Jay Clouse [00:00:14]:

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of creator Science. I am grateful that you've decided to spend, an hour or so with me here today. Now I was originally going to air an episode today, a new interview on the YouTube channel and an audio, but we decided to push that back because my editor Connor calls me and says, hey. I have some great ideas of what I wanna do with this video, but I'm gonna have to learn after effects. So you wanted to spend some time learning after effects He explained what he wanted to do, and it sounded awesome. So I I asked him. I said, are you telling me that the question is whether we should push our deadline for this video back to make a better video or to release this video and hit our deadline.

Jay Clouse [00:00:53]:

And he said, yes. That's basically the option. So I said, yeah, push it back. Let's make let's make the best video we possibly can on this. I'm really, really excited about that episode, which will come out next week, both in audio and on the YouTube channel. So when this happens, when I have a short term, warning to publish something new because we still fly pretty close to the sun here at publishing this show. every week, we are finishing the episode that is airing that coming week. And so with a couple days notice, I decided, hey.

Jay Clouse [00:01:23]:

The last listener mail bag we did was really, really well received. Let's publish out to, my social channels and email and the lab and ask people if they have any questions on their mind. It will do another Q and a episode. So I put that out a couple days ago. Got a lot of great questions here that I'm gonna run through and answer in real time. We'll see how long this goes. I got a lot of questions in, in the lab and on social media. So I'll just go through as many as I feel like I have energy to go through and hopefully, these help you as well.

Jay Clouse [00:01:55]:

So as always, I'm gonna start with the questions from the lab. That's my private membership community for professional creators. the lab is at capacity right now, but if you want to join, you can join our starter membership and get all of the content that I've made there in the lab and the starter members have the first opportunity to join new spots that open up. And usually there's, 2 ish spots per month that open up. So If you do wanna join the lab, I recommend getting on, the starter membership. You can go to join.creatorscience.com to do that. Anyway, first question is from Kat in the lab. Kat asked, given that you interview creators for your podcast and hear about all their strategies and successes, Do you have a criteria to discern whether or not you should incorporate a guest strategy into your own? Have you ever been distracted or pulled away from an existing strategy because of what a guest has? shared.

Jay Clouse [00:02:45]:

I love this question, and it really reminds me that earlier on in my career, this was very challenging. very challenging to set sail on a course, meaning like a direction. To go in a certain direction, here is something that Sounds like a good idea, but would require you to go in a different direction. If you are really getting a lot of what seemed like good ideas all the time from other people. It can really cause them like whiplash for you. And you know what? At the end of the day, I think the most important thing is that you stick with this for a long time. If you watch survivor, I'm a big fan of the television show survivor on CBS. And they have a mantra on that show that is outwit, outplay, outlast.

Jay Clouse [00:03:28]:

And I think that actually applies to anything we're doing as creators or in the world, if we can outwit, outplay, or outlast, it's not that you have to do all 3 necessarily, even though most winners do have to do all 3. But if you're really good at one of these That's a big deal. And so I I worry that people get too much strategy advice and simply don't give any strategy an opportunity to really go all the way through, you know, and and really give it a chance to play out So to Cass's question, do I have criteria to discern whether or not I should incorporate this implicitly Yes. Explicitly, no. I think implicitly, what I run through in my mind is, does this does this idea slot seamlessly into the strategy that is already in place. If I'm already moving in a direction and I hear something, that's a good idea. The question is, how drastically is this going to change my course? Because the more drastically it's going to change your course, I think the slower you should be to adopt it. I think the more drastically this encourages you to you to change your strategy, you really have to sit with it for a long time and wonder, is that worth it? If it's something that's a little bit additive that you can just kinda put on top of what you're doing, then I think it makes a lot of sense because it's not changing directions.

Jay Clouse [00:04:47]:

It's continuing to go in the same direction, but maybe even more intelligently or with with more depth or nuance or something. You know? If you're not changing direction, then I think it's easy to incorporate. But if it's really gonna ask you to change direction, I think you have to spend some time really thinking about it and maybe talk to other people who have tried that strategy. I think it's important to think about, the current time because sometimes people's strategy that they tell you worked might have been very dependent on conditions that were specific to a certain point in time, which might not be now. So it's a part of the question, have you ever been distracted or pulled away from existing strategy because of what a guest has shared? I would say no. Oftentimes, What's great about doing a podcast is the conversation happening in real time, I'll hear something that a guest shares, and that will have an impact on me. And then I will go and edit the episode weeks later to realize, oh, this had such an impact on me that I actually have take an action based on this. And it's not even always an explicit realization.

Jay Clouse [00:05:50]:

Sometimes I hear something and I incorporate some of that or learn from that in my work. And then when I go back and hear it again, I realized, oh, yeah. That that was the starting point of this decision that I've made. So I guess the last point on that is I think there's merit to listening to an episode more than once if it really impacted you reading a book more than once, you know, consuming impactful materials more than one time I think can be eye opening. Next question from the lab comes from Charlotte. She says, do you find it easy to do the strategy product research or customer research aspects of your business. If yes, why and how? If not, what do you do instead? I do find it easy at this point. I think I think doing strategy product research, customer research actually gets easier as you build more of an audience because you just get more feedback.

Jay Clouse [00:06:35]:

You just get more feedback from your audience. If you aren't getting that feedback right now, if people aren't consuming your work or aren't giving you meaningful Feedback, even if it's not framed as feedback. I'm saying feedback in terms of you get a response from the people that your work is going out to. If you're not getting a response back from your work, then you have to ask yourself, why? Is it because you're not getting in front of the target market, or is it because it's not resonating with the target market? Is probably 1 or the 2. for most people, I think it's probably a struggle to actually get your message in front of the people that you are trying to get in front of. But sometimes the issue here is that you haven't define to yourself who those people are. It's really hard for you to get your message in front of the quote unquote right people. If you don't know who those people are, you're you're kinda throwing darts and and guessing and hoping for the best.

Jay Clouse [00:07:30]:

So for me, Charlotte, yes, I find it easy because I get so many data points back from the things I put out on social media, from the podcast, from email. But if I didn't, then I think it's really important to a, describe and articulate who your target audience is. b, find out where those people are accumulated or aggregated or together right now. You know, those people are probably somewhere together and see then you had to gotta have conversations with them. And and it could be direct conversations, or it could be, okay, I know I know that my target market are, high school football coaches. so I'm gonna go to high school football forums, and you can build relationships there in your content and responding to them, or you can do social listening, which is basically saying, I'm going to find where these people already are socially. I'm going to make it a priority to tune in and listen to the words, the struggles, the ideas, the thoughts of this target market, and that is how I can do this. Next question from the lab comes from John.

Jay Clouse [00:08:36]:

He says, what does your creator business make possible for you? How does it fuel your kind of rich life? or plot twist, how does your creator business get in the way of your kind of rich? Interesting questions here. I'm gonna go one at a time. The first ones what does it make possible for you and how does it fuel your kind of rich life? I told this to people sometimes and they they don't believe me. I think I am an inherently lazy person. I think a lot of the reason that I have built a business is because I am lazy And the idea of going into an office or a job, 8 hours a day every day for, like, 40 years was just untenable to me because that sounds like quote, unquote work. And what I've realized is I just define work differently than most people. I think there are 2 connotations of the word work. Work can either mean your life's work.

Jay Clouse [00:09:32]:

That's kind of the way I think about it. Like, the purpose of what I'm doing here in the short life that I have, the the stuff that I fill my time with, the stuff that I do out of pure interest and creativity and artistry and craftsmanship, that is my work. A lot of people see work as, like, a means to an end. You know, they go to work, and it's something that they don't have necessarily a positive or glowing or happy relationship with. work is the thing that is quote unquote necessary in order for them to fund and fulfill their own rich life, which is probably fulfillment outside of work. So all that to say Building a business has allowed me to opt out of the second, negative connotation of work because now I can spend my time every day doing what I want to do with who I want to do it, when I want to do it. Yes. There are some constraints because I have made commitments.

