Jay Clouse [00:00:14]:

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. I hope you had a fantastic weekend. I'm speaking to you from the past. I'm recording this on Sunday evening. It's kind of gotten into my flow that when I record these solo episodes, I do it on the Sunday before this episode airs. And it's kinda nice. It's nice.

Jay Clouse [00:00:31]:

It's it's dark in my office as I'm reading this. It's very calm. It's Very quiet. It's very cozy. Anyway, if you live in the United States, you know that this week is Thanksgiving. And, historically, I don't actually release new episodes over the holidays. In fact, I just wrote in my newsletter this past weekend how I typically republish past episodes with a new introduction. At this point, I feel compelled to say if you don't already to the creator science newsletter.

Jay Clouse [00:00:56]:

I really think should take a minute and do so. I get more and more emails every week saying that people love reading it. So check it out. Go to creator science.com. I really think you'll enjoy it if you enjoy this show. Anyway, I don't normally record new episodes over holidays, but I've been Thinking about this episode in particular, this end of year solo episode, and I figured I might as well do it this week. To give you a little bit of behind the scenes, The podcast is growing. It's very exciting.

Jay Clouse [00:01:21]:

I've been following my analytics closely in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and the show is growing month over month. So I've been reenergized to publish more episodes and really push the envelope on making each episode better and better, and I think this will be a really great, really helpful episode. This episode is all about looking forward to 2024. I know it sounds crazy to hear that number 2024, but it is right around the corner. And this is a fantastic time of year for you to take advantage of how much the world slows down so you can find some clarity, Organize your thoughts and really start the year at a full sprint. A lot of people coast through the next month, and there's nothing wrong with rest. In fact, I think you should absolutely give yourself some time and space to rest and recharge over the next month. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do some thinking, questioning, and planning.

Jay Clouse [00:02:10]:

If you do that over the next month, You'll start the year at full speed while others start the year already feeling behind. So to help you get the wheels turning, in this episode I'm gonna share with you my overall goals my team strategy my content strategy my product strategy and my sponsor strategy for 2024 We'll dive in and get started right after this. Okay. Welcome back. Let's dive in. My 2 big goals that I know are carrying into 2024, and there might be more by the time we actually reach the beginning of the year, but the 2 big goals that are on my mind right now, Number 1, increase revenue. Number 2, increase mindshare. I'm gonna talk about each of those things starting with revenue.

Jay Clouse [00:02:54]:

Yes. We want to increase revenue. That probably feels obvious. It's probably something that you want to do as well. Most people would say that they wanna increase revenue, But most people don't seem to know why they want to increase revenue other than because that feels like what they should do. It feels like growth. Growth is good. Growth is the goal for everything.

Jay Clouse [00:03:12]:

I don't think it's a great reason to increase revenue I don't think you should just feel like well numbers need to go up all the time it feels nice for numbers to go up but there's a couple of key reasons why I am really focused on revenue coming into the next year namely Increasing revenue increases optionality in what we say yes to. I'm saying we, kind of a royal we right right now, but there is a team behind me at this point the team is growing which I'll talk about here in a second we really wanna increase optionality in what we say yes to things like partners sponsors projects when your needs are covered by revenue that is directly in your control what I would call direct revenue relationships transactions between you and your audience me and you when your financial needs are covered by direct revenue you have a lot more optionality in turning down other projects that don't necessarily excite you but you know bring in money A good example of this might be sponsorships or partnerships or brand deals. When you have a platform, when you have an audience of people that brands want to reach it becomes easy to monetize your platform on behalf of brands and that revenue can be really nice that might be something that's hard to say no to or to let go and then suddenly you normalize the revenues coming in on a monthly basis not thinking about how much of that might be third party revenue that isn't exactly what you want but when you want to make change, suddenly, you're faced with a near term drop in revenue. If you were partnering with brands that you didn't necessarily align with or love and you're like, know I I kind of want to pause on sponsorship but if that was a significant part of your revenue that's hard to do so we would increase revenue from direct revenue sources so that we have more optionality to say no to things and change the way we approach things especially with third parties to give us more optionality if that seems a little unclear or vague don't worry I'm gonna dive into deeper as we go through the episode here just sharing my overall goals to start so that's one of the reasons that I'm trying to increase optionality but the other thing is I want to be able to invest more in the business this is something I think makes me different as a creator than a lot of my peers I have Lower margins than a lot of my peers because I am actively investing in people, in projects, and things that I think will pay off in terms of long term growth. And a lot of creators kinda treat their business like a bank account where it's, Well, I'm going to have the bare minimum of expenses and whatever I have left from my revenue is kinda gonna go into my pocket. But I I pay myself a salary and so a lot of revenue stays in the business and I do special projects with that, things like branding projects or design projects or that's what the YouTube channel came out of. I've invested A lot more in the YouTube channel than it has earned back yet. And I can do that because I'm willing to invest in projects for a number of years, knowing that long term, if I believe in them, they're going to turn a profit.

