November 12, 2024 • 39 mins
Interview with Jay Clouse of Creator Science Covering Advanced Creator EducationEPISODE OVERVIEW:
In this episode, I talk with my friend Jay Clouse the Founder of Creator Science, an award winning Creator Podcast about what Creator Education looks like beyond the basics, and how we can better monetize through memberships and building creator businesses. The conversation goes deep and we talk about the importance of systems and also the impact of building a strong community to support your brand.
Key points include:
The need for creators to view their audience as customers to capture the full value they provide, rather than just relying on ad revenue
Strategies for pricing and framing value, such as emphasizing outcomes and benefits over features
The advantages of starting monetization efforts early and setting appropriate expectations with one's audience=
Time Stamps and Highlights:
- 00:37 - 01:47: Jay’s origin story, sharing his background and how Creator Science began.
- 02:15 - 04:15: Jay discusses the transition from newsletter to podcasting and eventually YouTube.
- 05:35 - 06:55: Exploring the concept of “relationship platforms” (e.g., email, SMS, private communities).
- 07:10 - 08:50: The value of direct monetization and capturing value from audiences.
- 09:02 - 10:28: Jay’s thoughts on affiliate marketing and the benefits of direct product creation.
- 11:38 - 13:16: Pricing anxiety and the importance of setting boundaries in monetization.
- 14:32 - 15:49: Introducing monetization early on to set consistent expectations with the audience.
- 16:35 - 18:55: Managing perception and value in pricing for creators and entrepreneurs.
- 20:23 - 21:57: Building communities and memberships: content-focused versus community-focused models.
- 23:30 - 24:45: Entertainment creators and business models, like physical products and memberships.
- 26:51 - 28:45: Leveraging membership structures for entertainment creators, including premium content and community.
- 31:05 - 33:30: Jay's perspective on the value of paid education versus freely available content.
- 35:45 - 37:48: Roberto and Jay on the reality of long-term commitment, especially in YouTube.
- 39:10 - 39:55: Final thoughts from Jay and where to find Creator Science.
Brief Guest Bio:
Jay Clouse is a creator, entrepreneur, and the host of the 'Creator Science' podcast, where he dives into the strategies and mindsets of top content creators. His work has made him a trusted resource for creators looking to build sustainable careers, and his podcast has become a go-to for insights on the creator economy.
Resources Mentioned:
- Awesome Creator Academy
- Creator Science and The LAB
- Brand Deal Starter Kit
- Spotter Studio
- Kit.com for Email Markting
- Amazon Influencer Program
- Patreon
Sponsors of the Podcast:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Roberto Blake (00:00):
Hey everybody. This is Roberto Blake, and today
(00:00):
I have the one and only Jay Clouse here, here to talk about
monetization, long form and short form and all things
creator economy. Jay, welcome to the show, Jay
Clouse (00:10):
dude. Roberto, thanks for having me.
Yeah, Roberto Blake (00:12):
no, awesome.
So we've known each other for a while online.
We've met in person a few times,great conversations, but you are
the man, but for the five peopleliving under a rock in my
audience, tell them a little bitabout yourself.
Give them your hero or villain origin story.
Well, it Jay Clouse (00:30):
begins dark and stormy night when a man and
woman, I mean, my parents love each other very much.
So my name is Jay. I'm the founder of creator
science, and new thing I'm playing with is I'm saying this
is advanced creator education. I Roberto Blake: love it.
I love it. There's a lot of beginner
education. So I love advanced creator
education. Yes, good standout, because Jay
Clouse (00:50):
I am really big on analytics and data and making
data driven decisions. So really, creator science is
saying my origin story is someone who did not consider
himself creative. And the only way that I've been
able to build the following, theattention that I have is because
I have been so deliberate in experimenting, learning,
(01:12):
innovating and just getting, like, tiny increments better all
the time, 1% Roberto Blake (01:16):
better every upload like we like
to say, totally Yeah. So no, that's great.
Can you tell us a little bit more about creator science and
the lab and what you're doing, and then I'm going to get into
specifics around sure monetization options for content
creators, because you guys know what I say.
I'm here to help you improve your reach, your reputation and
your revenue, and I think Jay can help us with all of those.
(01:36):
But I really want to hone in on the revenue piece.
You know, we know that we all need money, which makes world go
round. So tell us a little bit more
about the business side of creator science, if you don't
mind, and the learner. Jay Clouse: So I actually
identify as a writer more than anything else.