Jay Clouse [00:10:32]:

and I am accountable to those commitments. So sometimes it feels like I've made a job for myself in some ways. But for the most part, Everything I do has been my choice and anything that I don't like, I can undo. I can make new choices that change that with you know, whatever fluidity I want. I have that autonomy. So for me, this makes possible spending all of my time in a way that I am excited about and happy with. And is that the reality all the time? No. You know? I I think about the concept of entropy a lot from chemistry if you've taken a chemistry class.

Jay Clouse [00:11:07]:

Entropy is this idea that all things move towards disorder when something is good. If you don't tend to it over time, it gets worse. It's probably not the right words to say, but think of it as, like, you have a home, you clean the whole home, Over time, the home gets born messy, you have to put work into the system in order to maintain that clean home or make the home cleaner. The natural or, the natural way of the world is to tend towards disorder. And so even in your business, You do all this work. You make it exactly what you want, but over time, it's gonna get more disorderly. It's gonna be less of what you want. You had to put work back into the system, effort back into the system to make it what it This has enabled me to, have this beautiful home that my wife and I just bought and are building out It allows me to have a work from home lifestyle where I spend all my time with my wife, with my dogs.

Jay Clouse [00:12:01]:

the business is bringing my wife into it here in the next couple of months, which is really, really exciting. So it really allows this work life integration where work is a positive thing. And, it also gives me the ability to have uncapped potential on my earnings, which I I just I realize now How hard it must be to be on a fixed income. Because when things happen, bad things or unexpected expenses, my mind automatically goes to a, okay. Well, I'll just earn more. And for most of the population, they don't really have that mindset or the mechanism built up to do that. And for me, it's like, okay. Well, if if we have to cover this unexpected cost, like, what can we do to generate that from the business, from the platform that we have built, which is awesome.

Jay Clouse [00:12:48]:

now to John's second question, which is how does your creator business get in the way of your kind of rich? you know, going back to what I said about being inherently lazy, there are a lot of days, even even right before this, where I was really feeling like, ah, I just wanna do nothing today. I want to do nothing. I'm recording this on Sunday, the Sunday before the this airs. And there's a big part of me that's like, I wanna do absolutely nothing today. I gotta clean up the house. We had a housewarming party last night. I gotta clean up the house. I wanna go get coffee.

Jay Clouse [00:13:18]:

I wanna go for a walk with my dogs. That's also part of my rich life, being able to do that whenever I want. But even though that is possible and enabled by the business. Oftentimes, because of the commitments I've made, which are often a lot of commitments, I feel some pressure, some stress, some anxiety to hit deadlines to do the effort that is necessary to hit those deadlines. And sometimes kinda gets in the way. There's this parable of a fisherman and a businessman. And the the punch line is, you know, the fisherman out. He's fishing a couple hours a day.

Jay Clouse [00:13:51]:

That's all he needs to provide for his family, have a good life. The business bin talks him into this idea of, hey. What if you just fished more, made more fish, made more money, build a fishing business. And at the end of it, you can have all the time in the world to spend with your family. Sometimes it feels like I'm making that that bargain. Last question that I'll take from the lab here today is from Paco Paco, I'm gonna paraphrase your question here. Paco is a podcast host, and you had a guest on to talk about the subject matter. And he was criticized for giving visibility to a guest, which some consider a scammer.

Jay Clouse [00:14:29]:

this exposed paco to trolling in bad comments, which not used to. And he's asking, have you experienced a similar situation? And what process have you put in place to ignore the comments and move on? So no one wants to get trolled. No one wants to get hate online. It just happens. And what I've been experiencing over the last several months is The more visibility you have, the more reach you have, it the more it happens, you know, it's it's a numbers game. If, you know, call it 1%, but really probably less than 1%. But let's for easy math, if 1% of people will be a troll, when you have an audience of a hundred people, you'll have one troll. It's a pretty quiet room of trolls.

Jay Clouse [00:15:06]:

At a thousand people, you have 10. At 10,000 people, you have a 100. You know, you start to compound the number of of trolls because they are out there. They are out there. There are people who are just unhappy in my experience. It seems like they are unhappy, and the way they get happiness is attention and they've realized they can get attention by, playing the negative angle. There's there's always an opportunity to be polarizing to be negative to get attention. I think about trolls in this type of stuff as a flame.

Jay Clouse [00:15:39]:

And to me, I do not give oxygen to the flame. If I if I give oxygen to the flame, the flame grows. So I try to take oxygen from the flame. If somebody is being a troll and leaving negative comments. Most of the time, I do not address it if they are attacking me personally. If they're attacking me personally, I let it go. Me or my ideas. If they are attacking somebody else, then I step in.

Jay Clouse [00:16:01]:

But most of the time, these trolls are attacking the the original poster. So what processes have I put in place to ignore comments and move on? Unfortunately, Paco, all I can tell you is it you get desensitized to it. And you see that, oh, the game these be people are playing is they want a response. I have in some situations had guests on the show that listeners did have strong opinions about strong negative opinions. And those listeners let me know in private. They I've gotten emails. I've gotten direct messages from people saying like, hey. I just wanna let you know, maybe you're not aware of this.

Jay Clouse [00:16:36]:

There's this information about the guest that you've had on. Just wanted to make you aware. And what's great about that is those people obviously respect me and believe that I have good intentions. And so they're telling me privately as an act of kindness to help me protect my reputation. And that's very much appreciated. It's very kind of those people, and I always respond to to that. but really when it's when it's simply trolling and hatred, you just develop a thicker skin to it over time. I don't do a lot of, muting or blocking.

Jay Clouse [00:17:11]:

I know a lot of people have, like, a very short tolerance policy and will block people immediately if they get this type of attention. I usually let it go because if I don't give them any oxygen. If I don't respond to them, then their experience was I put this effort into crafting this information. And I got nothing out of it. It was not worthwhile. You know, I think when I started learning how to train our dog, Ted, I learned a lot about, reinforcement. And I don't think humans are much different from dogs. When you reinforce a behavior, There will be more of that behavior.

Jay Clouse [00:17:45]:

And so I I do not give any type of reinforcement to that, type behavior because I don't wanna see more of it. Alright. We're gonna take a quick break here. After the break, I'm gonna answer a question from Roberto Blake on Twitter about having a personal website. So stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Thank you for sticking around.

Jay Clouse [00:18:05]:

We're moving over to Twitter now. We've got questions on LinkedIn and threads as well. Like I said, I'm gonna go for as long as I have the energy here. Roberto asks, why do you think so few creators value having a website and their own product to offer? Honestly, when I saw this question, I was like, what are you talking about? This this is not my experience. And then I realized, Roberto comes from the world of YouTube. I have noticed this really interesting cultural dichotomy between creators who get started on YouTube and creators who gets, started elsewhere. it may be out even lump in some, social media visual platforms in the camp like TikTok and Instagram. I do see that folks who are taking on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram seem to value less having a website and their own product to offer.

Jay Clouse [00:18:51]:

And I think it's just because when we're getting started on any platform, we look at the models of success there, and we try to aim towards those models of success. And when you look at the models of success on YouTube, You see people who are mostly building their business on YouTube and AdSense and sponsorships they haven't gone down that other path because they've been so focused on doing YouTube well. And then that is, you know, a perpetuating system. I really do see the creator landscape as this 2 sided Venn diagram of creator educators and creator entertainers, people who focus on teaching and knowledge transfer versus people who focus on entertainment. And of course, there's a middle ground, edutainment, as has been coined. And, yeah, I I would I would agree that edutainment is probably the gold standard of what you should shoot for, but that's, like, winning two games simultaneously and winning one of those games is hard enough. So I I tell people, if you're leaning towards education, teaching people things, helping people improve, self actualize, learn. That's on the educational side of the spectrum.

Jay Clouse [00:20:02]:

And that business model and the people who are models of success there, have their websites, have their own products to offer. I really think it's just part of the landscape and where people land. Most people on YouTube tend to be less, less focused and really less aware of the business model of creator educators, which often comes with having a website and their own product to offer. Next, we have a question from Kyle on Twitter. Kyle's also a member of the lab, though, so I probably should have done this earlier. Kyle asked, what are the best ways to monetize early on? I'm growing my audience and don't have a good pulse on what they would wanna buy from me just yet, but there are costs involved that I need to cover. I think about this as a product development pipeline. I have a background in product.