Jay Clouse [00:06:23]:

So there are lots of projects that are on my mind, more and more projects all the time that I want to invest in that usually means investing in people and that can be kind of expensive. So increasing revenue gives me the opportunity to invest more. So that was goal number 1, increase revenue and why we wanna do that. Big goal number 2 is increasing mind share. And what that means is I want creator science to be the 1st brand, the 1st idea to mind when it comes to the best educational content for creators. I literally think about conversations that people have that I want creator science to come up with in conversation. When I see someone saying, what are the best newsletters for creators? I want creator science to be tagged first. When people say, what are the best YouTube channels for creators? When people say, what are the best podcasts for creators? I want creator science to be the first name to mind.

Jay Clouse [00:07:14]:

So what we're trying to grow is the space in people's minds that when they hear the word creators, They think of creator science, and this is one of the go to places for educational content for creators. I think we're definitely in the mix of that conversation right now. I would say we're definitely in a a top five position. You know, there's some other big players, Colin and Samir, come to mind, and we're in the mix. We're in the conversation. We're seeing natural word-of-mouth and natural growth in that way. I wanna continue to push the envelope there and grow it. That is that association is really what helps businesses grow.

Jay Clouse [00:07:53]:

When there is an idea a concept an audience that you wanna be closely associated with and you wanna be the first to mind because there are out sized rewards to being the number 1 that's what I'm trying to do next year and that's why investment is important you can great you can gain mind share By investing in the business, investing in ways that you get in front of more people more quickly, investing in making better content so that people can't help but talk about it, That's what I'm trying to do. We're trying to increase revenue. We're trying to increase mindshare. Let's move on to team strategy for 2024. This is really exciting. I shared this on social media last week. Maybe you saw it, maybe you didn't, but I am making my 1st full time hire In the next, I guess, month or so on the team, and it is my wife. Technically, I'm the 1st full time hire.

Jay Clouse [00:08:45]:

I'm on w two already. I'm full time. She will be on w two. She will be full time. She's going to be really my my right hand. She's gonna be a full partner in the business. She's, I'm thinking of her as my my general manager, my COO. She's really going to oversee operations.

Jay Clouse [00:09:03]:

She has an incredible skill set in terms of design I watch her interact with Canva and and I'm incredibly jealous the way she can do things in Canva it's just fantastic I can't wait to bring her on board and weaponize that skill set for us she's also Currently in a community management role with, a community of financial advisors. She's been doing it for a few years now, and she's so good at it she's beloved by that community so she has all of the all of the skills all of the complimentary skill sets that I would love to bring into the team and it's in her and she's my wife and I trust her implicitly so I just Can't wait to see what we can do by joining forces full time and doing this. It's scary because there's a lot of operational things that I'm doing right now that I'm obviously going to have to hand off to her. But when it comes to delegating, one of my biggest issues is trust and control. And if there's anyone on this planet that I trust to take control, it's her. So this is very, very exciting. I think it's gonna have A good impact on our our marriage, our relationship. I think integrating our lives will just be fantastic.

Jay Clouse [00:10:21]:

I see the way she cares about people. I see the way that she helps people succeed and overcome challenges. It's going to have a huge impact on the business, on the people we serve. It's just gonna be awesome. There are already, people that I consider and see as members of my team. We have Connor who runs the YouTube channel, essentially. I hired him as a video editor. He has really stepped into, like, a full producer role on the channel.

Jay Clouse [00:10:48]:

He does so much there. He's incredible. He's working pseudo full time on it. We have Jonathan who is our thumbnail designer. We have Nathan who does our audio engineering, but, Nathan's actually moving Out of his role, he's giving up freelance. He has a full time job that, he loves and covers his needs, and he's just dropping freelance. So We are bringing on a new podcast editor, and we have Izzy, my virtual assistant. She's fantastic as well.

Jay Clouse [00:11:19]:

So we have a pretty solid team here working behind me but there are other things that I want to hire for or I'm at least considering hiring for in the coming year first and foremost whoever I hire to replace Nathan I'm hoping to grow them out of just an engineering role an audio engineering role and actually into a producer role on the podcast. I'm doing a fair amount of editing on the podcast right now the non video episodes I do a fair amount of editing on which really isn't where I should be spending my time and if it wasn't on me to do that editing then we would get ahead of schedule and things would be a little less stressful so I don't know if that'll be hiring a producer out of the box I actually have someone that's gonna be doing a trial and starting with us here shortly and he might grow into that producer role. We've already spoke. He's interested in it. So whether it's him or another producer, a podcast producer is on my shortlist of, roles that I'm looking at hiring for in 2024. Then I have these 3 potential roles that I'm not sure if I'm going to hire anyone into them, but they're of interest to me. The first is what I would call a short form specialist. Conor does incredible work on the YouTube channel.

