#308: Live Podcast Audit: Jeremy Enns Diagnoses What’s Holding Creator Science Back

Jeremy Enns [00:00:00]:
I always refer to these as killer concepts. One of the things I often find is they actually take way less pre production because you front load all the decision making and bake it into the concept and everything else becomes almost unnecessary after the fact.

Jay Clouse [00:00:26]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. Today's episode started with a text. Today I'm speaking with Jeremy Enns, the founder of Podcast Marketing Academy. Jeremy is a friend. He's an early member of the lab and a longtime listener of this show. But more than anything, Jeremy is a podcasting savant. He has spent years doing podcast audits for clients and has developed a really sharp lens for what separates shows that grow from shows that stall.

Jay Clouse [00:00:54]:
Jeremy recently reached out and basically said, hey, I've been taking some notes on your show. I think I have some thoughts that could be useful if you ever want to work some ideas around the podcast. And of course, I said yes. And we decided to record that and share it here publicly so you can benefit from it as well. So in this episode, we get into things I've never really talked about publicly. The tension between wanting to have interesting conversations with relatively unknown people versus wanting the show to grow and what it seems like that takes, why my Sam vanderweelen episode recently performed so well, and what it revealed about a premise that's hiding in plain sight. The difference between a show that requires you to already be known and liked as the host versus one that earns new listeners on its own merits, and whether there's a version of Creator Science where the concept is so well defined that making each episode becomes almost effortless. This one really got me thinking a lot, and I hope it does the same for you, because all the questions Jeremy asks me, you can just imagine he's asking them to you.

Jay Clouse [00:01:53]:
We will get to that full episode with Jeremy right after this. Jeremy, welcome. I'm excited to chat with you and put a little bit more thought into the podcast than I've put in some time. You know, it's interesting.

Jeremy Enns [00:02:09]:
We.

Jay Clouse [00:02:09]:
We have these efforts, we do these things and then we kind of continue them. And sometimes it's worth reflecting back and saying, what are we doing here? What's going on? What's the point of this? So I'm excited to have that chat in public.

Jeremy Enns [00:02:20]:
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's funny, my main product for many years now has been podcast audits, and at some point in the past two, three years, I was like, every time I listened to Creator Science, I was like, I've got thoughts about this. I Was like, I should just use my template for client audits. I'm just going to just keep notes in here for a long time, and eventually, at some point, who knows when in the future, I'll be like, well, here I'm going to just dump a bunch of stuff on Jay. And then there was actually, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was like, actually, this was one of the best episodes that I've heard in a long time. Listen to your show. And then I was like, actually, you know, we started getting into a conversation. I was like, maybe this is a good time.

Jeremy Enns [00:02:51]:
Just like, say, hey, I've got other things that could be useful. So I'm excited to dig into it.

Jay Clouse [00:02:55]:
Yeah, sorry, you told me already. But what episode was that where you were like, this was better than usual.

Jeremy Enns [00:02:59]:
This was the Sam vanderweelen episode, who actually is a former client of mine as well, before her book came out. It sounds like some. From some of the stuff you mentioned in your email, that that one actually got some feedback from other people as well.

Jay Clouse [00:03:11]:
Yeah, it did. People did respond really positively to it. And I don't know that I've, like, fully deconstructed exactly why that is. There is legitimate analytical proof that the podcast has been on an upward trajectory since January of this year. And that perfectly aligns with me saying, I'm going to stop doing anything other than the episodes that I want to do and have fun doing it.

Jeremy Enns [00:03:32]:
Interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:03:33]:
But that probably leads to something that's more concrete and insightful as to why people liked it. I'm sure, like, it's a. It's a good undercurrent, but I think probably underneath that is, like, curiosity. Maybe.

Jeremy Enns [00:03:46]:
I've got a few ideas and maybe to kick things off here as we're going to be talking about the show, one of the things, I've got several references of things you've said in the past that maybe we'll dig into it. And so I know you think about the podcast a lot, but I'm curious, like, what would be most helpful for you as you're thinking about the podcast in your life and your business? From our conversation today, I want to

Jay Clouse [00:04:04]:
feel like the things I'm doing have a clear purpose and give me a clear lens for making decisions. So right now, the driving force of the podcast is I have a weekly deadline to publish this podcast. So I publish every Tuesday because that's what I do. But I haven't really thought about it within the broader creator science context and content strategy in a long time. I know some benefits of having the podcast, but we have another episode with Callaway coming out soon where he's like, tell me about your short form strategy. And I was like, I don't know, I don't have a strategy. Like, I just haven't had a cohesive strategy as much as I've had a schedule that I've been very good at maintaining.

Jeremy Enns [00:04:48]:
Yes. Yeah, okay. Which I think puts you in the 99% of all podcast creators and I think most content creators as well. And so I think there's some interesting things that you already actually just articulated there. There'll be a through line here. So before we get into the deep dive on the podcast, I want to just kind of get your sense first of the state of the union of Creator Science as the business. What's your read on where things currently are at? And then the same for where the podcast is at. If there's anything to add based on what you just said.

Jay Clouse [00:05:17]:
Super unique point in time right now because I would say from 2021 and especially 2022 through 2024, business was on a tear. It was just doing great. And it was like, everything I do works. And then I turn around and say, look, this worked. I can teach you how to do that too. And like, that's a wonderful virtuous cycle when it works. Then we had a baby, and a lot of things that were working were really based on my time and no longer were working. So we had a small step back in 2025, namely on digital products and sponsorship.

Jay Clouse [00:05:57]:
Memberships continued to grow in 2025, but overall revenue was down a little bit. And heading into this year with a second on the way, I was just like, well, I gotta fix some of the stuff that's broken. After some conversations, some of which have been on the podcast with Michael Bungay Stanier, I hired someone to be an integrator full time in the business, and we have more capacity on the team than we've ever had. And, like, I'm finally not doing some of the things that I was doing, and that's very, very exciting. So as we sit right here right now, I think the core revenue model of the business stays the same. We have more capacity to handle more partnerships, so we're doing a little bit more on the partnership side. But I'm actually really interested in pushing the boundaries of Creator Science, the brand, the company, beyond Jay Claus, the individual, which is not something that I had been committed to in the past.