Jay Clouse [00:20:42]:

product management. And so this comes, kind of second nature to me. But I think about what is the minimum viable product that I can put out there, that I can collect data, that I can make things better. And, also, speed is important. A lot of people, who asked me a question like this. They have financial constraints that are kinda knocking at their door. And it takes time to build a fully leveraged digital product business. what I recommend to folks in this situation, Kyle, is that they start with selling their time.

Jay Clouse [00:21:13]:

I think the the fastest thing you can do is provide services, provide time either in your expertise. Let's say you are a web designer, you can offer that as a service for sale. or, as a consulting arrangement. A lot of times, if you have any audience and I don't mean 100 or 1000, I mean, If there are dozens of people who are paying attention to you, who you see their name and their face pop up and you guys have gotten, some interaction back and forth, Those people likely value you, your opinions, and giving them an opportunity to work with you directly is very probable that they will take you up on it. So I think the best way to monetize early on is to sell some sort of service or access to you directly in terms of time. When you do that, What you start to see over time if you work with several people are patterns. And those patterns give you the opportunity to productize a service. you know, maybe your service was, I will build a website for you.

Jay Clouse [00:22:13]:

The productized version of that service might be, I will build a five page website for you that includes a homepage and about page, a newsletter subscribe page, a services page, and a testimonials page, because those are the pages that you see over and over again people want the most. And now you have those patterns. You say, I'm gonna build you a five page website. Includes these five pages. I can do it in this amount of time because I've done enough times. I know how quickly I can do it. The price is this. You even, make the process very seamless because you know what you need in the beginning to make this work.

Jay Clouse [00:22:44]:

That allows you to scale, quote, unquote services a little bit more when you productize those services. A productized service can sometimes become a product. maybe it's a digital product, maybe it's a software product. But this is a product development pipeline that I like to push people into. Another potential service is coaching, which could be group coaching, which could be a cohort based course. You know, there's there's a lot of overlap here, but something that I like as an approach is if you wanna teach people a skill and you're starting to get some respect as someone who can teach that skill. Start with a pro start with a cohort based course that you do live, that you prepare slides, and you deliver live. Because when you do that, you see what lands.

Jay Clouse [00:23:30]:

You also see what doesn't land. And you can improve that curriculum the way you deliver it run the CBC a couple of times. And once you feel like, okay, I've kind of got this down. You can release a self paced version of it. And now you've probably spent more time building an audience. That audience may not all have been able to afford a cohort based course because often those are priced higher than a self paced course. And now you have an option for them. The other great thing about that approach is, like I just said, cohort based courses are typically higher priced than self paced courses.

Jay Clouse [00:23:59]:

So in the beginning, when you have a smaller audience, earning more revenue per sale is helpful to build some runway and start building a business on the back of this. So short answer, Kyle, I would start with selling your time, either in the form of services, coaching, group coaching, cohort based course, and then kind of product ties after that. Alright. Next, we've got Justin Moore, the founder of creator wizard, good friend of mine, also member of the lab. Justin asked, what would happen if we merged our 2 businesses? Which, like, I won't lie, Justin. I've thought about this. you know, what you're doing with sponsorship, serving the same audience. I think we pull Chanel into the mix as well.

Jay Clouse [00:24:42]:

We could build a super business. I have thought about it, but it's the difficult thing is, you know, we each have our own histories of these things and figuring out, like, what would a partnership look like, what would evaluation look like? There's there's a lot of steps there. And, part of, you know, my rich life, as I shared with John, is I because I'm lazy, because I'm an introvert, I want, like, full autonomy over things and decision making autonomy. It was, it was scary pulling mal into the business or talking to her about that and talking to the specifics of that. I don't know. It's it's hard for me to imagine full partnerships, especially when there is a history to the businesses that are being pulled together. If you're starting from 0, I think it's different. If it's like, hey.

Jay Clouse [00:25:29]:

We like each other. We know, a lot about this space. Let's start a business in the space as partners. I think that's a lot easier. But when you have, like, a history and baggage and opinions, it seems a lot harder. but I I've thought about it. I thought about it. I won't lie.

Jay Clouse [00:25:44]:

Next, we've got Trent on Twitter. Also remember the lab. I guess you guys saw the tweet before you saw the post in the community. Trent as which questions have led to the biggest personal or professional paradigm shifts for you? One of the biggest questions I think I shared in the last mail back actually is If I were to hire a replacement CEO to run this business tomorrow, what were the first what would the first actions they take be? Because it really helps put you outside of yourself. and show you the obvious things you know need to change or be taken seriously in the business, but that you're avoiding because they're probably hard or scary or uncertain. That has been super, super helpful in a professional sense. From a personal perspective, one question I've been asking myself more and more lately is do I want? You know, like, I I have so many creature comforts now. I have I have this business.

Jay Clouse [00:26:34]:

I've achieved a lot of the things that I've always wanted to. And so now It's it's easy to get demotivated if you don't have meaning. And so I have to continue a ask myself and remind myself, what am I what am I doing here? Like, why am I doing this? What do I want? You know, I think about the Ryan Gosling, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Sometimes I have to interrogate myself that way. And, you know, more and more, I think it's It's living this rich life that John was talking about. And to me, that is autonomy. It is, knowing that the time I'm putting into the system, the thing that I'm building, the work keeps working for me, and it's impacting more and more people to get positive results. That's pretty powerful. getting messages from people about how the things I have made impact them or I've helped them.

Jay Clouse [00:27:26]:

That is so awesome. It's like my favorite thing. And that gives me a lot of meaning. So, you know, as simple as it is, what do I want is probably the most impactful personal question that I'm asking myself right now? Terry asks, everyone talks about being an authentic, genuine creator, but what exactly does that mean? It'll be interesting to hear from you about it. So To me, being authentic is being natural, being in alignment with who you are when the cameras aren't rolling, when the microphone's not on, it's being honest. You know? It's it's not being manipulative or persuasive or You know, a lot of times, a lot of things that take off online are talking about these, copywriting or psychological frameworks to do x, y, and z. And That's interesting. That's helpful.

Jay Clouse [00:28:16]:

But the more you think from the frame of, you know, psychological hacks and things. I think it might take away some natural integrity that's coming with what you're saying. I'm not saying that in absolutes, But I think it's it's better to let those the understanding of psychology become, embedded in you and something that you understand so well that your natural behavior flows out from having that as part of the knowledge you inherently have versus trying to contrive something that is psychologically hooky, you know, because Again, I I try to be online. The same way I'd be offline. If you and I met in person at a conference, I'm gonna be at FinCon later this year in inbound for HubSpot's conference, If we met in person, I would hope after meeting me, you thought, man, he's exactly like he is on his podcast. That is authentic to me. That is what I I strive for because honestly, it's exhausting to be anything else. And it's it's a little bit risky, you know, maybe not like a huge risk in terms of like, oh, if you aren't as energetic or kind or thoughtful or empathetic in person as you seem to be online, probably not that you're gonna get, like, canceled or something, but, you know, you you never wanna be the hero where people say, ah, don't meet your heroes.

Jay Clouse [00:29:39]:

Like, you wanna be the hero or people like, Man, I met my hero, and he was awesome. And I I think that comes from being authentic, being who you purport yourself to be. it's it seems exhausting to me otherwise, but I would being in alignment with how you act in different situations, And, you know, some sometimes you're, like, on, quote unquote, I talked to my wife about this sometimes, where if I have to be on a bunch of calls or on a webinar or a podcast. I feel like I have to be what I call on, which means, like, focused high energy, a little performative. Like, there's a little bit of being performative in that way. And I think that's okay. I think that's, like, saying I am who I am, but I'm gonna turn this up a little bit so that it's more engaging, more watchable, more inspiring people watching. So I I don't think you're out of alignment by bringing more energy to what you're doing.

