Jay Clouse [00:00:23]:
All the channels, YouTube, the Lab, Instagram, threads, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I asked for some more listener questions. These episodes tend to be some of our most popular and I love doing them. So we're gonna keep rocking. Now this is actually a part 2. The first half of these questions I recorded in video format with my producer, Connor. We took a lot of the questions from YouTube and the questions about YouTube and we prioritize those for a video episode on the channel. So if you have not listened to the part 1 and you want the part 1, it doesn't really matter what order you listen to these in. There is just more questions for you to learn about predominantly related to YouTube or things that a YouTuber would care about over in the feed before this episode or on the YouTube channel as the most recent video, depending on when you're listening to this.

Jay Clouse [00:01:09]:
But for this audio episode, we are going to dive into questions that I got from the lab, from Instagram, from LinkedIn, Twitter, and threads. But before we get into that, I have a couple of things that I want to tell you. Thing number 1, if you are not already subscribed to the Creator Science newsletter, please do so. You will like it. Almost 60,000 creators subscribed to it already. It's atcreatorscience.com. It will help you become a professional creator in 10 minutes per week. So if you don't already get that, I'm telling you, if you like the podcast, you're gonna like the newsletter.

Jay Clouse [00:01:38]:
Just go to creatorscience.com. Thing number 2, I've spent the last couple of months building a new product called Creator HQ. And this is a templatized version of my personal Notion setup that is how we run the entire creator science business. It's what we use for task management, content preparation, content publishing, content repurposing. It's what I use to manage sponsorship campaigns and all of my relationships. It's my lightweight CRM. All of this, I have prettied up, cleaned up, put together for you to implement in your business as well. I've shown it to a bunch of creators and they've always asked me, can I have this? And the answer for a long time was no.

Jay Clouse [00:02:20]:
But I have done the work now of turning it into a set of templates that you can implement in the course of an afternoon, get up and running and run your entire business out of. We'll give you the peace of mind that everything is in one place. It makes tracking and managing everything just easy. It is your second brain, I guess you'd call it, but built specifically for creators. Again, this is exactly what I am using in my business, and it manages this half $1,000,000 growing empire that we have here at Creator Science. So if you're interested in that, if you want to have everything in one place and make managing all of the work easier, if you feel like you're dropping the ball or things are slipping through the cracks, go to creatorhq.co. Get on the wait list if you're getting this before it's available or once it's available to purchase, you can get that at creatorhq.co. It's probably the best thing I've ever made.

Jay Clouse [00:03:12]:
We'll see. Results are coming in now. Folks in the lab, we got this early, and they are loving it. And I'm personally using it, so I'm loving it, obviously. But if you're interested, creatorhq.co. So let's start with questions from The Lab. The Lab is my private membership community for professional creators. If you're a professional creator and you lack community or want to be around other folks who are operating a high level, that is a good place to be.

Jay Clouse [00:03:34]:
You can apply at creatorscience.com/lab. The first question is from Joanna Parsons. She says, how do you sell to your audience without feeling salesy? I struggle with this sometimes. And as a result, I probably don't talk enough about my products or services. This is something I relate to strongly. We talked about it in my recent episode with Amy Porterfield. Especially on webinars, I find it's really hard for me to stay in the sale if I'm talking about the product. I just talked about Creator HQ and I probably could have talked about it for 2 or 3 times as long to show you just how much I believe in that product.

Jay Clouse [00:04:07]:
But I think the key is belief in your own product. That really is the thing. You know, when you walk into a Starbucks, you're there for a reason. The people at Starbucks know what you want. They have a menu. They have products and they have prices. And they say if you want this here's what it costs. And And we should think about our products the same way.

Jay Clouse [00:04:25]:
You know, people come to us for a reason. They know more or less what types of things we offer. And we should have no shame in saying, this is how I can help you. This is the price of that. I'm not here to convince you. But if you want it, it's here. And if you believe that your product is worth the trade of cash that it requires, you should feel compelled to get that in front of as many people as possible. And think of it more as an offer than a pitch.

Jay Clouse [00:04:52]:
It's more about saying, this is here if you want it and not about, hey, take this. I want you to take this. No. It's, hey, I know a lot of people like you have this problem. I have a solution for that. It's over here. It costs this much. If you want it, you can have it.

Jay Clouse [00:05:08]:
No pressure. That's the way I like to think about my work, and maybe that will help you as well. Joanna also asked, are there any parts of the job you really dislike? Yeah. I mean, I'm perpetually on the journey of trying to do less of the things that I dislike and more of the things that I do like. The thing that I dislike the most is the stress that comes with running a business, to be honest. And when I break this down, it comes from financial stress. Is there enough revenue coming in to cover the expenses that we put out? It comes from deadline stress. Do we have something prepared to publish on the dates that we want to publish? So that's the thing that bothers me the most.

Jay Clouse [00:05:47]:
It's just the stress that comes with those. And this year, my one goal is reducing stress in the business and my life. And that looks like getting ahead of publishing. It looks like increasing our net income or our margins. And yeah, that's like the number one thing. Outside of that, like the tasks that I don't enjoy, you know, administrative things take up time. They're not the most fun things. They're not the most high leverage things.

Jay Clouse [00:06:13]:
But I'm getting better at delegating those things. I I I certainly have a long way to go. Editing isn't really my zone of genius either. So editing isn't my favorite thing to do. Engaging quote unquote for the sake of engagement and getting in front of new audience members. That's not my favorite thing to do. I really like tinkering and I like making things. So outside of the creation of things that I'm excited about or outside of conversations with people that I enjoy talking to, everything else pales by comparison.

Jay Clouse [00:06:44]:
But, you know, I'm spending less and less time doing anything I dislike. I found last year that speaking isn't one of my favorite things. So I've really changed my approach to speaking or collaboration, so I do less guest presentations, I would call it. I like speaking from a stage and going to events, but I don't like guest presentations as much. So I've I've just stopped doing that. The next question comes from Chanel Basilio. Chanel writes a fantastic newsletter called Growth in Reverse. It breaks down how people got to 50,000 email newsletter subscribers.

Jay Clouse [00:07:16]:
So if you don't subscribe, you should check it out. But she asked, where do your most valuable email subscribers come from? And I like this question. I hadn't really put enough thought into this before. But something that I found in researching my response to this question is the subscribers that I get from ConvertKit's creator network have a 42% open rate to my emails and all other subscribers average about 40%. This surprised me because people often, when they think about, like, recommendations or referral programs in newsletters, they assume that the quality of subscriber is lower than your typical. And I found that, actually, the subscribers I get from ConvertKit's creator network is not only on par, but a little bit higher. So that's just one metric though. Right? That's open rates.