Jay Clouse [00:12:32]:

He could do short form if he wanted to, but we really want to focus his time and energy on our long form videos. I think there's space for hiring a short form specialist that just really goes above and beyond and wants to really make this, like, their thing for a while to prove they could do this and, Really kinda treats me like talent in a way. You know? They're ideating on some of the short form video. They really, really have a grasp of reels in TikTok, and they can help push me in the direction of breaking through on those short form mediums and that they can do the editing as well. That's something that's on my mind. I know there are a lot of people who are offering this. I get pitched this type of thing all the time, but the pitches are bad. I I rarely get a pitch that's Not boilerplate.

Jay Clouse [00:13:21]:

Not obviously a spray and pray sort of situation. I really want to see somebody going above and beyond to prove that this is something they want to do and they're adept at doing because I think there's a lot of space we could grow on Instagram predominantly, also TikTok, and those same videos do pretty well on LinkedIn right now. So I'm looking for a short form specialist potentially to help us really grow on on social media in that way. Another potential position is what I'm Thinking of as AI specialist. I've been playing around with some AI stuff. My guiding principle with AI, as you've maybe heard me say before, is When I think about what will I utilize AI for, I wanna feel comfortable sharing how I'm using it in complete transparency. So the rule is If my audience knew I produce this with AI, would they think less of me or be less interested in my work? If the answer is yes, then I don't do it. So I'm not saying I want an AI specialist to help me write what goes on Twitter or write my essays.

Jay Clouse [00:14:26]:

I really want to continue my input being creative, thoughtful stuff. But I am interested in having someone who really understands what's possible right now, show me what's possible, Push the boundaries. Decide what fits for me. And it's not me researching and ideating. It's someone saying, I understand the space. I'm going to apply what I know about you and your work to this and give you some options of how this might make sense in your workflow in your business in ways that feel in alignment with your integrity and your interests. Let's see what's possible. Again, this is something that I'm gonna be really picky on.

Jay Clouse [00:15:05]:

I I need someone go above and beyond to show me that they can do this and do this really well and be really unique. The thing is with a business my size being kinda small, I can't push others. I need people to care so much that I can be pretty hands off until they ask me for help or want things, but I can't direct and give you the direction. I can give you feedback. I can give you input. I can give you, you know, my priorities and what I care about and what's in alignment with me, but I can't be driving these projects. So if somebody is interested in this, you're hearing AI specialist. That sounds like me.

Jay Clouse [00:15:44]:

Cool. Show me what you can do. Make me believe this is something that you can do and that you can really get in the driver's seat and not depend on me pushing things forward. And the last team position that I'm considering is what I would call development partner. I have an idea for a SaaS platform that I think can be really, really good. I'm interested in building that alongside somebody who's Great not only as a developer, but also has strong taste from a UX perspective. I've met some great developers. I know they could build what I'm looking for, but the user experience, the interface is just as important to me.

Jay Clouse [00:16:26]:

And if that's not a skill set that the developer also has the engineer of this, then now there's 2 people that I'm hiring, and it becomes much more complicated. So I'm looking for a great partner who is strong in development and some front end UX design to potentially pilot this SaaS product. And I don't think the need for it's gonna go away anytime soon, so I'm not in any rush. Yeah. So I don't know I don't know if this will kick in in 2024 or not, but those are the positions that I'm thinking Obviously, I'm hiring my wife full time. I'm hiring a new audio engineer who I hope becomes a podcast producer. But those 3 speculative roles that I'm considering, in case they're interesting to you as well, I think of them as a short form specialist, short form video in particular, an AI specialist to help show me what's possible and to think about where it might fit in my business in alignment with, how I think about AI. And 3rd, development partner, somebody who might help me develop a SaaS product.

Jay Clouse [00:17:23]:

Wow. I really didn't know if I would have a full episode worth of plans to share with you here, but we are maybe a 3rd through this. And, we're already at about 17 minutes. So maybe I'll go a little bit faster, try to get through some of this stuff moving forward, but hopefully, you're enjoying this this planning exercise that I'm going through. Next, I wanna talk about audience strategy. I also would call this content strategy. I was thinking I might have separate categories here, one of audience growth, one of content strategy, but they're really hand in hand. Audience growth for me predominantly comes from My content strategy.