Jay Clouse [00:30:37]:

But, If you if you have to put on an entirely different, like, suit, you know, some some people talk about, like, having an alter ego for these things and I understand that method, and it makes some sense, but I don't really want to be a different version of myself. I just wanna make me a better me. Like, I wanna make myself the best version of me that I can be and then show up authentically as that person all the time. I'm not gonna say that that's absolutely right or judge other people who have different opinions there, but that's what it means to me. Halftime heroes ask how soon is too soon to start a Patreon or similar crowd support tool? I've written about this before on the blog. It's, when to start monetizing is the essay name on creatorscience.com. But in brief, when people ask me when they should monetize, I say as soon as you're able to and as soon as you want to. There are reasons why you would not be able to, which is that your message has not connected with an audience or resonated with an audience.

Jay Clouse [00:31:34]:

People don't look to you as someone that they trust yet. If you have that, even the small number of people, then the question is, do you wanna monetize And there are reasons why you would not want to monetize, namely that monetizing, is an ask. It it changes the dynamic of the relationship. When you are creating things for free and giving it generously all the time, and that's all you're doing. Then people are just like, wow. This guy is just giving and giving and giving. I think that humans do have this ledger that we keep in our minds of what have I given? What have I gotten? And I think we have that for most people in our lives. And I'm I'm talking about, like, a subconscious level.

Jay Clouse [00:32:13]:

I'm not talking in execs either. But we know when somebody in our life has taken more than they've given. And we also know when they've given more than they've taken. And if you were a creator who people just know, man, I have gotten so much more from this person than I have given them. When you start monetizing, that opens up a way for that ledger to come back into equilibrium. And that's a good thing because creators need to make a living. But for example, for, a year or so, I had a tool called buy me a coffee, very similar to Patreon, a little bit more lightweight. I put it in the, show notes of the podcast episodes.

Jay Clouse [00:32:51]:

I put it in the footer of my email, and it had options and increments of $5 to, you know, basically thank me for the work and give me a tip, essentially. And I eventually took that out because I didn't think that the impact of the the tips that came from buy me coffee was worth kinda cashing in on some of the social capital. you know, when you build goodwill with goodwill, when you build social capital with people and then you say, alright. If you like this, you know, give me five bucks. that's going to make them feel better and, change the scales to equilibrium equilibrium a little bit more, but it's not really the the outlet that I would want because it's it's it's a tip. You know? Like, I would prefer that they say, okay. You've given me so much. You've created this tool, this product that I think I would really like.

Jay Clouse [00:33:49]:

So I'm gonna take a leap and invest in you in that. Because not only, like, you're listening to this and you're probably thinking, okay. Yeah. Because that's gonna cost more money. But really, what I'm saying is that is also probably gonna give them a great experience. They're probably going to experience transformation from that, and that's gonna make the relationship stronger too, whereas a tip doesn't make the relationship stronger. It just makes the ledger a little bit closer to equilibrium. Francis asks, I'm wondering what your what is your take on the channel split.

Jay Clouse [00:34:15]:

I run a channel, but I have too many ideas that are completely apart. I decided to make another one. What is the best way to split the channel to help the algorithm find the best audience for the video topic seems niches? So here's what I've come to believe about channel splits. I believe each channel you create on YouTube should be directed towards 1 avatar, 1 viewer avatar. If you have multiple ideas, but those ideas are aimed at the same viewer, then I think you can do it all under one channel. If you have multiple ideas that are for distinctly different viewers, then I think you need to split it. Because what What seems to happen is when you have a video that you publish, YouTube shows it to an audience that they think will be the audience for the video. Then based on how that video performs with that audience, do they click it? If they do click it, how long do they watch it? YouTube gets some data.

Jay Clouse [00:35:09]:

that data either says, okay. We were right. This is the audience for this video. Maybe it performs well in that case. And it shows it to more people like that. Or they say, this video did not work, and they slowly start tapering off the impressions they're giving that video to that audience. So what they learn on the back end of that is either this video wasn't good or it was the wrong audience. They might try to change the audience over time.

Jay Clouse [00:35:33]:

But the the riskier thing is when a video does really well, that's a lot of positive signal to the algorithm that, oh, we were right about the type of viewer that is good for this channel. If you have a channel where you want to talk about Lego, And, you also wanna talk about cleaning a home. If you put out a video about Lego and it crushes, And then you put out a video about cleaning a home, the algorithm is probably going to try to serve your cleaning a home video to people who like Lego because it has a bunch of data that this channel is popular with viewers like this. So you can see how it can it can be preventative for new ideas, different ideas that are aimed towards different audiences to really work. So think about your channel as specific to one audience, You can have multiple ideas within that, but if you have multiple ideas geared up multiple different audiences, then I would split the channel. Alright. We still have a lot of questions here to go. We're gonna take one last break for our sponsors.

Jay Clouse [00:36:37]:

When we get back, I'll get to the rest of the questions from Twitter and LinkedIn and threads. starting with my little bit of a rant on why I don't like the word solopreneur. And so stick around. We'll be right back. And we're back. No more ad breaks. We're gonna go until I run out of steam. Our next question is from Nick Glimsdall here on Twitter.

Jay Clouse [00:36:55]:

He asks, when should creators move from a solar panel to delegating tasks to other experts immediately immediately immediately as soon as you can. This is my biggest bone to pick with the word solo preneur. When you hear solo preneur, The intuitive definition is I am the only person doing the work. And that's attractive for a certain period of time. and it's completely untenable at some point, especially if you have larger visions of what you're trying to accomplish. And the thing is when people really advocate for entrepreneurship, if you press them, they're gonna say, I don't mean that you don't work with other people. I mean, you don't have other full time employees. And that's valid.

Jay Clouse [00:37:39]:

That's that's fair, but I feel like the word itself does not have that built in. And so the assumption is I've gotta do everything myself, and it becomes kind of a badge of honor. I think you should be delegating as soon as possible. when I started this podcast in 2020, 2020, and I had another podcast before this in 2018, I hired an audio engineer, Nathan, who is phenomenal. And he's so good at what he does, and he's able to do it much faster than I would be able to do, and it's so much better for me to pay Nathan to do this work that he can do well than for me to spend more time and make a worse product. So I would start delegating tasks as soon as you are able. And, you know, you've gotta you gotta take a little bit of a leap. Sometimes this is an investment.

Jay Clouse [00:38:27]:

Sometimes you don't see the ROI in terms on in terms of cash on cash returns right away. This the YouTube channel that we have I have not turned a profit on that channel. I haven't even broken even on that channel. I've invested heavily in help to make the channel work and be good in an editor in a thumbnail editor or thumbnail designer in a audio engineer. So I would say delegate as soon as you are able. When you have somebody that you know can do better than you and you have the breathing room to invest in them, do it, do it, do it. A few days ago, I tweeted that creators getting started today are going to look like geniuses 10 years from now because I think we are still early into this game. And Gustavo asked, hey.

Jay Clouse [00:39:09]:

When you said that, what are your top 3 predictions for the creator economy in 10 years. I think the language is gonna change a little bit. I think already It's it's kind of implicit that we are all creators to some degree. Anybody who is publishing something on social media is creating. So will the term still be creator 10 years from now? I don't know. I I kinda feel like it won't be. because even if, you know, I I think that the opportunity in the creator economy is for creator educators. I think there are more opportunities for creator educators than creator entertainers.

Jay Clouse [00:39:48]:

I should say it that way. I think that creator entertainers, people like Mister Beast, Logan Paul, Emma Chamber Lynn. It's a revolving door. We only have enough space in the cultural Zeitgeist for some set number of, quote, unquote celebrities at any given time. And I think the natural conclusion of a creator entertainer is a celebrity. It's a boom or bust type of space. Most people are either super big. Like, it's it's it's a hitmaker's game.

Jay Clouse [00:40:18]:

There is a little bit of a long tail, but the long tail is much harder to make a living on the entertainment side than on the education side. Anyway. So if that is true, and I believe that creator educators will continue to get more and more proliferated popular. You know, I was looking at a stat. I think it was 2022 college enrollments were as high as they've ever ever been. There's still as many or more people looking to get higher education now than ever before. And I think it's going to become crazy to invest in most higher education institutions rather than learning online. The promise of the institution is the job.