Jay Clouse [00:08:02]:
I do find that when we talk about, like, most viable subscribers, the subscribers that become customers typically are drawn in from some other platform first. Like if somebody goes from podcast listener to email subscriber, that person is gonna know me a lot better, trust me a lot more out of the box, and are more likely to join the lab or purchase a course or something like that. So if we're talking about value in terms of monetary return, probably from the podcast, maybe from YouTube, maybe social media. I do find that the folks that I connect with on Twitter tend to be more likely to become customers than folks on Instagram or threads. I think it beats out LinkedIn as well. So, typically, if people come from one of my other platforms, Twitter, podcast, YouTube. If they join my free email course on becoming a professional creator, that also tease them up to really appreciate my writing style and trust me. So yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:09:03]:
As much as I wanna say, like, the ConvertKit Creator Network subscribers have a higher open rate than other subscribers when I also query that list by customers, they don't become customers as quickly because they don't know me yet. So anytime they come from somewhere where they've already interacted with my content, the better off. Next, we have a question from John Meese that actually inspired my latest essay. He says, I built a really great high paying job for myself as an entrepreneur, but I'm thinking more and more about how to build my business as an asset rather than a job. What's your take on this? I'd love to know. So I actually refer to this problem as platinum handcuffs. It's like a step above your typical golden handcuffs that a lot of us have heard of. You know, and if you haven't, the idea of golden handcuffs is you're working a job that you don't really love, but they pay you so well that you can't imagine quitting and giving up that compensation and starting from 0.

Jay Clouse [00:09:53]:
So we see this a lot with creators as well because as a creator, publishing content brings more attention to you, more awareness to you than the typical person. And so you're gonna have your supply and demand equation for your time gets even more skewed than the average person. You have more demand for your time, but the same amount of supply as anybody else. So very quickly, you realize as a creator that you can charge high hourly rates for your time, and you probably indulge in doing that. You know, you start selling some of it either as a one on one time or a group program, something where there's direct access to you. You can charge pretty high prices. And after a while, your lifestyle escalates, so you start selling more of your time. And soon, you've tapped out all of your time.

Jay Clouse [00:10:40]:
You're selling all of it. You're making a lot of money, but you may have lifestyle creeps. So you're both time poor and cash poor. It's hard because a lot of people get into the creator game because they want to decouple their time from money, but the money for their time is so good that it's hard to turn down especially as your cost of living grows. And especially if that cost of living is in things like a mortgage or schooling for your kids. So to try and get out of this, you have to invest in yourself and your ability to create generative assets that can be leveraged. Digital products, content, generally, you know, your revenue model needs to provide value to the end user with an input that is not your time. You're always gonna involve your time in creating the asset, but the asset itself should be generative so that your time is not involved.

Jay Clouse [00:11:34]:
For some creators, this is all sponsorship. They create content. They get a lot of eyeballs, and they monetize that attention with a third party's product or service. But I really like, if possible, creating your own direct lines of revenue with your own product. And I recognize not all creators are in the education space. We're not all teaching or providing transformation. So it's harder for someone who's more on the entertainment side to create especially a high priced direct product. But if you can, that's a great way to go.

Jay Clouse [00:12:05]:
If you can't, you can get more creative. You know, we had Sarah Renee Clark on an episode of the podcast. Her YouTube channel is all about helping adults learn and appreciate coloring. And not only does she create coloring books, She created this physical product called the color cube that provides a bunch of color palettes and inspiration and that's a fairly high priced thing. I think it's a 100 or $200, and her audience loves it. Because not only is it practical and provide utility, but it gives them a way to support the channel in a way that also is not just, like, pure charity. So I think you have to start buying back some of your time if you find yourself wearing platinum handcuffs. And depending on how tight your expenses are, how much margin you have, you can go fast or slow in this direction.

Jay Clouse [00:12:58]:
In the beginning, it might start as, like, working with 1 fewer one on one client and being really disciplined to say that time that I'm saving from that 1 on 1 client, I'm gonna funnel into creating my own asset that can be leveraged over and over again. Books are another great example. I know books take a lot of investment of time, and they're not guaranteed to be successful. And if they are successful, it might take a lot of time, but you don't need to have a traditional publisher. Oftentimes, if you want a financial return, self publishing may be the better path for the majority of people. But you've gotta produce assets that do not require your time, that once you build an audience, you can introduce that asset to that audience and they purchase it. And then the law of big numbers kind of comes into play where the more people you reach, the more people buy. You start gaining the freedom to buy back more and more of your time.

Jay Clouse [00:13:51]:
Ironically, the more time of yours that you buy back, the less time you have available for sale, your supply and demand equation moves again. You have the opportunity to charge even higher prices for your time. So you have to be brave. I know it's hard. And depending on your requirements, your situation, it might be a slower shift than others. But the best thing is to avoid the platinum handcuffs in the first place. Make sure that you're reserving enough of your time to invest in the building systems and generative assets. Next, we have a question from Susan Bowles.

Jay Clouse [00:14:25]:
And, actually, we had related questions from Kevan and Brett on Twitter as well. Susan asked, I'd love to hear your thought process on developing Creator HQ, this Notion template I was just telling you about a little bit ago. Why that product? How you approach thinking about what should be included or not included, etcetera. So for me, I've been really interested in changing my business from being so reliant on memberships to being more reliant on digital products. Again, both are what I would call leveraged assets. Memberships aren't totally passive. You know, like, there's a lot of involvement that both my wife and I have in the lab. But digital products, those are they just feel magical.

Jay Clouse [00:15:05]:
You know, you invest the time in creating these things, but you can sell them over and over and over again, generate revenue from them, and there's no fulfillment on the back end. And for a long time, digital products in my business was synonymous with, like, self paced course. And I think self paced courses are great. I'm super proud of Build A Beloved membership, my membership course in particular. And I love selling that product. But I was asking myself, what are digital products that I can create that don't require the effort of, like, education on the part of the user? Like, what what is something I can promise that is out of the box more utility? And I I started thinking about this notion template idea because every time I showed another creator what my Notion setup looked like, it just blew their mind. They're like, I need this. And I didn't even really have it in the format where I could give it to people at the time.

Jay Clouse [00:15:59]:
It would take time to templatize it, make it more broadly useful useful than my specific use case. So it just took time, but a lot of people asked for it. It it seemed like something that could provide a lot of value out of the box without, you know, teaching somebody a skill and then requiring them to go put that skill into action to see the result. I just wanted to sell something that people could implement and get a result super quickly. Because I think the speed at which you can provide a result to somebody and have that result seen by somebody else is where you unlock a lot of word-of-mouth referral. I was talking to Charlie Hone recently about writing books. And he said the greatest thing a book can do can create a result for somebody else so quickly that people around them ask about it. And they can say, well, I I read this book, and it really helped me do this thing.