Jeremy Enns [00:06:54]:
When you think about the center, or maybe there's multiple Centers of gravity. What are the gravitational masses in Creator Science that you feel like these are the core pieces of what I do and what the business is right now. And if there's any difference between aspirationally, how would you articulate those?

Jay Clouse [00:07:10]:
The things that came to mind most quickly were the newsletter, the membership, the lab, and I suppose a third would be the podcasts. And then like, YouTube is kind of a fourth, even though it's also kind of a gorilla in the room. And I would say short form is fifth.

Jeremy Enns [00:07:30]:
Is that how you would like them to continue to be, or is that the state of the union right now and that's you want to spend more time investing in those big gravitational pulls or distribute that further? What's the vision?

Jay Clouse [00:07:41]:
I'm interested in publishing deeper, higher quality things. I'm also interested in publishing more. And those things historically have been at odds because I was the only one publishing. And I think in the future, I'm very excited actually, to explore more collaborations and just more people publishing underneath the Creator Science brand.

Jeremy Enns [00:08:09]:
Very interesting. And then the last thing on the business front, I'm curious how you see your business model. You obviously have two big pieces in their own right. You've got sponsorships and partnerships, and you've got selling your own products and services. You've got the lab, obviously, as the biggest of those. How do you think about these two things? Is Creator Science a primarily creator business that happens to sell some products, or is it primarily a product business that happens to also do sponsorships and partnerships?

Jay Clouse [00:08:35]:
I think primarily product business that also does sponsorships and partnerships. It's interesting that, but this is like a dichotomy that I see exists in a lot of places. It's like, is this a individual selling products, or is this a media company selling advertising? And I really feel like we are a merger of the two. But if I were to pick one that I weigh more heavily, it would be our own products.

Jeremy Enns [00:08:57]:
And is there a reason for that?

Jay Clouse [00:09:00]:
I just like to have more control over the customer experience.

Jeremy Enns [00:09:05]:
Yeah. Great. Okay. So that's helpful on the business front with the show, maybe. I think you articulated some of this right now that you've had a schedule, but not really much of a plan around it. Is there anything else that you would say? And maybe you can expand a little bit, your thoughts on, like, podcasting in general right now. And so there's obviously lots going on with AI in particular right now. But even over the years, like, I know you have opinions on where podcasts fit in a business.

Jeremy Enns [00:09:29]:
What they do well. What they don't do well. How do you think about podcasting as a whole and then your show within that larger kind of frame?

Jay Clouse [00:09:36]:
Podcasting as a whole as it relates to audio only RSS podcasting, I think is not top of funnel. It's very close to the bottom of the funnel. And that has been historically the closest free experience to one of my paid offerings. Like, if I look at the applications for the lab, a disproportionate number of them mention the podcast. And usually it's like I've been listening to the podcast for years. So it's always been like my best relationship builder in the business. It's not the largest platform. I think it's probably the smallest, all things considered.

Jay Clouse [00:10:12]:
When we started the YouTube channel, the thought was that podcast and YouTube channel are the same products, but one has video, one does not. And increasingly I'm thinking of them as very separate products. And so YouTube, regardless of what style of videos we put out, whether it's 100% interviews, 100% talking head, or some proportion of the two, that to me is mostly new audience. We do get people who come through to the lab now who say they watch the YouTube channel, but analytically I just know that viewers of the YouTube channel are mostly new viewers.

Jeremy Enns [00:10:47]:
And so with that in mind, do you see the show as playing a specific role or job in your business that you intentionally, you think this is the role that the podcast plays and I intentionally create it to fulfill that role?

Jay Clouse [00:10:59]:
I've never articulated this way, but the obvious answer is that it is the gateway to our largest product experience. Like, it's just undisputably true that most people who come to the lab come through the podcast. But I've never pointed to the podcast and said, the job that you are doing is getting people into the lab. I haven't done that. Like, to me, the podcast job has been for me to talk to interesting people.

Jeremy Enns [00:11:25]:
And is that enough or is there more that the podcast could be doing? How do you think about that now in the stage of business?

Jay Clouse [00:11:33]:
Well, now that I've kind of said, like, I'm decoupling the podcast from YouTube. It got complicated when podcast was YouTube because we were trying to keep it a one to one product for a long time. Every episode we publish should also go on YouTube. Then we realized that some guests we just knew, like, weren't gonna perform super well on YouTube and it was better off to put more time into fewer videos than to try to be one to one. But I wanted to Continue publish every week on the podcast. Then at some point we were like, let's just make the YouTube interviews be very YouTube centric. But that's not. That wasn't as interesting to me.

Jeremy Enns [00:12:05]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:12:06]:
And so the job to be done of I wanna talk to interesting people kind of got wounded in that way. And so when I pulled these things apart and said, these are separate things and I'm just going to enjoy myself on the podcast again, that's when we saw the podcast started performing better again. So it is enough to me that the podcast is where I am learning and building relationships with other people. Like, it's been how I've met a lot of people. If nobody joined the lab and referenced the podcast anymore, that would be weird. And I would probably be like, well, where are people going to come from then? So I guess maybe it's not true to say that just having fun with it is enough. Maybe I do implicitly expect that it is my best gateway to the community.

Jeremy Enns [00:12:53]:
And I guess on a somewhat related note, how if you were to rate the podcast in whatever job you've given it in your mind, on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective would you say it is right now?

Jay Clouse [00:13:04]:
Um, definitely on the right side of five. Trying to decide if it's on the right or left side of seven. Okay, I'm gonna say the podcast itself is probably at like a seven. And usually when I ask people to give me a one through ten, I say you can't pick seven. But if you were to say you can't pick seven, I have to pick six or eight. I guess I'd probably say six.

Jeremy Enns [00:13:23]:
Yeah, I think that tracks with how I might see it. Feels like there's a bubble around seven. That's kind of interesting and we can get into to some of that in a bit. The thing that I'm curious about is you have said many times on the podcast itself, in Retros, in other places and conversations that maybe we've had that if you were to start the show again today, you would do it very differently than the current show is. But there's sunk cost and any number of other reasons takes time to change things. So I'm curious, like, is that still something that you feel right now? And if so, like, what would you do if you were starting from scratch today? New podcast, the old one never existed, you're starting a show for creative science. What would that look like?