Jay Clouse [00:17:56]:

Yes. There is, of course, paid advertisement that I could do for audience growth. There is, of course, collaborations, partnerships, earned media there's a lot of other things that might go into audience growth but for the purposes of this episode I really want to talk about my content strategy which is at the core The heart of my audience growth strategy. So for a while, I was getting a little bit down on the podcast. Podcasts are the hardest platform to grow. It's It's been a little bit of a challenge over the last year or so. But as I shared at the beginning of this episode, over the last several months, we've seen some pretty significant month over month growth, and Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which shows me that people are tuning in. People like it.

Jay Clouse [00:18:34]:

I'm also seeing more people talk about it on social media. So that's been really, really exciting. Thank you if you have shared about it on social media. If you haven't, consider talking about it when you have an episode that you like. But as a result, Something I've seen as a trend is the episodes that I have that are solo episodes, things like this, Seem to do really well. More people seem to click play on episodes like this. The retention has been really, really high on episodes like this. So Next year, I'm going to be sprinkling in a lot more solo episodes in between the interviews that I do.

Jay Clouse [00:19:10]:

People seem to like them. I have a lot of fun doing it. Of course, if I'm off base and you aren't enjoying this, let me know. But you're listening to this, so seems to suggest that I might be on to something. And, You know, as much as I love talking with other people, there is a lot that I'm doing that I think can be helpful. You know, inside the lab, I am doing office hours and hot seats and sharing a lot behind closed doors that people members tell me they get a lot of value out of I want to bring more of that To the public through the podcast. But as I've also shared before, podcasting is not a Audience growth strategy, to be honest. This is a relationship platform.

Jay Clouse [00:19:52]:

It's a distribution system that you own, but it is not how you attract new audience this is really where you deepen relationships with people who have already found and enjoy your work elsewhere So for the purposes of audience growth, I am doubling down on YouTube in the coming year. We hit 20,000 subscribers about a month ago on the YouTube channel because we had this video with Jenny Hoyo's go super viral. It's at, like, 1 and a half 1000000 views right now. This past weekend, we just crossed 50,000 subscribers over on YouTube. So the audience growth rate there is pretty crazy. It's It's growing a lot, and I'm taking advantage of the community tab on YouTube as well. And the engagement there is just really, really great. So we are gonna put more and more time and effort into making great videos on YouTube because we just see a big big return there And as people find me through YouTube, they do find their way to the podcast, to email, to social media.

Jay Clouse [00:20:52]:

It's not as clear and effective as I want yet, which is something I wanna talk about here in a second, but YouTube does have the effect of growing the overall Creator science platform. So that's something I'm really focused on is improving the pathway from YouTube to email and even YouTube to the podcast and even the podcast to email. Like, I I have a real multiplatform approach here. I feel like we're doing really high quality work in email, in podcasting, in YouTube, and I want people to experience all of those platforms if they consume those platforms what we don't really have yet is this clear pipeline or this clear user experience that moves people to those different platforms. With that huge outcome of Jenny's video on YouTube, 1,500,000 views. Yeah. We saw a bump in in podcast downloads. We saw a bump in email subscribers, but not to the degree that I would have hoped.

Jay Clouse [00:21:56]:

And I don't think that's a sign that, oh, well, YouTube growth doesn't lead to growth elsewhere. I think it's a sign that I hadn't really thought through what that customer journey or that audience journey looks like to move people in that direction. That's something I really wanna figure out next year is How to better connect these different disparate platforms so that people can find and enjoy all of them. Continuing along the content strategy here, I'm actually thinking less and less about short form, personally. This is another reason why considering hiring a short form specialist is, Personally, I'm putting less time and thought towards it because I see my work, you know, capital w work, as my long form, my long form writing, my podcast like this, the YouTube videos that we do. And I'll use That, that long form content as what kinda creates short form ideas for x, for LinkedIn, for Instagram, for threads. A lot of people build entire businesses off of making bespoke unique content for short form then moving that into long form and yada yada. But, increasingly, I really feel like what I care about is building an enduring body of work.

Jay Clouse [00:23:08]:

And I do that through my long form writing. So more and more, I'm thinking about long form and less about short form. And what I'm seeing on Shortform is that platforms like X, the things that perform the best for me, it's not what I'm doing, like, this in-depth teaching it's not about creating these long posts these threads where I'm teaching you how to do a specific thing really what's performing well for me right now is sharing personal stories and these personal stories are more compelling when they're about the interesting long form work that I'm doing you know I we make a great video we publish the video we see results and sharing the results of that video sharing what we've learned about YouTube because of that video That's doing well rather than, you know, these these long threads that I used to do of, like, here's what I would do if I was starting over today. Those are probably they they would probably do fine, But those also take time, and they're kind of gone after you publish them. So more and more, I think about Short form platforms as a journal documenting my experience creating long form work. Last thing I'll say along the content front here, I really wanna lean more into experiments as part of my content in the new year. This is something we share in the lab right now when we Ideate, come up with, run experiments. We share the results there in the lab.

