Welcome to the visual marketing podcast brought to you by CI Marketing, where we explore how to show up consistently, be more visible, and connect with the right people through your marketing. I'm your host, Liz. Welcome to the Visual Marketing Podcast. Today I am really excited to introduce to you Cliff Ravenskraft, my guest on today's show. Many of you will know Cliff from his work in the podcast world, launching huge numbers of podcasts across the world, across the globe. I met Cliff a couple of years ago at social media marketing world in San Diego and I attended again this year and went to his talk on podcasting. So fingers crossed, everything goes well today because he has taught me everything he he knows. And so if it doesn't, it's totally his fault. But today we are going to be talking about something completely different. Now this is an area Cliff also works in, which is helping businesses through strategy and mindset. welcome to the show. It is so great to have you. Liz, I am so honored to be here and I am so thrilled to see you fully embrace all that podcasting has to offer and even going into the wild technical weeds of trying to pull this off in video as well. So my hat's off to you.~ I appreciate that so much, Cliff. Honestly, it's such an honor to to be talking to the king of podcasting. However, today we're going to be talking about something completely different.~ we are going to be talking about your work here with businesses, with strategy and mindset, and also a bit of focus as well, which is something you and I have spoken about before.~ tell me about what you've been doing in this space. Sure. So it all started because I had the honor of doing~ this four-week group coaching program called Podcasting A-Z. And through this particular program, I gave people unlimited access to me for four weeks, and I would answer every technical question they had related to podcasting. And by the end, you would successfully launch a wonderful sounding podcast. By the end of those four weeks, everyone successfully launched their podcast. And while there were over a thousand students who went through this particular version of my training and my coaching, a majority of them never made it past their seventh episode. It's not because they didn't have the technical skill. It wasn't because they didn't have great equipment and all of the stuff. It it sounded great. It was wonderful. But what I realized is that most of them had no clarity about what their desired outcome was. They thought, I should have a podcast. Everybody's got a podcast. I should have one. But they didn't have some sort of desired outcome of what that podcast would create for them. And so over time, I realized the people who truly succeeded were the people who said, Cliff, I'm willing to talk to you about some of my My fears, my feelings of inadequacy, my f you know, my imposter syndrome, and helping people through the mindset related stuff beyond just the technical how do I hook up all the equipment, how do I actually get this published to the internet? The people who wanted to go deeper and who were willing to be honest and share their fears and vulnerable stories of of what's going on inside giving them resistance to creating that next episode. It's those people I was able to help get clarity on on what they needed in their mindset to shift their own perception of who they were and their and value that they have to offer offer to others. And so I began to see a significant amount of a higher percentage of people succeed with continuing to create content as a result of The mindset work that I was doing. But I still noticed that let's just say 200 episodes in for the podcasters who continued on for a few years, I recognized most of those people were still not happy with their results. And these are people who had podcasts that had let's just say 4,000, 8000, 20,000 subscribers. Downloads per episode, however, you want to count that. And yet their income from their desired efforts of creating a business model where they could produce income from their expertise was just not consistent. And in many cases, after three years and a few hundred episodes, they still weren't breaking even on the costs. And so I got in and I Found out what was going on there. And then a lot of that had to do with business strategy. And so that's how I got into this. Like, ~ wait a second. So you before you started creating content, you had not validated that you had a product or service that people are willing to pay you money for. That's correct. I'm like, ~ so you basically you said, I just am passionate about this topic. I'm going to create content ~ content. I'm gonna build an audience and I'll figure out how to make money later. Okay, that's exactly what they did. But when we I said, you know what, some of the most valuable work we could do right now is just to put your podcast on pause. Let's just shut it down for three months. And for the next three months, let's see if we can't find somebody to pay you some money for your product or service. And once they actually found the people who would pay for their product or service, we and not just one, but three, four, five people. What do all those people have in common? And then I said, let's rebrand your show. And speak to the things that those people were interested in, the problems that you're solving for them. And then let's also only speak to those people when you're actually creating content. The problem before is they were speaking to everyone. Now they're speaking to the exact people they know who have the problem that well qualified to solve. People with money who have a pain that they're aware of, they're willing to pay to have that problem solved. And this person can do it. So Business strategy and mindset became the pillars of what I was doing. And the technical aspects, I began to recommend other people. So I already began to step away