, he hasn't been there from the very beginning, but one of those people, just to give you an idea, I was just sharing some of my goals, and I was shutting down Plus Membership.

I said, "I'm going to start giving this away for free. If you want to still contribute, it's all voluntary from this point forward. I make enough money here. I just want to start giving away all my content for free." And one person who listened to Pursuing a Balanced Life said, "Here's my voluntary contribution." If you go to gspn.tv/check, you can see the letter of his explanation.

Have you heard the story? I've seen the check. It's worth going. It's a $12,000 check. It's awesome. That was his voluntary contribution. So just, I mean, that audience, the Pursuing a Balanced Life -- and not just that audience. I'm very open and authentic in Pursuing a Balanced Life, but yes, I do turn to my audience, and I tell them things.

Even some of my business advisors today kind of say, "You probably don't want to talk about this one. You probably want to keep this one around." But every now and then, I just like, "You know what, guys? Pursuing a Balanced Life audience, let me just tell you, this is what's going on, and I'm really struggling right now." And I shouldn't be struggling.

I'm probably the luckiest guy on the face of this earth, but this is what's going through my mind right now, and I'm really struggling. But, you know, so I haven't listened to every episode of Pursuing a Balanced Life by Amy Scheider. I've probably listened to, I don't know, 20, 30 episodes.

But from time to time, maybe even more, 30, 40, 50, it's hard to know. But I actually -- I've thought, because I've enjoyed -- I discovered years ago that I'm a verbal learner, and it changed my world. And I think you are, too, my guest. I don't know if you identify as this, but I actually think by talking.

So for me, the most cathartic event that I can do, the way I can solve problems is by talking. And so because of that, for my own personal benefit, I've thought about simply starting something similar, just not trying to be professionally branded, anything. It's just me talking so that I don't have to annoy all my friends all the time.

That any time I want to talk something through, I can just talk into a microphone. But the other benefit of it that I've actually enjoyed is sometimes I just want to -- I just want to -- I don't want -- I spend a lot of time learning. And so I spend a lot of time consuming audio books and reading and listening to podcasts.

But sometimes I get tired, and I just want some fluff in the background. But I still like to engage with something. So I actually -- oftentimes when I'm doing the dishes, I'll turn on Pursuing a Balanced Life, just because it's encouraging to me to hear the ups and the downs of somebody else.

And I feel -- I've tried to cover this in my show and not just -- my show is not an interview show, but I do a lot of interviews. But I try not to interview just experts, because it's so frustrating, because experts often have a polished facade. Everything is perfect.

Everything is great. So the fancy recorder died, so we'll finish on the backup recorder. It actually is encouraging just to hear somebody else -- hear somebody's struggles, because here's the reality. We all struggle. Nobody has all good days. No matter who they are, everyone has a struggle. But most of the time when you hear other people's lives, you hear a rich person talking on stage.

They're talking on stage, and they're going to present the positives. But the problem is that rich person has just as many problems as the poor person. They just don't necessarily have the problem of running out of money. Or the person that has a marriage, they have difficult days, too.

And so it's very hard for me to share as much detail. I'm a pretty private person, as you do, so I cringe sometimes at the details that you share. But I still listen sometimes, just because it encourages me to hear. And I feel like that's a really valuable aspect of it -- of your show.

And so I feel like that -- it provides a real value. And then when you even see the impact that that value has had on other -- the value that that's had on other people and on your own life, the Dan Miller connection, it's pretty cool to draw those connections.

Yeah. I mean, being authentic and sharing some of that stuff that's cringeworthy -- there have been times when I put something online, and I'm like, "Should I have done that?" And incredible things happen as a result of it. You might be interested to know that of all the episodes of Pursuing a Balanced Life that are out there, there's probably about 20 or 30 episodes of Pursuing a Balanced Life that will never see the light of day.

Really? Yeah. And there's probably -- I'd say there's at least three or four that maybe 200 or 300 people got before I actually took it back offline. So, I mean, there are some things -- So you do pull some things out. There are some things that I pull back.

I've never told everybody, I'm going to share every single detail of my life with you guys. Right. But what I will tell you is that I believe in being authentic and transparent, and there are some things that are just not appropriate for me to share. And those are the ones that I typically pull down.