Jay Clouse [00:40:59]:

The promise the institution is this gets added to your resume. This is a certification. Employers need a certification. I think over the next 10 years, we're gonna see that employers don't care about certification. They wanna see demonstrated ability. We're gonna get better and better at testing for demonstrated ability and certifications are gonna matter less. So if I need demonstrated ability, how am I gonna get it? I'm gonna get it from the person that I can learn it from the best. And I think that will be accessible broadly online rather than saying, well, pack up your clothes, pack up your stuff, move across the country, live in a college dorm, and learn it there once a week for a semester.

Jay Clouse [00:41:39]:

Like, no. It's It's available online on demand. You can go through it as quickly as you can. You can master it as quickly as you are able to, and that's it. And there's gonna be so many skills. Like, there are there are infinite numbers of things that we can teach one another, learn from one another, and the internet will make that very cost effective. Information wants to be free. We will get better and better cheap or free information to learn things online.

Jay Clouse [00:42:06]:

And so our value as career educators, you know, going back to the prediction here, Not only do I think there will be more of them, but our value will be less on the information and more on how we teach that information, how we ensure that people get success, how we connect people to opportunity, You know, information is just gonna get cheaper and cheaper. So it's not enough to teach things. You have to create an experience. You have to make it something that's worthwhile. This is the thing that I think will protect some higher education institutions. 1, there will still be status for going to places that are Ivy League or whatever. And 2, there are other aspects of the college experience that make college awesome. You know? It's like it's like I think about, when we were a kid, we had a an aquarium.

Jay Clouse [00:42:54]:

And they were fishing the aquarium. If you brought home new fish in a bag, that bag had water from where that fish came from. You set the fish in the bag that that bag full of water in the aquarium. so that the water around the new fish slowly acclimates to the water in the tank so the fish can go in that tank and survive. Otherwise, it might be too much of a shock to drop that new fish into a new tank with new water. He might not make it. College is a lot like that bag that the fish is in going into the Aquarium. And I think there's value in that.

Jay Clouse [00:43:27]:

So those are 2 of my predictions. More and more creator educators, I think that, information will become cheaper and cheaper. So it's about experiences and, all the things around the information. And Let's see. I kinda I kinda just feel like we stop using the term a little bit. it I I have no idea where monetization will go. You know, I think that probably, I don't know if it's VR or AR. Something in the virtual reality, augmented reality realm will play a big difference in this.

Jay Clouse [00:44:00]:

You know, every time there's a new modality to teach something, There are winners and losers in that game. Someone's going to create the 1st amazing virtual reality cohort based course. That's gonna be awesome. And there's probably going to be a pendulum swing where people say this is the new model. We do this now. Oh, you can charge $12,000 for it. So a lot of people move into the space. I think that we will see that.

Jay Clouse [00:44:21]:

I think we'll see people who are educating in VR or AR, and it will be awesome. John on Twitter asks, well, first of all, he says this is long, so feel free to paraphrase. And I I will do that. He says in most of my business background, the approach to winning has been place some calculated bets, try a bunch of stuff. Some of it works. Some of it doesn't. A banner works. Stick with what doesn't.

Jay Clouse [00:44:40]:

This is kind of like the Daniel Vasalo portfolio of small bets approach that some people are really into. an example would be when launching a new brand, he might test meta ads, Twitter ads, Google search ads, YouTube ads, and influence marketing. Of those 5 things, of the one of those 5 things will drive 80% of results. So he cuts the others and runs the rest. But he finds in a creator business, is difficult because it's difficult to execute on multiple podcasts, multiple newsletters, top of funnel social strategies, and it's harder to abandon anything when there's actually an audience likes the content involved. He believes in the concept of trying multiple things, finding an outsized winner and going with that, is there a variation of his approach for creators? or is it not something that you can do as a solo creator per viewer? It's a really great question. And honestly, I completely agree that it's not nearly as practical in the world of creators. But there's there are some variations here.

Jay Clouse [00:45:34]:

I agree that Having like a portfolio of small bets looks different as a creator. It's it it's not the smartest strategy. to try to be on all platforms at once and say, oh, whichever one does well, let's stick with it. Because the thing is, like, all of these are games that you can win. And there's there's almost never, like, some lightning in a bottle thing that you're just gonna get right that no one has figured out takes off. You're like, okay. I'm gonna cut everything else off because I did it as well. Like, there's there's a lot of competition, especially just competition for attention, even if you have, like, a new concept, So I think focus is a superpower in the creator landscape because if you focus on one platform, you actually get better at that game winning that game, give to leverage to enter and win other games.

Jay Clouse [00:46:20]:

Having a, episode coming up with Justin Wells. We're doing around 2, and we talk about this quite a bit. So I I think it just doesn't work as well. Like, it's it's it's more effective if you're gonna do the creator thing, to get really clear about who your customer is, the premise of your message that they absolutely need, why that premise is different than what's out there, why that premise is spreadable by word-of-mouth and, trying that out. And it it's difficult to even get clear signal on a premise of a creator business. You know, my premise is helping creators become creators, mostly through the value of data and feedback and experimentation rather than just craftsmanship. but it's hard to test a premise fully because it's so hard to compete from 0. So, yeah, I do think this is hard.

Jay Clouse [00:47:10]:

I think if you want to do, like, the portfolio approach, for creators, you almost need to be like an investor above a team of different creators and try things out that way. It's very hard if you are the one creating content or really play this through. Not sure you can do it. Tarique says I'd love a breakdown of your digital business stack. All they have done, did one for his YouTube business and it's massively helpful. How small teams are scaling? 6 and 7 of your businesses with systems is mass tell in my view. So one thing I will say is if you go to creator science.com slash toolbox, then you can get a full notion database of all the tools that I use in my business. creator science.com/toolbox.

Jay Clouse [00:47:47]:

It's free. You enter your your email. You get a full notion database of all the tools that I use in my business. So those are the tools. That's where you can get the the tool question, Tarique. As far as the the stack of my team goes, I I've gotten more help over over time here. So I have my audio engineer, Nathan. I have my video editor, Connor, thumbnail designer, Jonathan.

Jay Clouse [00:48:09]:

I have my assistant, part time assistant named Izzy, and my wife has joined the business as a partner here soon as well. Recently, I started working with, an agency team. who is taking my long form content and helping me produce some short form from it. That's been effective because it's helped me really increase the output that I'm putting out on social media in particular. it's all derived from my original long form work. So it's my ideas, my thoughts, my voice, I read through everything and, provide any edits to make sure that it really is me. but that's helped me get more output on social media and free up more time to focus on the long form that becomes short form over time. So that's my that's my stack.

Jay Clouse [00:48:52]:

And I'm still on pace to to hit somewhere between $50600 in the business this year, depending on if there's any crazy spikes or big things that happen. if any big crazy things happen, then it'll be higher than that. But that's the, the gist of it. Jack asked, at what point in your life did you realize you wanted to create stuff on the internet for a living? Probably somewhere in 2018, 2019. Not a whole lot more to say to that than I was I was facilitating mastermind groups at the time. I got introduced the world of online marketing and courses and, how you could actually make a living from content. And that became pretty much all I wanted to learn about and do. Maxwell asked, how do I reengage a wait list that I haven't been active with for an extended period of time about 5 months? So it depends on what the wait list is for, but generally You know, I think the most important thing is that you just own up to the truth about this stuff.

Jay Clouse [00:49:42]:

There's gonna be people on there who remember you. There's gonna be people who don't. So I think when you email them first, you say, well, you you need to have a compelling reason to open the email. If they do or don't recognize your name, the subject line has to be compelling and a reason for them to open it. And I would maybe start with something personal, like, maybe that subject line is, hey. I have a quick question for you. And inside that email, you say, hey. I'm Maxwell.

Jay Clouse [00:50:06]:

You signed up for this wait list through this means. you haven't heard from me in a while because and then lay out why they haven't heard from you. And it'll be like, well, because I haven't had anything to say. I I would prefer to to position it as I've been doing something. something that's exciting, something that I am bringing to you soon, because you wanna get them interested in following along. You wanna open up a little bit of a loop in their mind. so they they say, okay. I am interested in finding out more about this.