Jay Clouse [00:16:52]:
But I think it's such a great insight for any product. If you can create an outcome for somebody so quickly that other people notice, you're gonna unlock so much word-of-mouth. So I wanted to give it a shot, and it took several months to build this the way that I wanted. And there are a lot of things that are in my Notion setup that I had to change or remove or make more clear. Because the thing with Notion templates generally is that they don't do a very good job of explaining how it works or how to make changes. So people buy it. They're excited about it. But then they feel underprepared in implementing it or changing it.

Jay Clouse [00:17:29]:
They're worried they're gonna break it. It's too heavy duty. It requires too much Notion knowledge. So my thing was I really wanted to integrate a lot of training and tutorials right into the tool itself so that as you're using it, it becomes really obvious how to use that, how to make changes. If you're not sure how something works, there's, like, information right there on the page or a video that explains it. So it took a lot of time to do that. And so far, the people that are trying it out in the lab, they're having really good experiences and getting a lot of great feedback. And I haven't had to change much, which is awesome.

Jay Clouse [00:18:02]:
That says that, hey, people get it and they like it and they they aren't asking for anything additional. Because I think if anything, it's probably too big, but I wanted to be thorough and everything that I use, I think, is gonna be useful to somebody. Maybe not all of it will be useful to everybody, but everyone who uses it should find multiple things there that are helpful. So to tack on to that, both Kevan and Brett basically asked, how do you figure out what to build or sell next And how much do you listen to your customers or your instinct in what to sell next? So in the beginning, a lot of people will tell you, hey, you've got to validate your ideas before you build them. And I did that for a while. Like, the way I would validate course ideas would be that I'd think about the benefits of the course, the outcome of it. And I would stand up a sales page that promises that outcome and kind of acts as if the course exists and then say this is on presale. It will launch by this time.

Jay Clouse [00:19:04]:
And I'd tell people if 10 people buy, then I will make it. And that was the way I'd validate ideas. But as I've gotten older and I know my customer better, the ideas kinda become obvious. Like, my problem isn't what should I build in terms of, like, I need ideas. I have lots of ideas. The problem is what do I pick? And, increasingly, what I wish I would have done sooner was make fewer things. I think really what you need is one signature product that is aligned with the overall goal and promise of your business. And, like, you can just do that really well and make it better and make it better and make it better.

Jay Clouse [00:19:44]:
If you have a signature product that is super aligned with the goal of your business, then actually that product itself can grow top of funnel. Not only is it sitting bottom of funnel, but making it so good that it grows top of funnel creates this beautiful flywheel for the whole business. If you think about build a second brain, if you think about rite of passage, ship 30 for 30, those products were like the only product in those suites for a long time and they just made it better and better and better. And the brand itself grew top of funnel for the business. So over the last 6, 12 months, I've been looking at the business as a whole, the creator science business, and saying, what is the optimal product suite? I have all these digital products that exist. But, really, I want a smaller product suite that applies to the average creator who enters my ecosystem. Because my best selling course right now is called Build A Beloved Membership. It's only relevant if you want to build a membership.

Jay Clouse [00:20:41]:
That's not the majority of my subscribers. And I don't have a product that applies the majority of my subscribers. The lab is another example. That's for, like, the highest tier of creator in my audience, which is the smallest segment. So I was really annoyed with myself that I didn't build a product that served the majority of my audience. And Creator HQ now does that. I'm building another membership called Creator School, which I mentioned on the podcast before. That is coming after Creator HQ.

Jay Clouse [00:21:12]:
And that's an educational product that will take people from, I want to be a creator, to I'm making money as a creator. And at that point, they're eligible for The Lab. So the products to be is Creator HQ, Creator School, The Lab, and then I wanna stop making products. Anything else that I make outside of that will live within Creator School and or The Lab. But I really don't wanna have a ton of different paid products because then it becomes difficult to market all of them. You kinda get to a point where they're competing with each other in your own content for what do you talk about. And I just think it's too complicated. So I'm really trying to simplify the product suite as a whole.

Jay Clouse [00:21:54]:
And so everything that I'm making is really on the journey of how do I make something that serves somebody at every step of the journey. I wanted the product that serves the average listener, viewer, subscriber, that's Creator HQ. I want a product that could educate people to go from point a to point b, point b being I'm making money as a creator now. And then at that point, they could graduate to the lab if there's space. Okay. I'm gonna catch my breath. We're gonna take a minute to hear from our sponsors. But when we come back, I'm going to talk about some of the future vision of Creator Science.

Jay Clouse [00:22:28]:
Then we're gonna move into my Instagram questions. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We're still answering questions from The Lab right now. We've got a couple more. We have one again from Joanna who asked, where do you see The Lab in 5 to 10 years time? Do you have a long term vision for the business? The good thing about the Creator Science brand is I think there's a future where I actually build this as a sellable asset if I wanted to. You know, that's why I wanted to build a brand name outside of my own name, even though right now you could probably argue that Creator Science and Jay Clouse is pretty synonymous.

Jay Clouse [00:23:03]:
But I wanted to have the ability of building a media company that could actually be available for sale one day. And right now, I don't really see that as the path, but I am still leaving that door open. 10 years from now, I want my career to be built on books. I see myself living the life of an author, and that should be true definitely 10 years from now. 5 years might be a stretch. I'm thinking all the time about the first book that I will be writing, and I can see that being published in the next couple of years. And if that goes well, maybe it accelerates my timeline towards being an author. That book will serve you.

Jay Clouse [00:23:43]:
You know, it'll serve people listening to the show. It'll serve people who read the newsletter, but it might also start to bridge into a larger audience. The thing about being a creator, especially in the the way that I serve creators, we're talking about entrepreneurs here. We're talking about entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship is a small market in terms of people, like number of people. It's pretty small. Not a lot of people are cut out for this. Not a lot of people will stick with it and find success doing it.

Jay Clouse [00:24:11]:
And I have strong belief in myself, my potential, what I can contribute to the world, and I think I could serve more people if I applied myself to a more broad challenge. So in the future, I think my audience will be more broad and I think books will be the vessel that get me there, but I don't know what that looks like quite yet. The question I ask myself a lot is, do I write a book that is squarely serving my existing audience or do I write a book that is kind of a bridge to the future that serves my existing audience but also opens up to a larger audience? And I think that's probably the route that I will go. We don't know where this content world will go. Like, I still believe that this is the best way to build personal agency in the world and a lot of optionality for your future. I think we're early innings of the creator economy, and creator science has a leading role in that. So I wanna maintain that position, that momentum, keep serving this audience because the people that I meet who come in contact with me through my work, awesome people, the people who I want to be spending time with. But personally, I want to be an author spending more time in fewer but bigger projects, most likely books.