Like, my real dad, biological dad, just passed away this year, and I did not have a wonderful relationship with him. And there were times when I would say things in the -- actually, there are still episodes online that I've got in the archives early, early on, back when it was only Plus members who could get it, but now they're open to anybody.

But there are a couple episodes there where I shared some really authentic feelings about how I did or did not feel about my dad, and I felt really weird sharing it. But I shared it because I felt like, you know, I'm certain there are other people who struggle with this, and they need to know that they're not alone and stuff like that.

So, yeah, I'm an open book, and I share a lot of information. And as long as it's appropriate to share, then I'm okay. And even some things, there are some things that most people don't think that's appropriate, but I still feel comfortable sharing those things. The last question is this.

You're a normal guy who, especially at a place like this, you've achieved some notoriety and some celebrity. I'm interested to know what you've had to do and learn to change, or just how you've learned to deal with that as a mini-celebrity within this space. I'm still learning to deal with it.

I am. And I struggle, to be honest with you. Coming here is one of the most difficult things for me to do for so many different reasons. Number one, I'm an introvert, like crazy. And an introvert, there's a lot of people who don't understand what an introvert is. They think an introvert is somebody who is shy and never wants to talk to anybody and just wants to be inside of a shell, and that has nothing to do-- that's more personality, but it's not an introvert.

The difference between--an extrovert, when they go into a room and they talk to a crowd of people, they are energized by that, so that when they--let's just say they go to a networking party or all the stuff that's going on at this conference, and then at the end of the night, they go to the hotel room and they say, "Wow, what an incredible day.

This is exciting. I feel great." Right? An introvert is me. An introvert is somebody who I can go into a crowd, I can look like I'm networking and enjoying myself just as much as the extrovert that you think is the extrovert, right? I can have a great time and I'm engaging everything and stuff like that, but what's happening is I'm giving of myself to you.

I'm forcing myself out of my comfort zone of having conversations, interacting, and all of these different things, and then I'm having a great time. It's wonderful, but when I go to my hotel room at night, I feel like my life force has been drained from me. So that is one thing that I know.

One of the things that I've learned that I need to do is I need to pull back every now and then. So at 1230 this afternoon, I left the conference, went to my hotel room, put my workout clothes on, grabbed one of the rented city bikes, and I rode to Chipotle.

I had a guy who ended up joining me, but at least it was one guy instead of having 50 people in a line waiting to talk to me. But it's weird because I come here and I believe so heavily in the value of my audience and I want to know them.

I love what we're doing here. I get to know you on a much deeper level. Before, you were just a guy on Instagram that's lifting weights and using training with Cliff, but now I know you so much better and I'm thankful for this opportunity. What happens is I would love to have what you and I are having here with all 75,000 people that follow me.

I would love to have this interaction, this level of engagement. It's just not humanly possible. And honestly, the thing that I struggle with the most is I probably had at least 100 people today who came up to me and told me how much my content has helped massively impacted their life in a positive way.

And they've told me their personal stories. And the worst thing in the world, and it eats my heart up, is that 10 minutes later I'll have no idea that I actually talked to that person. And that kills me. I hate that more than anything. And there is. I could actually go up and go out of my way and introduce myself.

A couple things I've learned to do is, "Have we met before?" I've learned to not use the--I'll never use the phrase, "It's nice to meet you." Because we talked for 25 minutes last night. We met at NMX back in April. And I'm like, "Gosh, I feel--" It just kills me.

There's nothing worse than that. For me, the most horrible thing about being a mini-celebrity, a big fish in a small pond, is what I consider myself to be. The biggest thing that I hate is coming here and having people who absolutely love me and adore me and what I've been able to be for them in their lives, and they're not able to come away with, "I matter to Cliff Ravenscraft." And the fact is, they do matter, but I don't remember them.

And I hate that. Does that make sense? That's the biggest struggle in the world. This is really one of the most difficult things that I do is to come to these conferences, but I feel like I have to come. It means a lot to me. But I can tell you this.

