#230: How much do I make? How much do I work? Why don’t we ever mention politics? [Ask Creator Science]

Jay Clouse [00:00:00]:
YouTubers keep a lot of secrets, but that's not really my style. So last week, I asked my audience for questions that creators are typically too afraid to answer. How much does this channel make? What are my politics? And how much time do I actually spend working? In this video, my producer, Connor, and I answer all these questions and more with complete transparency, starting with this.

Conor Conaboy [00:00:20]:
Alex Sekaiya asks, how much money are you currently making off the channel all combined? AdSense sponsors, affiliates, clients, etcetera. And how much are you hoping to make eventually?

Jay Clouse [00:00:33]:
I can give a very exact answer to this because I have really good records. So let's just sum this up real quick.

Conor Conaboy [00:00:43]:
And you do in the lab. You go over this every month in a retro in your community.

Jay Clouse [00:00:48]:
Yeah. So I'm literally looking at my KPI dashboard that I go through every month in my retros for the lab. And so on the YouTube side of things, we've had $22,099 in sponsor integrations for the year through October and $28,727 for AdSense for a total of $50,825 from integrations of AdSense.

Conor Conaboy [00:01:15]:
Directly from the channel? Directly from the channel.

Jay Clouse [00:01:17]:
What's difficult to attribute is core sales or memberships in the community, and it's not 0. I think especially for the lab, it's fairly significant, but it's super hard to attribute. Basically, I would only be able to track that by when people apply. A lot of people do mention the podcast or YouTube in their application. So just looking at that, if we just looked at integrations and AdSense, I would actually be losing money on the channel this year so far. But I know that that's not actually the case. So to the secondary question of how much money do you hope to make as much as possible, I guess. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:01:58]:
I don't know. I don't I don't have a strong goal there. Like, I'm not, I'm not making videos with some arbitrary number in mind. I just know that based on what YouTube does for discovery for the business as a whole and kind of building the brand of creator science and getting my face out there in more places, it's an investment that I've been making, you know, for for 2 years. But it's not the moneymaker in the business, so to speak.

Conor Conaboy [00:02:26]:
Baldly Rudy asks, what's the average sponsorship rate that someone of your size and caliber can expect? Or maybe want would be a better word? Just curious.

Jay Clouse [00:02:38]:
Well, if Rudy's asking how much I would want, again, as much as possible. But at this point, our videos go for, typically about $3,000 per video. Sometimes we'll we'll cut like a discount for buying in bulk or buying sponsorships on other properties in the business, like the newsletter or the podcast. But the the typical, like, base rate, if you wanted to sponsor a single video on the channel right now is around $3,000. And I think that's higher for some channels. It's lower for some channels. It completely depends on what is the thing that's being sold by the advertiser. Because at the end of the day, the the sponsor, the advertiser, is looking at a simple math equation of money in, money out.

Jay Clouse [00:03:24]:
And they will continue to invest in you if the investment to sponsor your videos is less than what they're seeing on the back end as a return. If you're able to drive a high return, you can charge more. This is kind of the rate we've landed on for not only are we able to sell sponsorships at this rate, but we're able to renew sponsorships at this rate. And that renewal point is really important.

Conor Conaboy [00:03:46]:
And something I wanna touch on that I think is really important for people to understand is that one of the things you do really well is, like, upselling a package. So, generally, when people are, like, sponsoring, you know, Creator Science, you are selling slots in your newsletter in other places or the audio podcast in addition to video. So that, like, 3,000 price isn't, like, a total ad sale. That's generally broken down into just video. And that's something we learned from the Justin Moore episodes is trying to put together these packages where you can upsell for brands that's giving them more value and giving you more money on, you know, a single contract or whatever you wanna call it.

Jay Clouse [00:04:25]:
Totally. That's what I try to do with every inbound opportunity or outbound opportunity that feels like a good fit for the brand as a whole is I say, let's talk about your goals and let's look at the properties we have to work with here, typically, YouTube, podcast, newsletter. But I've even been looking at, LinkedIn recently because a lot of people are asking if they could sponsor a LinkedIn post, which I haven't done in the past, but seems to be some real opportunity there. Yeah. Those campaigns work better, especially towards renewals because you look at the campaign then as a whole. And again, money in, money out. We put this into the broader campaign. Here's what we earned on the back end.

Jay Clouse [00:05:02]:
And a lot of times, if I have a sponsorship in the newsletter or the audio podcast, that might be the second time you hear from that sponsor because you've already heard about it once in a YouTube video. So it's that multiple touch point thing that is usually what reminds people or nudges them or gets them to think more seriously about investing with a sponsor.

Conor Conaboy [00:05:22]:
And what's the general response from a sponsor if they say, hey. We wanna sponsor your YouTube videos, and you come back to them saying, like, hey. That's great. What if we did this other thing where you're proposing them spending more money for these other, these other integrations that they weren't originally planning on?

Jay Clouse [00:05:39]:
Generally open and curious because what I find is there's not a lot of people that are having larger discussions with sponsors. Usually, creators like, here's the price for this thing that you asked for specifically. And sponsors are generally kind of open to, like, to thinking, well, what else is possible and why would you recommend that? This is something I learned when I was doing more client services people like to be led in a process and when a sponsor comes to you and says we want to sponsor one of your YouTube videos If you take the position of leading them towards the goals that they want and say, well, tell me what you want. Here's what I would recommend to get to those goals. They're generally open to it if you have a degree of confidence and even better if you have some historical data to back it up. So now that I've been running sponsorships for years, I can look at the data and see, like, well, based on past sponsorship campaigns, the clicks we're seeing from your sponsorship campaign are overperforming or underperforming. And that gives me confidence to make suggestions for how to move forward with the sponsorship. And generally, people like being led when they feel like the person leading them knows what they want and knows the best path to get there.

Conor Conaboy [00:06:51]:
Just to get rid of, some fears people might have, have you ever had a negative experience where, like, a brand not only like, some people would say no, but anytime that they're, like, no, of course not, or, like, had some negative response?

Jay Clouse [00:07:05]:
Literally never. I mean, they're always willing to hear other options. And sometimes, like, oh, we're just not really interested in that. Totally fine. But it's never it's never rude, one, and it's never the end of the conversation. Like, they're still going to at least want to talk about the thing that they came to in the first place. And sometimes, if you're able to say, well, if we expand the campaign beyond this one YouTube video, we can actually derisk the campaign. This is a word that I found really resonates with people.

Jay Clouse [00:07:34]:
If you're trying to sponsor 1 YouTube video, there's a lot of pressure on the performance of that one video. And if you say, well, if we do 3 videos or we do 2 videos and a couple of newsletters, it derisks the investment because all of your spend is not in that one piece of content performing well. Yeah. It goes across multiple piece of pieces of content. And in newsletters and audio podcasting, the return is a lot more predictable because there's not the the boom and bust of what happens on YouTube. Like, you have a set number of subscribers that typically engage with that piece of content no matter what's in it. And so it really helps to make the the investment feel safer.

Conor Conaboy [00:08:15]:
And I think that is a really good point with how we approach sponsorships too is, like, not, not seeing it as a one time transaction, but trying to have, like, consistent partners, which I think just builds a better relationship and, like, gets you in that mindset of upselling and and whatever because I'm not trying to, you know, squeeze as much out of this one deal right now as possible, because I am anticipating more deals with that partner in the future. So you wanna keep that relationship good.

Jay Clouse [00:08:45]:
And the longer you have a positive relationship with the sponsor, the more freedom they'll give you to suggest how to run the campaign as a whole because there's a broad spectrum of sponsors who have very clear, specific, rigid talking points for the creative and others that are like, we trust you. Do your thing. We like to work with the sponsors that are like, we trust you. Here's our goals. Do your thing because we know our audience best and we know content a little bit better than most sponsors do. But sometimes you have to earn that by showing them, 1, hey, this campaign performed. Or, hey, the ad creative you wouldn't let me deviate from is underperforming. Can you now let me suggest some changes?

Conor Conaboy [00:09:25]:
And this kind of goes to, what a a question from Tyler Reid, another one we had, which is, what would you say is the most overhyped revenue source for creators? And I think my answer for that would generally be AdSense, and to some degree, even brand deals, especially if you're operating a channel like us where we're very like, I I treat the YouTube and and how I operate with it as very top funnel that I'm, like, all kind of awareness focused. And something like we started doing to even try and deepen that is experimenting with putting, links to your email sign ups and, like, pushing some of these other email captures or things like that so we can, like, not necessarily we like, we won't be able to directly see the money that comes from that, but at least we will get a better idea of who is moving down the company funnel or the audience funnel in Jay's universe, to, like, build out some of these more robust revenue sources like courses, you know, freebies, clients, coaching, things like that.

Jay Clouse [00:10:30]:
I would agree with AdSense. The average of what we've earned in AdSense for the past 10 months is $2,873 per month. And that's for the channel that now has a 111,000 subscribers, 5,000,000 views. And a lot of that AdSense, candidly, is coming from our Jenny Hoyos video or has historically. You know? So a lot of people, they're like, I wanna get monetized on YouTube. I want to hit the partner program. And that's literally a starting point where you now are eligible to make money. But that does not mean you're going to make money because you have to drive a lot of use for AdSense to really pay off.

Jay Clouse [00:11:10]:
And of course, you can bring in integrations like we have too. But the integration average is $22100 per month, which is less than AdSense. So I look at means of revenue, meaning the transaction is not between you and your actual audience. I look at those forms of revenue as generally overhyped. So AdSense is one of them. I think sponsorship generally is one of them. Yeah. But I would also put affiliates in that Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:11:39]:
Because most affiliate deals over time go to 0. After a quick break, we talk about something I never talk about, politics. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to the show.