Jay Clouse [00:25:33]:
And that'll be true 10 years from now. We'll see you about 5. Last question from the lab, another one from Susan. She says, I'd love to hear about how you're planning for parental leave slash balancing the baby and the business for you and Mallory, especially now that you're both in the business. So if you don't know, my wife, Mallory, joined the business full time in January, and she's also pregnant. And we're having a kid, our first kid, this summer. And it's really, really important to me that she has as much maternity leave as she would want. And it's also important to me that I take some paternity leave, but being the 2 biggest drivers in the business, in the business thriving on content that is usually behind my name, if not my face and voice, there's a lot of ongoing stuff that needs to happen after birth that includes me.

Jay Clouse [00:26:25]:
And so really my timeline looks like getting creator HQ out because I think it's one of the best things I've ever made, if not the best thing I've made. I know that it is going to be broadly helpful to any creator. I think if I do my job right, creator HQ becomes the product that when you enter the creator science ecosystem, it's just a no brainer to purchase and make part of your business. And if I do that well, then I think it will have a good financial outcome and it will relieve a lot of the financial pressure that I was talking about earlier. And, b, like, probably our biggest revenue generator is what I'm hoping. After creator HQ comes Creator School. That's a Content First membership. That's a membership where I am doing a lot of teaching.

Jay Clouse [00:27:11]:
There is not a cap the way the lab has had a cap historically, and it's going to be designed in such a way that no matter how many people are in there, it's not really taking more of my time. Like, whether I have a 100 members or 300 members, the amount of time that I put into Creator School will be the same. So those are the revenue generating activities that I'm putting in place that I think will will give us a lot more financial breathing room. Because if we have products that can be sold infinitely at no incremental costs, then the game is just getting more attention. It's it's really a world where I just focus on creating great content, publishing it, having the systems on the back end that introduce these paid products to people consuming the content, and that grows the business. If I do that, you know, my my time is really just dedicated in content and relationships, and that's what I want. I want the products to exist on the back end to serve people, but I really want to focus on the front end of getting in front of more people. And that's where a lot of my time is spent because the backend is built.

Jay Clouse [00:28:17]:
That's the goal. It's going to be tough since we both spend a lot of time in the business now as is, but up until January, it was really just me outside of the contractors who helped produce an edit, and after birth, it will return to that for a period of time. And, hopefully, I've set things up by then to be even more systematized. We're going to leverage my wonderful assistant Izzy some more as well. We're elevating our audio engineer from just an audio engineering role into a producer role. So I'm trying to get the team even more involved and incentivized. And if these products do well, we'll have the financial means to make it worth everybody's while. Moving on to Instagram.

Jay Clouse [00:29:01]:
1st question comes from YesRoots. They say I'm at the beginning of my creator journey, still figuring out what my offering will be. I've heard you talk about how earlier in your journey you put together mastermind groups, a. K. A. Micro communities. How did you go about getting your first couple of groups together and how did what you were offering to those groups change over time? So this is good research. Back in 2017, when I started my business, I was facilitating mastermind groups as my first offering.

Jay Clouse [00:29:27]:
You can think about this as group coaching. We had 5 people per group, and I would usually work with 3 to 4 groups at a time. So 15 to 20 people at a time. The challenging thing with any group program is that you have this time bound nature, which is nice because you have, like, built in urgency saying the group kicks off on this time and ends on this time, But that means that you also have to herd all the cats to being ready on the same time frame. You know, hey, we're getting started a month from now. I need your commitment now. And in the meanwhile, you're like playing this puzzle of these 5 people fit together. Do the time zones work? Do the projects make sense? A lot of people before they commit to a group program are also asking who else is involved, and it's kind of a staring contest where you have to get one person to commit, and then you can say, well, this person's involved.

Jay Clouse [00:30:16]:
Now 2 people commit. You say, well, these 2 people are involved. So it was very manual. It was a lot of direct communication. It was a lot of outreach. You know, it wasn't sending an email and saying I've got 5 spots or 15 spots. I didn't have an audience at that time. It was really having conversations, spending a lot of time meeting people.

Jay Clouse [00:30:36]:
And if they felt like they were a fit for the program, I would make a note. And then the 2 or 3 times that the program was available throughout the year, I'd reach out and say, hey, how are you doing? Last time we talked, I made a note that you were trying to do this thing. Is that still true? If so, I'm starting this program and it might make sense to have a conversation. Just get them on the phone. I was much better at selling them in conversation whether it's on the phone or video or in person than I was in email. So it was meeting people ahead of time, keeping good records, having a conversation over the phone. And, yeah, that was it. It was very manual.

Jay Clouse [00:31:10]:
I remember I I did the math. I literally had to fill these groups in order to make rent and afford being self employed. I knew that, like, okay, this is a 12 week program. It costs $400 per person, and it takes a month to market this. So I have to think about 4 months of expenses paid by 15 people at $400 it was very very tight and it also meant that I couldn't fail so I'd have a whiteboard in my room was a studio apartment at the time, but I would see it all the time. I would write the numbers 1 through 15 on the board. And when I had somebody that I thought was a good lead, somebody that I thought would join the group, I would write their name underneath one of those numbers. And once they committed, once they paid, I would circle the number.

Jay Clouse [00:31:59]:
So I basically had 3 or 4 weeks, 2 to 3 times per year when I would do this board exercise and I would have to circle 15 numbers in order to make rent. And that's just what I did. Failure wasn't an option. So if I wasn't getting 15 people, I would have more conversations. And it was tough. It was it was rough. The timing was hard. Selling was hard.

Jay Clouse [00:32:23]:
I didn't have an audience. The program itself stayed relatively the same. It was a mastermind program. So it wasn't me teaching. It was me curating good groups of people that could learn from each other and hold each other accountable. Towards the end, this is right at the beginning of COVID, I did one cohort where it was very educational. It was me presenting things, and it was about being a creator. And that was received really well because it just felt like I had more structure.

Jay Clouse [00:32:50]:
I had more to offer. It was more obvious what I was offering. It wasn't just, hey, trust me, you're going to enjoy learning from these other 5 people. It was, hey, I'm going to teach you this skill in a small group. And that worked well. But then COVID happened. And I don't know if you actually remember the beginning of COVID, but people didn't know what the heck was going on, and they didn't want to spend anything on anything. So at that point, I started consulting more and that led to working with Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income.

Jay Clouse [00:33:20]:
He acquired the mastermind program and community that went with it. So I worked with Pat for a year, and then that was really a year of me building the audience more broadly. And that gave me a lot of optionality coming out of that 1st year at SPI. The next question comes from Katie Macon on Instagram. Katie was actually an early member of Unreal Collective, so it's great to hear from you, Katie. And she says, I got a book deal. Huzzah. I'm gonna start an adjacent podcast where the writing's done later this spring.

