Creative Elements
Creative Elements bridges the gap between art and business by talking to high-profile creators about the nitty gritty of building their creative career. Through narrative interviews, Jay Clouse dives into the story behind how your favorite creators broke through. We discuss the specific elements of their personality, style, or approach that have helped them thrive: elements like focus, vulnerability, revision, and constraints. Learn how these creators made a living with their art and you’ll feel more confident earning a living on your own terms too.
Episodes
April 6, 2021 • 54 min
Dickie Bush is a macro investor and the creator of Ship 30 for 30, a community of writers developing a writing habit in 30 days.
He is passionate about providing writers and creators with the tools, resources, processes, and mindsets required to find points of leverage and achieve exponential growth—both personally and professionally.
In this episode we talk about Dickie’s humble newsletter beginnings, his experimentation with Twit...
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March 30, 2021 • 61 min
Nick DenBoer (also known as Smearballs) a director, animator, editor, music producer, remix artist and self-proclaimed "all around great guy."
With a following of 75,000 on Instagram and 25,000 subscribers on YouTube, Nick has worked with clients including Conan, deadmau5, KFC, Old Spice, Wieden + Kennedy, and more.
Nick has an incredibly unique style of animation, and has recently begun selling his work independently a...
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March 23, 2021 • 55 min
Corey Haines is the creator of Swipe Files, a membership site that provides content, community, and courses to help you master marketing.
Corey curates marketing examples, copywriting help, and more through his newsletter, membership community, and podcast.
In this episode we talk about Corey’s five pillars of Growth, how he achieved early traction with Swipe Files, why he decided to go full time, and a complete strategy for using ...
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March 16, 2021 • 54 min
Rosie Sherry is the creator of Rosieland, a community and resource hub for community builders. She previously led community for Indie Hackers, a community of more than 140,000 independent makers.
In this episode we talk about Rosie’s history of building community with Ministry of Testing, what she learned through her time at Indie Hackers, the different forms “community” can take, and why trust is at the heart of improving communit...
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March 11, 2021 • 54 min
In this bonus episode, I'm talking with Courtland Allen, the founder of Indie Hackers. As I’ve shared a couple times over the last few months, my accelerator and community Unreal Collective was acquired by Smart Passive Income in January of this year.
I wrote an article about the acquisition, and it got quite a bit of attention. One of the places it got shared was on Indie Hackers, a massive online community of nearly 30,000 pe...
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March 9, 2021 • 62 min
Amy Landino is the creator of the award-winning series AmyTV and author of the best-selling book Vlog Like a Boss; How to Kill It Online With Video Blogging. With nearly 400K YouTube subscribers and over 23 million views, Amy has empowered people from over 100 countries all over the world to go after the life they want. In this episode we talk about leveraging YouTube, building an audience, creating a persona, and how Routine has b...
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March 2, 2021 • 51 min
Lalese Stamps is a ceramicist and the founder of Lolly Lolly Ceramics, a small-scale ceramics production and design studio.
Since undertaking a 100 day project at the end of 2019, Lolly Lolly Ceramics has grown to more than 100K followers on Instagram.
In this episode we talk about Lalese’s start to ceramics, the process of making a mug, growing a large following overnight, brand partnerships, and how her tenacity has helped her to...
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February 23, 2021 • 63 min
Sarah McAllister is the Founder, Director and CEO of GoCleanCo, a widely sought after cleaning company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
The GoCleanCo Instagram account serves more than 1.8M followers today with cleaning hacks and tips.
In this episode we talk about Sarah’s scrappy beginnings, how hard it was to even pay herself in the early days, accidentally selling out products on Amazon, and Sarah’s best advice for growing a follow...
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February 18, 2021 • 47 min
Last week, I was featured on the Smart Passive Income podcast.
The SPI Podcast is one of the biggest shows in online business. The host, Pat Flynn, has been podcasting for nearly a decade, has published somewhere close to 2,000 episodes of his shows, and the SPI podcast has had more than 60 million downloads all time!
Pat was on the show back in August of 2020 with his business partner, Matt Gartland. And the two of them spoke abou...