Conor Conaboy [00:11:52]:
Keiko Sohno asks timely question. What is your stance on political topics in your podcast and other content? I've never heard you or your guest go there, and it's a different niche. But is there an ongoing agreement not to talk about it or mention it on your posts?

Jay Clouse [00:12:07]:
I was hoping not to get this question because if I don't get the question, I don't have to answer it. And I, like, never get the question. So I just kind of skate by because I mean, I think the business is a non political business. I'm a pretty non political person, but that's not really a luxury that any of us can have. And I do look at people who are willing to use their platform to share their beliefs. I look at that admirably, but also realize, like, it comes at a cost, and that's tough. And when you're scratching and clawing trying to go a business, it feels like a luxury that you're afraid to do. So, you know, on political topics, I don't think from the business lens.

Jay Clouse [00:12:52]:
I think from, like, the human lens. Yeah. My friend Nils wrote this this article on Substack called The Normalization of Being an Asshole. And it was his he called it a his apolitical lens on the election. And he made the point that I would base to the echo, which is like, I could not vote for Donald Trump for a position of office because of the person that he

Conor Conaboy [00:13:17]:
is. Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:13:18]:
I don't think it sets a good precedent for how other people in all walks of life, in all areas of life, should behave as people to build a productive, kind society. Mhmm. I don't love that the Democratic party didn't have a primary where we could choose who we wanted to represent the Democratic party.

Conor Conaboy [00:13:42]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:13:43]:
So, you know, like a lot of Americans, I felt like I was in a rock and a hard place. My wife found this website called, like, I side with dot com. And you answer a bunch bunch of questions, and it basically says, okay. Of all candidates, here's the percentage agreement you have with each of them. Yeah. And I took that, and it was like I had 20 to 30% agreement with all of them and nothing higher than that. So it's it's, like, really hard for me to be, like, vote Kamala or vote Trump. I mean, I would never say vote Trump because I just can't vote for a convicted felon for president of the United States.

Conor Conaboy [00:14:20]:
Yeah. We're so cooked.

Jay Clouse [00:14:21]:
It's insane to me. And, you know, I the optimistic part of me is, like, this guy is old, and he's a narcissist. And then as a second term president, he doesn't have any incentive to actually do any work. Maybe he'll just not do anything for 4 years.

Conor Conaboy [00:14:41]:
This is, like, best case scenario.

Jay Clouse [00:14:44]:
Best case scenario. But I worry that there's such toxic ideological stuff in the Republican party as a whole that we're seeing in the cabinet that it could be really bad. And

Conor Conaboy [00:14:58]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:14:59]:
Having a new daughter entering this world, I think that sucks.

Conor Conaboy [00:15:04]:
Yeah. I think in terms of, like, political stuff in content, there there's, like, no ongoing agreement. I think mostly it just doesn't come up because that's, like, why would it come up? You know what I mean? Like, there there have been times where people have been mentioned in interviews where I did kind of cut that section out because it's, like, I don't think it really applied there. But, like, let's say it came up in terms of, like, regulation or something like that, like, that applies to the creator economy or, like, creators. I think that's a very valid conversation to have. But beyond that, I don't think politics serves a role in the purpose of our content, but that's not to say, like, I am, like, a political person. If you went to my Twitter or, like, when I'm streaming on Twitch, like, I would not I would not hold back on my beliefs for fear of impacting content or whatever, but in terms of, like, the actual product we make, it just doesn't come up. Yeah.

Conor Conaboy [00:15:59]:
And that's, like, the point of it. It's it's no one's avoiding it or anything like that. It just doesn't come up.

Jay Clouse [00:16:05]:
And it would be a bummer. Like, I don't, I don't judge people on their political stance. I might judge them on their ideological beliefs on some level, but, like, I don't think we have good options in this country from a voting perspective. And what No. Sucks is most people have a strong tribal reaction to politics. And so if you're

Conor Conaboy [00:16:31]:
It's like a sport.

Jay Clouse [00:16:33]:
If we're having a conversation that's productive and great for the purpose of helping you be a better creator and we say something that enflames the tribal response you have with politics, Now you're gonna throw out everything we say because of that around it's if it's not relevant, I don't think it belongs in the conversation. I think there's plenty of content and interesting things that can now be made around, like, what are what is the impact to the creator economy going on now? Or what role did content play in the outcome of the election? I think that's really interesting conversation topics to go with. But Yeah. For most of the stuff we teach, it's just it doesn't have a place.

Conor Conaboy [00:17:13]:
I think the the areas where it has come up for me is, like, when I'll see a comment from, like, a channel that makes content that I like I really disagree with. Like, I know for a little bit when, like, Andrew Tate was popping off and there was all of those Andrew Tate wannabe channels, we would have some people comment, like, hey. Thanks for the help. I did this. And it's like, I didn't really wanna help you. You know what I mean? Where it's like, that's that's definitely, like, hurt a little bit near where it makes me question being like, fuck. I like should I, like, be more hourly so, like, those people don't view the content? You know what I mean? Because it's, like, I don't wanna help those types of people be good at YouTube, because, like, what they're doing is bad for people. But outside of that, like, yeah, it just doesn't come up.

Jay Clouse [00:17:59]:
It's tough. It happened, at one point, there was someone I had on the audio podcast who has very strong, outspoken political views. We didn't touch it at all in the conversation, but just having them as a guest on the podcast led to a bunch of like, some of my only one star reviews of the podcast. And it's, like, really? You're, like, just seeking out every guest appearance this person has just to shit on the show and give them a one star review. It it was wild.

Conor Conaboy [00:18:29]:
And I I think there's, I don't think compartmentalization is the right word, but you can learn things from, like, bad people. You know what I mean? Like, there are some awful con men and scammers that, like, were really good at capturing attention in a way that doesn't have to be bad. And I I think, like, you can learn from a lot of those rage bait channels or drama channels and things like that without, you know, endorsing them as a person. And now it doesn't mean, like, you have to, like, love the interview or love the person, but just because, like, you think this person sucks and is a bad person or, like, evil or whatever, doesn't necessarily mean everything they say about every topic is wrong or not worth listening to. But I I get the conversation of, like, well, then you're platforming them, and then that gives them an opportunity to, like, extend those beliefs that are bad, which I understand. I think it's, like I just think there's a lot of nuance to this that's not a clear this is why or why not or, something like that. Because it's like, I'm not trying to change anybody's mind. I like, I have my beliefs, but I'm I do not feel qualified to, like, argue positions or try and change anybody's mind.

Conor Conaboy [00:19:36]:
So I'm just gonna, like, like, do my thing. I'll vote how I want to. And, like, if I asked, I'll tell my beliefs, but I'm not I'm not out here trying to convert people. Tom Crate asks, what are you most afraid of? Now we can either go take this one, like, are we talking life? Or do we wanna talk about, like, as far as the channel or business goes? Probably the channel or business. Right?

Jay Clouse [00:19:56]:
Yeah. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you my greatest existential fear. My wife leaving me, like, in the business. I think my biggest fear is the non specificity of serving creators coming back to bite me because more specific people going much more in-depth and basically like eating away the edges of what I do well. Since I try to help a lot of different types of creators do a lot of different types of things in the lifespan of their creator business, there's opportunity for somebody to come in and own each of those individual things. Somebody saying this is how you do podcasting well. This is how you do YouTube well. This is how you do Instagram well.

Jay Clouse [00:20:40]:
This is how you do email sequences. This is how you create online courses. This is how you create a membership. Here's how you sell it. I cover all of that. And resource constraints mean I can only cover any of it to a certain level of depth at any given time. Mhmm. And as more people get into the creator world, they're gonna be people who pick off little bits of that and do it extremely well, and you should learn that little bit from them.

Jay Clouse [00:21:05]:
And so I could see nonspecificity being a long term threat to the business.

Conor Conaboy [00:21:12]:
I think mine would be, like, ending up being a one trick pony, being, like, only being able to figure out remote podcasting or whatever and, like, not being able to develop the channel into something bigger than, an interview show. And, like, I think probably the imposter syndrome that comes along with that of being, like, hey, all this success at what it was actually luck. Like, you were right. You know what I mean? Where it's, like, you didn't actually do this. It was just luck, and you you can't figure anything out, which I don't think is true. But I think that that is the fear of being a one trick pony that happened because of luck.

Jay Clouse [00:21:48]:
I can't possibly see how that would be true in your case.

Conor Conaboy [00:21:52]:
Sarah Hart asks, from all your podcasts and work with creators, have you ever encountered someone who seemed wildly successful but wasn't actually thriving like you would think behind the scenes? I think this is really interesting because there's, like, there's a veil of content creation where you're getting started, and especially if you get, like, that initial boost where even if it's a podcast where it's like you might not know how to get brand deals, you might not, you know, be really monetized, you you're still, like, you're not making money for from the thing that people know you about. So this actually happens, like, way more often than people

Jay Clouse [00:22:30]:
think. I think it's, like, it's constant. Yeah. I see it all the time because this the business model of I'm gonna teach you to do a thing only works if people trust your claim that you can do that thing and the human species is really good at detecting lies because lies are threats And so people have to get really good at appearing genuinely confident in their claims to have any success at all. And so confidence is something that we see as success a lot of times.

Conor Conaboy [00:23:09]:
Like Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:23:10]:
We we see people's confidence. We're like, they must be making it work. That must be working. But constantly find that that is not the case. I mean, I forget I forget who said it. Maybe it's like, I forget who said this, but they said all businesses are like a loosely functioning disaster. And so even the folks who are thriving, their business is still like a loosely functioning disaster. Anytime I've seen how the sausage is made, it's like, you guys make sausage in here? Weird.

Jay Clouse [00:23:37]:
Yeah. So I think it's I think it's constant. And it also depends on what does success mean because a lot of people are wildly financially successful, and there's other parts of their lives that are completely on fire. That is not worth the trade. That's the thing I see more often.