Jay Clouse [00:33:50]:
Do you have any tips? And will I be lampooning platform growth if I start audio only for the podcast, or is that fine to start? First of all, Katie, congrats on the book deal. When I first met Katie, she was making this great deck of cards called Compass Cards. Very fun project. It's very fun to see you grow and make new things. I'm excited for your book deal. An audio only podcast does not build an audience. That's the thing that you need to know. Audio only podcasts are not new audience acquisition.

Jay Clouse [00:34:21]:
They are relationship builders. So if your goal is to deepen your relationships with the people that you're already reaching, Audio podcast is fine. It's a great way to do it. The people who do listen to it spend a lot of time with you at this point in this episode. If you're listening to this right now, which you are, you've now spent 35 minutes with me, which is like watching 35 consecutive reels. You know, it's it's much longer, much more in-depth, much more nuanced. So audio is a great way to build relationships, but if you're trying to build an audience or reach new audience so that you can promote the book, audio is not the way. YouTube would be better, but long form video podcasts are also a difficult format on YouTube.

Jay Clouse [00:35:04]:
So if you really want to grow audience and you message me on Instagram about this, Instagram is a better place to be probably because it's a huge overall audience in terms of users on that platform and Reels can get a lot of reach. So in terms of tips, if you are going to do an audio podcast, spend a lot of time making the art good. People underestimate the importance of cover art for a show. Think about what makes the premise of your show unique and referable. Like the format is typically not the most unique part of the show. It's really the premise. Like, Hot Ones is an interesting premise. It's a celebrity interview, but they're doing it while eating chicken wings.

Jay Clouse [00:35:47]:
Or Song Exploder is a great premise because it's not just interviewing an artist, it's actually breaking down one of their songs piece by piece. So what is the unique premise of your podcast that just the idea of it gets people excited to listen to it and it's also something that people can feel special for discovering and want to recommend to other people. That's the best way to grow an audio show is to have a unique premise. You got to make sure that the audio is good. And I mean, like the quality of the audio, but also the edit, you know, don't just assume because people do listen to podcasts that people will want to listen to 60 minutes of unedited audio. You got to respect people's attention and do a good job of editing it, making it sound good. I think that kind of covers it. I found some research recently that said that people need to listen to 3 of your podcast episodes before they become a regular listener.

Jay Clouse [00:36:39]:
And so make your first three episodes good. Make them really good. Realize that the first couple of episodes you record might be so bad that you're better off scrapping them than publishing them. A lot of people still go back to episode 1 of this show when they hear about it. And I'm so glad that I took a lot of time to make episode 1 good. It's with Seth Godin, episode 2 is with James Clear. I feel like I really put a good foot forward, but a lot of people would be like, I'm just gonna put the first one to record as episode 1, and it's not a great audition. So think about that if you're gonna go audio only, but the biggest thing I would stress is audio only is a relationship builder, not an audience builder.

Jay Clouse [00:37:18]:
After one more quick break for our sponsors, we're gonna get to the rest of my questions from Instagram and LinkedIn. The next question is about creating a good lead magnet. I have some opinions there, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Our next question is from Janis Ozalines. He says, what are the ingredients for a good lead magnet? For context, I don't create content about explaining ideas visually, but that is what I teach in my course. Some percentage of my followers find that randomly on my website newsletter or from affiliates, but it's a hard sell without any warm up in email sequence or blog post.

Jay Clouse [00:37:52]:
I'm unsure what to deliver in a lead magnet that would give value, build trust, and convert well. So let me restate this another way. Giannis, you should follow him on Instagram. Giannis has wonderful visuals on Instagram that are just like candy in your feed. The candy visually, but, like, they have some good deep thought to them. And Janus' paid product is a course that teaches people how to make visuals. So there's it's not direct alignment between who would enjoy the work and who would want the course because people can enjoy the work without wanting to create visuals themselves. So I see the problem here.

Jay Clouse [00:38:29]:
In terms of lead magnets that are good, quote unquote, a good lead magnet, as you've kind of already pointed out, gives value, builds trust, and is in alignment with your paid product. So the line to toe here is how do I provide value without also making it overwhelming? Because some people will think I'm gonna make the best lead magnet ever, and they make some giant thing that is actually difficult to consume or get the outcome from. And that's not a good first experience. We don't want to just be overwhelmed and think, oh, this guy must be smart. We want to get an outcome from the lead magnet. So where I see a lot of people screw up is either they over engineer the thing so that people don't actually consume it because what you want is momentum. You want people to download the thing, get the thing, use the thing, find value in it, and then feel smart or accomplished and just want more from you. But if I can't consume the whole thing, then I'm gonna get stuck.

Jay Clouse [00:39:29]:
I'm gonna feel frustrated with myself, and I probably won't come back. So there are a lot of different lead magnets that could work. That could be a free resource. It could be an email course. You know, the best lead magnets are things that are so useful that you could charge for them, but you make them free. I know this is all vague, but, like, there are so many possibilities. I don't want to tie you into a corner. I would just think of what is something that can provide value that is easily consumable, easily achievable, and it's aligned with the course itself so that once I do consume or experience the lead magnet, the obvious next step is to enroll in the course to get more.

Jay Clouse [00:40:11]:
So it might even be like, hey, what's the fastest result piece of the course that I can make free? And then people can use that. They can get something out of it. You say, by the way, this is one lesson from my course where I teach you this. Here's more about it. Here's the benefits from the course, and it becomes kind of this layup. But, you know, the way that you're set up right now, there's going to be some inefficiency between the people who see and enjoy your content and the people who want to purchase this particular course. For you, Giannis, or anyone in this situation, what I would look at is how do I frame Giannis the person so that everyone coming in, there's a consistency behind what they want. You know, right now, it kind of feels like you're you're framing everything behind the idea of visuals, but visuals could cover any subject matter, any problem, any whatever.

Jay Clouse [00:41:04]:
I would try to create some cohesion behind what's the core theme behind everything Giannis visualizes because that will start to standardize the people that are coming in, and then you can develop a new paid offering that is aligned with that standardized audience avatar. Next, we have a question from Ola Yimi. He says, I'm close to launching my first podcast ever and wanted to see if you had any advice on finding new and exciting guests week to week. I've gotten some really exciting people so far, but what do I do when I run out of the people in my immediate circle? Well, you mean, what I would think about is do I want to make this an interview show only? I think that interview podcasts are hard to differentiate and therefore hard to grow because so many of them are so similar. You know, what makes your interview podcast different besides the fact that you're hosting? Because if you're trying to get the same guests that are on a bunch of other shows and talk to them about the same subject matter they're talking about on other shows, why listen to your show versus the person who already has a large following or better access to these people or a preexisting relationship to these people? So increasingly, if I were to start a new podcast today, I would not predicate it on being an interview show because I think it's harder to differentiate. I would think about what is the unique premise that I can bring to the table that is different than what other people are doing. So that's that's, like, my first advice. If you wanted to find new and exciting guests, I think you have to be a consumer.