Jay Clouse [00:14:02]:
Well, I think what you're referencing is, I will often tell people, if I were starting a show today and I'm not saying this specifically about creator science, but if I were to start a podcast today, I think in a lot of circumstances it makes sense to try and have a co host, which I've never had on creator science. I have had a previous podcast where I did have a co host, which I really enjoyed. So it's conceptually interesting to me. I think it's probably more on the table now than it's ever been. The questions become like, stupid, small, tactical stuff like, who bears the cost, who bears the work, who reaps the reward? How do we talk about your thing if you're independent of creator science? And what does that mean? But those are all solvable problems. So I suppose it's still on the table, namely because the other shift in my mind when I started enjoying the podcast again was I don't think of these as interviews as much as conversations. I want this show to be about having a good hang, and so it's a lot easier to have a good hang with somebody you already have a relationship with.

Jeremy Enns [00:15:08]:
Yeah. Other than that, would there be any other changes? Another thing that I've heard you mentioned before is the idea of premise and concept. And so if you were starting today, you might have a stronger premise around the show right now. One of my kind of questions I sent for you to mull on a little bit is the best version of the show. You're coming to get Jay, and, like, there's not really a reason to listen to the show if you don't already know and like Jay, or is the best version of the show, like, you have Jay, and you also have a great premise that Jay is packaged within?

Jay Clouse [00:15:37]:
I think it'd be a lot more growable and interesting to a new listener if it didn't require an awareness and affinity for me to listen to the show for sure.

Jeremy Enns [00:15:48]:
How do you typically feel about constraints? I know a lot of people when we talk about concepts and premises and formats and things like that, a lot of creators like, like, no, that feels like I'm gonna get stuck into that and it's gonna box me out of having these types of conversations or talking to some people. Is that a fear you have, or do you Is that not?

Jay Clouse [00:16:07]:
Not really. Because I think I can break any rule, like, who cares? Like, it's probably good to have some guardrails. And then if it's like, I want to test not doing this, who cares?

Jeremy Enns [00:16:15]:
So when we're thinking about both the business and the show, and I think that these are connected, I'm curious about, like, goals that you have you mentioned, like, there was a period where, like, everything you touched kind of turned to gold. Everything worked. It's maybe gotten a little bit harder now. It's interesting. When you started Creator Science, in the grand scheme of the creator economy and everything else that was going on versus where things are at now, very different world. Like, what are the current goals of the business? And then how does the show fit into those in your mind? It feels like they've been a little bit detached. Not a lot of intention. Or are there problems or opportunities in the business that the show could be solving better than it currently is?

Jay Clouse [00:16:51]:
Well, as I think about team building, I'm thinking about company and brand building. And I want the Creator Science brand to mean something to people. And historically, like, the business was just a front for Mallonite's lifestyle. So, like, what were the goals of the business? Afford rent. And then eventually it was afford mortgage. You know, but like, that seems pretty safely covered at this point. Barrington cataclysmic events. I think the podcast should bolster and help grow the Creator Science brand.

Jay Clouse [00:17:24]:
Like, I think the podcast can be a good enough product on its own that it could be the front door to new people, to creator science. And I don't think historically that has

Jeremy Enns [00:17:35]:
ever really been the case except at the very start. I would say it almost was the front door early on.

Jay Clouse [00:17:43]:
I don't know. I don't know if that's true. I feel like I don't know if that's true. I think the people who came to the podcast early on were coming from email. They were coming from X Twitter at the time. Twitter actually used to be a huge positive force in my business that is now basically rounded down to zero.

Jeremy Enns [00:18:03]:
Actually interesting as I think about my memory is that I found you through the podcast, but that's not true at all. I found you months before with probably four different brands of the newsletter ago. You're still under the Unreal collective maybe branding at that point. But the podcast is interesting in when we're thinking about like center of gravity. Like that in my mind was the thing that I spent binge through every of the first, you know, 30, 40, 50 episodes and have a very specific time and a place where I was like, oh man, I listened to every episode back then. And so I think that that's true probably for a lot of people who, with podcasting in general, who discover somebody one place, but it actually occupies this mind. Share is like the show becomes the thing, which then is not really surprising that a lot of Those people end up becoming lab members and whatnot.

Jay Clouse [00:18:47]:
Yep, yep, that makes sense. It's interesting because I would actually say, you know how you stumble across something that you made like three years ago and it's kind of cringey and you're like, whoa. On the podcast, if I listen to episodes from like two or three years ago, I actually don't feel that way. What I actually feel is like, huh, I was more confident then than I am now. And objectively, I have more knowledge, more experience. I'm a much more well rounded person, more knowledgeable person. But I've crossed over the other side of Mount Stupid and when I was coming across as like confident, it was a pretty good show. I was on Mount Stupid, but like, people respond so well to confidence and sometimes that confidence brings out really interesting questions.

Jay Clouse [00:19:34]:
It worked on the show, so it's kind of depressing. Sometimes I listen to past episodes. I'm like, I don't know if I've really grown that much listening to this person from two or three years ago. I know, like, truly I have, but in terms of the product that gets put out and the way that I'm experienced, I don't know that I'm necessarily experienced as more confident or competent because what I have become is more self aware, which has also made me a little bit more self conscious.

Jeremy Enns [00:20:01]:
Interesting. I'm curious about some of the shows that you listen to and we can look at both podcast hosts and podcasts as role models and then they may or may not be related to businesses that those people may run. Who would you list in some of those aspirational figures?

Jay Clouse [00:20:16]:
I'm a big fan right now of Plain English by Derek Thompson. That's kind of the podcast that I have on repeat the most. That's a very episodic, like, we go all over the place show which like just tickles my novelty and want to understand the world brain. On the other side of the spectrum, I really like what David Perel is doing with how I write. That is a very premise driven, very specific show that is just interesting in a very different way. I really like shows that dig into specific pieces of art. And so really that comes down to music for me. A lot of times it's switched on pop dissect, song exploder.

Jay Clouse [00:20:58]:
And there's a joke podcast that I like called Working it out with Mike Birbiglia. Oh, and also good one. And also good one. Yes, good one also. So I really like the artist behind the craft types of shows. And then Derek Thompson is this weird Outlier, where I'm just so impressed with the way he prepares and drives interviews.