Conor Conaboy [00:23:54]:
Yeah. And and there there are so many aspects to creator businesses where, not everyone is good at everything. So, like, you could be really good at making content and getting attention, but you don't really know how to monetize. So you could be one of those channels, you know, coming up that might have a couple 100000 subscribers, but you don't really know how to monetize. You don't know how to go get brand deals or whatever, so you're relying completely on AdSense and maybe your type of content that's a, you know, low RPM. So there are a lot of these different things you have to, like, consider when you're looking at somebody, and views does not equal money, especially depending on all of these different types of channels. Like, our channel could potentially make a bunch more money on the back end than, you know, an entertainment channel pulling in 100 of thousands of views per video, mostly because we're not relying on that, and you we have a completely different business model than them. And I've seen, I was talking to people when, we were we were down in Dallas for the conference, where there are these, like, small specialty channels, like, I don't know, like, a lawyer or whatever.

Conor Conaboy [00:24:58]:
That channel could get, you know, 10,000, 50,000 views per video, but they're on the back end making 100 of 1,000 or 1,000,000 of dollars in clients because that's where their money is. So on the servers, you see their views and you're like, oh, that's that channel's not popping, yet they're, like, probably one of the most financially successful YouTubers you'll ever meet. So it it's like there are so many different ways and so many different consistencies. It's hard to look at something and being, like, man, they have everything figured out or, like, this is the portrait of success because there are so many different things you don't know about.

Jay Clouse [00:25:28]:
There's, like, this progression of what we realize success is in the content game. Early on, you think success is views. Mhmm. And then once you get views without revenue, you think, actually, success is revenue because views isn't doing anything for me. And And then once you earn revenue but you're not enjoying yourself, you realize actually success is like enjoying the work. And so I wish you could start there and I could tell people like you should start with something you enjoy doing for the sake of doing it because that's the only success that matters. And usually, the other stuff will come from it. But unfortunately, it seems like something you have to learn the hard way to, like, truly learn it.

Jay Clouse [00:26:09]:
The other thing about social media is social media rewards polarizing opinions Yeah. And lots of content. And so if you think about what type of person is gonna be successful in that set of incentives, you get strongly opinionated and opinionated people who are sharing a lot, which means they probably don't always have the best data or temperament. Like, it's it's just kind of problematic. A lot of the most successful voices are not necessarily balanced, healthy people. Because it's not healthy just to be spewing your opinions all day on stuff. No. So I found, like, the struggle that I have is I get more eyeballs on what I'm doing.

Jay Clouse [00:26:56]:
I grow as a person and I actually want to, like, yap about stuff less. Totally. And so it's it's it's interesting. A lot of wildly successful people are just not happy.

Conor Conaboy [00:27:10]:
Writer Science asks, wondering about work life balance with a newborn. Do you think it would have been possible for you to build Creator Science to what it is today if you had your baby a few years back when you left SPI? For those who don't know, SPI is Smart Passive Income. It's Pat Flynn's membership community that Jay used to run their community.

Jay Clouse [00:27:30]:
Work life looks so much different with a newborn. And that is also coming from a place of we wanted to raise the baby here at home during the day. We didn't wanna do daycare. So my wife and I are both, here at home with the baby. We really split a lot of the responsibility. I mean, she definitely leads on this front, but I'm very involved. So life looks way different. There are certainly fewer hours in the day where I can actually work and especially fewer large uninterrupted blocks.

Jay Clouse [00:28:04]:
I really have to plan ahead and find ways to create a block of 2 or 3 hours at a time a couple of times per week. I had a friend one time describe this as popcorn time. Like you just kinda find these little bits of time throughout the day as places where you can work. And so to be completely honest, like, I think you can I think I could have built the company, but I would not have been able to compress the timeline as much as I did working without a newborn? So, you know, there I think a lot more about leverage these days also because with less time, where can I apply my effort and have the highest impact? And all the leverage is in choosing what to work on so that you get the most impact from that time. I would have had to have been a lot more intentional about that, and it certainly would have been tougher.

Conor Conaboy [00:29:01]:
Outside of time cost, what about, like, actual financial cost? You know, would you have been able to build the business and have your financial backing with you and Mallory back, you know, with with, right after you had left SPI, or was now, like, the right financial time to be able to do that?

Jay Clouse [00:29:19]:
Well, because we had the goal of not putting her in daycare daycare is a huge cost. I know people who pay many times their mortgage each month in daycare costs. So daycare itself is so expensive, to do what we're doing now. In some ways, it, like, saves some money cost but has a much bigger impact on time cost. I don't think I don't think having our daughter has an impact on financial cost. I think it's all time cost at this point. But it is really hard. It's really hard to focus.

Jay Clouse [00:29:55]:
What I have found having a newborn is you realize how unfocused you were before you had a child because we're still getting relatively the same amount of stuff done with way less time. So what's that mean? Means I was pretty inefficient before.

Conor Conaboy [00:30:11]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:30:11]:
And 2, it really forces you to think more during a day. Like, I think a lot of my wasted time, I would sit in front of a monitor and look at it and be like, I should do that task. I should do that thing.

Conor Conaboy [00:30:23]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:30:24]:
And that's like the the loop that repeats in your head for 30 minutes at a time. Mhmm. Whereas now I'm doing stuff. I got the baby in one arm. Maybe I'm rocking her to sleep. Maybe I'm feeding her. And your mind can't help but, like, work on stuff. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:30:37]:
And I think it I think it leads to better decision making. And by the time you finally get some open free space, you have, like, the action item list prioritizing your mind. You know exactly what you're gonna hit. And you can kinda run through it a lot faster.

Conor Conaboy [00:30:52]:
So is it it's like forcing you to get your focus together. Otherwise, you just won't be hitting what you what you need to hit.

Jay Clouse [00:30:59]:
Yeah. I mean, have you ever, like, gone on a walk or gone to the gym? And while you're there, you have, like, kind of a breakthrough on what you wanna do, but you're away from your computer, so you literally can't do the thing right now?

Conor Conaboy [00:31:10]:
Yeah. All the time. That's I I I pull out my phone and my notes app, and I'll I'll just, like, be in the gym, like, sitting in a corner typing for 5 minutes so I don't lose that idea. I do the same thing, like, if I if I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, I used to be, like, oh, I'll remember it in the morning. You never do.

Jay Clouse [00:31:25]:
No.

Conor Conaboy [00:31:26]:
Never do. Always I always will take the time and effort even if I don't want to to, like even if it's just shorthand note that I might not remember exactly what I meant in that time, I will make note of it.

Jay Clouse [00:31:37]:
Yes. And then when you finally sit down at the desk, there's, like, this explosion of, like, finally, I can do this thing. Yeah. That is that is what working with a newborn is like. Because by the time you finally sit down, you're, like, I know exactly what I wanna do. I've been chomping at the bit to do it for 2 hours now. And so it is more effective. You just get fewer blocks of that and shorter blocks.

Conor Conaboy [00:32:01]:
It's just a lot. It's it's a lot of work. Yeah. Kate Holmes asks, how much time do you actually spend on your creator biz? What are you spending time on? Content, products, community, what?

Jay Clouse [00:32:13]:
Time at the keyboard is less than ever right now. Again, newborn. But I can't think of I can't think of a time in the last 8 years where I wasn't spending 75% of my waking time or more thinking about the business. Yeah. That's like where all the time comes in if I'm not actively, you know, quote unquote working. And in fact there have been a lot of periods in my life where I am actively working fingers at the keyboard and not spending enough time thinking about what I'm doing because again like highest leverage comes from the choices and how you allocate your time So, you know, I would say so much of my waking consciousness, the vast majority of my waking consciousness is thinking about the business, the health of it, what we're doing next. And I'm not saying that's aspirational or admirable. It just it just is.

Jay Clouse [00:33:07]:
And when I look at my peers and folks that I admire because they have an even more successful business, it's almost always the case that they have a near unhealthy obsession or preoccupation at least with the work that they're doing I think it's true of most people that you see in a position of quote unquote success and so you have to ask yourself is that what success is because I do think it is again for the most part I won't say it's absolutely prerequisite to reaching the levels that I am now or the people I aspire to are but it's extremely common amongst the people that do.

Conor Conaboy [00:33:46]:
Yeah. I think there is, like, a unique form of brain rot that, like, all, like, YouTubers and content creators have where it's, like, even me where it's like, I'm not the face of the channel. I spend most of my time thinking about YouTube stuff, and it's not even, like, intentional. I'm not intentionally spending the time. It's just, like, how my brain works and how, like, I ended up in this job. I You have to remember, like, with a lot of people on YouTube, whether they're, you know, the actual creators themselves or they're the back end people, this isn't somewhere where you just end up. You you know what I mean? Like, a lot of this is intentional, and, like, people are you you know, people with this, like, brain rot is what I'm referring to it as self select into these positions. So it's like yeah.

Conor Conaboy [00:34:28]:
A lot of time is spent thinking about it, time at keyboard. Like, I spend, like, minimum 40 hours working on stuff, sometimes more. But outside of that, like, it's it's very hard for me to be able to, like, separate work and, like, truly get, like, time where I'm just not thinking about or have nothing on my plate because there's always something to be done. That that that's the problem with this job. There's a lot of perks. I love it. Best job in the world. But there are downsides.

Conor Conaboy [00:34:57]:
Alright. Pass test. Yeah. My boss is amazing. It's incredible. There's no problems.

Jay Clouse [00:35:04]:
A lot of times, when I talk to a creator or someone who's kinda getting started, I make I won't say a judgment, But I I definitely make a prediction on what I think their chances of success are based on what I know about them in our interactions so far. And most of the time, if I make the prediction that this person isn't gonna make it, it's because I feel like they don't have enough preoccupation or or brain rot for it. Because it's just math. If if I am thinking about this 12 hours a day and you're thinking about this 10 hours a day. Doesn't seem like a huge difference. But that's, 14 incremental hours per week, 14 times 52 for how many incremental hours per year. And then you multiply that over years. Like, you just are spending far less time competing on this than I am.

