Hey Dave,

it's Ralph Estep Jr. and I'm responding to your question of the month.

I gotta be honest, when I look back at my several years of podcasting, I would say the best advice I received or the best feedback I ever got was when somebody told me, go hire a speaking coach.

Because to be very candid with you, I was struggling to find my voice.

I was struggling to figure out just how do I start the conversation? How do I do those things? And I found a lady and she was fantastic.

And it has absolutely changed the way I do things.

And that was feedback.

It'd

be good to have the microphone.

That'd be good.

Can everybody hear me all right? All right, we're going to start off by, we're going to talk about how to keep more of what you make.

So guess what? This whole talk is not going to talk about podcasting at all, a little bit.

But I'm really going to go in a completely different direction because I'm going to help you do more with your podcasting.

So I'm going to jump into the first question here.

argue it so that you get refunded.

And I'm going to play Ralph straight from his phone, and then we will hear Ralph's full message after it's gone through the processing.

Hey, Dave, it's Ralph Estep Jr. I'm responding to your question of the month.

Okay, and again, Ralph is just using his phone, and here's the full one now with all the processing.

Hey, Dave, it's Ralph Estep Jr. I'm responding to your question of the month for the School of Podcasting, and that is, "How many downloads would I have to receive in order to keep on doing my podcast?" And I've thought a lot about it, and I remember when I first started.

I was so excited to have about 20 downloads, and then it went up to 30 downloads, and, and then it went to 100 downloads, and now it's over 1,000 downloads an episode.

And so to answer your question, I remember working a few years ago with you, and we talked about, "Man, if I could get this thing to 300 episode, or 300 downloads an episode, I would feel like I've really arrived." So I guess my answer right now is 300 downloads per episode.

But at the same time, in the last couple weeks, just about every week I've gotten a letter, and it's been, uh, excuse me, a letter, I mean email, from a, a listener, and they said, "You know, here's what your podcast has meant to me, Ralph." So the truth is, Dave, when I think about it, it's not really a question of downloads.

It's more a question of impact.

Here we go.

How's it going, buddy? Good morning, gentlemen.

How are you guys today? Good.

How are you? I wanted to comment about the getting yourself big, making something.

And I think the biggest problem I've seen with podcasters is they're trying to solve a money problem with a microphone.

And I think that's a real dangerous place to be.

And I'm actually going to be talking about this on Friday at the Empower Podcasting 3.

So.

You can find all of his shows over at AskRalph.com.

The first one I got was from somebody who is a founder and CEO of Podcast Booking and a YouTube growth expert.

And he started off by saying this, Dear Ralph, And as soon as I read this, I hope this email finds you well.

Well, if you know anything about AI, you know that that isn't going to work.

But then he moves on.

His name is Something Ahmed, and I specialize in arranging podcast appearances for exceptional guests.

Your podcast truly caught my attention.

And, uh,