Jay Clouse [00:24:29]:

I do it. Other members do it. But I really wanna get more diligent about documenting the experiments that I'm running because I'm running tons of concurrent experiments all the time, but I'm not rigorous enough in documenting them in real time like I really should start each experiment with a hypothesis I should write out my process for how I'm doing it I should document the experience and then, the results and share the results. And then I can craft an entire narrative about that experiment and share with you how that went. It's so aligned with the creator science brand. It makes my work more unique and valuable over time. That's really something that I need to do more of In the newsletter, in the podcast, on YouTube. So it's a big priority in the coming years, making my content much more experiment and results based.

Jay Clouse [00:25:17]:

So look out for that. And if you like that idea, I'd love to hear from you to make sure that I'm on the right track. Alright. After a quick break for our sponsors, I will dive into my Product strategy for the coming year and then our sponsor strategy as well. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We talked about my team strategy my content strategy for the coming year.

Jay Clouse [00:25:38]:

Now let's talk about my product strategy or maybe you want to think about it as my monetization strategy I really focus on what I call direct revenue rather than indirect revenue that is the transactions between me and my audience are just between the 2 of us. It there's no third party involved. That's the way I like my revenue generating activities generally Because it's it's a little bit more pure. Our interests are really, really aligned. And, yes, there's a great argument to be made that with a great partner, It's a win win win. All interests are aligned. All incentives are aligned, and I agree with that. You can absolutely find those things.

Jay Clouse [00:26:16]:

But it's easier when you have 2 parties rather than 3 parties. And direct revenue I think is also a little bit more resilient to macroeconomic changes or even in the micro you may have a great relationship partner, things may be great, and they may decide they just don't wanna do it anymore. So I think your business is more resilient when you have products and services that you offer to your audience directly. And that's what I'm really continuing to focus on in 2024. So for a quick recap about 70% of my revenue is from memberships through The Lab and then I think 13 to 15% is through sponsorships then I have small percentages broken down between affiliates digital products services and royalties So moving into the new year, I want to diversify my revenue a little bit, so it's not so heavy on the lab. It's I'm not trying to reduce the amount of revenues coming in through the lab. I just want to increase revenues coming through outside of the lab. And you may be thinking well Jay why don't you just raise the revenues coming in through the lab why don't you sell more spots there's a 200 person cap on the lab and so it's not really Practical to do that? Of course, I could raise the cap and and make a good reason for doing so and make the experience great and probably be fine, But I really wanna stick to my word and keep that cap there until there's really a reason why it should be higher that's not Jay selfishly wants more revenue.

Jay Clouse [00:27:46]:

So that cap is gonna remain in place. I wanna diversify my revenue outside of that, and I want it to be through direct means. I thought that would be through more traditional digital products. Like, I thought by the end of this year, I would be driving more and more revenue from courses, and that would become the predominant base of revenue for the business. But I've kind of changed my tune on that moving forward. The courses that I have, they're very goal specific. Build a beloved membership is probably the best course I've ever made. No.

Jay Clouse [00:28:20]:

Definitely the best course I've ever made, and it's teaching people how to build a membership community. Then I have podcast like the pros, which is an incredible podcasting course. I'm very proud of that as well. But those courses are not applicable to the majority of my audience. The majority of my audience doesn't wanna make a membership community. The majority of my audience doesn't wanna do a podcast. So those courses don't do a lot in the way of revenue and won't do a lot in the way of revenue because they're not applicable to the majority of people who come in the door it wouldn't make sense for me to pitch those courses to everybody that came through so I was thinking for a long time well what is the digital product that I could create that is more applicable to my entire audience and I was thinking about it through the lens of a course. But I did this fantastic exercise facilitated by Becky Pearson Davidson.

Jay Clouse [00:29:11]:

You can find her on Instagram build with Becky. It's actually build w Becky. And we did that as a sprint in the lab. What I realized was there are a lot of problems that I can help creators with along their their journey. If I think about my customer journey creators can start from the point of I just realized content creation is a thing and I want to do it All the way up through, I have scaled an organization. Right? And the lab really is for creators who are doing this professionally. There's a huge chunk of the customer journey that goes from I just realized content creation was a thing to I am now a professional creator I'm not serving that audience very well and there are a lot of problems that come up in that customer journey So if I wanted to serve that audience and I wanted to do it through courses, there was, like, a dozen different courses that I would want to make To help people at different points on that journey. It just became too much.

Jay Clouse [00:30:07]:

When you have that many products, it becomes challenging to even market and sell your own products. You don't know what product to talk about when. You really have to segment your audience incredibly well it's just challenging and I admire creators and businesses that are much more simple They have 1, maybe 2 products. And so I started changing the way I was thinking about my revenue strategy because of this. The conclusion that I've come to is that I am going to double down on memberships. In my ideal world, next year, I am selling 2 products. The first would be the lab, which already exists and will largely remain the same. It will get better.