Love it. So creator science started as a
newsletter and evolved into a podcast, and it was only then
(01:59):
that I realized, like, oh, social media could actually be
helpful, and maybe I should try YouTube.
So now we're like on all the things, but it started from
email and podcasting, which are notoriously difficult platforms
to grow. And Roberto Blake: so you
actually technically went hard mode from beginning, because
email writing extremely hard. Podcasting without previous
(02:19):
social media, and for distribution, very hard Yes.
Then YouTube, yes, the hardest thing out of all content
platforms. And so hard mode in the
beginning, but nightmare mode from the beginning.
And like, Jay Clouse (02:30):
there's, there's an argument to be made,
a really good argument to be made, actually, that like, you
should do the hardest things first.
Yes, because if you do the hardest things first, then like,
you can really snowball your efforts.
So I think I lucked out in some degrees, but I also definitely
shot myself in the foot in a lotof ways too.
Roberto Blake (02:46):
So Avalanche method, but for creation instead
of debt payoff. Dave Ramsey, avalanche versus
snowball. Interesting, Jay Clouse:
interesting. We're Roberto Blake: doing
snowball. You went avalanche?
Yes. I think that for those of us who
came from previous backgrounds in the industry, like marketing,
sales, business, we are kind of more predisposed, I think, or
someone with social proof. Let's say you were a lawyer like
(03:06):
Emily D baker or legal Eagle. I think those people can take
advantage of avalanche as professionals over 30, yeah,
versus like creators with no resources or experience over 20s
or teens, Snowball Method, yeah.Jay Clouse: I think a lot of
people that get into the Creatorspace, you know you're inspired
by the people whose content you were consuming and learning
from, right? And so for me, it was a lot of
(03:28):
email based creators, and, course, creators.
So like, I saw that as the path,and it's definitely a path, and
it's a good path, yes, but that was the path I emulated.
And a lot of the rhetoric in that space is like social media,
bad. Social media rented land and
like so true, but they were so extreme in that rhetoric that I
didn't touch it at all. Oh, wow.
(03:49):
And, you know, you come to realize, like everything in
moderation, everything has its place.
You just need to be you need to know what something is good for
to play the game correctly, but in its proper place.
Yes. Right sizing.
Yes, Roberto Blake (04:03):
right size. I always say, Make YouTube or
make content creation right size.
In your life, a lot of people that take over their life
totally. A lot of people are inspired by
people who've let take over their life, but they never hear
the downsides totally. But there's also sometimes too
much doom and gloom, too much negativity.
In your case, the negativity around social media hindered you
in the fact that it was a missedopportunity Jay Clouse: for yes
(04:25):
correct, like I could have grownso much faster if I would have
embraced social media faster. Because it turns out like the
best way to grow your email listyour podcast is to grow on some
other platform that rewards you with free attention, Discovery
platforms, as you would like to say, right?
Discovery platforms as I like tosay, and then redirect that
attention towards the systems ofdistribution that you Roberto
Blake (04:45):
own, the relationship platforms that you would have.
What often some people call it relationship platforms, some
people call it networking platforms.
Yes, I like the idea of relationship platforms that
feels better, that feels more humanistic to me.
Yes. And.
And for those watching, you described, I think, examples of
relationship platforms very eloquently.
(05:06):
Do you want to run us through real quick?
Jay Clouse (05:08):
I think that there's really only four relationship
platforms, and you could make anargument for YouTube and call it
four and a half, maybe. But I would say email,
podcasting, SMS and private communities.
These are systems of communication and distribution
that you can control. They're reliable means of
communicating with the people who have opted into that
situation, right? And Roberto Blake: you own the
(05:29):
relationship itself, because youhave access to the people not
controlled by an algorithm. My biggest frustration, yes,
right? You have Jay Clouse: direct
access to their contact information.
They control whether or not theystop hearing from you, not a
third party intermediate. And we Roberto Blake: used to
call this direct marketing back in the day, and like, in the in
the business world, like, you know, things creators don't like
(05:49):
like. So let's, let's get into this,
because this leads to the monetization piece.
So the reason that we want to dothis is, I call something very
similar to, like, what you have,I have, trust, sorry, traffic,
trust transaction, traffic, trust transaction, that's how I
got three T's. Where's yours?
Is your attention? Trust or no?
(06:10):
Sorry, awareness. Trust transaction, mine is.
Traffic, trust transaction, I'm gonna be honest.
I kind of like yours better, butmine has the alliteration, you
have the acronym that's a little bit better, but,
yeah, same same idea, same idea.Roberto Blake: The reason this
becomes important is for creatormonetization.