Jay Clouse [00:50:37]:

I'm gonna stick around for the journey. Then I would ask them a question. I would ask them to either respond directly or fill out some sort of short survey. Probably something like if I were to dedicate issue this newsletter to an issue you're facing? What would it be? Or what's going on in your world right now that you're struggling with? Something that encourages them to respond because then you're gonna get some data. You're gonna get some feedback. and it's gonna build a relationship with them and their inbox. So I would probably have a question, the subject line, like, can I can I ask you a question? I know it's kinda meta. Tell them what you've been working on, remind them how they got on this list in the first place, and then invite them to continue on this journey with you through some means.

Jay Clouse [00:51:14]:

It's probably Not gonna make sense to pitch them on some product. I don't know what the wait list was for, but if it's been 5 months that even talked to them, it's time to start building the relationship again. Mayhem asks, your readers are willing to hop on the phone with you to chat about their experience. What do you ask to get the most tactical feedback on your newsletter? Well, I don't even know that I would ask for feedback on the newsletter directly. I think if I were gonna get on the phone with my readers, I would wanna just understand more about them, their problems, their thoughts, their challenges, their desires. So really, I would make it much less about the newsletter and much more about the person finding out what are you trying to accomplish? What's hard for you right now? What fears, anxieties do you have? What is your biggest desires? What are you trying to do? If I gotta wave a magic wand and change something about your life, what would it be? Those type of questions, I think it's better to get more insight about the audience than their feedback on the products. Because if you find out insight from the audience, what you'll understand quickly is, is my product even addressing the things that are most important to that person? And if they give you feedback directly, probably going to be coming from a place of this is what doesn't reach me, and you can figure that out on your own, but getting more data on the person on the audience that's going to make it more clear to you how to proceed and make things better. The tax hero asks, I am curious about what best tools to manage cross posting across multiple platforms.

Jay Clouse [00:52:44]:

I use public. I really like public. You can go to creator science.co/publicpublre. is my affiliate link. It'll help grow the show, but Publisher is what I am using to publish on social media. It's what I manage my relationship with that. that agency through. It's where I get ahead and publish things.

Jay Clouse [00:53:03]:

I like public quite a bit. I've tried a lot of things. This is, like, It's like a a fusion of hype fury or tweet hunter plus later because it it handles Instagram reels well. It handles LinkedIn PDFs. handles Twitter well. That's by and far my favorite tool I found so far. Home Rapid Repair says how large would a YouTube channel realistically have to be to attempt a membership for private content. I think size is the wrong question.

Jay Clouse [00:53:31]:

I think you need to ask yourself, do I have a reason to believe that I could get 5 to 10 people who are of my viewers to join a private membership. I think a community well, it depends on the style. There there are 2 styles of community. You have one that is premium content focused, and you have one that is peer to peer focused. When it's peer to peer focused, you need 5 to 10 members to really get things started. If it's premium content, You don't really need any specific number. So back to my, point about when to monetize I think you do it as early as you want if it's premium content. it's less about top level size.

Jay Clouse [00:54:07]:

I find a lot of YouTubers think about top level size because what they see is Big, big numbers don't necessarily translate directly to trust in relationships. And so I think, well, the answer is just bigger number. because then naturally, there will be more people who trust me and like me, and that's that's fair. But I think that you can focus on trust and likability with smaller numbers and still be fine to get people in there. So I'm not gonna give you a number because I don't think there is a number. I think you probably can do it now if it's premium content focused. If it's peer to peer, And a lot of the value is from connecting with each other, learning from each other. You need 5 to 10 members to get started.

Jay Clouse [00:54:43]:

I have a whole course on building an incredible membership community. It's everything I've learned from the lab. It's called build a beloved membership. You can go to belovedmembership.com to learn more about that. It's the best course I've ever made. Two more questions from Twitter here. Robert asks, what do you think about b to b creators? The b to b creators are the people hiring companies that create content and build a bridge between their own audience and their company's product or services. So I think this is interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:55:11]:

I think there's there's a couple of ways this can go. If I'm a company, I might go out to someone who already has an audience that is the audience for my products and bring them in house, try to hire them that way. And if I'm a creator, I'm very hesitant about that because if it's if it's the role of a, like, a w 2 employee and it's pure salary, I feel like you are taking something that has uncapped potential and upside and putting it into a a world where your upside is capped. and you may not have exposure to the upside. you know, that's that's a lot of Social Capital you've built that now you are lending to the company, I would be hesitant to do that as a creator if I have already had some success building an audience. If I'm a company and I'm hiring a creator to come in in house, to better connect us to our audience, and that person's not bringing an audience. I think that makes a lot of sense, but also has some long term risk. It's probably short term good for both sides.

Jay Clouse [00:56:16]:

I think it's long term good for the creator if you don't have your own audience yet. Because what you'll have is kind of this launching pad to learn how to create, to get paid to do it, and to build an awareness of you personally. This isn't a perfect example, but I think it actually applies very well. If you are familiar with the YouTube channel, channel makers. There's guy Nate Black. He's been the face of the channel for a long time. A few weeks ago, he came out with a video, said I'm leaving the channel, In case you didn't know, there's actually a whole team behind this channel, and I'm not the owner of this channel. And a lot of people felt kind of duped.

Jay Clouse [00:56:51]:

They felt like the channel was Nate's channel. Like, what is going on here? And, also, are you okay, Nate? But some people felt upset that that was not more transparent and that it wasn't Nate's channel. He was just kind of the face of it, not just the face of it. That's not even accurate. He did a lot of work on it, but it was not his channel. He left to create his own channel, which has grown very, very quickly already. Last I checked, I had more than 20,000 subscribers and just, you know, like, a month's time. So that's the opportunity for creators.

Jay Clouse [00:57:18]:

If you go in house and you are basically paid to create great content and build an awareness of you, If you wanna go back out on your own at some point, it's gonna be a lot easier than starting from absolute 0. So it's a good way to derisk your ability to become a creator in that way. Of course, then the the company is left a little bit, I won't say high and dry, but the company is in a tough spot if you leave. And that's kind of the rest they're taking too. Hopefully, in the interim, when you were working with the company for the company and and helping connect an audience to their products, that was worthwhile for them. but it's hard to put someone else into that seat if the creator leaves. Pam asks a lot of greater advice is based on how things used to work pre 2022, but ask anyone who started writing in late 2022 or 2023 and has been a very different experience. I'd love to hear how your advice has changed over time.

Jay Clouse [00:58:11]:

and what you've observed and recommend now. The space changes all the time. My advice changes a lot of the time. This is why it's difficult to write in-depth in this space because a lot of people who write about the creator space are very tactical in real time, and that quickly goes out of style because even content has, fashion. You know? And so this is why I think about things in terms of discovery platforms and relationship platforms. So if you haven't heard me talk about this, I wrote a whole essay on it, go to creator science.com/content hyphen strategy. It's also on the homepage. But if you think about relationship platforms versus discovery platforms, relationship platforms are those where you own the means of distribution.

Jay Clouse [00:58:57]:

It's email, podcasting, SMS, private communities. Discovery platforms have built in discovery mechanisms to help find help third party connections find your content. That's social media. It's anything with search. So SEO, YouTube, What's working at any given time changes, but I think the strategy has been relatively consistent, which is to build an audience on a discovery platform and move them over into a relationship platform. You see a lot of people on social media who direct people to email for this reason. Because once you have an audience in email, you have a more resilient asset over the long term. So what's changed over time is just what's working on each platform at any given time.

Jay Clouse [00:59:44]:

And what I really try to look at is find a couple of people who are playing each game that I'm trying to play. Email is a game. Podcasting is a game. YouTube is a game. Find people who are playing each game at a high level and really watch what they do from a production standpoint. What I mean by that is, like, if you are in TV or film, you're a producer or a director, I guess, maybe I should say a director. there are director level decisions that are made to get the thing that you see. And so what you wanna watch is what are the director level decisions that are being made by this creator to get the thing that I see? Because there's probably wisdom in those director level decisions.

Jay Clouse [01:00:25]:

something that I would notice. I look at sawhill bloom and Justin Welsh on Twitter as kind of my canary in the coal mines of what's working right now. because those guys are always innovating and trying new things. Because again, in content, there is fashion. Things become fashionable and then unfashionable. And once a fashion has passed, the people who were reaping benefits of that are looking for their next first mover advantage of a new fashion. So for a while, I was seeing Sahil try things like images in each tweet of a thread on Twitter because the Twitter algorithm was open source. You can see that media was positive.