Jeremy Enns [00:21:21]:
Do you ever listen to the Ezra Klein Show?

Jay Clouse [00:21:24]:
No, I don't.

Jeremy Enns [00:21:24]:
Okay. Because I consider them to. To be very similar in subject matter. And I think Ezra Klein is. I read your recent newsletter about Derek. I like him, but I think Ezra's like his intros. I am in awe of his podcast intros. Unfortunately, they're behind that paywall.

Jeremy Enns [00:21:38]:
There's this one on Taste from about a year ago. I clipped it out, I transcribed it into script, and then I did a whole annotated thing for my clients where I was like, everybody should just be in awe of this intro at what he has done here. And he actually. On how I write. Him and David Perel have one of the best episodes about both writing and podcasting that you'll. You'll ever hear. So I'd highly recommend that I have

Jay Clouse [00:21:58]:
listened to that interview, but I haven't listened to his show, which is interesting. You know what I don't listen to is I don't listen to this person's name show, with the exception of Tim Ferriss, because it was the first podcast I ever listened to. Because, yeah, I've never had a relationship with Ezra Klein, so why would I jump into the Ezra Klein Show?

Jeremy Enns [00:22:14]:
Which is interesting because you could argue that the show right now, Creator Science, does not really have much of a premise. The name does a lot of work with the show, but really, if I think about, like, what am I coming to Creator Science to get? It's like, I want to hear what Jay thinks.

Jay Clouse [00:22:29]:
Right, Right. I would agree.

Jeremy Enns [00:22:31]:
How do you think about that?

Jay Clouse [00:22:32]:
I think the brand has more potential than it is realizing right now.

Jeremy Enns [00:22:39]:
What would that look like in your mind? I'm guessing you've. I've actually heard you kick around ideas on extending the idea of science experimentation through other parts of the business. There's maybe other ideas.

Jay Clouse [00:22:50]:
Yeah. I mean, science is a pretty rich motif. One area of that could be experiments. So there could be a world where creator science is just breaking down specific experiments. Like, here's something I tried, here's what worked. And I think that's a great opportunity to bring collaborators into the business because, again, like, historically, it's been limited to me, so it's limited to the velocity with which and ability or documentation with which I run experiments. But I think that could just be opened up a lot wider, which would be awesome. Similar to Chanel's brand Growth in Reverse, which I think is just like, there's so much Space here.

Jay Clouse [00:23:30]:
I could break down anything. Anything related to creators, like, could take a very analytical, scientific approach, and it's right there. And I think the titles could tie really well into that. Like, an interview show isn't necessarily the obvious conclusion for this brand.

Jeremy Enns [00:23:46]:
Obviously, you've explored ideas. They're kind of like obvious extensions of the brand. There's experiments that you encourage people to do in the lab already and you've actually talked about in the past, like, what if I incentivize people to post more of them and feature them in different ways? So you've obviously thought about this. What has been the block from experimenting with that in small ways on the podcast or elsewhere?

Jay Clouse [00:24:06]:
Capacity. I've never been ahead of the schedule. I have a very intense schedule for what has been a resource constrained business. And so to do a bigger idea with the premise of the podcast, it just necessitates that I get ahead of it. And also probably, I don't know that the pace of the schedule really accommodates it unless we're doing a lot of these things in parallel, which is possible. But again, like, needs somebody managing that from a capacity standpoint. So it's purely been resource constraints, which were, of course, made worse when we had a baby.

Jeremy Enns [00:24:45]:
Yeah. Okay. When you think about the idea of experiments, what are the ways that you could explore that on the podcast? Because it sounds like the way you're thinking about it is we have a hypothesis and either over the course of one episode or many episodes, we're keeping up along with that. Are there other ways that you could think of that that could be incorporated?

Jay Clouse [00:25:02]:
Well, yeah, I think experiments are kind of fractal in that it could be episodic, every episode is an experiment, or it could be a series. I could do updates over time. I think either would work. The pattern is really pre production, and it's true of everywhere I'm producing content is I don't spend enough time in pre production because there are deadlines coming up. So I better get into production right now. Yeah, so I think everything in the business would benefit from a more rigorous period of pre production.

Jeremy Enns [00:25:35]:
One of the things that I find with many great concepts, I always refer to these as killer concepts. And I made a show about that. And that's my kind of, like, way of thinking about, like, just something that, like, I remember hearing David Perel talk about just like writing that just like rips and you're like, oh, like, yes, that's just like a killer concept. One of the things I often find is they actually take Way less pre production because you front load all the decision making and bake it into the concept and everything else becomes almost unnecessary after the fact. Have you considered that there is a version of the show that the concept is so well defined that actually making episodes is insanely easy?

Jay Clouse [00:26:11]:
I am tracking what you're saying. This would be the difference between like a reply all versus a song splitter. Meaning, like I think of reply all as like, every episode's a little bit different. Like I trust these guys and they're like big episodes, big ideas, but pretty distinct from one another where I think there was probably somebody in a room talking about potential ideas and them saying, yes, this one's interesting. Go track down that scammer. Whereas song exploder, it's the same container every episode. All you're doing is putting a new variable inside the container. So yeah, I do think that having a well defined container would reduce the time needed for pre production.

Jeremy Enns [00:26:53]:
I have an example of this that really like opened up my eyes to this. So I years ago created a show that was. It was actually inspired by early creator science with this semi narrative breaks and music at very high production value, took, I don't know, 20, 30 hours an episode. And that one was a big, big misfire on that one. It was actually kind of like working out all right, but I realized there's no way I can sustain this. And then years later, in several shows later, our mutual friend Justin Jackson and I kind of just on a whim, started doing these podcast roasts as a spin off bonus episode of our main show. And what we realized, and what I've realized is part of the premise was that we do zero prep. And so it's our first impression to a podcast and we basically use our combined expertise and we say, okay, here's everything that we can see on the surface.