We need the traffic the platforms provide, and they do
(06:31):
give us an opportunity to build trust.
But I feel a lot of creators fall down on the transaction
part, because they're not pursuing a transaction.
They're just looking at Platformrevenue and sponsorship that
doesn't require any commitment from their audience in terms of
a transaction. Yep, and I feel that a lot of
creators have been socialized inthat way by the Creator culture
(06:53):
to not sell anything. Oh, you're a scumbag, you're a
scammer, you're a sellout. Blah, blah, blah, how dare you
ask me for money. It's enough that I give you
attention with my eyeballs don'tis ad revenue not enough for
you? Oh, why is everything sponsored?
I think that transactions and the audience voting with their
dollars is actually really important totally.
And I think that there's a deeper level of intimacy and a
(07:15):
commitment between somebody thatyou've exchanged value with at
that level of a transaction. That Jay Clouse: is the key like
this is another difference in the world that I came from,
which is in the world of direct marketing, of email courses,
whatever like, the implicit assumption is that you earn
money from the audience. It's a transaction.
(07:35):
It's an exchange of value, as you said, and so many people
from the I would even say, just like video side of the world,
yes, they think the model is traffic or attention monetized
by a third party sponsor, yeah, Roberto Blake: subsidized by
advertisers, beholden is to somedegree to the corporations of
the ad appliance and the sponsorship that which, those
(07:57):
are the same things that's brands paying You instead of
customers. But then who are you beholding
to them? Yeah, Jay Clouse: exactly.
You don't. You don't take their money.
They can't tell you what to do. So with your audience, you, you
need to be good at value creation, which most creators
are, I create value, but you also need to be good at value
capture. Yes, and say, I'm creating value
for you, and I'm going to capture a small bit of that for
(08:20):
myself, and we both come out winners, Roberto Blake: yes,
because then I can build more ofthe thing that you like, and you
also get to know that you participated, and have the right
to have influence over the way in which I pursue doing it, Jay
Clouse (08:34):
even beyond that, like if I told you I have a button
you can press, and if you press this button that I brought to
you, you'll earn $5 how much would you be willing to give me
to push that button? Like, like, you would probably
be willing to give me up to $4.99 because otherwise you
wouldn't make anything right. So, like, that's really easy to
quantify in in money terms, but the idea is, if you create net
(08:58):
new value for somebody, you should be able to capture some
of that, and they're still getting net new value, and so
are you? Well, Roberto Blake: that's
that's why I like affiliate marketing for creators.
I like affiliate links. Amazon influencer program is the
obvious and easy one for to get people get into.
But I like the better ones, because then you get more of
that value. Because I've always likened it
to, if you're an employee, imagine how different your life
(09:19):
would be if you had captured 10%of the value created for your
employer, yeah, for every dollaryou created for your employer,
you got a dime, okay? For every $100 you got 10, you
know, got 10 spot for you, yep. So how much is your life
different if you've made your employer, um, millions of
dollars, then in that case, you earned hundreds of 1000s of
(09:41):
dollars if you got something like 10 to 30% that's life
changing, if you think about it from that perspective.
Yeah. So as a content creator, you are
getting a fraction of the value that you create for advertisers
and sponsors on average, but then they don't pursue things
like affiliate marketing, and then, well, what's better than
10 or 30% of the value you create?
What about nine. 90% of the value you create.
Yeah, it's about selling your own product or having your own
private Jay Clouse (10:03):
community. Yeah, yeah.
And like, you just gave the sponsorship example, but a lot
of times you're creating value for your consumers, the people
who are consuming your content. Yeah?
And like, there's no reason to believe that you should not be
able to have a positive relationship with them while
they are also paying you for some of the value they have
received. And it's voluntary
participation. Voluntary participation.
Voluntary participation, obligated to buy anything
(10:25):
correct, you know, but you're just like putting the
opportunity in, whether that's in a community post or you do
your own insert, you act as yourown sponsor, you do your own
insert in your podcast or your YouTube video or whatever.
Yes, we're talking about commerce.
Like I have a lot of creators who have, like, pricing anxiety.
Who talk to me? Talk to me more about that?
Well, it's like they worry aboutthe dialog that will happen when
(10:47):
they tell their audience they have a thing and here's the
price. And I just try to make it like
as stark of a comparison as possible.
I say you walk into a Starbucks because you want a coffee.
There's no barista like twistingyour arm and saying you need to
get this coffee. It's this is what we have.