Jay Clouse [00:30:46]:

The 2nd product would be what I'm calling Creator School. I'll talk about that here more in a second, but I'm gonna start with the lab because the lab is the greatest product that I have ever made. It's the most successful product. I am more proud of that product than anything else retention in the lab is very very high close to 90 or maybe a little bit above people love it people stick around and it's my biggest priority to not only keep the lab great but to make it better I wanna make it better and better and better. That's priority number 1. But there is a slight problem with the lab, and that's that It's not creating a great experience for people who are not in it. Because retention is high, the waitlist gets longer and longer every week, Every month. And just from a numbers perspective, most people will not get off the waitlist.

Jay Clouse [00:31:39]:

As the business grows, there is more interest in the lab than I'm able to comedy with the 200 member cap, then it'll only become more the case. With a larger audience, there'll be more people who are interested in the lab. There's not gonna be more people leaving at least not in huge numbers so the waitlist will keep growing and then people are just sitting there feeling like they can't get in and it's not great for them And since I'm planning to retain the 200 member cap, some things have to change. One thing I've realized is that, a significant percentage of the people who join the waitlist for the lab actually aren't ready for it. They're not a good fit yet. They are ambitious. They can get there. They're just not there yet.

Jay Clouse [00:32:19]:

And I'm not giving them any feedback that they're not ready. And, Previously, what I would do when spots opened up was I'd send an email to the basic members first, then The waitlist and say, hey, we have 2 spots available or 3 spots available first come first serve. And so some people who are on the waitlist who might not yet be ready for it, but were ambitious and enthusiastic. They could join the lab, and They just weren't quite the fit yet, potentially. So here's what I'm doing. I'm I'm moving away from a waitlist, quote, unquote, for the lab, and I'm actually gonna move to an application basis. And the application is there to ensure that somebody is in fact a professional creator and this is the place they should be because in the lab It's less educational content based and more, experiments and Responding to specific issues you're facing based. And that community thrives when those questions are nuanced, They're specific.

Jay Clouse [00:33:23]:

They're contextual, and they're not questions that have already been answered online elsewhere. Something else I've been thinking about a lot is how much I admire the business model of what Sam Parr is doing at Hampton these Small group forums that he enables with Hampton or maybe you've heard about in y YPO or YEC. I think there's Really good opportunity for that in the creator space, and I think I'm really well positioned to do it. And I think I could start with the lab to do so. The unlock for me that I learned from Sam is that, you know, we tried mastermind groups in the lab before actually, and I thought we put pretty good groups together. But when inevitably happens, when you depend on the members To steer and facilitate those groups themselves, they're busy people. They have other priorities. They're pressing priorities, and so things often fall apart.

Jay Clouse [00:34:12]:

The unlock is hiring facilitators as the organization, as the community to help make those groups thrive. And so I'm looking at the future of the lab, and I'm thinking about how do I not only enable and create, but facilitate Small group interactions for members of the lab. Again, this really requires those people are at a similar stage of business for it to be valuable to everybody But it also opens up some really interesting additional benefits that maybe I'll hold behind the vest a little bit right now, But, one thing that it brings to mind is in person experiences. It unlocks in person experiences for the small groups and then in person experiences for the lab as a whole. So I'm thinking about that. Those are some of the improvements I wanna make in the lab in the coming year, but it's gonna take some change. So it's really really important that the people who get into the lab are professional creators who are at the same stage of the journey because otherwise The folks who came to the lab because they are professional creators and they're trying to get nuanced, deeper, higher level questions answered or have those conversations, they start to feel like that space isn't for them. They start to feel like that space might be for beginners.

Jay Clouse [00:35:27]:

So the application is to let people know, hey. You're a good fit. You are now on the waitlist. Or, hey. Thanks for applying. You're not yet a fit for this. There is some progress to be made. That ensures that the quality and the purpose of the lab stays intact.

Jay Clouse [00:35:46]:

It'll be harder to be get it'll be harder to get in, But that will ensure that we are pursuing our mission. This is scary. This is scary because I know If you're listening to this and you're in the lab, you're currently saying, gosh. Is that me? Is he talking about me? And the answer is probably no. There there is a very small number of folks in the lab who I feel like might be too early in their journey for it to really be helpful to them. But, you know, moving forward, how how do we proceed? The application is going to be based on some objective measures that Determine that you have traction in product market fit. It's not gonna probably be based around some arbitrary revenue number or something like that. It's really gonna be looking at has this person achieved product market fit? Are they growing? Do they have an audience that cares about this thing? If not, then Creator School is the best place for them because that's going to be all about education and figuring out how do I get product market fit? How do I get myself on the track to be a professional creator? So a little bit more about creator school if this is piquing your interest.