Jay Clouse [00:35:57]:
So it's it's just a math problem. So to to Kate's question of what do I spend my time on, I wanna say the majority of it is content creation. But it's actually probably very evenly distributed between content creation, showing up in the lab, our membership community, and administrative work. Increasingly more is administrative work. And I'm trying to pass that off more and more because it's kinda like a hydra. You cut off one head and 2 more heads pop up. Like, I can't clear my inbox without immediately refilling my inbox because every response gets a new response. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:36:30]:
So it's it's tough. I would like to be spending the vast majority of my time on content, community, and I would say relationships broadly. Completely get admin out of my world, but it's a it's a work in progress. After one last break, we talk about whether you can overpromote your paid products and erode trust with your audience. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of our q and a.

Conor Conaboy [00:36:59]:
Tyler Reid asks, have you ever worried that promoting paid products could erode trust with your audience? How do you gauge when you're over monetizing or overpromoting? You

Jay Clouse [00:37:11]:
gotta think long term. You gotta play long term games. So if you are promoting a paid product for the short term revenue of the sponsor at the expense of long term relationships with your audience. It's not a trade you should make. So increasingly and this is tough because we have more inbound partnership requests than we've ever had. It's and it's and it's more than we can even possibly service. Mhmm. And so I am getting much, much, much, much, much tighter on who I say yes to because I have to come from a place of I'm not just saying this brand sponsors the channel.

Jay Clouse [00:37:49]:
I am willing to give an explicit endorsement over this brand and product because it's implicit anyway. And an implicit endorsement comes at the same cost to your audience as an explicit endorsement in some ways. And so I'm really leaning into explicit endorsements. And I'm experimenting a little bit with, well, what if I just promoted my own products in that space versus sponsored content. And those tests have been wildly successful leading me to believe I should do fewer partnerships, even fewer partnerships, get even tighter on that and do more of my own personal products because not only do I obviously know everything about those products, but I have full control over what happens after the point of purchase. So, you know, if, if you don't believe in the product, I wouldn't do it because that will erode trust. Totally. And over monetizing, to me, that means you're like, I don't think you can over monetize unless it's coming at a cost that's not worth paying.

Jay Clouse [00:38:54]:
And the cost that's not worth paying is a trust. And you have to listen to your audience their feedback on sponsors I've had sponsors on the show before and I've gotten notes from people in my audience who said Hey I know you have high integrity you have good intentions Did you know this about this sponsor And gave me new information that actually changed the way I felt about that sponsor, and I would not renew with that sponsor because of it.

Conor Conaboy [00:39:17]:
And the hit on the point of believing in the product, there have been several times where we've been presented, like, tools to use, whether it's, like, creator tools or editing tools that you would hand to me and being a, hey. Do you like this or whatever? And then I'd come back and be like, it's fine. Like like, I wouldn't use it. And then we'll decide, like, we shouldn't really promote that because we're not we don't feel strongly enough about this product that I would actually recommend it to somebody, which is, like, the threshold of accepting a sponsorship because that's what you're doing, there can be, like, this misconception among creators where you're just like, oh, it's just an advertisement. Like, they know it's just an advertisement. It's, like, not that big of a deal. But I think going back to, like, the parasocial side of content creation is people do take your word for it, and, like, they trust you because that's, like, why they followed. So it's not just like, oh, this person paid me to promote this thing, and people know, oh, he's just taking money.

Conor Conaboy [00:40:11]:
There is that implied, like, endorsement that, yes, I actually believe in this thing, and that's really important. And as far as, like, over monetization goes, I think the biggest thing with, like, over monetizing whatever would just be, like, less effectiveness of of just being, like, oh, this you know, he's promoting he promoted 10 things this week rather than, like, trying to promote 1 or 2 that people would be more likely to click on. Because then the more often you're promoting stuff, it's, like, the less like, what you always talk about, how there's less opportunity cost or whatever of, like, missing that thing or whatever, where it's just, like, oh, he's just promoting another product. Like, I'm not even gonna look at this.

Jay Clouse [00:40:54]:
Yeah. I mean, another tenant that I have is I don't promote competitors, especially not simultaneously, but usually just in general. Yeah. Because that gets confusing for your audience. Like, well, I thought you're recommending this tool for this thing. And, yeah, that's a that's a great point, I would say to you, if you actually ask me that. Yeah. It's tough because usually the stuff that you don't really wanna promote makes the biggest offer.

Jay Clouse [00:41:16]:
And you're like, well, maybe just this one time. But you really can't do that because you want to really stand behind something with your audience because that relationship, that trust is all that matters. And if the goal is renewals with your partners, which I think it should be, you want to give the most effective ad read or endorsement of that product as possible, then you can only do that if you really stand behind it.

Conor Conaboy [00:41:41]:
Yeah. I know there's a running joke that, like, in the entertainment space, it's that way with, like, mobile gaming companies. Because they have so much money that they'll just throw it it, like, tons of money with the most rigid restrictions. So I actually interviewed to be, like, this was, like, years ago before we started working together. I interviewed for one of these, like, ad agency companies that worked with, mobile game, and they're, like, they have some rigid instructions. Like, there's your creative freedom, but the, you know, the the the positive of that, taking that as a creator, is it's a bag. Like, it's it's a lot of money, but it's not an ideal sponsor. So there's, like it's hard to make that decision.

Conor Conaboy [00:42:24]:
It's not always super clear.

Jay Clouse [00:42:25]:
We saw it with a lot of crypto stuff couple years ago. We're seeing it now with, like, sportsbooks. I would not touch sportsbooks.

Conor Conaboy [00:42:33]:
No. I get a

Jay Clouse [00:42:33]:
lot of requests for, like, financial services companies. And I don't I mean, I'll I'll work with, like, some accounting tools. Yeah. But if if I the rule is if I use it, I'll endorse it. But if I don't use it, I'm not touching a financial services company. So, yeah, it's it's something you gotta think long term, which is tough if you're in a short term cash crunch. But that's why I really over index on your own products and services so that you don't have to make this this bargain in the short term.

Conor Conaboy [00:43:05]:
Question from Rohan Lark. Is the creator economy mostly falling into eating itself? Creators selling to others who want to be creators rather than creators actually connecting with their existing or previous niche in a meaningful or impactful way?

Jay Clouse [00:43:21]:
I see this question all the time, and there I would agree that there are a lot of creators for creators, myself being one. There's gonna be a time when there's creators for creators who create for creators. You know, like, the reason you see all of that is because you are a creator. You are the target audience of those people. So what you're seeing are there are more and more people targeting me, but that is not the extent of the creator economy or creators. If you don't like gardening, you're not gonna be targeted by all the creators who are doing things in the gardening niche and, you know, sub gardening for literally any interest or any desire on the planet. Most of the creator economy are people who have very particular interests and skills and are teaching people those interests or those skills or, you know, sharing that interest or skill. And if you're not in their target audience, you're just not gonna see them.

Jay Clouse [00:44:17]:
What you see are the people targeting you. And I agree there's more of those than ever. And most of those will go to 0. I mean, the reason this exists is the same reason I got into this I was a 20 something year old who wanted to do online business didn't have a lot of skills didn't have a direction I wanted to go got so obsessed with the idea that all I was doing was studying online business and suddenly the thing I know best is what I have learned about online business. And that's just what happens with a lot of people. And most don't create enough credibility or last long enough to turn the corner. And since it is really competitive, that will continue to be the case. So if you are really interested in being a creator and you're learning a ton about it, instead of turning around and teaching that to other people, apply it to one of your other interests.

Conor Conaboy [00:45:07]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:45:07]:
And you're destined to do better. Because if you pick a more specific interest, there's bound to be less competition. And also, the expectations are lower. When you're a creator for creators, the expectations of the quality of your content is so high as it should be. But if you are a creator for people who are really interested in Lego, maybe the expectations for your content from a production standpoint are a little bit lower.

Conor Conaboy [00:45:37]:
Yeah. I think this is a, like, a good example that you need to be very careful about extrapolating, like, general theories from your own viewing experience. Because like you said, you are their target audience, so you're gonna see it. And something that comes up all the time in our episodes about how there is no one general trend on YouTube. Everything is happening on these different micro communities, and that's, like, what YouTube is now. It's there are so many different corners. Like, you could say the same thing about, like, you know, how golf has blown up, on YouTube over the last 3 years and being like, oh, is is is this golf niche too saturated or whatever? And it's like, well, if you're interested in it, of course, you're gonna see all that stuff. And I I think there's a general, kind of attitude that being, you know, a creator for creator is easier, or just, like, talking about YouTube generally gets views, and that's not the case at all.

Conor Conaboy [00:46:35]:
Like, I know this sounds like we're just, like, protecting ourselves or whatever. But, like, generally, it's, like, it's hypercompetitive. You know, there's only so many things you can talk about, but, like, not everybody succeeds. You know what I mean? Like, there are tons of shows like ours that don't get views. There are tons of shows like ours that get more views than us. There's a lot of different things. I don't think there's one area that's necessarily easier, and I also don't think, like, creators for creators are some existential threat to the creator economy, because there are just so many other robust areas.

Jay Clouse [00:47:13]:
Yeah. Most most creators for creators will go to 0. But if you think about the creator economy is eating into traditional media and commerce. Yeah. And anything that is for sale that is a successful business selling something to somebody, that marks an interest that you could create content around and probably be successful. And the more, like, kind of obscure and non obvious it is, probably the less competition is gonna be. And it might be easier for you to get a little bit of a foothold, Granted the total addressable market might not be as big as other things. But the creator economy to me is eating traditional media and commerce, and that is huge in terms of potential.