I have every opportunity to pull some relational strings and actually get a two-hour interview with Dave Ramsey if I want. I guarantee you I can make that happen next week if I want to. But I can tell you this. I've been to Dave Ramsey's place, and I've shaken his hand, and I can tell you right now, 15 minutes after I walk out, he has no idea who I am.

And I don't fault him for that. I don't think negatively of him, but I just know that to Dave Ramsey, Cliff Ravenscraft is a nobody. Do you know what I'm saying? Not as a person, but just as a relationship. I don't exist in his world. You know what I'm saying?

And the interesting thing, you know Dave Ramsey has a mastermind group he meets with every week, and he has for 10 years, right? Right. It's called the Eagles Club. You know, Dan Miller's in it. Right. Gosh, I'm drawing a blank. David Foster was in it. David Foster is a guy who was in his group for that full time.

He passed away a couple years ago, came very close, personal friend of mine. Like half of the group that Dave meets-- Yeah, those guys are all personal close friends of mine. And for whatever reason, I'm even a big deal in their circle. But I remember going to David Foster's funeral and almost using myself, using my relationship system to say, "Hey, I should matter to you." It's like, "Yeah, I'm friends with Dan and so and so and so and so." He's like, "Oh, it's great to meet you." And I just know that five minutes later he'll never remember talking to me.

And so I know how that makes me feel, knowing that I'm probably not going to ever be on his radar. And I hate to know that there are people that probably maybe feel that way about me. Does that make sense? It is, but I think that's what's great about podcasting is because of the less formal nature of it, Dave has to maintain his on-air persona.

He can't--in traditional radio like that, he could be vulnerable, but he can't have the same vulnerability that perhaps he could have in a podcast. But I think everyone who listens to your content knows that, because when you listen to enough hours of content, you get to know somebody. And even though it is a one-way street, you do feel like you know them.

And I actually don't like--I'm not a celebrity fan, and I often will choose not to-- I just try to--me and the way I handle it, I try to give people an encouraging word. If I know them, I know who they are, I try to say, "Keep up the great work," and not put the pressure, because I know they feel that way.

But I think anyone who listens to your content knows that. But it's a change. We're not taught those skills. And the difficult thing is if you look at my Twitter account, you'll find that I don't follow anybody on Twitter anymore. I've just become so intentional about who I have genuine, real, authentic relationships with, and I try to keep from having any of the facade.

I don't follow many people on Instagram. I don't follow anybody on--I mean, anybody on Twitter. I follow my wife, my kids, and two human beings, and then I follow five brands. And I've got over 15,000 followers, and I used to really be extremely active. I cut all that out because it's like these people, I don't know who they are, and I don't want--for whatever reason, I don't feel like I want to--I'm not getting-- this isn't the greatest way anymore.

Twitter used to be something amazing. And so what I did is I switched over to Facebook, and what I do now is on Facebook, I had thousands of friends. I'm almost at my 5,000 friend limit on my personal profile, and I have these thousands of friends, and all these people are on my newsfeed.

I had no idea who they are. I just had no clue. Maybe I met them once at a conference. I have no idea if I even did that. So I literally spent like three weeks unfollowing all that. Now, I keep them as a friend, but I unfollow them so they don't show up in my newsfeed.

And now what I do is I still have them as friends, and as I go to a conference, when I make a deeper connection, like you and I had not just this, but you joined me for a bike ride the other night, and so did Harold Rhee and Hans Menzel and Sean McClellan.

So I went back to my hotel room, and lo and behold, I'm already connected as friends. Of course, I was already following you on Facebook, but I looked up those other guys. We're already Facebook friends. But now I've had a really deeper connection to those, and now I've went in and followed them.

And now all of a sudden, now when I actually see their Facebook updates in my newsfeed, it means something to me. And so that's what I've decided. That's one of the ways that I'm managing this. I'm not going to go here and every single person that shakes my hand and shoves their business card in my hand, I'm not going to go back and follow them.

But if I've actually made some kind of connecting point, something that's a little bit more than a handshake and three-minute conversation, then what I'll do is, "You know what? I'm glad I got to take that a little bit deeper. I'm going to go and I'm now going to follow them, even though we're already friends.