Jay Clouse [00:36:54]:

The reality is most of the people who Consume my content and listen to this podcast or read the newsletter or watch on YouTube, they are not yet professional creators. I have the data to support this. I I have seen that it's A minority of folks who are in the professional creator category. So how do I help the majority of my audience? Again, I don't think it's one off courses. I think if I went that route I would be creating and selling way too many of these courses because I would want a course that addresses specific pain points along the journey I really wanna go the full route with somebody, the full journey with somebody to say, even if you're just getting started, I wanna walk alongside you all the way to the point where you are making a living as a professional creator, and then you might be a candidate for the lab, and we'll continue that journey together. That's a long journey. There are a lot of problems that come up on that journey. So even though courses teach specific skills, I really wanna create an experience that takes you by the hand and walks alongside you and teaches you a lot of specific skills, but maybe not in the form of these one off produced Courses.

Jay Clouse [00:38:01]:

Most products focus on a promise like, I'll help you make your 1st dollar online, which I think is actually pretty easy to achieve. I don't think hard to make a dollar online you can go on Fiverr and sell 2 hours of your time for $5 and wow you just made your 1st dollar the challenge is actually that Making a dollar in a way that also lends itself to making $100, then $1,000, then $10,000, even $100,000. Whatever you're doing to make that 1st dollar is that something that's sustainable to make a real full time living and grow a differentiated business So that's what I wanna do with Creator School. It doesn't just help you make money online. It helps you build a differentiated platform that is positioned for growth as a creator. It's not about making a quick buck. It's about creating a long term business that gets stronger every year. And And so this isn't going to be a quote unquote course with a static set of videos.

Jay Clouse [00:38:54]:

This is a growing library of in the weeds and over my shoulder tutorials that take you step by step through the competitive world of becoming a creator. Yes. This will be organized linearly. You could theoretically think about this as an always growing massive course, but I prefer to think of it as a growing library of very relevant in the weeds over my shoulder tutorials By achieving that, by creating these 2 products, I basically have 1 product that teaches people how to become professional creators and then a second product that helps Professional creators connect and learn from each other. And I think that's a fantastic product strategy to serve this large, Long customer journey. I will privately open the doors to Creator School in the in the next 2 months, and I'll be sharing it with the newsletter subscribers first, so again, if you don't subscribe to the newsletter, go to creator science.com. You will get my newsletter. You'll start to see little clues about how you can get involved in Creator School as soon as it is available.

Jay Clouse [00:39:55]:

And in case you're wondering, members of The Lab will have full access to Creator School as part of their membership as well. So The Lab, if you are a fit, if you do pass the application and you are able to get in, that is the only thing you'll ever need Buy from me. That is the the ticket to everything that I make. Last quick point on the product strategy, The book is happening. I I say that with 90 plus percent certainty. I have a partner that I'm working with. It will be much Closer to self publishing than traditional publishing, which I'll probably talk about in a future episode. But I'm very excited about this.

Jay Clouse [00:40:30]:

I've already gotten started in the manuscript, And I think it's gonna be a very unique book in a lot of different ways, but this is still early. So that's as much of a tease as I'm gonna give right now. After one last quick break for our sponsors, I will talk about my sponsor strategy moving into 2024 and then wrap everything up here. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's talk about sponsor strategy for 2024. The big thing that I wanna lead with is that I'm going to be taking the lead On sponsorships moving into next year, what does that mean? Well, I wanna create really fantastic sponsor experiences, not only in creating a good return on the spend that sponsors have with me.

Jay Clouse [00:41:13]:

But even just the experience of working with me, I want to be awesome. And right now, unfortunately, I don't think that experience is great largely because of the structure that I have put in place. This is 100% my fault and if you really want to go deep on this check out the video I did on YouTube with Justin Moore recently it's not on my channel it's On Justin's Creator Wizard channel, we did a public coaching call where he helped me talk about my sponsor strategy. And what we realized was, Historically, I've worked with partners on a revenue share basis. So they bring sponsors to the table, and they get a cut of that revenue. And they do a lot of the operations on my behalf, which is awesome in theory. And, honestly, it was awesome in practice as well in a lot of ways. Like, There are a lot of partnerships I've done on this podcast and my newsletter that were operationally easier, and There are relationships that I didn't personally have.

Jay Clouse [00:42:09]:

So those partners bring a lot to the table. The challenges as my business has grown More and more of the partnerships that I run and want to do are coming directly to me. And so in a world where I have a newsletter partner and a podcast partner. If that sponsor wants to work with both of those platforms, I've actually had to send 2 separate introductory emails, 2 different invoices. It's not been a great experience for the sponsor, and I really, really wanna improve that. So we are gonna take lead on sponsorships. We are going to be the ones interfacing with majority of these partners, and we're going to put together larger customized bespoke packages for these sponsors as well. Again, there's way more to this that I get into with Justin on his channel.