from my work in the technical aspects. I stopped calling myself the podcast answer man for eight years just to break free from that bubble, if you were, that identity that I felt painted myself into a corner for a while. And I only worked for the last eight years. on business strategy and mindset. And so that's how I got into the work that I'm doing today. That is a pretty amazing story and it makes a lot of sense and there's a lot of you know, substance to that as well, because you've actually been working with people doing this the whole time and building that as you went. I'm assuming this came from a personal perspective as well. And did you did you learn to do this yourself for your own your own business Abs absolutely. So my story is a little bit unique, when I started podcasting, I started podcasting as a hobby. And ironically, I started with no business model in mind. In fact, I didn't desire nor need any income from my podcasting. My wife and I started podcasting about a television show for fun as a hobby, the TV show Lost. And we literally grew an audience. In the tens of thousands, we then saw that people were interested in us talking about entertainment-related content. We launched several other very popular entertainment-focused shows. And now we're reaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And eventually people started saying, Cliff, can you teach me how to podcast? Can you teach me how you're producing seven to 15 podcast episodes a week in one week? in your free time outside of your day job. And I'm like, sure. And I started doing that for free. And people began to ask me. In fact, no, they began to beg me, you've got to let me pay you to do this. And that's how I started making money initially. I also had advertisers like DirecTV and Time Warner Cable who wanted to sponsor content before there were any kind of tools or mechanisms for that. So one could argue that I actually started a podcast, grew an audience And found a way that money could come in. But I will tell you the biggest problem that I faced is when I decided to turn my hobby of podcasting into a full-time career. My first year in business, I only made$11,000 net income with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And so much of that had to do with no the no clarity on my business model. And it had most everything to do with my mindset of an employee versus that of a business owner. And it also had a lot to do with what we'll probably get around to talking about a little bit later into this conversation. I really wanna get into some of these key words that you've been talking about. You've mentioned strategy, you've mentioned mindset and clarity. You know, some people might think those words are a bit fluffy and a little bit ~ new age and hey, I I don't need to get involved in that sort of stuff. I'm gonna argue that they do, because they're probably the ones who are not making it past episode seven or let's put it in another sense if they're not a if they're not a podcaster, if they're any kind of business, perhaps they've got other issues going on. How do you work with people when you know that they need that help, they need strategy, mindset and clarity? How do you actually convince them that this is an area they need to work in? But they're a bit dubious or scared of those sort of words. if somebody wants help with their business strategy, maybe most people don't come to me because they want To work on their mindset. They feel like I just got a business strategy thing. I just, you know, if you could just point me to the right framework and the right sales funnel, I will go implement. And I'm like, yeah, sure you will. But anyway, I I've been around too long to know that you already know more formulas, you know, more frameworks. You've got more, you've got more tactics and steps to follow that you've never implemented on. And I promise you, I don't have the magic one. So, so what I know is they have a they have a mindset issue. And they also have a follow-through issue. They have a commitment issue. Most people, most business owners are undercommitted and over-obligated. And this is what's holding them back. And so here's all I have to do for those who are kind of hesitant to enter into

Is there anything that you want to have as an experience of your life and/or business that you are not? Currently experiencing. Most people that I've talked to have an answer for that. We call them dreams, goals, desires, whatever. And if we are in business for ourselves, hopefully we have a few of those. So the next question is wonderful. If you were to succeed in that, what would that look like? That's the next thing that I try to get them to do. In fact, I Sometimes we'll work with somebody and say, hey, let's go three years into the future. Let's pretend it's 2029. We're recording this in 2026. It's it's July 2029. And I'm just now talking to you for the first time since we've had this conversation back in 2026. If I were to say, Hey, what's been going on in your world, Liz, ~ since we last chatted, and you said, Man, this has been the most successful th three years of my life since we chatted. I said, if that were the case, what would you have to tell me? What would your life look like for that to be true? And so what I do is I get them to project themselves into some dream future. Most people I talk with actually struggle. They struggle to imagine themselves succeeding. Again, for me, I know that this is a mindset issue, but I'm Able to help them tap into that inner child back when they were a kid, when they could make up stories in a playground and and bring up all sorts of fictional stuff. Sometimes I'm like, let's just pretend you're a fiction author and you're writing a children's story about this successful person who does this. Tell me what d just tell me a fictional story. So I get them to paint this picture of the future. And then I ask them