Conor Conaboy [00:47:58]:
Yeah. I think the only way you could, or or, like, the only area where you could say, like, I think it really needs improvement is with, like, employment stuff. Like, making sure people are getting paid fairly, making sure there's good labor practices, things like that. I think as the creator economy gets bigger, that could be an issue on, like, how it's, you know, harming itself. But outside of that, like, I don't think it's I don't think content's the problem. I think it being so new and growing so fast could could lead to some problems, but it's definitely not eating itself. Andy Wang asks, what's one of your episodes that you love and feel deserved more views?

Jay Clouse [00:48:41]:
All of them, first of all. All of them. All of them. A couple that stand out to me. I think I'm gonna re air soon a conversation I had with Dan Pink, who's like a New York Times bestselling author several times over. Really gave a great interview on the audio podcast about, writing a bestselling book. I think our interview with Justin Moore on the channel around sponsorships is critically under viewed. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:49:09]:
And it didn't do terrible. It's not our worst video on the channel in terms of views by by any means. But I feel like that video has huge potential.

Conor Conaboy [00:49:15]:
It's so good.

Jay Clouse [00:49:16]:
We did an interview with, Nusayar Yacine on the channel who I had never spoken to before. And he was so honest about the downsides of his life as a creator. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, this is great content.

Conor Conaboy [00:49:30]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:49:31]:
That's one of our lowest viewed videos in the channel. So this happens a lot. Packaging is often what's at stake here. But, you know, it is what it is.

Conor Conaboy [00:49:41]:
I think mine would be probably the Jamie Rossthorn episode, where he takes through a lot of, like, yoink and twist, is basically what it's called, where it's, like, looking evaluating other people's formats and adapting to your channel about how he did that with his old channel, the Zach and Jay Show, which is now just Zach Allsopp after he left. And it's really good. It's like he breaks down exactly what they did to hit what it what it was. It was, like, 900 k subscribers in, like, a year or a year and a half or whatever. And I think it was the episode before our Patty one, which is, like, where the channel kind of blew up. And the packaging isn't great. I think that's something we should revisit eventually, but that video is so good that, like, nobody watched. And then Justin's episode is, like with brand deals, it's just, like, I I I feel like we can't harp on it enough about, like, how good Truly.

Conor Conaboy [00:50:34]:
How good that is, and people just, like I think sometimes it's one of those things where it's, like, people don't necessarily recognize what they need to hear unless it's, like, right in their face or unless they experience that problem right away. And brand deals in that Just an episode is, like, right along that line. Whereas even if you don't think you need it right now, that episode will, like, provide so many insights to help you in in different ways and just how you're approaching thinking about your own content.

Jay Clouse [00:50:59]:
Also, our most recent episode with Chef PK, which such a unique conversation around creating physical products, creating merch or physical products, whatever you wanna call it, for your audience that nobody talks about. He's doing extremely uniquely and just died right out of the gate. Because regular channel viewers, you watching this right now, didn't watch the video. And I'm telling you, you should have. You'll like it.

Conor Conaboy [00:51:24]:
Yeah. That video paired with, Sarah Renee Clark and how she developed ColorCube. Sarah Renee Clark video is a bit older, so there's a, you know, a bit more background information and stuff that, in in episodes now that we would cut. But it's like, there's so much packed in there, and it's there there it's these it's those weird corners of products that are just so unique in how their channel operates that I think you just don't know that that's a story that is good to hear, until after you hear it.

Jay Clouse [00:51:56]:
Those are the ones I get most excited about. The ones that are super specific, our Angus Parker interview about, like, building a team for YouTube. Is those are the ones I get most excited about because this content doesn't exist. You don't get to hear from these people about this, and we did it. And, yeah.

Conor Conaboy [00:52:14]:
And it's not sexy, which which is some of the thing where it's, like, some of these really important aspects just aren't sexy. Like like, you know what I mean? Where it's, like, it's really in the weeds where the the, like, truth of, of building, you know, a creator business isn't as sexy. It's like it it's kind of like the equivalent where everybody thinks these, like, high yield companies to invest in are these, like, flashy tech startups, but they're actually, like, fucking logistic companies or, like, things that do these most the most boring things you don't even think about are the ones that are so interesting and making tons and tons of money because it's not sexy and because it's just, like, it's needed. It's this gritty part that you can't avoid, that I think a lot of the people that are stuck in if you're a person that's stuck in that phase of, like, I wanna think so romantically about, like, content creation or my business, you don't even think about this stuff until you're, like, really in it. And you're, like, man, I didn't even know I had to deal with this stuff. I'm glad this episode is here because it, like, walks it it walks me through exactly what I need to do in a no, like, a no hype kind of way. Like, even those episodes, like like, the Angus Park is Angus Parker episode, we don't hype up, like, at all. It's very much, like, here's how you wanna hire a team.

Conor Conaboy [00:53:28]:
Like, it's not there's nothing flashy about it. There's nothing sexy about it. It's, like, this is what you have to look for if you wanna build a successful team.

Jay Clouse [00:53:35]:
And it's literally the questions that I wanted and needed to ask in my position right now. And that's increasingly what I'm doing on the show. A lot of people are, like, how did you learn YouTube? And I was, like, I have an I have a whole channel. Yeah. A whole channel to show you how I learned YouTube. It's all recorded. But we'll we'll we'll work on making it sexy. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:53:56]:
That's on us.

Conor Conaboy [00:53:57]:
I I think like, I'm I did do a lot of complaining there. But at the end of the day, it isn't the audience. It is on us. I just wanna, like, be clear about that. I'm not blaming anybody. Another question from Andy. Do successful creators share only a portion of their knowledge to maintain a competitive edge?

Jay Clouse [00:54:16]:
Sometimes. And it it depends. I mean, again, most creators are not creating for creators. So they have no incentive or reason to share a lot of their knowledge and, at least about creating but their whole business is built on sharing everything they know about being good at this skill I think the creator for creators often share or hide some of their knowledge I try really hard not to do that. The, the times it comes into play, what I protect is brand decisions. So, like, sometimes people will write me and they'll say, hey, I really love your, the design of your email template. Can you just send me that? And it's like, no. I'm sorry.

Jay Clouse [00:55:04]:
But no. That's that's that's a key branding asset. And I'm not gonna share that with you. As far as, like, actual tactics go, I really try to pass all of that on. A lot of times it hits folks in the lab first because that's part of the value of being there. It's like, this is at the edge. This is low Fidelity high signal Let me tell you what we're doing there Like a few weeks ago I was experimenting Well actually we had a member who shared Hey I'm testing like I'm doing polls on Linkedin and adding a text only link in the body of the poll. And I tried that, drove a ton of subscribers.

Jay Clouse [00:55:41]:
I created a video about it. Then I did the same thing. But instead of driving people to my newsletter, I drove them to the workshop we did podcast like a YouTuber. Got a ton of reach on Linkedin for the poll drove a ton of clicks drove a ton of sales for us and so like that I shared that with a lab immediately kind of sat on it in terms of going to the audience as a whole but that's super rare for me. But I think it does happen broadly quite a bit.

Conor Conaboy [00:56:10]:
Yeah. I I think areas where it might happen are in niches where most of the differences between channels is, like, purely packaging. So I know, like, a couple people that run faceless channels. And when it's not personality based and, like, you don't have that edge, a lot of it is, like, packaging and, like, very rigid structure that I know, some of those people that run those don't share it publicly. Like, they'll talk about it, you know, behind closed doors or whatever, but mostly because it's, like, their edge is what they know in those in those areas. And if they didn't have that edge, then the the viability or, like, the success of their channel long term could be impacted, which kinda makes sense. And then the the other thing I would say is, like, I know for us or me personally, there are it's not holding back information. It's generally, like, when do I say it? And it's, like, if I'm in the middle of testing something or if I'm not, like, sure on an outcome or whatever, I personally kind of hold those back because I'm not, like, comfortable sharing in well, like, work in progress stuff, like, where you are, where you'll be like, hey.

Conor Conaboy [00:57:25]:
This is my approach. This is what I'm doing. I'm much more like until I have some concrete kind of thoughts around this because I'm still unsure of it myself, that happens sometimes.

Jay Clouse [00:57:36]:
Sometimes I I, my gut reaction is to not share something because of this artist identity that I I kinda mentioned. Like, sometimes sometimes I'll make something and put it out, like, look at this thing I made. And the response I get is, how did you do this specific part of it? And not, hey, thanks for making this thing. And that kinda bums me out. It's like, can you just enjoy the thing? And then, yeah, I'll I'll, like, talk about how I did this. But sometimes, I'm just not ready yet, either because it's super fresh and I wanted to, like, share the thing itself. Or, again, it's like a design or brand thing that feels unique and more, like, artistic than commercial. But I I genuinely try to fight the, like, hoarding instinct as much as I can because anytime I go I go, like, super specific tactical, hey, here's how I'm doing this thing, perform super well.

Jay Clouse [00:58:31]:
Because, ultimately, building an audience is building trust from an individual that you can do something useful for them. Mhmm. And if you don't prove that you can do something useful, share something useful that benefits them and isn't just, like, talking about how good you did this thing, they're not gonna care, and you're not gonna build an audience.

Conor Conaboy [00:58:52]:
Caitlin Burgoyne asks, what do you think is the biggest lie about building an audience that people want to believe is true?

Jay Clouse [00:59:01]:
I think a lot of people teach that you basically need to become a reply guy to get your name out there and get people to find you and build your own audience. I think there's some truth to it, but I think the real the real advice is more nuanced. And sometimes this advice of you should reply to other people's posts serves the dual purpose of you should reply to my post, the person who sold you this program, teaching you how to build your audience. And it it does more for that person than it does the actual person learning, doing the replying. And, you know, it makes some intuitive sense because the thought is, well, this person is creating content and the people viewing it are also my target audience. So if I show up there in their line of sight, then I should get some eyeballs from those people too. And I think it's a tough it's like a tough room. You know? It's like it's true.