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February 16, 2021 • 42 min
Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs are the co-creators of Lemonada Media, a podcast network that shares the unfiltered version of the human experience.
In 2015, Steph lost her brother, beloved comedian Harris Wittels, to a heroin overdose. And in 2017, Jess lost her newly-married brother Stefano Cordova, Jr. to a fentanyl overdose.
In this episode we talk about creating Last Day, how Stephanie produces their narrati...
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February 9, 2021 • 61 min
Jordan Harbinger is a Wall Street lawyer turned podcast interviewer with an approachable style and knack for securing high-profile guests.
His show, The Jordan Harbinger Show was selected as part of Apple’s “Best of 2018.” And today, the Jordan Harbinger Show generates more than 6 million downloads per month.
In this episode, we talk about building strong relationships, effective sales strategies that people actually appreciate, be...
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February 2, 2021 • 51 min
Emily Clouse is a Los Angeles-based comedy writer and cartoonist who illustrates this show!
Her work can be found in The Onion, The New Yorker, Reductress, McSweeney's, American Greetings and other, more unspeakable places.
In this episode we talk about our childhood, her interest in drawing, moving to Chicago, Uganda, and LA, and why holding space to explore her interests have led her to pursue a career in comedy writing.
Tran...
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January 26, 2021 • 60 min
Alex Cattoni is a copywriter, marketer, and the founder of The Copy Posse, where she teaches people to become freelance copywriters.
In 2017, Alex started her YouTube channel where she now has 75,000 subscribers and more than 1.5M views.
In this episode we talk about Alex’s start at MindValley, her decision to freelance, the connection between marketing and copywriting, the massively successful launch of her coaching program, and w...
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January 19, 2021 • 57 min
Tim Urban is the writer of the blog Wait But Why. Tim writes about topics including artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, alien life, the size of the universe, and more.
His articles are often tens of thousands of words – the length of finished novels. The success of his blog has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk.
In this episode we talk about the beginning of ...
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January 12, 2021 • 55 min
Matty Benedetto is the creator of Unnecessary Inventions. Unnecessary Inventions solves problems that don’t really exist by creating products that no one is really asking for.
Each product is editorially shot to resemble a real marketing campaign for a product you can not get your hands on. He has nearly 650K followers on Instagram and over 100K subscribers on YouTube.
In this episode we talk about being self taught, his experience...
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January 5, 2021 • 62 min
Chris McAlister is the founder of SightShift, a company that helps ambitious people be courageous and kind.
He’s authored 5 books, spoken to thousands of people, and loves the work of helping others unblock their best leadership.
In this episode we talk about separating who you are from what you do, what it means to be proving and hiding, and why becoming more comfortable with your identity can be key to unlocking your creativity.
...
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December 29, 2020 • 61 min
Kwame Christian is one of the foremost experts in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. He’s the Director of the American Negotiation Institute, the host of the Negotiate Anything podcast, and the author of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life. In this episode we talk about Kwame’s brief look into politics, how to lead negotiations, thinking long term, taking risks, how he ma...
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December 22, 2020 • 50 min
Do you remember watching TGIF on ABC in the 90s? They’d have new episodes of Boy Meets World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place…
And then, inevitably towards the end of the season, they’d run a clip show. Instead of running a totally new episode, they’d pull together memorable clips from the other episodes that season and stitch them altogether.
In this episode, I’m going to share with you 12 memorable ...
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December 15, 2020 • 65 min
Ali Abdaal is a Cambridge University medicine graduate, now working as a junior doctor in the UK's National Health Service (NHS). He started making YouTube videos in his final year of medical school at Cambridge University in the summer of 2017.
As of October 2020, his channel has 1.1 million subscribers and earns over £100,000 ($130k) each month, with 5-10 hours of effort each week.
In this episode we talk about going to medic...
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December 8, 2020 • 68 min
Matt Ragland is an independent creator. His YouTube channel showcases videos on the Bullet Journal process, productivity, and time management.
Previous to going full time as a creator in 2020, Matt worked in customer success as employee #5 at ConvertKit and later as a Director of Customer Success at Podia.
In this episode we talk about Matt’s journey starting with blogging in 2010, his time at ConvertKit and Podia, how to construct...
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