Jeremy Enns [00:27:38]:
Here's what you should do to fix this, here's interesting questions for us to discuss, and that's it. And it was a super easy edit. There was zero prep required. And it turns out like, that show is the one that gets talked about the most for my audience. It's the one that consistently drives sales. And it kind of reminds me of, I think I've heard you share this James Clear quote about when he was writing his book and saying, you know, do I believe that this current newsletter is the easiest, highest value, best for my business version? And the answer was like, well, no, There are some parallel universes where there's one that does better on every count. And so I'm curious When you think about creator science and you think about the show, what comes to mind for something that would be really easy for you based on your expertise that fits within the creator science universe? That is just like, man, I could do that, snap my fingers and do that every day.

Jay Clouse [00:28:26]:
Well, the current setup is fairly low lift because right now I'm only interviewing people that I'm like, naturally curious to interview. Like back when I was trying to pull in big names, it required a lot of prep because I didn't necessarily have a whole lot of whatever. But one variation of this is basically doing what we do inside the lab with hot seats, where people have like a pretty defined challenge related to their creator business and we talk through that. But that's a coaching style show and I just don't know if that has legs without people already having a lot of respect and admiration for me either. You have to really believe that I know what I'm talking about. To want to listen to me talk about it for 30 minutes or whatever, which a new listener might not necessarily do that. This is something I think about on my short form channels too. One of my most popular reels that I ever made was Nat Eliason.

Jay Clouse [00:29:22]:
Did a thing, launched a thing. And I was like watching his launch live and I just did like a green screen recording. Like, let me tell you about what this guy's doing right now. And I just broke down what he was doing and kind of gave the behind the scenes of what you're seeing in the front of the scenes. That's very easy for me to do. I can reverse engineer things on their face. Like, people right now are going crazy with what Jessie Jean is doing on Instagram with her yap challenge. I'm like, this is ship 30 brought to Instagram.

Jay Clouse [00:29:47]:
I saw this play out four years ago. You're good at a thing on a platform. You teach other people how to do that thing and be good on that platform. They talk about your program like it all cycles upward. So I feel like there's something there where I can be like, I'm going to identify something that's happening, some creator that has some juice right now and break it down and show you, like, why is this working? What do we need to know? What can we replicate from it?

Jeremy Enns [00:30:13]:
This is interesting and it gets at one of the things that I notice about the show. And I think you've addressed this and talked about it before. There is a breadth to the content right now. And so part of this is maybe driven by, well, there's interesting people out There doing all kinds of stuff. I want to learn about that. And so I'm going to go talk to them because I get to learn and my audience will find it valuable. Perhaps the other piece is, I think, a product of when you came into the creator world was it was kind of possible to become an expert on almost every platform in a weird way that I think you've talked about now recently. It's like, well, what do I need to become like an authority on? I mean, you already kind of were on X and then there was LinkedIn and then we've got, okay, what about Blue sky? What about Threads? What about Instagram? Like, where do you draw the line? And so I'm curious about a Reacting to something that's going on in the creator world is interesting to people who are on that platform.

Jeremy Enns [00:31:09]:
I actually have no idea who Jesse Jean is. I'm not on Instagram at all. So that's going to be an episode that I'm like, well, I don't know, not interesting to me. And this is actually something that I was at a lab meetup in or a co meet up that we ran in London a couple of weeks ago and there's several lab members there. And basically everybody said, yeah, I know, like maybe like 10 to 20% of the episodes are relevant to me. So I listened to those and like, I like Jay, I like when there's something relevant to me. But there's this kind of diffuse, like lack of density for any one person. How do you think about like topic selection, guest selection when it comes to that? Is that a thing that is working for you in some way or do you feel like that's something that like, could be addressed?

Jay Clouse [00:31:48]:
It is the biggest challenge in the business and I don't really know how to solve it under the current brand because creator science denotes a certain focus, whereas podcast science would be inherently more dense. The word creator intentionally kind of diffuse. So it is difficult to do this. I mean, there's a parallel world where the content I create on Instagram is all about Instagram, the content I create on LinkedIn is all about LinkedIn. The podcast content's all about podcasting. YouTube is all about YouTube. That would probably be the most highly performative version of creating content on all these platforms. I'm not in love with that future.

Jay Clouse [00:32:35]:
I'm just not. So I don't know what to do about that because I don't know how to solve that problem without verticalizing around platforms in some way. Or I say I'm not actually going to put a ton of time into the attention side of the creator world. I'm gonna instead focus more on the revenue side or relationship building potentially that starts to compress things in an area I think I'm more suited for and interested in long term. But I feel like I can't not talk about the attention and discovery side of being a creator. After a quick break, Jeremy digs in even deeper and shows us how we can really sharpen our podcast premise. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Jay Clouse [00:33:29]:
And now back to my conversation with Jeremy ends.

Jeremy Enns [00:33:33]:
One of the biggest things that I feel about creator science and you as a personal brand is that it is not really clear to me what your point of view is or process around creating. And so I could cite specific points of view on specific things. I know you have an opinion about memberships that I could speak to that I know you have an opinion about podcasting that I could quote back. But when I think about, like, Jay's perspective and point of view on, like, what is the core problem keeping creators from being successful, what is his prescribed solution, and what is the method that he himself uses and believes that other people should take, I don't really have a good sense of that. And I think that this is something that is becoming increasingly important for your brand, especially as you're looking to grow beyond yourself, is that it feels like there's a gap in the IP and point of view kind of section of the business that really, like, that is becoming a limiting factor on all of the content where you won. The easy option is almost to say, yeah, let's just verticalize everything. But there's another option that's like, we have a core piece of IP that we distribute across all the platforms that is about the big piece of idea of what does it mean or what does it take to become a professional creator.

Jay Clouse [00:34:49]:
Yeah, there's some. There's some of that. First of all, I agree with you that it's not centered in the brand as a whole and probably not as developed as it could be. It as well is like fairly diffuse across different aspects of the set. Like, what I'm good at is somebody coming in and presenting their constraints and then pattern matching and saying, like, okay, well, based on your constraints and what you're good at, I'm going to amalgamize everything I've learned about different people. And like, here's a pretty prescriptive path that I think will work for you, but that's a call and response style teaching versus anything. That's more prescriptive and self serve. So there's definitely something there that can and should be developed.

Jay Clouse [00:35:34]:
I agree with you. That's more important now than it has been in the past. That asset does not exist in an articulated, approachable form right now.