this question. What did that person have to do that they weren't doing? And let's just so you three years ago. What is it that you found out that you had to do that you weren't yet doing when we first had that conversation three years ago? And then they instantly have the answer. They know what they need to do. And then I said, Is there anything three years ago that you realized I need to stop doing this? To make room for this. Was there anything that you had to put aside so that you could finally put your focus all in over here? They almost always have an answer for that. Then what I do is I simply bring them back into the present. So I've now got them to feel what their future feels like. And in their mind, they're like, my gosh, that it's like I that's mine. This picture that I just created. There's this philosophy that Liz, have you ever purchased anything that's in your closet, that's been in your closet for quite some time? You are unwilling to throw it away because of what you've invested in it, and it's got some emotional attachment to it, but not in a million years, if you didn't own it now, would you buy it right now?~ I hate to admit it, but multiple items that fit that Yeah. brief. Exactly. And so what I am attempting to do in this three years moving forward is to help them feel ownership of that thing emotionally. And you will work harder to keep possessing something that you own emotionally than you would to actually go purchase it or to attain it. And the problem is so many people are trying to attain things that they have no attachment. To emotionally. And this is why oftentimes people will ask me, Cliff, I n I just need to know what steps I need to take to get this. And I'm like, okay, can you tell me something? Why is this important to you right now? Well, I I I because I said this was my goal. Why is it important that you achieve attain this? Why is it important that you achieve this? And most people don't do all of the things they know they need to do because they don't have enough fuel inside to get them to the destination. The first obstacle that comes up in their way, they're like, nah, it's not worth it. And they turn back to the more comfortable things. And sometimes to get that desired outcome requires that you go through some discomfort. You you pass through a little bit of fear and take on some courage. And you and you do things that are likely to cause you to be criticized by others. But what's on the other side, you already have this felt understanding it was worth it to get there. This is what we're creating when we project ourselves three years into the future and we answer the questions, why is this important? Most people do not know why it is absolutely essential that they achieve their dream, their goal, or their desired outcome. And that's if they even know what their desired goal actually is. So those are some of the things that I would do with somebody who is hesitant to talk to me. You notice I'm not talking mindset and I'm not talking about visualization or manifesting anything. Matter of fact, I don't even I while why I resonate with a lot of those more new age philosophies and stuff like that. Quite frankly, I I just that language I I'm more along the lines of what are the actions? That you're taking that gets results. This isn't about thinking it and then it appears. It is actually taking aligned actions, getting you closer to your outcomes. And that's what I do with people. So as soon as I start having that conversation, and all I have to say is this why haven't you already started doing this thing that you know will get you there? And people will automatically have answers, and we call them excuses. And then I'm like, why you already know that you need to put an end to this commitment that you have over here, or this obligation, or this behavior, or this pattern of thinking all the time that you s you're stuck in cycles on. You already know that you need to put an end to that. Why haven't you already put an end to that? Why haven't you already taken steps to end that? And they'll have excuses. Now, excuses is nothing more than another term for what I call. limiting beliefs. And all I do from there, once they have given me their excuses, is I help them evaluate their beliefs and help them see that there is evidence to the opposite. And I help them break free from the the false assumptions that those beliefs are true. And I help them find empowering alternative beliefs that allow them to never see that possibility that action in the same way. They can't go back and and be unconscious of the fact that this is nothing more than a false limiting belief. That's how I engage the people who are hesitant to work with. I completely understand what you're talking about with the limiting beliefs. I've I certainly have been through it. I mean, if you asked me three years ago, where did I want to be in three years? I wanted to be right here making this podcast. I I built this studio behind me three years ago. Ha ha. It took me three years to get the confidence to do it. So I completely understand where you're coming from and it's an interesting perspective, but you've also broken it down in such a way that doesn't sound as scary, which I really love. Mm-hmm. Something that you did touch on was ~ you know, the fact that people need to make a decision about the thing that they're to do and and just get on with it, basically, the thing that's going to get them over the line and and move the needle essentially. As entrepreneurs or business owners, I think we often have really big lists, whether it be in our minds or on post-it notes or on a piece of paper in a diary.