Jay Clouse [01:00:04]:
Those people are there. But it's like it's like going to a concert and there's an opening band. And you're like, I see there's an opening band here, but I really just want this opening band to go away.

Conor Conaboy [01:00:13]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [01:00:13]:
Some people be like, yeah, that was good. But is it the most efficient path to building a real audience? Are people really giving you a real shot in that context? I don't know. To me, what really helps people break through is getting a hand up from someone who's a little bit further ahead who explicitly, like, goes out on a limb and says, you guys should be paying attention to this person over here. Yeah. That's a hard thing to do. But if you take the same amount of effort that you're putting in to comment on 30 LinkedIn posts every day and say, I'm gonna dedicate that time to trying to build a handful of relationships with people who are ahead of me. Mhmm. I think that might actually end up paying off more in the long term.

Conor Conaboy [01:00:59]:
I think mine is that you have to be, you have to be a good entertainer or super charismatic. I think that's something we run into comments wise on the channel a lot is, like, how do I do this thing if if I'm a boring person or just, like, immediately seeing someone's success and attributing that to their charisma or personality. And that for sure plays into it. Right? Personality is important, but there isn't a correct personality. And I think that's where people get it wrong where it's like, there are tons of, you know, quote, unquote boring people, I guess, more like monotone is probably the correct answer, that do really well because it's like that's the audience they serve. Not everyone is looking for this super charismatic, you know, Jenny Hoyos or or something like that where, like, they're so bubbly and outgoing. You don't have to do that. Now if you wanna, like, do that type of content, it for sure helps.

Conor Conaboy [01:01:57]:
But there are, like, tons of tutorial channels run by, you know, 60 year old guys who are just, like, straight shooters that wanna cut the cut the crap and tell you how to do something. And that you can be successful doing that because they're not trying to be something they're not, and that's, like, something an audience can sniff out right away. Or if you're trying to fake a personality to build an audience, that's not good. Yeah. Personality matters, but there isn't one right personality that you have to mold yourself into to be able to be, like, a successful channel.

Jay Clouse [01:02:28]:
Yeah. What is the job the viewer is hiring your content to do for them? If they're hiring it to be entertaining or to simulate a friendship, and that friendship, they want to be a certain personality and you're not that. You're right. It probably won't work in that context. Yeah. So you need to if you have whatever constraints you have, you need to say, what is the job my content can do for somebody where this does not get in the way and build for that.

Conor Conaboy [01:02:57]:
And it's a a lot of it, I think, is because it's easier to dismiss and being, like, oh, my, like, my personality is the problem because I can't change that and that's why I'm not successful rather than, like, having to take a critical look at being, like, well, how can I just, like, lean into my personality? And where does where does my personality or where do my or where does my knowledge shine where some of these other people might not? And that, like, that's where you hammer home. Andrew Ellis, friend of the show.

Jay Clouse [01:03:23]:
Friend of the show, Andrew.

Conor Conaboy [01:03:25]:
Andrew asks, how do you discern a fake guru from a quality creator to listen to?

Jay Clouse [01:03:31]:
I look for alignment in what they recommend and what they do.

Conor Conaboy [01:03:35]:
Yep.

Jay Clouse [01:03:36]:
If what they recommend and what they do are not aligned, that's a red flag for me. I also look for real value that's being taught. Like, there there are a lot of smoke and mirrors creators. I think this is a bigger problem. It's kind of a relic of, like, early online business where this is all a big mystery where people were able to basically say, I have the secret. And these people say I have the secret. And if you pay for access to that secret, you can have the secret too. But if that person has not actually taught you something before that point or gotten you some sort of outcome, I wouldn't trust that they have the secret.

Jay Clouse [01:04:15]:
I would 100% screen for who is getting me an outcome without having to pay them first. Because if they have it, their courses or their programs or their products are probably gonna be more of the same, or they'll, like, breadcrumb you and say, here's a little bit of it. But if you want the full, full secret, you're gonna have to upgrade to this next thing, actually.

Conor Conaboy [01:04:33]:
I think I've always had a huge problem, with people who are trying to sell the information and not, like, the packaging of it. So, for example, like, with with our workshop podcast, like, a YouTuber, like, there's nothing in there that's a secret. Like, I don't have proprietary information. Everything we talked about, you can, like, discern yourself from watching our episodes. And, like, some of it is directly from our episodes. What I have a problem with is, like, where people will come and say, like, hey. I have this special piece of information no one else has, and you need to spend money to get this. Otherwise, you won't be successful.

Conor Conaboy [01:05:14]:
I think that's generally where you run into scams and predatory behavior when, for us, if you bought, you know, the podcast like a YouTuber workshop, you're getting a personal perspective packaging of that information that's delivered to you in a way that's best or convenient for you to learn. It's not necessarily the information, and I think that's a very important distinction. It's, like, we're never gonna sell you on we have this special piece of information. It's always gonna be, like, if you wanna learn about our personal experience and exactly what we did, that you can learn elsewhere, but this is packaged nicely for you, then you spend the money and then to get it. We're not trying to, like, scam peep we're we're not trying to play into the fears of not being successful because you didn't pay for this thing. I think that's very scummy.

Jay Clouse [01:06:04]:
Yeah. Someone said information wants to be free. Over a long enough time horizon, all information is or will be available for free. I think we're in the is place right now. So what you pay for is, like you said, the, the most compact version of this compact and legible version of this because you pay for

Conor Conaboy [01:06:31]:
speed. It's like curation almost.

Jay Clouse [01:06:33]:
Yeah. Speed, implementation, that's what you're paying for. But information wants to be free. So information products, don't think there's gonna be a ton of new stuff there that you couldn't find for free. But the time you spend trying to pull it together yourself and trying to put it in the right order, If somebody says, here is the essential stuff you need to know in the correct order, that's what you're paying for.

Conor Conaboy [01:06:56]:
And I also think it's evaluating their past experiences and being, like, did they actually do the things well that they're trying to tell you that they did well?

Jay Clouse [01:07:04]:
Yeah. And are did they have testimonials? And are those testimonials from people like me? Mhmm. A lot of times, you can tell a lot about somebody by who their audience is and how much you resonate with that audience. Mhmm. I know a lot of creators who build really large businesses on the back of naive, independently wealthy, late career people who are, like, I want the secret. And if you look at that, you're like, that's not me. And it ends up being super basic information that someone who's a little bit more Internet literate already knows. But, you know, there's a large population of people with means that you can build a large large business on these people.

Jay Clouse [01:07:48]:
But is that the is that the audience that you want?

Conor Conaboy [01:07:50]:
Daniel Markovits asks, what's the biggest lie or misconception you think creators tell their audiences to appear more successful?

Jay Clouse [01:07:59]:
I think the most common thing I see here is finding bits of data that are true and then using them in a way that leaves an open loop for interpretation. So it's not necessarily a lie, but it's intentionally misleading. So there's there's, like, some, guilt by omission. You know? A good example of this would be I made 50,000,000 or $50,000 last month. And in the background, they're running a Facebook ads funnel and they paid $45,000 in ads fees. You know? So it's like, okay. You've you've found an ads funnel that returns marginally more return on the spend. And so you're using revenue figures as social proof, but it costs a lot of money to get there.

Jay Clouse [01:08:53]:
You know? That's the most common thing I see is engineering social proof that looks impressive but you're leaving out intentionally some data that really speaks to well, this this isn't as impressive or admirable, aspirational as you would be led to believe.

Conor Conaboy [01:09:14]:
Yeah. My my answer is also, like, people omitting things and not being completely honest back to the, like, you know, what makes someone successful. A lot of people, like, wanna act like they're, you know, this big financially successful YouTube channel when they might just be getting views or whatever. And then something I've seen a lot in in, like, the YouTube like, the Twitter YouTube strategist. I I won't even, like, call them real YouTube strategists where they'll post, you know, screenshots of YouTube dashboard with, like, insane numbers, whether it's revenue reviews or whatever, and they won't show the title or the thumbnail. And it's like, those are clearly fake. Or, like, somebody else's where, you know, that's more on the malicious side, but it goes to what you're saying where it's like, that's not the whole story. If you're just taking those numbers at face value, you probably shouldn't do that.

Conor Conaboy [01:10:04]:
So it it's like kinda be wary of the omission or what they're telling you if they're not being completely honest, open and honest about their business, both the good and the bad. I think that's where you run into some issues. Daniel has another question. What's a trend or tactic in the podcasting world that you think is destined to implode?

Jay Clouse [01:10:28]:
I was trying to think of something kinda spicy here, but all I can really think of is I think most general interview shows are just headed to 0 because you're either interviewing somebody that's being interviewed so often that it's not that interesting and it's hard to package or you're interviewing people who aren't known which is even harder to attract an audience to that interview or you need unique access to huge celebrities or big names that only a small number of people can actually access and you're you're fighting with Armchair Expert and Smartless and Diary of CEO. So I think most interview shows are just destined to have a hard time. That format seems to get fairly saturated. And I think it's especially hard if you're not doing it in person now because we just expect that aesthetic and the people with access, with resources are investing there more and more. And the platform's kinda favorite. I don't think explicitly, but implicitly, the platform's favorite as well.

Conor Conaboy [01:11:39]:
My answer, is, like, kinda 2 pronged. It's 1, I think agencies, like a lot of podcasting agencies, will kinda die out, especially related to, like, short form agencies. I think there's a huge pop, especially with, a lot of AI tools. And I have in most cases, I just haven't seen that shorts and clips, like, really help a channel, and that's the massive selling point for a lot of these agencies is, like, hey. Pay us this money, and we can, like, not not necessarily promise returns, but they're selling, like, this vision on how people thought about shorts, you know, maybe a year or 2 ago. And that's not that shorts and clips can't work. There are obviously examples where they do, but I think if you're, like, starting from 0 or, if you're starting from 0 or or are newer, I just don't think going to an agency, even if, you know, you don't have the time to do things yourself, is going to produce returns for your channel.