Jeremy Enns [00:35:47]:
It's interesting in your case because the membership is not a prescriptive product and it's like that's its greatest strength. And it's also potentially a challenge with. I think a lot of times I always think about this with electricity with like there being these two nodes or like lightning needs something to be conducted through. And I feel like a lot of time we have this energy that is pent up and we're creating content, but if we don't know like what it's being directed to, we like can't really aim it and it's kind of like frizzled and frazzling all over the place. And I think that IP is one of those things that crystallizes that and focuses it. And it says, okay, we have a philosophy about. I'm sure you have a philosophy about how you create content and I bet that philosophy extends to other people who are like you that they could implement that. And I bet there's also a process or methodology that could come from that saying, hey, this isn't like so specific of like you need to post on this channel this many times a week.

Jeremy Enns [00:36:40]:
It's this is the way to think about your creative career if you want to achieve this thing. So if you have these prerequisites and you want this goal, this is my high level, 30,000 foot view of what you should do. And then we get into the tactics down below that and I can help you with some of those. But there is a mindset that I've installed in UA operating system to get there.

Jay Clouse [00:37:00]:
It's all there, it's just not. And by there I'm pointing at my head. It's all there. It's not there in the paper. And I do think it's an important thing to develop. And I thought about this because our next sprint as a team is we've been gathering a lot of feedback from folks in the community across all tiers. And so we have that feedback and we want to make changes to the design of the product. It's inherently more difficult to sell a peer to peer experience because the value is discoverable.

Jay Clouse [00:37:34]:
It's not super apparent. Memberships sell best when you have a very clear outcome transformation oriented thing easier to sell. I think not necessarily more retentive as A product. So it's like, how do I get the benefits of that without the downsides? Is an interesting design challenge that we're working through as a team right now. And a part of that I think could be taking a more critical look at which IP do I care to develop? Because there's lots of IP that I have that I don't actually care to develop is the thing.

Jeremy Enns [00:38:10]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:38:10]:
The harder question is what IP do I have that I care to develop? Because I actually do want to double down there. Like, the biggest blocker for me has been a lot of the stuff that I think I'm good at and could teach well, I don't necessarily want to be known for. And so I had.

Jeremy Enns [00:38:31]:
It's interesting that you mentioned the membership, which another person at the London meetup. She didn't say which episode it was, but there was a member of the lab who was on the podcast in the past maybe month or two and she said that was the first episode that made me want to join the Lab. And I thought, oh, I've had that same thought many times. And I've thought there's a world where probably the best. The highest conversion rate version of the show has some concept that makes it interesting to the outside people and features a hundred percent lab mates as the guest. When I think about your assets that you have working for you, you have a very, very exclusive community of people, which is exactly what you're selling. You're selling access to these people. And so featuring those people is giving a little bit of a window into like, oh, these are the type of people in the lab.

Jeremy Enns [00:39:19]:
And also they're smart people who are achieving things. They're going to be good guests anyway because they're all creators as well. Like, this is something that's really working for you and they all want more exposure for their own stuff. It's like a lot of things are kind of flowing in that direction. I remember the thing that kept me from signing up the Lab was the question of course is like, are my type of people in there? And as soon as I saw, oh, Justin Moore's in there and who else? There was a couple other people early on, I was like, oh, yeah, it's like the room that I want to be in, but it was opaque before that. And I know you do a lot of work with this on sales pages and things like that. But there is a world where every week there's a new spotlight who's both educational and helpful on the podcast and also working to promote the Lab.

Jay Clouse [00:40:00]:
I Think that's true. I've had that thought. And we have a few of those interviews scheduled. I think there's really something there. What's interesting is I don't know what to do with this tension I feel. So I'm just gonna put it out to you. I'm not interested in interviewing fancy people because they're fancy people and they're big names and they go on podcasts. There was a period of time where I was, and honestly, that period of time was probably when downloads were the highest.

Jay Clouse [00:40:27]:
But I also get anecdotal feedback from people that they're not necessarily interested in that. So it's weird because I get anecdotal feedback where they're like, I don't necessarily need you to interview big name person because you can. But also when I do, the results prove better. So I don't know what to do with that. But I guess ultimately, like, my brain has been. I don't really care to contrive a conversation with somebody just because they're a big name. I would rather actually have conversations with people in the lab because I think it's more relatable, more interesting and more actionable for listeners of this show. But that's been.

Jay Clouse [00:41:02]:
What's held me back is like, sometimes I question, is all this true or am I just hiding from making big scary asks to get people on the show? And I'm so good at deceiving myself that I don't know what the right answer is anymore.

Jeremy Enns [00:41:14]:
There's a couple things in here. One, to me is the question. I think great shows have a specific promise that gets fulfilled every single time. And it is parent to listeners whether or not it's publicly stated or not. Oftentimes it is, and sometimes there's several things that you get every single episode. I find it uncanny because it's so uncanny. I know it's designed for that. This American life.

Jeremy Enns [00:41:38]:
If you listen to any episode, it's going to make you laugh out loud at some point. It's probably going to bring tears to your eyes and it's going to leave you thinking differently about humanity and people. And so there's some design decision that they know. Like, this is our checklist that must happen for every single episode. And the stories are wildly different. Like week to week. Within each episode, there's different stories under one theme. But the themes of every week, those are different.

Jeremy Enns [00:42:00]:
And they don't really. Like, on the surface, there is some hook to them, but it's like actually the experience, it hits every single Time that that's what keeps you coming back. And David Perel is an interesting example here, too, because that's been a show that I've loved and binged through for a long time. It's been a few months since I listened now, but it was not really clear to me what the premise is. He mentioned it one time somewhere that I could never find again. That actually clarified it for me, where I think he said it was something like where the authors you love give the deepest interview on their craft they've ever given. And I thought, ah, yeah, that's what it is. And there's no other show that does that like he does.

Jeremy Enns [00:42:39]:
And so there are children's book authors and there's screenwriters and there's musicians and there's all these people. But there is a clear process and orientation that I know I'm going to get every single time I hit play. And I think that that's something where, like, with the episode, the Sam Vanderwielen episode, there was something there that I started thinking, hmm, it almost feels like you're kind of getting closer to it. But I don't know if it's defined, like, what is the thing that I'm gonna get every time when I listen to Creator Science?