~ and we have so many ideas constantly. I know I wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea, I have a shower thought, I have a while I'm cooking dinner thought. how do we organize all those ideas and how do we actually turn that into a a structured process to actually choose the right thing to start on first? Wow, I love that. By the way, I am also like that. I have a thousand ideas coming to me at all times. One of my favorite tools of 2026 is this thing. I'm not sponsored by the way, but it's called the Plaud Note Pro. And I always have this little, it's a little digital audio recorder. It transfers all the recordings to my phone and transcribes them and Chat GPT helps me organize it all and process. But I record little notes to myself all day throughout the day with all the different ideas. So I have those as well. And I capture them. And I have places where they go. One thing that I do not concern myself is with this idea of organizing all of them. In fact, I have come to the place where I Today have learned to do about 25% of what I used to do with a hundred percent efficiency. And that gives me momentum in my life. Whereas I used to do a lot more. I used to juggle all of the things. I used to have massive to-do lists broken down to projects and broken down into this and all this other stuff. And every single day it's like, you know what? I'm not feeling it today. Let's just move this to tomorrow. And the next thing I would know, I wake up one morning and there's like 230 tasks today that had all been moved. And each is like, this is I I this is so overwhelming. I can't keep up with it. And so what I would do is I would actually just abandon my to-do lists altogether and I'd go through a season of life where I'm like, I will just ask myself the most important question. What is the one thing? That I can focus on today that will make everything else infinitely easier or altogether unnecessary. And that's from a quest that's from a book, by the way, called The One Thing. And I can't remember who the n the author. It might be Jay Papazan or something like that. I think that might be who it is. But anyway, it's called The One Thing. And that I when I'm in those seasons, I'm just like, you know what? Forget my to-do list. It's kind of like I had this philosophy that I, my life today. Is not to be controlled by the version of who I was previously that did not have access to all that I have access to today. You understand what I'm saying. It's super clumsy how I'm saying it. But the the idea is that there's this prior version of me that had all of these ideas, but that version of me didn't have all of the clarity and insight and distinctions and and all of the change in my Perceptions and filters and priorities that I have today. And yet somehow I feel like I'm responsible for carrying that prior of me's priorities forward into my day today. And I'm like, I didn't like that. And so I just got rid of my to-do lists altogether. Wow. That's that's terrifying to me. Yeah. ~ I don't know if I can handle not having all my coloured post it notes all over my desk. Well, ~ the thing is is and I and I think there's some balance that can be had. I still carry lists and but they're small today.~ for example, if my if my to-do list ~ in like my and I call it my inbox. This is the things that are not currently scheduled, but if I have an inbox of more than ten items, then I have to go through that. If a if an eleventh item wants to pull on it pull pop onto the list, I'm like, okay, which of the 10 that are currently on here needs to be dropped into what I call the back burner? And it goes into a file that may never see the light of day ever again. But I just, I I just stop keeping all of these open loops for my mind to endlessly wander on. Because I know this, there will never be a day where I wake up and say, okay, these are the 10 things I'm going to accomplish today. No, I know that sometimes there's going to be The one, two, and maybe three things that are most important today. And pretty much everything else that isn't a part of standard administrative routine simply can't get my focus. Not based upon the level of work that I do that has such cognitive load and emotional load and just just sometimes physical load, depending on the things that I've got to do on my plate. And so I realize like, wow. I used to try to carry way too much, is which is why I wasn't really moving any one thing forward in a meaningful way. I was moving a lot of things creeping along, but never really finding success in any of them. And so when I decided to focus on fewer things, but give it all of my protected. Attention and devotion and calendared action, everything changed. And so you did say one statement in your question, if I remember it correctly, the way that I would and what the way I would rephrase it or paraphrase it is how do I discern what my next aligned action is? There, Mm. my to-do list could have have 20, 30 different things. But when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna ask myself, today, if this were the last day of my life, if this were the last month of my life, if this is the last year of my life, what really is my desired outcome? Okay, wonderful. Based upon that, what Where am I stuck? What obstacle am I facing? What decision needs to be made? I will either start journaling about it, meditating on it, having a conversation with my own coach or my own mastermind group about it, but I will get clarity, I will get insight, and I will make a decision. And then I will have clarity. This is not the next 15 steps, not the whole model mapped out. To the success and conclusion, but just what is the next aligned step that is small enough for me to put in a block of time on my calendar, to put it there, and then put it completely out of my mind until that day and that time comes. And what I've learned that is most important is when I I get to that block of time, I have to give it what I call protected focus, which means like I'm a warrior in fighting off any. Distraction. I subtract every distraction from from my phone to to inboxes and everything else. I I just literally have to say, you know what? I have to give this my undivided attention and focus. It's two hours, nobody gets access to me. My consciousness belongs here. And and then at the end of this two hours, I do whatever I want. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you how how do you deal with distractions, but I think you've answered that question pretty well. I know, ~ especially when you're someone like me who ~ runs multiple businesses and you have staff and you have customers and you have people needing things, you know, instantly. ~ I know some of my techniques are I'll actually take myself off site. So I might work from home one day, I might go and work in a cafe,~ or go to the local library, some something that just takes me out of the location to to get on with the thing that I've popped into my calendar and I know I have to get done.~ or even just using headphones as well. I know you and I have spoken in the past about actually utilizing specific music that can help you to focus. I'd love to hear about what you use and how that how that helps you. Yeah. So there are a couple of things, and I will I I promise you I will answer that last part in just a moment, but I'll answer the first part, which is some of the tools, some of the things that I do. So first and foremost, I my phone and my computer stay on do not disturb. I'm sure you're familiar with that function on the on Apple devices. Absolutely. 23 hours a day. In 59 minutes. So 23 hours and 59 minutes a day, every day, my phone and computer is in do not disturb. It would be 24 hours a day, but for some reason, Apple requires that for there's one minute that all of these things come through and then it goes back into the. Don't ask me why. But if I could be in do not disturb 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I also intentionally go into all of my apps. And even though I am in in do not disturb, I go in and all of my apps do not. Get to put a badge. That little red thing that psychologically tries to train me like Pavlov's dog, I ain't having it. No, that's that's not for me. I you do not get to put a red cliff you owe me your attention badge on my phone under any circumstance.~ I don't I you do not get to put a a banner that pops down on my phone. You do not get to show up on my lock screen to tell me that this is what happened when you stepped away from your phone for 15 minutes. None of those notifications, none of those apps get any of that. The if I want to know if somebody has commented on something I've said on a social media platform or if somebody has sent me a direct message, I will log in and I will go and intentionally check that. And you you don't email me to tell me that it's happened. It so I turn off all of those. So I've subtracted all notifications. I also refuse. To open my email in the morning. I refuse to open my email except for a block of time called inbox processing. Usually it's an hour, sometimes it's an hour and a half, sometimes it's two hours. But outside of that time block, if you email me five minutes after that window has closed, I'll see it during the next business day's block of time. Now, am I always perfect at this, Liz? I would love to tell you that I don't ever fall into temptation and open that thing. But I sometimes I do. I have never not regretted it. I and by the way, I know that's a double negative. It was intentional. Yeah. I have, and for those who weren't following, I always regret opening the inbox Yeah. because. Now all of a sudden there's an open loop and I'm not fully present with my family. I'm not fully present in preparing for this podcast interview. It's like, I need to respond. How am I going to respond to that? That was I I did not anticipate that. So now I've got this over here. And I and my my attention is diffused into something else. And I'm like, ~ this could have so been avoided if I would not have done that memory thing of click here, type this, and hit enter. I mean, I don't. I don't even have icons to open these. My phone, the you know how they have the ability to remove apps off of your phone? I don't Yes. on the iPhone, I can remove the app and say just remove from the home screen. So if you go to my home screen, my my phone looks like this. Wow. That's my home screen. There, I I can't even muscle memory to this. But you know what? I even got to the place where it's like, man, drop down, type in Gmail, hits hit enter. Sometimes it's just a muscle thing. It just happens. But It's just it's just like yeah, your hand just goes there, right? And yeah, It it having nothing on your screen is insane. I c I couldn't even imagine that. I okay, is this where I we're gonna swap screens for a second?'Cause I have two thousand eight hundred and one unread emails.~ that's great. So I'm taking that badge off after this recording. Yeah. There you go. Because you know they're there. I mean, but Yeah, I do. you don't need the you don't need the red badge to notify you. Anyway, so so so those are some of the things that I do. And and I am learning, I am every day, I'm practicing my discipline of not checking those things outside of a devoted block of time. Here's here now, here's the thing. I will tell you, I've get I'm getting really great at taking an aligned action. Putting on the calendar, giving it a block of time and saying, okay, I'm now going to do this. Now, this is where I'll bring in my noise canceling headphones and I'll put them on. And I do use a program called Focus at Will. It's called ~ you can find it at focusatwill.com. There's a specific playlist called ~ Atmosphere, and I use the segment called Flow. And I can put my headphones on and and set a two hour block of time.