Jay Clouse [01:00:59]:

We're starting to see more videos on Twitter because, again, we see that that is positive. We also see that replies are more powerful than retweets right now on Twitter and I'm using Twitter as an example because that's the game that I play the most intensely and have the best, awareness of But any platform has its own game. Find people who play that game well, study their moves, see the director level decisions that they're making, and emulate that. And I think the last thing I'll say is right now, right now, right now, what I'm seeing is there is a lot of power and not posturing as an expert, but being more open and using what I would call show and tell type content. Show us what you did Tell us how you did it. Show us what you did, and tell us what you learned. show us your results and tell us how you did it. Or show us your results and tell us what you learned.

Jay Clouse [01:01:52]:

show and tell. That is really, really positive right now because it's helpful. It's genuinely helpful to understand your results and the director level decisions that you made. That concludes our Twitter questions. I'm moving on to LinkedIn and I'm seeing more questions on LinkedIn than I initially realized. Thank you. If you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, go find me there. Dennis asks, for someone looking to start a podcast, do you recommend they go all in on YouTube at the same time, or is it better to master an audio podcast only first and then add YouTube later.

Jay Clouse [01:02:23]:

This is tough. I think it depends on your willingness and interest to do video at all. because as someone who did audio first, doing audio and graduating to video was very, very difficult. because the audio production process was so much different than the video production process that I basically had to reinvent the process. And so there weren't a lot of advantages doing audio first and going to video. That being said, there are far fewer variables in audio. To do video well, it's not about just creating great videos. You also have to get great at packaging, great at titles, at thumbnails, at pacing, It's it's there are a lot of meta skills in video and more costs because you're not just hiring audio engineer.

Jay Clouse [01:03:05]:

You're hiring a video editor. probably a thumbnail designer, or you're doing those things kind of poorly yourself, and it's gonna take a long time to get good at it. So It'd be really easier maybe like, yeah, just you gotta start with video. The reality is it will be expensive if you pay for it. upfront, pay for help. It'll be expensive in terms of time to get good at it to do that. If you don't have the interest or patience in doing that, then start with audio only. But just know that I think audio is the hardest platform to grow.

Jay Clouse [01:03:37]:

The hardest platform to grow. So it's, it's tough. Mike wants to know about the rate of failure among creators. He says most know that 1 out of 10 new businesses fail. I think he means 9 out of 10. But does the supply to creators? Does a given creator need to iterate more or less than average? How many failed offers does a successful creator go through before hitting their offer audience fit? of the successful creators, how many got lucky versus iterating their way to success? I think of successful people, most of them iterate their way there. very few people get lucky because I think the biggest reason that creators fail is that they give up is what I was saying earlier about outwit, outplay, outlast. most people are not willing to outlast.

Jay Clouse [01:04:19]:

If you're willing to outlast during that process, that long process, you will feel pain in failure and you will not want to feel that pain. But if you continue to play the game, your interest in avoiding pain to winning the game will push you to iterate and that will push you to succeed. You really have to be willing to do this for a long time. I have no idea, statistically, if, you know, more or less creators fail versus regular businesses, I would probably say more fail because they're easier to get started, quote, unquote, and most still fail. And really, again, the biggest reason I see see for failure is that people give up. If you're willing to keep going and keep iterating and learn from your audience and speak to them and try and try and try, you're gonna find your way. I really believe that. Blair is asking about work and home life sustainability, not balance.

Jay Clouse [01:05:13]:

She says I'd love to hear how you prioritize certain parts of your life your relationship, you time, sleep, business, socializing, etcetera. And how do you recognize burnout before you get that point? So I talked about this before. I don't recognize burnout until it happens. I have a little bit of a touch the stove syndrome where I need to touch a stove to remember that I shouldn't touch the stove. And typically, I will work until I burn out in some degree, but I've gotten a little bit better at recognizing when it's coming on. Now to be honest, as as the business has grown and gotten more successful, I find myself doing more life things. Part of it is because, like, it's just required. We we bought this new home.

Jay Clouse [01:05:58]:

It's on an acre. There's a lot more yard. I've gotta mow the yard. I have a lawn tractor that takes me, like, 2 a half hours to mow the yard well. We have a pool that needs to be maintained. We have 2 dogs that if you don't take them outside, they poop in the frame of your your video camera. So there's a lot of stuff that I have to do. just to maintain the life that we have chosen here.

Jay Clouse [01:06:20]:

The place where I could really get better probably is, well, really, really a lot of a lot of social stuff. I can always be a better partner to my wife. I can always be a better friend to my friends. I can always be a better version of myself to myself. for most of my life, I have prioritized the business and the work over social things. I feel like I've gotten good at, making time for my parents, which I'm happy about. but I don't call or talk to friends as much as I would like to I know I don't give Mallory my best all the time. And a lot of times, it's because I haven't given myself any me time as you're pointing out Blair.

Jay Clouse [01:07:00]:

And I don't give myself me time, I don't give myself time and space to process things. And if I don't process things, I have, like, this bogged down brain that's trying to process things that need to be processed. So, you know, I've heard some people kind of, debunk the airplane analogy of put your oxygen mask on first, but I do feel like there is some truth to that that, Sometimes the biggest thing I can do to make everything better and everyone happier is to make sure that I'm taking care of myself a little bit better. I wish I was getting better at detecting when burnout is happening. Typically, it feels like a little bit of a joylessness in my work. If I'm not excited to get out of bed in the morning, then we're on, the wrong path. Madison asked, how do I stand out in the oversaturated health and wellness I have a niche, and I think people really enjoy the content I produce, but I can't seem to drive traffic to the newsletter. I've tried Instagram and Twitter without much luck.

Jay Clouse [01:07:56]:

What's your biggest advice to a newbie on starting out on Twitter? Do I focus on creating quality threads, interacting with other creators, DMming other creators? I've heard so many mixed ideas. So with Twitter specifically, because they've open sourced their algorithm, a couple things that are very, very tactical right now. This may not be true when you're listening to this in the future. future listener. But right now, things that are working well involve having media in the post. So images, videos, And, they're really trying to make things more conversational on Twitter. And so what you see is when there are plies, that's a really good signal better than a retweet. And if there are replies, you wanna reply back to them.

Jay Clouse [01:08:37]:

So this also means that right now, the value of you as a replyer on Twitter is very high. So this is a good time to be a replier to other people in your space so that you start to get your name and ideas associated around the same people who have already built an audience there. The additive, Madison, I've seen the way that you interact on LinkedIn. I think you're great at this already. So continue that on Twitter. and then I I think it's less about threads anymore and and more about kind of the show and tell stuff, I was saying, like, be kinda grounded, be kinda humble, generate your own unique insight, but, kind of the templated thread style posts on Twitter. I just don't see them working. anymore.

Jay Clouse [01:09:32]:

So I I think I think you need to experiment with what can I do that creates conversation around my post and gets, get some people looking at it. I think that, this is another world where if you're in an oversaturated space, I think that you need to make it very clear, very quickly why your premise is different than other people in that space. And oftentimes in an oversaturated space, if you do have a premise that's unique, you also need the name to be reflective of that premise because then people get a very quick, very positive first impression that says, hey. This is different in an interesting way, and they're more likely to tune in and play, pay attention. Ignay says, aspiring creators, we tend to get stuck in analysis paralysis. How much prep should we have done before starting and how much evolves over time? 90% of it happens over time. I do think that you want to be clear about your premise as clear as you can be, but even your premise a lot of times, if you're approaching the market for the first time, evolves out from an evolutional understanding of your audience. So I think it's important to know have an assumption of who is my audience, what makes my premise unique, and go out with that, but it's really where your message meets the market, that you start to get the data you need to change and adapt and make things work.

Jay Clouse [01:10:59]:

Kevin asked, other than the hero's journey, what are some other stories business owners use. I think he's asking about, like, story frameworks. He also says he'd love to review an Apple podcast. Thank you, Kevin. Please, if you're listening to this and you haven't left to review an Apple podcast, please do it. I see every one of them. They make my day. They really, really, really helped the show.