Jay Clouse [01:12:47]:
I agree. I agree on the clip point, especially because we're just moving into time with content where volume is going to be out of control and it's going to be especially out of control in formats like this where you have a long form piece of content and you're trying to clip and post like 30 videos There are a lot of agencies that have tried to sell me on I'm going to create 30 videos.

Conor Conaboy [01:13:07]:
It's too much.

Jay Clouse [01:13:07]:
Thirty clips out of a video. I'm like, there's those are almost certainly all going to be bad.

Conor Conaboy [01:13:13]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [01:13:14]:
For sure. And if if we you have that across many, many shows, it's just gonna get deprioritized. And even the ones you see, if they're not good, it's gonna produce a response in you that you expect that type of clip to not be very engaging. So I agree with that.

Conor Conaboy [01:13:29]:
Valentin Farkash asks, what was the worst audience interaction you experienced?

Jay Clouse [01:13:36]:
A few things come to mind here. And, thankfully, even though weird interactions hit me and affect me in the moment, not many of them have left a mark. So it's hard for me to recall a bunch of them. But there have been a few situations where some people have responded to my emails out of a place of desperation that was actually kind of scary. Sometimes they're like, I just got out of prison, and I'm trying to do this online business thing, and you've helped me a lot. But they don't understand how a creator business works, so they genuinely think the emails coming from me that are mostly dispatched by a system of automations are, like, direct one on one emails from me. And so they'll respond, like, hey, got some questions. Please give me a call.

Jay Clouse [01:14:22]:
And they, like, send their cell phone number. And then it gets like, this one guy in particular, it, like, really ramped up over a period of a couple of days. And then he said that he was gonna get arrested again. And I was just, like, I don't know what to do with this.

Conor Conaboy [01:14:36]:
What so so in that situation, were you, like, responding back to him, or was this just, like, unsolicited follow ups from him?

Jay Clouse [01:14:43]:
In the beginning, I responded because Yeah. Anybody who responds and is like, man, this is so helpful. Thank you. I tried to respond back and say, no problem. I'm rooting for you. I hope this goes well. But that, I think, created more of an issue because now it seemed like there was a relationship there that was not as deep as maybe this person wanted so Yeah. In the end, it was a lot of unsolicited follow ups.

Jay Clouse [01:15:10]:
I think this is just common though because it's a big numbers game. If you think you know, pick whatever percentage of the population you think is absolutely nutso Take that percentage, time your times the size of your audience. How many people in your audience are just not well? I was watching, I was watching a vlog that Ryan Holiday put up, And he was showing something in Gmail. And it had his whole inbox on the screen for a moment. And I, like, paused it. I was watching it on the TV in the living room. I paused and I looked at the the folder structure on the left side. And there's a folder called I think it's called, like, crazy person.

Jay Clouse [01:15:49]:
And so I'm like, he's getting some crazy emails, and he's saving them and catalog them in case he needs to report them to the authorities someday. And it's just super common. I mean, Tim Ferris has a blog post called, like, 11 reasons not to get famous or something. Yeah. And so there's actually a ceiling on how big I want to get, because you just you have to deal with that.

Conor Conaboy [01:16:10]:
It's interesting you point that out because, like, parasocial relationships is something that's talked about a lot in, like, the gaming space or more entertainment space because it's, like, you know, younger audiences, people identifying more with, like, you know, their favorite YouTubers that are, they're they're, like, living vicariously through them, and they're picking up on, you know, these little facts about them. And then they start to develop an unhealthy parasocial relationship and start acting weird. And I've never thought about that in, like, the education space, but it kinda makes sense. And it's almost like what kind of allows, like, scammers to to go about is, like, these parasocial relationships and, really taking advantage of the per the perceived authority and experience you have on the Internet for these people that want that thing or think they want that thing. That's weird. I'd never thought about that. I know I screenshot, like, funny, mean comments, and I I have a folder of of We

Jay Clouse [01:17:13]:
did get some of those too. We certainly got some funny and mean comments. There there have been some folks in the past that had very strong negative responses to something that I wrote. And in the instances where I wrote back very thoughtfully and was, like, seeing them, those people then immediately flipped in some cases and became huge proponents of what I was doing. Because most people just don't expect that you're reading what they're writing, that you're going to respond. And, love and hate are not actually as far apart as like love and indifference it's just like it's both really strong emotional reactions so if somebody has a really strong negative reaction sometimes if you care and if this person is someone that you could see aligning with, you can have empathy and, like, see them and that might change their mind. Other times, it's not a battle worth fighting at all.

Conor Conaboy [01:18:06]:
Oh, totally. And it and it and it's like there are so many comments, especially because coming from me, who was like, I've been, you know, a fan of YouTube since I was, you know, a wee boy, I have never even considered posting a negative comment. Like, it is Same. It has never crossed my mind. Even on, like, the most heinous shit that I hated or disagreed with, didn't cross my mind. So it's like there's an element to people who do that where it's like, a lot of it's projection, a lot of it's like, you know, you want attention or to feel seen or to be perceived. So so you just have to, like, take that with any bad interaction where it's generally, like, it could be parasocial or they're just, like, having a bad day. And that doesn't excuse being a dick on the Internet, but as, like I I think you kinda have to take some of that.

Conor Conaboy [01:18:55]:
That that's like I I hate when people say, like, oh, dealing with negativity or criticism is, like, part of the job when you make content on the Internet. It's like, that's true to a degree, that that I think you have to, like, compartmentalize that, but a lot of it, yeah, just isn't good. It's just people, like, acting out. Yep. Jackie Brown asks, how often have you seen a big time creator who might lean on algo hacks or a platform for their success crash and burn or just disappear? I I think this is really interesting. I think, I've seen this happen a lot in the thought leader influencer space, where a lot of people especially early LinkedIn, there were tons of people who were really good at gaming the algorithm and, like, using bots that would then turn around and, like, make an agency out of that, that ended up, like, kind of disappearing. Because it's like as soon as there's a platform update, you have to, like, relearn everything else. And if you're not on top of that, then it goes away.

Conor Conaboy [01:19:56]:
And I think the other place you would see that is, like, short form creators that aren't that don't make the leap to, to longer form audience building content.

Jay Clouse [01:20:08]:
Yeah. I see this happen a lot. Always tied to a discovery platform where for some reason or another, your content is hitting people's feeds. And if that changes and it no longer hits our feeds if you have not built a true audience that is not dependent on a third party distribution it comes crashing down. I saw it a lot on Twitter over the last 12 months where the the For You feed really took over and what they prioritize moved from, like, niche interest to broad entertainment. A lot of folks that I saw constantly on Twitter and who had built entire businesses off the back of their Twitter audience I haven't I haven't seen them So it's super common and a reason why I really am a proponent of building your relationship platforms building your own distribution with email podcasting, private communities, maybe SMS, if you wanna get into that because these rules can change. And if you can't reach your audience, they're not really your audience. They are they are traffic on a third party platform that was being served your content, and you were kind of renting that space.

Conor Conaboy [01:21:24]:
Daniel Brennanman asks, what's the actual runway you need as a creator to be successful? For the sake of this example, let's say a creator who has little to no preexisting audience or network, and success is defined as 8 k a month in revenue.

Jay Clouse [01:21:39]:
There's a guy named, Dan Andrews, runs a great podcast called Tropical MBA. I've been listening to it since 2015, I'll say. And he has this principle he calls the 1,000 day rule. He says, in general, what he's seen and he's reinforced this over, like, a decade now, it takes about a 1000 days to replace your day your day job income with a business of your own. And I think that's a pretty good measure. There are certain things you can compress. You know, if in in Daniel's example here, success is defined as $8,000 per month in revenue. Even if you don't have an audience, if you have any network at all, you could probably sell some sort of service or productized service and get to $8,000 per month in a short period of time, much shorter than than 3 years.

Jay Clouse [01:22:34]:
Again, especially if you have some relationships. If you don't have any relationships, it really depends on what type of skill sets you can offer and how you can package that to be unique because it's always going to be easier to sell your time in the beginning, have, like, a lower leverage offering. If you're trying to get to $8,000 per month in courses or digital products, it's gonna take a lot longer. I think probably longer than 3 years. I mean, my my path started in April 2017. It wasn't until I'll say 2020 at least, but maybe 2021 until I was doing 8 k a month in non service based revenue. So that's 4 years. So I think I think the 1,000 day rule generally fits.

Jay Clouse [01:23:21]:
And if you look at this, you say I'm not willing to do this for 3 years before seeing that kind of return. I get it. And I wouldn't I wouldn't start. It puts you in a difficult financial position because it's also a 1000 days assuming that you're more or less going full steam at this. It's not like you just start a clock and say, alright. 3 years from now, it'll happen. It's, like, 3 years of very intense concerted effort.

Conor Conaboy [01:23:48]:
Ryan Furrer asks, has the time, energy, and effort you've put into the business negatively impacted any personal relationships? If so, how did you traverse that? How are they now?

Jay Clouse [01:24:02]:
1000%. I think there was a time for sure where my wife had kind of a she had kind of a a negative relationship with the business because of the space that held in my life and took away from her. And that was really hard because it's not that I love the business more than her or love working throughout the day it's it's gone to a point now where what provides for the family is the thing. And I gotta take care of it. But, you know, I also understand that, you know, I think about the, the the story of the fishermen and the businessmen all the time. And the brief version of this is, like, there's a fisherman. He goes on the morning, catches enough fish for the day, in a couple of hours, decides to go home. Businessman comes up and says, woah.