~ and and and I start it and I'm like just like I it's one of those movies of some like genius person that is just like just doing this. I turn into a completely different version of myself and all of a sudden my my ~ it goes ding, which tells me the two hours is up. And I swear to you it was two minutes. I mean that's what it felt like. I just did two hours of work in two minutes. The only thing is, is that That is accurate, but if I were to think about the times when I'm not using this tool, I just did two days worth of work in two hours. Right, because you are operating it a hundred percent. I'm operating at 100% of focused efficiency with Yeah. zero distractions. Now, Liz, I would love to have everybody walk away and think that Cliff is perfect at all of this. But there's this one other distraction that still comes up. It's this guy. I haven't figured out how to get me to stop distracting me during these blocks of time. So all of Mm-hmm. a sudden I'm like, ~ I'm over here, blah, blah, blah. And it's like,~ you know what? This I've never had this. You know, I'm gonna respond to so and so. And wouldn't it be nice that the next time that this comes up, it would be great if I had a template that other people, because this has come up before, I could go and create a template. And the next thing you know, I'm 17 minutes into a rabbit trail working on creating some sort of templated automated system in my Notion account. That has nothing to do with this two hour block of time. And and thankfully, I'm getting very good at catching myself much sooner. So it's like, ~ 17 minutes. Wow. That okay. And I and so I turn that awareness and I re recognize it's like, okay, I'm aware of this. I'm not going to feel any guilt or shame about it. I'm glad I caught it. I'll go over here. I'll say, hey, it is 5 43 PM. I just took a a a 17 minute side quest. I was ~ prompted with this and I had this idea to create this and I spent 17 minutes and then I realized, wow, I just diffused my attention and focus away from my committed task for 17 minutes. I wanted to document this, that it's important to me, remind me at the end of the day in my daily reflection, to choose whether or not that gets any further action. And then I hit stop and I go right back laser focused to what I was doing. Another place where I get can get distracted is so sometimes my what my work reli relies on or requires me to send somebody an email. Now I haven't figured out a process yet, I will, for me to go in and send emails to somebody without opening my email client and seeing my email inbox. I know that this is possible, Yeah, I like it. but but I haven't Haven't worked on it yet. But one of the things that happens is I'm like, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and I open up Gmail, click compose, and like boom, I see that name. I've been waiting for that. I wonder if it's this. Click and and next I I don't know. Sometimes it's two minutes, sometimes it's 12, sometimes it's 25, sometimes it just ate up the entire two-hour block of time. I am still work, but the thing is is I'm consciously working on. discerning how can I remove these distractions, how can I navigate this better. And so I'm much better today at this thing called protected focus for my calendared actions than I've ever been before. So if you do need to write an email just from a practical sense and you don't want to go into Gmail, are you like throwing that on like a note or like using an AI tool or something to help you with that? No, I'm still I'm still I'm still doing it. Okay. And so I I just go in with with what I have it's this thing,~ it's this thing called willpower. And I and I will myself to ignore all of those things. Even those it's like, ~ I can't wait to see what that one says. And I was like, nope, this I'm not here for that. You know, and I'm I'm clicking compose, I'm typing up this person's name, I'm copying and pasting this subject line. I here I'm gonna take this draft that I the final draft of this email. Copy, paste, hit send. Close. Okay, next. I'm back. Wonder if I wonder if you could use something like Claude or or Chat GPT and use the audio function and just get it to save it as a draft or something for you. So you're not even going Yes. That all into Gmail, right? absolutely. Those tools are there. I have not yet ha the I love the AI tools and their accuracy and their ability to follow through, I would give it about seventy percent success rate. And I'm Yeah. not willing with thirty percent failure possibility. And so ~ yeah, it the There there are gonna Fair enough. be there are going to be some solutions that'll work. So for example, I could probably wr I could probably vibecode a Gmail applet will be something nothing more than a compose button and a window that'll just be there and it yeah. I'll I'll figure that out sooner or later. But right now, I'm my willpower is working more times than not. And as I'm devoted to mastering and practicing the art of practiced. attention and focus during calendared block times, it's becoming less and less of an issue. Yeah. ~ hey, you mentioned something about~ having a daily reflection. I would really love to know what you do with that and how that all works. wow. So I am going to read you something, okay? Okay. So this is ~ let's see how I can go here. I'll go to Liz and give me one second, I'm just gonna type in this phrase Yeah, sure. kilo reflection. So I want you to imagine this. In ChatGPT, I have a thread every day that is labeled the date, the day of the week, and it says reflection. Mm-hmm. And throughout that day, I am logging all sorts of different things. I'm interacting, just you know, that don't have dedicated threads. I at the end of the day, I might have 30 or 40 different audio files on here that all get merged into one. And I get one transcript, and it's called the daily log. So my daily log gets put in there. Now, here is what I give ChatGPT. It says, okay. In this thread, I have now shared all of the context I want included in today's reflection, including any relevant call transcripts, side reflections, decisions, emotional processing, business updates, relationship