Jay Clouse [00:43:09]:
Yeah, if I were to think about that episode that was very much driven by, like, she did a thing, and I had enough knowledge to know the thing that she did, and that it was unique and aspirational. And then I basically wanted to get as much detail as I could in an hour on that. Which I think, like, speaks to the intuitive promise of a show called Creator Science. Certainly is something that listeners of the show should enjoy and be interested in. So maybe it is that. And there's probably, like, a level of explicitness on that premise that I could make and say, like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep an eye open. And this happens in the lab when people share, like, experiments and launches and whatever else I could be like, I want to see somebody that did a thing, and then we're going to talk about that thing.

Jeremy Enns [00:43:59]:
One of the things that you mentioned before with the. The challenge of reining it in, thinking about, like, okay, do I verticalize everything, or is there something more centralized? I think a lot of times there's, like, a process in an offer a lot of times, especially, like a course or coaching engagement or something like that. I also think, and, like, you hear this in, like, classic copywriting language, like, the unique mechanism that you have that your product's built around. I think great podcasts also have a unique mechanism, usually, which is the specific defined way that they fulfill the promise. If I think about, like one of the best versions of creator science, to me, it's that you talk to all the same people and that there's somebody who is an Instagram person. And I'm not on Instagram or TikTok. I've never even set up an account on TikTok. But I know that there is a process that you will go through to unearth certain insights that it doesn't matter who the person is.

Jeremy Enns [00:44:51]:
I know that because of the questions and the segments and the way the show set up. It could be something that I have no experience with. I know it's going to be valuable to me.

Jay Clouse [00:45:02]:
That's interesting. One way that I can think about this, there are just aspects of every creator that are true. Somehow you have to have new audience discovery, and then somehow you have to have relationship and trust building. And then somehow you have to monetize to create and capture value in the business. So I suppose I could apply that lens and say every interview, be a lot to cover in an hour to try to be like, let me talk about how you get discovered. Let me talk about how you build relationships. Let me talk about how you monetize. Because each one of these people, like, I could spend an hour on all three of those areas.

Jay Clouse [00:45:37]:
But maybe it's not an every episode hits all three. Maybe it's every episode hits one of those three to a level of depth that is uncommon.

Jeremy Enns [00:45:46]:
So part of me thinks that I would actually still keep it all three of those. And there could be other segments, there could be other things you explore. But we've got these three, so we can work with these. But I would say that those can be elastic in length where sometimes because something is a little bit more common and like, oh, they just sell courses the way everybody sells courses. There's nothing really interesting there. We'll talk through that. And maybe there's a couple things there, but we're going to spend much more time on the specific audience acquisition strategy or this other specific, like, nurture thing that they're doing. And a show that does this for me really well is Money for Couples from Ramit Sethi, where I don't relate to 90% of the couples, maybe on an income level, maybe on just some life situation level.

Jeremy Enns [00:46:27]:
But the format is consistent enough. It's. It's flexible, it's very flexible. But it's consistent enough that Every single episode I'm like, it doesn't matter who the guest is. The process Ramit takes them through is going to surface something that I'm like, huh, that's an interesting way to think about money and or relationships.

Jay Clouse [00:46:42]:
What's the format on that? It's like, come complain and then I'm gonna ask you if you do a budget and I'm gonna walk you through the budget.

Jeremy Enns [00:46:48]:
So basically he took the where should we begin? From Esther Perel, like live couples coaching sess with a money lens. And so he's a very good coach and he's a very good content creator and marketer. And so the, the hard part about that is like, it is very difficult to have a useful coaching session that also is listenable content. So I think there's a lot of editing there. But he has his set plays kind of that he works around. And so every episode is maybe going to be an hour and a half and probably like an hour of that is segments that happen in almost every episode. Sometimes the order is switched, but he has moves he can go to to move the conversation along. It's a very like, high show.

Jeremy Enns [00:47:26]:
But the idea that like, there is a process that could be much easier, it's not dependent on the guest and like a great guest could elevate it. Where now somebody's like, ooh, I want to see Jay apply that lens to this person that actually amplifies that person's interestingness. Because you're coming at it through a lens that other people haven't.

Jay Clouse [00:47:43]:
Yeah, okay. I've listened to Ramit show. Actually when it first launched, I binged a lot of them. I was like, I can't believe people are coming on the show and sharing this. But I was trying to think like, literally what is the three act structure? And if I were to articulate it from my memory, which was when the show launched, it may be different is I remember it being like, here's the problem and we're both talking about the problem. And then Ramit's kind of like, have you filled out this worksheet? And then he's like, let's walk through the worksheet. But is there like a different aspect

Jeremy Enns [00:48:07]:
to that now that's still in it. And the fascinating thing about that is this is like, I think one of the most brilliant podcast things I've ever seen. That worksheet is his primary lead magnet. And so he basically has a 20 minute ad for his lead magnet that I went and downloaded it and it's like baked into the show. And it actually. It is a useful tool for exploring the conversation. And so this is something I love in shows when they have artifacts for people to react to. David Perel's another great example of this.

Jeremy Enns [00:48:37]:
This is my favorite part of any interview. Doesn't do this all the time. When he gets people, he reads back their own writing and gets them to react to it. There's this third thing that enters the conversation, and that can be a set piece that is often so useful it removes the, like, I'm interviewing you and extracting information. And we're more seeing how you think about something, maybe in his case, that you've written or that's happening in the world that you've done in the past. Something else.

Jay Clouse [00:49:02]:
These are good prompts. I like the idea of, like, okay, we're circling on a couple of things. Lens, which could probably be informed by or built from ip, which could exist in the form of some sort of asset or artifact which is naturally present in every one of these episodes.

Jeremy Enns [00:49:25]:
Yes. The thing that is so useful about this is, I think, one of the hardest parts of getting a podcast listener. It's such a time commitment. And so there's high risk to clicking play. And so I always think about the more transparent we can make the show where we can read them. This is what happens. Creator science is a show about creators where in every episode we do this thing and they're like, oh, I get the show without having listened to any of it. Where we interview the most successful creators is like, yeah, you.