Jay Clouse [01:24:51]:
Woah. Woah. What are you doing? If you fish 8 hours a day, you'll catch more fish. And then you can sell those fish. And the fisherman says, why would I do that? Businessman says, well, catch more fish, sell more fish. You build a business. You sell the business. Then you don't have to work as much.

Jay Clouse [01:25:06]:
You can go home at the middle of the day and spend time with your family. The fisherman's like, that's that's what I'm doing here now. Butch the story, but you get the point. Yeah. I think about that all the time. You know, am I trying to build a thing that provides a certain lifestyle that I could have now by spending less time on the thing? That, like, keeps me awake at night sometimes. But we've we've gotten to a better place because now, you know, she is a part of the business. She understands more of how it works.

Jay Clouse [01:25:31]:
She also sees that, okay, this is providing a lot for our family. That's just one example. I think I've also probably, I won't say lost friendships as if there was like a fight. But, when you don't have a lot of space in your life for friendships that used to exist and you don't proactively try to work on them because, oh, here's another hour I can put into this thing over here.

Conor Conaboy [01:25:56]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [01:25:57]:
That can, you know, have an effect over time. So, you know, there is this effect where this is true for me, and I know it's true for a lot of my friends. The larger the audience has gotten, the smaller my inner circle has become. And that's kind of a bummer. I don't think any of that's, like, irreparable. And, you know, I'm trying now when I go on walks with the baby, instead of listening to a podcast, I'll, like, call someone in my network that I haven't talked to in a while. But it takes more effort as you get older to maintain those, like, closer ties. But if they're not nearby and there's not the convenience of just crossing paths, it takes effort.

Jay Clouse [01:26:35]:
And most people most people aren't willing to go first. So if you want to maintain a relationship, be that person that goes first.

Conor Conaboy [01:26:43]:
Yeah. I I know there's, there was, like, a part in my life where I was very much, like, a productivity bro, where I was, like, I know doctor k talks about this a lot where there's that sector of productivity bros, like, that I was in, where it's like, you wanna maximize work now so you can work less later. And it's like that full on sacrifice all or nothing that I used to do. And it's like, I definitely didn't I was not as active in my friends' lives as I would have liked to have been. And I noticed that and, like, started to make, that change where it's same thing as you where sometimes I'll put, like, on my calendar of, like, hey. Like, text this person or something like that where I can just, like, keep that relationship open. Because a lot of, like, your best relationships, whether they came from school or whatever, you start to realize, like, how, how circumstances played into the strength of that friendship. And a lot of times, it's like yes.

Conor Conaboy [01:27:37]:
Yeah. Proximity for sure, whether it's, like, work or school or whatever. And when that's away, like, you still have these feelings for that person and and, like, want to share that friendship, but you don't have all of these circumstances that are supporting it. So it's like, you have to make the effort to put that support there that, at at least in my life, nobody really talked about. In, and, like, I was able to fix that. And, like, I have very healthy relationships. Nothing was, like, permanently ruined. That was definitely, like, a huge learning curve for me, where it's, like, it doesn't have to be 1 or the other.

Conor Conaboy [01:28:10]:
Like, there's there's that balance that, I think is worth it to be fulfilled, even if, you know, it's not, like, perfect, but it's, it's way better, and it's, like, for sure helped.

Jay Clouse [01:28:23]:
I've heard Alex Hermozzi say this. He says, everybody wants you to be successful, just not more successful than than them. And, unfortunately, I think this is true for a lot of people because you you you do hear, like, people that you thought were close to you. You hear, like, they're talking shit or Mhmm. You know, saying unkind things.

Conor Conaboy [01:28:44]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [01:28:45]:
And it's a bummer. Like, people people really do struggle when someone like, we are we are comparison machines. Yeah. And when we feel like the comparison we were making is no longer in our favor, that makes us feel bad. And how do we deal with that? Usually, not in a healthy kind way. Yeah. And that that for sure happens.

Conor Conaboy [01:29:11]:
Jason Davies asks, I priced my monthly subscription product, not a community, too low. How do I raise it without pissing people off or appearing greedy?

Jay Clouse [01:29:23]:
Yeah. I mean, like, there's a whole spectrum of what you could do. And a lot of companies have done this very, very badly on the software space in particular. And I do like that he called out that this is a subscription product that's not a community because I think my answer would be a little bit different between whether it's, like, a subscription software and a community. Reason being community products that are peer to peer in nature have the potential for negative network effects. And what I mean is network effects means somebody joining the network makes the product more valuable. So somebody joining Facebook makes Facebook more attractive. More users join Facebook.

Jay Clouse [01:30:03]:
Suddenly, it becomes the most impactful social network on the planet because that's where everybody is. That's a positive network effect. In a community, if you're there for the people and somebody leaves, now you have the potential that other people leave also because that was such a linchpin in the community. And so if you have this announcement or this change in a community product that has a negative reaction because there's so much connectivity between those people, I think you're you're certainly going to have a big negative outcome by raising a price on existing So does

Conor Conaboy [01:30:50]:
So does that mean, like, you grandfather existing customers into the previous price?

Jay Clouse [01:30:55]:
Yes. That's what I would typically do unless you have such high market saturation for your target market that there's fewer non customers available to even join at the new price than you would like. But if you still have a large addressable market that's not using the products, I would grandfather the early customers or legacy price the early customers into, their current price. Otherwise, you know, I'm with you. I I don't like changing the pricing structure on something that you're already getting at a certain price. If I did wanna raise the price on current subscribers, I would basically add something of value to the product and then say, this pricing tier is this. But we just introduced this new change, which is an add on to this price or a new pricing tier, or maybe even have a limit and say, this pricing tier is going away eventually because we're moving to this, which has more value. So you basically remove the apples to apples comparison of I'm getting an apple for $4 and now I have to get the same apple for $5.

Jay Clouse [01:31:58]:
And the other great thing about, legacy pricing is it has a good effect on retention. Because if I know that I'm locked in at a price that I can't get anymore, I'm more likely to continue with that product if I think I'm gonna wanna use it because of, I don't know if you wanna call it, like, FOMO or loss aversion or something. So having a higher price for new customers has a good effect on retention.

Conor Conaboy [01:32:23]:
Have you ever run into a situation or had a bad response from someone, about price? Or even even, let's say, like, a current whether it's a community subscriber or somebody who who had purchased your stuff that, like, did not respond well and and you had to deal with something regarding price?

Jay Clouse [01:32:41]:
I've never raised the price on an existing customer.

Conor Conaboy [01:32:44]:
Okay.

Jay Clouse [01:32:46]:
But I have had prices raised on me for software, and I hated it. Because if you don't especially if the change is something I don't have any influence over. We don't humans don't like feeling like we don't have a choice. Yeah. So if you're raising the price on me, I'm automatically opposite into it and I don't have sufficient time to evaluate alternatives. You're gonna get a really negative reaction. The best changes I I see are like hey we haven't raised prices in 5 years we've added all of this stuff price changes taking effect on this date many months in the future that's like the best way to go about doing it I think is to show what has changed talk about how prices have not raised in a very long time and then give people a long lead time to react when you do it really short term it gives people a really negative taste in their mouth. And it's kinda like the feeling of you're dating somebody and they wanna break up with you and you talk them out of breaking up with you.

Jay Clouse [01:33:48]:
You're, like, still dating, but it's just not good, you know, and probably never will be. That's what it's like when you raise a price on somebody, without much warning.

Conor Conaboy [01:33:58]:
If if I'm Jason in this situation and I was, like, starting to make a new product, how can I avoid this situation where, like, I'm pricing this in a comfortable way? Is that, like, planning for the future? Or, are are there certain things I need to do?

Jay Clouse [01:34:14]:
Well, when people start memberships, because this is where the conversation comes up a lot of times for me, I do tell them to air on the side of pricing it too low because the people who purchase early are big fans, big advocates and you want to recognize them for their, like, faith and trust in a new product and in you. So, like, over time, I would only want to raise prices. And so it's good, actually, I think, to start on the low end.

Conor Conaboy [01:34:42]:
That's really interesting because a lot of times I've seen in tech, it's like the opposite approach where early adopters end up paying a lot more for an awful product. Like like, an example, I I think one is, I I I think my company's name is Humane Labs or something like that that released that, the, like, AI pin that you put, and it was supposed to, like, work on your hand and stuff. And it just didn't work, but people paid, like, $500 for this. And it was, like, yeah. Of course, I paid 500. I'm an early adopter. I know price is gonna come down. And it's, like, why are you paying more for getting a worse product?

Jay Clouse [01:35:18]:
Yeah. I think it's a different relationship when you're identifying with being an early adopter versus identity identifying as being a fan of company. Mhmm. Because I am always thinking, how do I give the best opportunities to my biggest fans and recognize them and give them the best pricing? But it it there is a lot of precedent for just products generally to say we are going to release the premium version of something first to subsidize the cost of producing a lower cost version. This is like the Tesla strategy. You know, we're gonna go out with, like, this luxury car that speaks to status and people with means can purchase to subsidize the cost to create the more accessible unit going upmarket and then downmarket. If you wanna capture the entire span of, like, people's income, it's better to go upmarket than downmarket because it's difficult for a low status product to become high status over time.

Conor Conaboy [01:36:23]:
That makes sense.

Jay Clouse [01:36:24]:
So it it really does depend on who your market is and what type of product we're talking about here. And just like pure software, it might be nice to bring cost down over time because that is rare, but it's rare. I would I would on starting lower on price because then you can get testimonials, raving fans, advocates, affiliates. Even if you say, like, this is gonna be priced at $50 a month, but right now, it's 25. Now you've set the precedent and the expectation this is a $50 per month product. You're getting in at a preferred rate, but this is what the product price is. And then eventually you can say this is this is just that market right now.