updates, strategic questions, and anything else I want included. After reviewing the full thread and this daily log transcript, please give me a full, complete, thorough, detailed reflection of the day. Please use the following notes when creating the style and format of this daily reflection. Specifically, Treat the entire thread as context, not only the final daily log transcript. Please review all transcripts previously shared in this thread. Integrate the daily log transcript with earlier transcripts, conversations, insights, and decisions I shared throughout the day. Do not simply summarize chronologically. Reflect on the deeper patterns, thresholds, insights, emotional shifts, business implications, relationship dynamics, and spiritual slash philosophical themes. Use clear subject section headings with numbered major themes. Be detailed, grounded, and specific. Name the true headline of the day. Identify what matters most, what shifted, what was learned, what was clarified, what still needs attention, and what should be carried into tomorrow. Include honest strategic critique where appropriate, especially if I contradicted my stated goals, drifted into performance, avoided something, and Accepted responsibility that was not mine, or used language that weakened my positioning. Also highlight wins, evidence of progress, integrity actions, aligned decisions, and moments where I followed through. When reflecting on calls, distinguish between enrollment conversations, relationship conversations, referral partner conversations, coaching moments, strategic conversations, and boundary moments. When relevant, Include business analysis around momentum mastermind, my coaching craft, invitation engine, CRM follow-up, client slash project prospect signals, and offer processing. When relevant, include inner narrator slash mindset reflections, but do not indulge shame or self-attack. Be accurate, direct, compassionate, and discerning. Include a section at near the end titled What to Carry Into Tomorrow with practical next actions. After that, include a strong final reflection that captures the meaning of the day in a concise but powerful way. The final reflection should be titled Actional Actionable Items, or the final section should be. The section should include any concrete tasks that should be considered for a to-do list, project list, or follow-up list, CRM update, or future action. Output the actionable items section in a notion-friendly bullet point format. Do not turn every insight into a task. Only include actionable items that represent something I may actually need to decide, schedule, send, review, update, or follow up on. Please avoid overweighting the most recent or most emotionally intense transcript unless it is truly the central event of the day. Use citations when referring to uploaded transcripts or files that were a part of the thread. If there was important context you cannot access, access, yeah. or you are unsure about, say so clearly rather than guessing. For this response, ~ please give me the full, complete, long form reflection in one continuous markdown formatted version. I am ready for my full reflection today, now. That is my prompt that goes in at the end of every day. That thank you so much for sharing that. That is absolutely phenomenal tell me what do you get from that? Like what what so you get I g your output and what do you do with it? So I take the so I it comes back and then I copy that and I put it into my Notion journal. That's the first thing. So I get that it's all stored. But I use a Speechify app. Speechify is a text to audio program. And so I copy it and I paste, I just click pa this paste button inside of Speechify. And matter of fact, I will. I don't I have no idea what will actually be said in here, so I'm a little bit concerned, but let's go ahead and ~ click in here. So daily reflections Saturday, July eighteenth. so I will just hit start over and true headline of the day. You refuse to move through the day unconsciously. That is the deepest thread connecting almost everything that happened today. You noticed the cost of certain relational patterns with your dad instead of continuing to call them harmless obligations. You noticed that your growing reluctance toward casual lunches, coffee meetings, and vague relational access is not necessarily withdrawal from people, but a more conscious discernment about where your finite attention goes. You refined your manifesto until it more accurately described the man you are choosing to become. By the way, she is reading at one point seven five X speed, and my reflections for her to read at almost two X speed usually run about twenty three minutes. So it is a twenty three minute practice at the end of each day. And then when I wake up in the morning, I do what's called a morning routine. And I sometimes will just peruse over it just for any things that like are still it's like, man, that really resonated with me. I think that's an incredible piece of advice and I think that's something I was I was actually going to ask you ~ if you had some advice for somebody who has maybe a really full calendar and and wants to figure out how to prioritize their to do list and and pick twenty five percent of their to do list and or or maybe maybe ten percent of their to do list if it's very~ and and do those things at a hundred percent. You know, how do they fit that into their calendar? But but what can they do after listening to this podcast episode? And what is the first thing that they should do? I I think that that's one really good thing they could try. Yeah, well, that certainly that I mean, getting a very conscious, mirrored reflection of what you're doing each day has been a total game changer for me. I mean, it has literally shifted my life. Now you can see behind me this this bottom section down here, there's a bunch of written handwritten journals. There's a stack of