Jay Clouse [00:42:39]:
Like, you have to curate the information you're bringing in and who you are hearing from and, like, almost like a hunter. Who can I find that is interesting and different and speaks to this subject matter that we're covering, exploring on the podcast that may not be a big guest elsewhere? The hard thing is when you're a hunter and you're finding people who aren't, like, career guests, They typically don't have good recording equipment, which makes the audio product itself worse. So I'm really lucky in this podcast in that the people that I interview or talk to, they typically have excellent recording equipment and experience speaking. So again, another reason why a great way to build a podcast is not by doing guest interviews, but by figuring out what can I deliver as an individual? Just me. Like, how can I make people come to the show just for me? And that might take research. It might take a lot more and unique consumption, but I think that's actually the most differentiated way to go right now is to build a podcast that's not based on guests, but built on you. Another way that you could do that is with cohost. If you have a good friend, the rapport that you bring to a show when you have a cohost who you already know and like, that rapport is felt by the end consumer, and it's it's a great way to build a show more quickly than guest interviews or even solo shows sometimes.

Jay Clouse [00:44:08]:
Elliot Zelenkus asks, how do I get my name out there more specifically on Instagram? You know, I'm not great at Instagram, so I'm probably not the best person to ask this question. Ironically, the best way that I've been growing my Instagram account lately is just by growing my YouTube account. The people who are following me on Instagram seem to be finding me on YouTube first because I'm not even posting that much on Instagram right now. This is the first listener Q and A episode that I've posted about on Instagram, and I was surprised at how many responses I got, and I was happy about that. But Instagram is hard because it seems like Instagram has really prioritized reels above all else, and it's not even close. So you're trying to get your name out there on Instagram. It seems like you have to be playing the game of reels right now. And if you're playing the game of reels, you're looking at trending audio, trending memes and conversation.

Jay Clouse [00:44:59]:
You gotta be really good at hooking people's attention in the first, like, 3 seconds. So, you know, this is true for Instagram. It's true for any platform. If you wanna figure out how to play the game, find the players that are playing it really well and study their style. Break it down. Understand what they're doing that makes us so good. Our most popular episode on the YouTube channel is with Jenny Hoyos, and she studied literally 100 of YouTube Shorts creators and thousands of Shorts and broke down. Okay.

Jay Clouse [00:45:27]:
What's what's working here? It told her the format of how to make a good short. It told her the length of a good short. So studying the players who are getting outsized results is really the way to go, but then you have to innovate. You have to do something different. I mean, in the beginning, you can model after what other people are doing and kinda emulate them, But to really stand out long term, you have to innovate, and that takes courage. And a lot of times, it doesn't pay off. A lot of times, innovating doesn't work, and you have to recognize that's part of the game. But for Instagram specifically right now, it really feels like you have to be using reels as a strategy.

Jay Clouse [00:46:06]:
Moving on to LinkedIn, we had a great set of questions on LinkedIn. A lot of them I already moved into our YouTube video, but we're gonna start with Oscar Sanchez. Oscar, it's great to hear from you. He says, what is the first step that new creators should take to start seeing their effort as a business instead of just a hobby? Well, the thing about a business is it has to create value for the end consumer and capture value for the business. So you have to ask yourself, okay, I can create value through the means of content and sharing things that I know will help people. What is the mechanism for the business capturing value though? I see a lot of people who create content, they engage viewers, they get attention, but they don't have any model for capturing value for the business. And if you don't do that, then you don't have a business. You have probably an ego, And I've been there.

Jay Clouse [00:46:58]:
I get it. So, you know, the thing that's made me different, I think, is early, early, early on, I was focused on how does this generate revenue for me because I needed it. I went all in too early. I had to pay rent, and so I had to come up with a business model, a business model that allowed me to generate revenue. So if you're a creator, you have to be thinking, what is the business model here? What's the revenue model? How am I going to turn the attention that I'm able to get assuming I'm able to get attention? How am I going to leverage that to capture value for the business? Am I selling my own product? Am I selling my own service? Am I redirecting that attention to a 3rd party product or service through the form of advertising or affiliates? You have to nail down your revenue model and make sure that it makes sense and literally model it out, spreadsheet it out, create projections. How would this model work to support me and maybe even support a team someday? You have to do that modeling to come up with how this will work. Next, we have Ray McFerran. Ray asked, you've studied creators of all types, sizes, and levels of success.

Jay Clouse [00:48:10]:
What have you found to be, if any, the underlying skills or characteristics or experiences or philosophies of the ones who are able to build and sustain their business? Well, Ray, I think the biggest thing is they've been doing it for a long time. Like, we really underestimate the length of time that some of our favorite creators have been at this. I think about this a lot with my interview with Vanessa Van Edwards, which was super early on. I think it's like episode 21 or something. Vanessa has a business called The Science of People, and it's been really successful. But before she did that, she spent, like, 10 years building an entirely different business that was kind of similar, but no one knows about it. So even the stuff that isn't what we're known for paves the way for the things that we're known for. And a lot of times we spend so much time on both.

Jay Clouse [00:48:58]:
So time is a big one. The amount of time that someone spends leading up to their business or in building their business. The second would be picking a subject that they remain curious about for a long time. A lot of people think they're burning out, but what they're actually doing is losing interest in the thing that they're talking about, and they fail to rekindle that or find parts of it that remain interesting to them. And if you don't retain interest in the thing that you're talking about, then you're not gonna enjoy doing it. It's inherently not sustainable. And I think the last thing that I'll point out is people who have been doing this for a long time are relentless in making small improvements that seem imperceptible, that seem really micro. But all these micro improvements, these micro changes, these micro experiments in the aggregate, they add up to such a huge difference.

Jay Clouse [00:49:51]:
Like just small things that you push the ball forward on every day, make actual progress, not just maintain, but small incremental progress every day really adds up over these long time spans that I'm talking about. My friend Joe Gannon asked, how do you pick your podcast guest? Do you have any secret sauce or are you just winging it? In the beginning, I was probably doing a little bit of clout chasing. Like, I was just trying to get big names on the show because I thought that's what would make the show legitimate and grow the show. And that's what I think a lot of people do. They become like this collection of guests. But we try to do on the show is build a body of work where each episode is a contribution teaching a very specific and particular skill. And so what we look at is where are the gaps? What skill have we not taught in-depth? Because a lot of interview podcasts are like a profile of a guest saying this guest is awesome, and let's talk about why this guest is awesome. We are really doing, like, guest workshops almost.