Jay Clouse [00:43:02]:

So I really recommend you dig into that because that's a full, like, 45 minutes on sponsor strategy specifically. We're gonna take lead on that because I admire folks like Tim Ferriss who not only have sponsored products that they share but they fully fully fully endorse them as well I love that but when you're working with partners a lot of times the incentive structure is to sell as many add units as possible. And so you get a little less picky about the sponsors. I wanna get more picky. And Creating more resilience in the business from a direct revenue perspective really gives me the opportunity to do this. You know, if I were to just completely break my sponsor right now and not take on sponsors, that would be a significant revenue hit month over month. So moving into it carefully, but, I am getting more and more optionality to kind of break things move slower work with sponsors on a larger more long term basis across platforms and and really be choosy about those sponsors and pick folks who have products and services that I use that I recommend that I can fully fully endorse and Feel good doing so. I can count on one hand the number of sponsors that have been on the show or elsewhere that I had a second thought about.

Jay Clouse [00:44:17]:

So it's not like I'm not recommending brands that I use and love right now, but I really want to get just really, really picky about it. The other reason for this is, especially in a world where Creator School is up and running and finished, I think it will be as advantageous for me to take Time to talk about Creator School as it will be to talk about a third party brand. Obviously, the margins are high. I get more data on that, but I think it's also just going to be more likely that that product is useful to the person hearing it than whatever the other product is because I'm designing it to be useful for my audience So that's what we're thinking. At first, I thought that meant completely releasing my ad partners and taking everything in house. But what I've come to realize Is that the bigger move is to move from exclusive relationships to nonexclusive relationships. And what I mean by that is Exclusive relationships are having ad partners that say all ads on this property are run through this partner. So even if The advertiser came to me.

Jay Clouse [00:45:23]:

If I had an exclusive relationship with an ad partner, I would have to introduce that sponsor to the partner and then give up a percentage of revenue. What I'm gonna move to is nonexclusive relationships where if I bring in the sponsor, I'm going to keep 100% of that, and I'm going to manage the process as well. And you, ad partner, if you do bring a brand to the table, then you can get a cut of that. That's what I'm moving towards. I think it's the best of both worlds situation, but we'll see we'll see how things go. Alright. I think that just about covers it. That's that's, you know, a high level 30,000 foot view of my priorities for 2024.

Jay Clouse [00:46:03]:

I hope this got you thinking about things as well. A lot of these changes are structural. There will be growing pains and expanding the team and creating new processes and building new products. It's scary. It's scary to kind of break things that are working in order to build things that are better. But I wanna leave you with this, this idea But actually, I learned from Todd Henry on the show. Todd Henry was a guest on this podcast, long time ago. You can search Todd Henry creator science and find it.

Jay Clouse [00:46:30]:

But he he gave me this anecdote, this metaphor of a grapevine. He said, grapevines, they have the capacity to grow 200 to 300 buds on them. But that's actually not something that they could sustain. So what happens is grape vines are proactively pruned. They prune off the weaker buds, the buds that don't seem capable of growing good fruit so that all the resources of the plant are concentrated on the strongest, best buds where they get the best yield from the grapevine. By allowing the entire grapevine to grow they actually dilute the yield and the quality of the grapes And I think our work as creators is a lot like that. I think there's all kinds of things that we are possible or we are we are able capable to do. All things are possible, But we can't do all things.

Jay Clouse [00:47:22]:

And so whatever the fruit is that you really want to grow and improve and make strong, You might need to proactively prune other parts of the business, and that's what this is a good time of year to really think about. Where can I prune My business, Grapevine, to get the best yield in the coming year? That's what you should be thinking about right now. And for me, that's evaluating how things are done. It's being willing to rip the Band Aid on things that aren't working. One of my weaknesses historically is that I wait too long to have difficult conversations or dive into something that seems scary, but you can't do that. When you identify that something needs to be done, something needs to be changed, the sooner you take steps to make those changes, the better off you will be. So I'd love to hear what you think about this episode. I'd love to hear if you like this format, if you like the solo episodes, if you enjoyed this, you can tweet at me or tag me on Instagram at jklaus.

Jay Clouse [00:48:14]:

That would be awesome. And lastly, I have a quick ask. I would love to break 400 ratings and Apple Podcasts. Right now, we're sitting at 387 as I read this, so we're so close. I need 13 people to leave a nice reading or review on Apple Podcasts to help get us to 400. It would make my day. It would make my Thanksgiving. I read every one of these reviews.

Jay Clouse [00:48:36]:

It means a whole, whole lot to me. So please, if you enjoyed the show, Leave a rating on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.