them over there as well. I used to do this manually myself. I would like in the middle of my day instead of recording Pressing record, I would literally write down, it's like, hey, this happened today, this happened today, this happened today. And then I at the end of the day or the next morning, I would go through that and I would do something called morning pages, which is from a a practice from a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. And so I've I've had a reflection practice most of my life. The only thing is, is it's never been consistent. For I mean, I've been doing this for four months straight without missing a day. And and there's never been a time in my life where there's been that level of consistency with this particular practice. So, yes, this is er I mean, one could actually download the MP3 file of this and get that entire ~ I I spoke every word of my prompt. You could actually copy that from the transcript and and paste it into your own thing. So maybe that'll inspire some people. Another thing that I would highly encourage you to do, sometimes people are not aware of their own blind spots. You can't see the things that you're currently seeing through just your filter, your lens, your perspective. And sometimes it helps to have somebody mirror back to you the things that you're not able to see. Oftentimes I'll work with a coaching client or somebody in one of my hot seats in my mastermind group and they'll say, Wow, why didn't I think about that? That's so obvious. And it's like, yeah, that it it you would think, but ~ all I had to do is ask a question. The other fun thing is I will ask a question and I'll hear somebody say something and they swear it's like, I just can't figure this out. I have no answers. I have nothing. I'll ask them a question and they'll just say something, just flowing from their from like the spirit within. And it's like just they'll just say this amazing thing. And I capture it all in my mind. I hold it right there. And then a few minutes later, I'll say, you know what? It sounds to me like, and then what I will do is I will rephrase what I just heard them say. They're like, When you say it like that, wow, that's amazing. I said, You do realize I just said to you word for word what you just said to me five minutes ago. And they're like my gosh, that was inside of me the whole time. I love this. So some of sometimes the best thing you can do is to sit with a coach who is trained to do these types of things and/or to get into a mastermind group where you can witness an entire group of people who are devoted to getting clear about their desired actions, who are absolutely ready to be honest about what's holding them back, what obstacles are facing them, being truly. Authentic and transparent about their mindset and and their fears, and then getting clarity and insight. And the problem that most people run into is they get insight and they're kind of addicted to it because insight oftentimes feels like progress. But oftentimes it's not. It's just insight. You have to actually convert that insight into now I what I would call a calendared action. And putting it on the calendar doesn't mean squat. If you get to that block of time and you are not a warrior in protecting your So my recommendation is get clear about what you want, understand why it's absolutely important to you. Determine where you're stuck, what's holding you back, gain some insight and clarity, put some stuff on your calendar and protect it like a warrior. And when I say protect it, I mean protect your focus. The only thing you're doing is that action. And then get results. And then You the results may not be desirable, but you got results. And results are nothing more than feedback. Take that feedback, and that feedback will allow you to ask the question, what's the next aligned step? Keep putting it on the calendar, keep protecting your focus. And I actually do have a momentum mastermind group that is built around this entire philosophy. It's called the momentum methodology. Cliff, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you today. I have learned so much. If people would like to know more, where can they find you? You know, my favorite place for people to connect with me first is LinkedIn. So just look for Cliff Ravenscraft on LinkedIn. I'm sure the show notes will have a link to it.~ the one thing I would encourage you to do if we're not already connected, go ahead and send the connection request with a note. Put the word momentum in it. And then tell me an area in your life where you wish you had more momentum. You'd be shocked and surprised at some of the questions I could ask you to just in a single LinkedIn DM conversation over time. I love asynchronously serving others. So reach out to me, DM me on LinkedIn. And if you're interested in a mastermind, cliffravenscraft.com slash momentum. So cliffravenscraft.com forward slash momentum. Thank you so much, Cliff. I can absolutely~ attest to what you're saying because that is how we first connected and I appreciate your time so much. So please do reach out to Cliff. He is in so generous, incredibly generous with his time and incredibly~ good at what he does as well. all of that information will be in the show notes, absolutely. So if you haven't caught it here whilst listening or watching, please feel free to check those out.~ once again, Cliff, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to our chats and seeing you again ~ in April next year in Anaheim. I look forward to it. Liz, thank you so much for this and congratulations on everything you've done with this podcast and are gonna continue to do. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Amazing. Thanks so much, Cliff. Catch you next time. Thanks so much for joining the Visual Marketing Podcast, brought to you by CI Marketing. I'm your host Liz, and I can't wait to share more episodes with you.