Or if we're not friends on Facebook already, I'm going to add them as a friend and I'm not going to unfollow them when they accept my request." And so those are some of the things that I'm doing to do it. And what that helps me to do is I don't feel as guilty about somebody who shakes my hand, says, "I really appreciate your podcast.

You helped me get started, blah, blah, blah," and then they're gone in five minutes. I don't feel so guilty about that. But what this is allowing me to do now, because I am so intentional about who I do and don't follow, every single person who went on that bike ride with us two nights ago, I'm going to know them at the next conference.

Because I have been following their updates and when I see their updates, I not only have a face to a name, but I have an experience that I've had with them with that name. - Cliff, I want to thank you for coming on. I want to thank you for sharing your story.

It's an encouragement and also packed full of lessons and I appreciate it. So podcastanswerman.com, gspn.tv, and where do people find information on podcasting A to Z? Is that on podcastinganswerman.com or where do people find it? - PodcastingAtoZ.com. - And you have a free tutorial, right? - At learnhowtopodcast.com. - I want to recommend if anyone's interested in podcasting, Cliff does a good job.

Go and check out his podcast, Podcast Answerman. If you're interested in the behind the scenes, pursuing a balanced life, then also you're actively still doing with your wife, family from the heart. - Yeah, right now it's currently about once every six weeks. But the thing is this year everything's kind of been, you know, there's a lower priority in the business side of things as I've been working on fitness and health and family stuff.

So, you know, 2016 things are going to ramp up pretty big. But 2015 you'll get an episode of Podcast Answerman every week. You'll get an episode of Pursuing a Balanced Life every week. And family from the heart, Stephanie and I will get down there and record every six weeks or so until the end of the year.

- Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. - Thank you, Joshua. It's been awesome. - Told you it was a good one. Now here's my closing challenge for you. Are you today putting the foundation in place that will sustain you, that will give you the ability to go out and launch something new if you ever decide that to be the case?

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Working a job has some tremendous benefits. There's no reason why everyone in the world needs to be an entrepreneur. Some days I wish I were working a job again. But it's really nice to be in the position where if you ever do want to do something different, that you can do that.

It's really nice to put yourself into that position. And that's something that you can do today. Because it'll make your life better now if you continue doing exactly what you're doing. And it'll make your life better if you ever choose to do something different. That's the bulk of what I wanted to share with you today.

I hope you enjoyed that interview. I hope you enjoyed just hearing a little bit of Cliff's story and even just a little bit more of my story. As I told you there, there was a lot in... It's funny. When you go into certain things, there's no one to help you.

There's no one to guide you. And I remember just how I didn't know who to turn to. And he was one of the guys that I turned to. It's kind of a unique thing about podcasting. I know in some ways for some of you who are listening, I fill that role for you.

And I hope that I can do a good job as Cliff--as good of a job as Cliff does. So thank you so much for listening. Patreon campaign, if this show has been helpful to you, please sign up to be a supporter of the show. I want to thank the 207 of you who currently send me money every month for the work that I do for you.

Thank you, each and every one of you. I really, really appreciate it. That's the primary way of building the show and creating an income behind it so I can continue to do it with the pace and frequency and depth that I am doing it. I am working on bringing on advertisers.

That's been a little bit mixed up with the move as far as my launching thing. I've got to get some website done working. I've got some interviews to use at the launch. I'm just behind on everything. But Patreon, I'm not behind on that. So if you find value in today's show or in an everyday show, please consider going to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

And here is what I would love to do. It makes a huge, huge difference to me that you are a patron, not so much how big of a patron you are. And so I would ask you, if you gain any value and benefit from the show, please consider going to becoming a patron even at the $1 a month level.

I've got some bribes there and some different incentives for you at different levels for you to consider doing it at a higher amount, $3 a month, $5 a month. But even at $1 a month, I'm going to, in coming shows, I'm going to be steadily reporting the number. And Patreon won't allow me to set up a campaign where I can say, "Here's the number that we're shooting for," and then I can give you a prize.

But I do want to do something to celebrate some milestones. We're at 207 today, and I'd love to get to 250. So RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, and that means you. Yes, you. Yes, you. I couldn't help it. Seriously, you. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable?

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