Jeremy Enns [00:49:53]:
And a lot of other shows. Why this one? Where when there's a specific thing that becomes like, oh, what I think is going on here, there's two things. Partly it can just be a hook. There's like an interesting thing of, like, oh, that's an interesting way to talk to creators that I haven't heard before. Take hot Ones. Not creators, but celebrities. But the other thing is that I think it demonstrates that thought has gone into the product. And it is a sign that, like, oh, there is a process here that somebody has thought about and they've decided that this is the way to do it because it's going to get to some positive result.

Jeremy Enns [00:50:23]:
And so I think there's a subliminal kind of thing that shows us like, oh, this is a more thoughtful show than all those other interview shows that I'm sick of.

Jay Clouse [00:50:31]:
I like this. This gives me a lot of food for thought to chew on and play with.

Jeremy Enns [00:50:36]:
Two last examples that I'll give you that are interesting. One is in your space. I worked with a client that she's now moved the show positioning a little bit, but it was. She was speaking to creators, very small show. And her show was called Edit History. And basically the premise was that in every episode, a now more successful creator came on and looked back at one of their early content pieces and basically said, here's how I would do it different today. And like, oh, and it was such an interesting show because you got through this whole creator journey story in actually an interesting way, where some of the episodes were kind of like, oh, yeah, back then I was feeling like I wasn't confident. And so I felt I had to speak in this register.

Jeremy Enns [00:51:14]:
And so I was doing this and that. And so then when you read this line here, that just makes me cringe really hard. And like. And then they rework it and say, well, if you were to rewrite a post today around the same content, like, how would you do that? And I thought this was a brilliant concept and just a way of talking about creators that gets at so many different things than you're likely to get at during a typical interview.

Jay Clouse [00:51:35]:
Yes, yes, I like that, too. I like that. Okay. And you said there are two things that you want to show.

Jeremy Enns [00:51:39]:
Yeah. The last one that I'll share is one of my favorite shows called three Books. This is by my fellow Canadian, Neil Pazrica. It's a pretty big show, and in every episode he says, one of the world's most interesting people, which is a very loose kind of like, up to his discretion qualifier. And they share their three most formative books. And I think what works about this show is that if you're a book person, you have had the experience of having a book change your life in some way, and so you immediately. It plants an image in your head of, like, your books, like, unbidden, that is in your mind now. And you're like, huh? And then you see Seth Godin on the list, and you're like, whoa.

Jeremy Enns [00:52:13]:
I've never heard Seth Godin talk about his three most formative books. And what do you know? It's the. In my mind, the best interview I've heard of Seth Godin. Sorry, Jay. I know you interviewed him early on, but the thing was that I'm not offended. The thing was, like, it got at this angle of Seth that there was no one that could ever have gotten at that any other way. But the premise did the work of opening up this whole other angle. And it's very consistent.

Jeremy Enns [00:52:35]:
Three books, but very elastic. Like, the length varies wildly. Everybody has different books sometimes. He doesn't usually allow people to pick the same book, but when he does, it's interesting to hear different people's perspectives on how the same book changed them. And so it feels like there is this structural format and yet it is very non formulaic and it's something that I just like. Again, it's a format where I'm like, I don't care who the guest is. If I'm a book person, I'm like, yeah, I want to hear how books change people and I want to hear about the books and I want to hear about the people. And it almost elevates everything.

Jeremy Enns [00:53:05]:
And so that you have this really high floor to the show where it's really, really hard to make a bad episode.

Jay Clouse [00:53:10]:
Okay, well then having heard all of this, I'm not going to hold you to this and you're not going to necessarily set me on a path. That is something I'm going to say. Like, Jeremy, having heard all of this, where's your head at where you're like, this feels like a natural creator science premise to me.

Jeremy Enns [00:53:28]:
I want to hear the IP fleshed out around what does creator science mean to you? That's what I want to see demonstrated and explored in every episode. And so there's a prerequisite there. And one of the things I always find is that podcast problems are almost always brand and product problems, where usually the podcast is designed to lead people to some outcome. It's meant to be valuable, but it's also meant to do something else. And so usually people have unclear products and unclear branding, which makes it impossible almost for the show to be useful to the business or really interesting. That's the first piece I'd put out there. To me, though, like, the perfect creator science show has some kind of external hook. And so it's something that I don't know, Jay, but I'm like, that's an interesting show.

Jeremy Enns [00:54:09]:
I want to listen to that. And then I think the other piece on the inside, 100% of the episodes, or let's like give you some wiggle room, like 75% of the episodes feature lab members. I would not be surprised if that increased lab revenue depending on where there's caps immensely. And I think there is so much. If you're teaching something, demonstrating your thought process and your ability to teach, not like actually telling people, but showing your process that sells. And I think with a membership community, it's again, demonstrating like, this is what's happening here. These are the people here. This is how we operate and the level we operate at.

Jeremy Enns [00:54:42]:
And I think that when people consume enough of those I've listened to the show for years and I'm finally ready to sign up. It's like I listened to three episodes and like that's the place for me.

Jay Clouse [00:54:51]:
So good man. Really appreciate you taking the time. I think I've told you this before, but your client results page on podcastmarketingacademy.com is so aspirational and smart. We'll link that in the show notes for anybody who wants to see what does it look like to showcase evidence of your competency and results that you're promising? Where else should I send people after the show?

Jeremy Enns [00:55:13]:
Yeah, I've got if people are interested in learning more about the kind of like how do you design a show to both grow the show and your business? I've got a free workshop that is called the Podcast Growth Equation, both on the show and the business side. You can find that@podcastmarketingacademy.com J.

Jay Clouse [00:55:35]:
Let me tell you, my mind was spinning after this conversation. I can't wait to spend some time journaling on these ideas that Jeremy shared, and I hope it spurred some thoughts and ideas for you too. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know. Those reviews go a long way to helping us grow this show. I read them all. I love them all. They give me new life. I think they actually make me younger when I see reviews on the show.

Jay Clouse [00:55:59]:
So thank you for those of you who are trying to make me younger. If you want to learn more about Jeremy, visit his website@podcastmarketingacademy.com definitely sign up for his newsletter. There's a link to both in the show notes. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next week.