Jay Clouse [00:50:57]:
I think about it as conversational education, and we're looking at this body of work as a whole and saying, what gaps have we not taught and who is the expert to bring in and present on that essentially? And I really personally get a kick out of finding people who are a little bit under known. I don't wanna say unknown, but, like, not as known as others because that's really fun to surface people early, shine a light, shine a spotlight, give them the platform. And also it makes the episode inherently more unique to bring someone in that isn't already doing a ton of interviews. So we're we're looking at what are the what are the holes in our syllabus and who's the best teacher to bring in to fill that hole. Kieran Drew asks, where do you see the attention economy evolving with regard to quality and quantity? Kieran has a lot of success online. If you're not familiar with his name, you should check out his work. And what I've noticed in Kieran recently is that he's really taken a step back and being thoughtful and intentional about what he's building and what he's publishing, which I admire because I've gone through this cycle as well. There's this great video on YouTube.

Jay Clouse [00:52:11]:
It's a talk by Paul Saffo at something called the Long Now Foundation. It's a group of futurists who try to predict and look forward. And Paul Saffo talks about the evolution of industry and how every new evolution of industry takes what used to be a scarcity and makes it abundant. And every time there's a new abundance, there's a new adjacent scarcity. So right now, we're moving from a world where the ability to publish on every platform was scarce because it's just hard to produce that much. But the tooling gets better and better and the examples and the templatizing of things, it's gotten easier and easier to publish more volume or quantity that is no longer as scarce as it used to be. And as it becomes less scarce, there will be a new adjacent scarcity, and that scarcity will be, I think, content that really emotionally connects with people because we're gonna get really good at spotting things that we don't trust. For better or for worse, we're gonna get good at spotting things that we suspect are AI or just kind of mass produced.

Jay Clouse [00:53:23]:
And I think we're gonna get a little bit jaded, a little bit bored of it, and we'll want something that feels real. And so you could call that quality, but I do think I think our humanity and our ability to connect with people on an emotional level, I think our ability to share our personal experience and tell stories that are unique to us, I think that becomes more and more scarce. And what is ultimately, like, the the moat. I've been listening to a lot of Tim Ferris stuff lately. I mean, I've been following Tim Ferris for a long time. He's what got me into podcasting, but he is laser focused on integrity and trust with his audience and has been for a long time to the point where I've really changed my own approach to sponsorship to work with fewer people and really dial in on brands that I know and trust personally and want to vouch for, not just promote, but endorse. Because trust and your ability to retain integrity, I think, is also going to be scarce and what really brings people in and keeps them around. So you can call it quality if you want, but I would say connection is what's gonna be rare.

Jay Clouse [00:54:32]:
Jacob Bischoff asked, what's the best way to earn on a regular basis as a creator? How do you have a steady and predictable income? It's definitely what people want, and it's definitely hard. Right? Having a steady or reliable income means that either you have, like, literally recurring revenue or you have a system that you've seen works reliably over time and as long as you continue the inputs, you'll get the same outputs. So in terms of recurring subscriptions, could be software, could be a membership, but the thing you have to think about is a recurring subscription requires recurring value being delivered to the person who's paying the subscription. So we're seeing a lot of noise right now about memberships because of Hormozi's investment in school. I don't even think school's that good of a platform. I think it's definitely not as good as Circle as far as a forum tool goes, but we're seeing a lot of people get into the subscription membership game because it's recurring revenue and people think that's just amazing, and it is. But if you do not really prove how you're creating recurring value for the members of the community, you'll churn a lot of people out really, really quickly. And I don't think the world needs more bad memberships that exist for the purpose of generating revenue for the creator.

Jay Clouse [00:55:50]:
I think we need more transformative experiences which may be delivered in the form of a membership. So if you're high conviction on your ability to create a space that provides real value to people on an ongoing basis, then a membership is a great way to do it. Being able to create software is also really, really powerful because software, by contrast, you know, that if somebody purchases your software and it solves their problem for them, that's the same value that can keep recurring. The utility that's in the software doesn't have to be re proven as much as like a membership does. So if you can do software, that's that's fantastic. If you can do memberships and have high conviction and interest, that's fantastic. Otherwise, you know, the fastest way to revenue for anybody is is selling your time in some form. Could be 1 to 1, could be services, could be group coaching, group programs, things like that.

Jay Clouse [00:56:43]:
And typically, anything involving your time is also valued more highly by the market than something that does not value your time. So the fastest way to revenue, either 1 on 1 or a group program that has your time involved, that can help you see meaningful revenue pretty quickly. And that's what I recommend most people to get started. Next, we have Brian Kopsky asking when does your Notion template come out? Well, Brian, April 11th is that date. I shared about that in the beginning. I'm really excited about it. If you're excited about Creator HQ and using the exact same Notion system that I use in your business, go to creator h q.co to find out more. Thank you, Brian, for the question.

Jay Clouse [00:57:20]:
It's a nice little layup there. Tanya asked, what's the one thing new or emerging creators should be doing every day to grow their audience? To be honest, Tanya, I think the one thing you should be doing every day is innovating in some way, experimenting in some way because everything changes changes all the time. I just saw a message in our community, The Lab, about a decrease in impressions on LinkedIn that a lot of members are experiencing. So what does that mean? It means that the status quo has changed and you can't do the same things and expect the same results anymore. Anytime there's something like that happening, anytime there's a change or the status quo has been interrupted, that means there's some new innovation ready to be discovered or created that will deliver outsized results. Any change for the negative means that there is some potential for a positive change, and you're only going to recognize that if you innovate and try things and experiment. Someone's gonna find it and they're gonna get a 1st mover advantage because of it. So you need to be innovating, be trying, be experimenting, and most of the time that won't work.

Jay Clouse [00:58:26]:
But over time, you'll find something that really, really does. Alan Noe asked, what's one question you wish creators would ask you and why? And I don't know. I get a lot of good questions here. I think a lot of people may be surprised to hear that. I don't think the strategy that I've taken at a lot of points in my business was the smart strategy. I think that I try to do too many platforms too quickly. I think that my niche of creators isn't very niche at all. It's actually very broad which makes it challenging.

Jay Clouse [00:58:57]:
I think I've tried to create too many products all at once. So if you're looking at my example and trying to model after me, I don't think it's a smart idea because I bit off a lot and I struggled for a long time because of it. You know, I often think that you get 6 kicks of the ball per day. You can either kick 6 balls one time or 1 ball 6 times. What's gonna get you further? A lot of the people who grow the fastest, they have very simple, elegant businesses to start where they get really good at LinkedIn. Great. Now I have an audience there. I also have the asset of the attention that I can command on LinkedIn.