Jay Clouse [01:11:15]:

Kevin, your question about other storytelling frameworks, I honestly don't know a lot about this. there's, another one called Dan Harmon's story circle. You can look at that on YouTube. yeah, I I don't think a lot about frameworks in general or storytelling frameworks. what I think a lot about are stories and practice and feedback. Like, when I have a story I wanna tell, I share it with somebody and I see how it's received. I'm doing this a lot now as a guest on podcast. When people bring me on a podcast and ask me a question, I try to answer in the form of a story.

Jay Clouse [01:11:51]:

And what I've seen is, like, really, really positive responses from that. And so I know stories work. I think humans are storytelling machines. We've been doing it for a very, very long time. So I'd probably benefit from learning storytelling frameworks. and save some time. But right now, it's kinda trial and error, and I don't have a lot of information for you. Last question here on LinkedIn from Matthew.

Jay Clouse [01:12:13]:

He says for emerging creators who have a hard time deciding what their niche is or what they should create, what do you advise? Well, if you go to creator science.com slash niche, I have a whole essay on this and why I don't think that the advice of niching down is good advice. But here's what I would say, Matthew, is you have interests If you can just look at your own social media feeds and the things that you're seeing, the things you're engaging with, you already know what some of your interests are. I would ask myself, what are my opinions in the space that may be different than other people in the space Like, you the the whole game of being a creator is a long term game. You have to do something that's sustainable. To do something sustainable, I think you have to really follow your personal intrinsic interests. And so if you don't know those off the top of your head, you can figure it out by looking and like, viewing yourself as you view social media and saying, what what is interesting to me? What am I drawn towards? and starting there and say, what what are my what are my beliefs that are counter to this that I can start to talk about? and maybe get people to buy into because they also believe something that's counter to the typical narrative. That's a good starting point. And then you do that for a while.

Jay Clouse [01:13:34]:

You see how it resonates, how it lands, if you enjoy continuing to do it. And it's little, little iterations. onward and onward and onward over and over and over again as time passes. We are now moving to threads. The final frontier, yes. I am still active on threads. I still believe in it. And if we're not connected there, find me.

Jay Clouse [01:13:52]:

I am at jclouse. tony.coms says what's been the most effective way of growing your podcast following? And if the answer is joining, HubSpot podcast network, please discuss the 2nd most effective way also. So I do think that's been one of the biggest drivers, Tony, is joining the HubSpot network because they have a systematic way of getting their show hosts to do cross promotions for other show hosts. And that does help because The easiest way to get an audio listener is to pull them from a pool of existing audio listeners. It's hard to get someone who isn't already a podcast listener to care about podcasts. So as much as I try to drive my discovery platforms, social media, to email, which will drive people to the podcast, Really, I think most of the growth comes from audio itself, either as a cross promotion or guesting on other shows. Guestsing on other shows helps as well. something that I wanna make a more systematic effort in doing, but there's a real there's a real eightytwenty here.

Jay Clouse [01:14:49]:

If you're guesting on shows that don't have real listeners, or much of an audience, it's just not gonna drive much for you in terms of listeners to your show. So it's better to spend more time building relationships and making friends with hosts who have their own shows and their own platforms over the long term to have an opportunity to collaborate with them on their show at some point. than to spend 20 hours doing 20 interviews on shows that don't have an audience at all. Vishal asked a related question. So what's the top channel through which your podcast downloads grow? It's it's probably cross promotions in the network right now. I've tried some paid campaigns and actually have an episode coming out with, my friend, Chris Hutchins, who's done a lot of testing of this stuff. And we talk about this predominantly. But, I've done some paid camp campaigns, and it's it's been okay in terms of, like, numbers and things.

Jay Clouse [01:15:41]:

I'm just always a little bit skeptical that the downloads that come from paid campaigns, the subscribers that come from paid campaigns are actually listeners with intent to listen to my show. So I've stopped doing paid campaigns for the most part, and I'm mostly doing organic stuff. I really think that guesting you're doing guest swaps will be one of the biggest drivers. Maya, or is it May? It's Kim. Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. I'm reading I'm reading usernames and making guesses. Kim asks how to get genuine specific reviews for your podcast.

Jay Clouse [01:16:17]:

Any other tips? you have for growth in the podcast space, man. Apparently, my threads, friends are all podcasters, which is really interesting. So Kim, getting genuine specific reviews for your podcast. I have found that the greatest way to get reviews is an email. Ironically, I don't know why. I call out at the end of every single episode of this show. If you like this show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And, seriously, that helps so so much.

Jay Clouse [01:16:45]:

Please do it. Please do it. If we get to 400 reviews on Apple Podcasts, this show is is going to be in a different place. So the way I get it is making asks like I just did, but I put it in email as well. I have a couple of workshops that I've developed over time. And those are paid workshops or $40 each. But on Tuesdays, I sent a newsletter, and it's predominantly based around the episode of the podcast that week. And sometimes at the bottom of that news I give people the opportunity to get a workshop for free if they leave a review on the podcast and send me a photo.

Jay Clouse [01:17:16]:

That's an open offered for you dear listener. If you want one of my workshops, you can see which ones exist at, jclouse.com slash workshops. If you want a free workshop, leave a review snap a screenshot, email it to me, we'll get you hooked up. That has been helpful because that incentivizes people and really thanks them for taking the time to do it. I don't have any instruction around what type of review to leave. I don't say it has to be a 5 star review. I just say leave a rating or review. And thankfully, people seem to be enjoying the show.

Jay Clouse [01:17:46]:

We still have a 5.0 average on Apple Podcasts, and people do leave specific reviews. So I that's what I've done. that's my recommendation. Hopefully, it works for you as well. Alright. Last question here. It is also from threads. It's not a podcasting questions from who's your type.

Jay Clouse [01:18:04]:

They say this is a current question I keep coming back to. I'm a designer, but I work in this antique and slow method of letterpress design and printing. Because of that, I just feel like I can't put out the same quantity of social media content and keep up with the digital designers. I see these awesome designers all time post like a dozen different logo or layout variations, which would take me a week solid. So in an outdated art form, how do I compete for the same audience? Let me try to make this broader for other people. If you feel like your work takes more time than other people who are competing for a similar audience and are putting out more content on social media, that is okay. You don't have to make your content on social media the finished product. In fact, But I see a lot of times are people are so focused on making this, like, junk food, short form style content just to feed the machine and be publishing constantly that they're not creating bigger, large scale enduring work.

Jay Clouse [01:19:08]:

And I think you should optimize for creating enduring work. Work that keeps working for you after it's done. Work that is harder, fewer people are doing that. So if that's what you're doing, then I would recommend sharing your short form content as part of the process. It's not the finished product. Bring us into the process. Then you're actually building anticipation as well. You know, we see some of these time lapse videos of people who do these incredible things and, you know, days or weeks pass in the span of 30 or 60 seconds in this time laps is You can have a similar effect, but just with multiple posts over time, you know, instead of doing a time lapse, show us like, hey.

Jay Clouse [01:19:51]:

I'm starting this project. This is what I hope for it. here's the beginning stages and make another post tomorrow about the progress you've made. You don't have to have the finished product every time, show us the process, go in-depth, into the behind the scenes of the process itself as opposed to trying to compete on finished products. Alright, guys. I think I am out of gas. Thank you everyone for your questions. if you left a question, I missed I'm sorry.

Jay Clouse [01:20:18]:

I really tried to get to all of them. Or at least one question from everyone who had asked. I really enjoy doing these. So keep an eye out on social media for when I ask for stuff like this because I like doing these episodes, and it's helpful to get a lot of varied questions and specific questions. so thank you for leaning in and doing this. If you did enjoy this, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We'll have a new episode coming out for you in a week or so. and as always, if you enjoyed this, you can also tag me on social media at jfiles.

Jay Clouse [01:20:49]:

Find me on Twitter, linkedin, threads so we can do these things in the future. But tag me. Let me know what you thought. Let me know what you liked about this. And, I'll talk to you. that route.