Jay Clouse [00:59:33]:
I'm gonna go to somebody who's really big on Twitter and say, hey, if you help me grow on Twitter, I will help you grow on LinkedIn. It's a much faster way to grow, to dominate one place and then kind of land and expand elsewhere. I don't know why I've chosen to do, like, everything at once, but it's been really hard for a long time and it's still really hard. So I just want you to know that if you're looking up to somebody and modeling after them, 1, you should remember that this is probably their version 10 that you're comparing to your version 1. And 2, they probably have more resources than you do. And 3, what was their actual strategy to get there? Just because they have all of these things now doesn't mean that they started by creating all of them. It was probably an incremental process where they added a little bit at a time, and that's a smarter way to go. I wish I would have exercised more restraint in the beginning.

Jay Clouse [01:00:25]:
Next, we have a question from my friends at ConvertKit saying predictions on what changes are coming to the newsletter space in the next 1 to 3 years. Fun question. I'm really, really excited that right now, the players in the newsletter space have created a discovery mechanism within email. For a long time, I would have called email a relationship platform where there is no built in discovery. The best way to build discovery towards your newsletter is on social media. But with ConvertKit's creator network, Beehive has recommendations, Sub Stack has recommendations. It is now more possible than ever to grow your newsletter by building relationships with other newsletter writers and getting recommendations from other people's newsletters. And I'm seeing huge growth because of that.

Jay Clouse [01:01:09]:
I think that also represents a little bit of a threat long term for the newsletter space. I think this will lead to a little bit of newsletter fatigue. A lot of people speculate that it's happening now. I don't think it's necessarily happening now. I don't see that data, but I do think it's possible that we see newsletter fatigue. I think it will inflate the typical benchmarks that have historically been impressive in the subscriber space, and that will have an effect on advertisers and what they're looking for in terms of engagement rates and prices for your newsletter. I think that these referral programs are at risk of abuse from spammy activity. I've seen it happen in my account where somebody's getting spam sign ups, and they're recommending my newsletter, so now I'm getting spam sign ups, which is a real threat.

Jay Clouse [01:01:56]:
So that's a little bit doomsday, but it's on the tails of what I think is really exciting, which is this faster growth that we can see in email, which is especially important in a time where it feels like social media impressions are down across the board. Email becomes even more important. This is where you're fostering relationships. If you're not building an email right now, I do have an email masterclass you can check out over at creatorscience.com. But I think all of the numbers that have historically been impressive are going to get inflated. I think attention will be harder to grab an email. Because of that, I think we'll probably see people start to get even more YouTube y with their subject lines, trying to optimize for the click. That'll work for some people.

Jay Clouse [01:02:40]:
We'll see some big winners because of that. But I also think that ultimately the relationship you want with subscribers in their inbox is that they open you because who it's coming from, not because of the subject line. So we'll, we'll see a new wave of great writers. We'll continue to see newsletters pop up, grow quickly, get acquired. I think we'll see more consolidation in the space because we've seen a lot of newsletters start up with the goal of getting a lot of subscribers and getting acquired. I don't know what will happen with the cost per acquisition rates that we're seeing in email right now, which are super low. That'll probably stay fairly low. But again, I think this does have an impact on downward pricing pressure for typical newsletter advertising.

Jay Clouse [01:03:23]:
But we'll see. We're gonna round this episode out with a question from my friend, Dan Bennett. It's a little bit of a spicy question. I wanna spend some time unpacking it. He says, do larger creators feel pressure to only highlight or work with other large creators because of the recognition factor? Would it negatively impact large creators to highlight small fries when the information provided is just as credible and impactful? I think in this sense, we often have a narrow lens. Like, I think, Dan, you and I actually are in a very small circle. And so we look at the same small number of, you know, like, meta creators the way that I am and think, I can see the networks that these people are working within and they're not supporting me or highlighting me. The majority of the creator economy, the people who are making livings as creators, they're serving an audience that doesn't even recognize them as a creator.

Jay Clouse [01:04:19]:
They just recognize them as someone that's doing something helpful for them, and they will highlight anything that supports their audience. But I do think in this smaller bubble of meta creators where we have creators serving creators or entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs, there is a little bit of a scarcity mindset that I've noticed I've had at times where you think that the people you associate with are a signal for your credibility, a signal for your status, your trustworthiness, your legitimacy. I do see that. I also think that as you experience more success, you start to become more aware of what you have to lose. I think people become more risk averse the more successful they are, And it feels risky to make our own judgment decisions when the world is telling us you're awesome. We love you. We also think that this person over here is awesome and we love them and we can see that in their their numbers, it becomes safe to engage with other people at your scale and size because they have been publicly, in aggregate, recognized as good. You know, I genuinely believe that as you get more successful, if you're not really thoughtful and intentional, your taste gets worse, your viewpoints get a little bit less relevant, and it's because things are easy and you don't recognize that your own taste or helpfulness is declining.

Jay Clouse [01:05:51]:
There's, like, this this lag of when you start becoming a little bit stale and when you notice your engagement decline. All this to say, I think that there's this natural evolution a lot of times where somebody does great work, They're recognized. They grow because of it. But then they get complacent because they don't see a difference in their engagement or results based on the quality of their work because everything kinda has a halo effect. And so they engage with other people at that size because that's what they see as getting more attention on their stuff and maintaining their relevancy. But at some point, they become a little bit out of touch and people start to lose interest because it's not actually helping them, and it creates this, like, vacuum in the market and new people rise and and fill that space. So, Dan, to that point, I do I don't know if it's that creators feel pressure to only work with larger creators. I think that the aperture of what we're looking at and thinking about gets narrower and we get more scarcity minded than we used to be, And we focus on what feels like the higher leverage engagement, which is people with larger audiences because it just feels like, well, if I support them, they'll support me, and they reach more people.

Jay Clouse [01:07:12]:
So it it's good for me. I think people actually get more selfish as they grow sometimes, and I've been guilty of it. I've been guilty of guarding my own reputation, my own resources, and trying to play up versus reaching down. Alright. I think we'll, we'll wrap it up there. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this q and a episode. Of course, we'd love to hear if you enjoyed this or you want more them.

Jay Clouse [01:07:42]:
If there's anything that I missed or anything you wanna follow-up on, you can tweet at me at jklyles or find me on Instagram at jklyles. I'm doing more over there, including threads. If you enjoyed this, I'd love for you to leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And as I said, if you're interested in Creator HQ, get on the wait list at creatorhq.co. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.