Do you want it? And you say, Yes, I recognize
that the value of having that thing is worth more to me than
(11:07):
the cash in my pocket right now.And I transact.
That is no different for us. I Roberto Blake: tell creators,
you're not saving your audience any money by not selling
something. You're just deciding to opt out
of that conversation altogether,because somebody's going to get
that money so it's not going to sit in their pocket.
It's going to go going to go to a faceless corporation.
It's got to go to Starbucks. It's, you know, going to go to
target, it's going to go to someone.
(11:28):
And all you're doing when you don't sell to your audience is
saying someone is more deservingof your audience's dollars than
you, and you're out. And I'm Jay Clouse: reacting and
riffing a little bit here, but what you're also saying is
implicitly that you don't value your own contribution, and so
they shouldn't value your contribution either.
I think Roberto Blake (11:44):
that it's largely imposter syndrome, and I
think that's fear based, yeah, and I feel that creators don't
feel they have permission to do it, yeah, because they've been
socialized by a culture largely of and this is no offense they
might the largest content creators have created that
culture and created that idea ina lot of their their audience,
who looked up to them. And you said it yourself, people
(12:07):
become the facsimile to some degree, or who they're inspired
by, who their heroes are, who they consumed.
They want to be like them, yeah.And therefore, to some degree,
they don't feel they have permission to do this if their
hero didn't do Yeah. Jay Clouse: Now the other thing
that we should talk about is, ifyou do want to sell direct to
audience, yeah, I actually thinkthat the best time to do that is
(12:28):
ASAP. Like, I think a lot of the
backlash, I think people wait till they're a certain size to
feel they've earned the privilege to do that, right?
But if you wait till you're a certain size because and think
you've earned the privilege, what you're now introducing is a
new expectation that people might not have had.
So also, Roberto Blake (12:42):
if you start from the beginning, you've
socialized the expectation. You've conditioned the
expectation, yes, of this is howit you've already, Jay Clouse:
like, set the terms of relationship of saying, like,
Hey, welcome in. I make things for you.
By the way, I sell things. And so in the future, when you
sell something, that's not a surprise.
Roberto Blake (12:58):
I get it. There's no code switching.
No, there's no code switching. Nice.
I Jay Clouse (13:02):
think this is why we saw like the exam, monetize
from Day Zero. Monetized from day zero.
And it goes even beyond this, like any precedent that you
expect to have in the future, like I started a podcast four
years ago now, and from day one,we had ad units in there, even
if they weren't paid for by sponsors.
It could have been just like me saying, like, hey, subscribe to
(13:22):
the newsletter. But the idea being, you know
that there are promotional messages at the beginning, in
the middle and in the and over time, as you earn the ability to
sell more paid units, like, it'snot a format shift, it's not a
change Exactly. Roberto Blake: There's no
interruption in service. It's how it has always been.
Yeah. So there's continuity.
I love this. This makes sense.
(13:43):
This is consistency from Day Zero.
I like this idea. It also means for future
proofing and Future Planning, the units are there, the price
increases with demand and performance.
Okay, so it always is there, andyou have predictable inventory,
you've set your own destiny. You have a plan in place, yes,
for monetization, and we used tojust call this, oh, well, what's
(14:04):
your business plan? Totally, and creators, and
creators, if I ask most creators, well, what's your
business model, their answer is ad revenue, sponsorship, and I
might get into merch, because that is the pre approved in
their mind, in the culture, thisis the pre approved model of how
you're allowed to make money, and, Jay Clouse: you know, have
appropriate expectations for howmuch you're going to sell.
(14:25):
But here's the other thing, likeeasy thing that you can sell in
the beginning, from day zero, isaccess to you.
Could be your time. Could be 30 minutes with you,
one on one. And if people value that, they
will value that. But here's the thing, by nature
of having something for sale andnobody knowing how much of it
you're selling, people are boundto assume you are selling some
amount. So even if, like, from day zero,
(14:46):
you're saying, Hey, you can booka one on one call with me, and
you don't sell a single call forthe first six months, everyone
who is aware of the fact that you sell that call has probably
assumed that you've sold some ofthem.
Yeah, and that's good. That's like.
Getting them to understand thereis value in your time, and
eventually someone will book it.And you've set that boundary,
you've set that boundary, set that expectation, somebody will
(15:07):
book it, and now you can have even more confidence Roberto
Blake (15:10):
in marketing it. It's also okay if no one
currently qualifies for the boundaries that you've set.
Say more, because, you know, well, think about it, if you
lower the goal post, then you'renot getting what you actually
wanted instead of your boundaries.
When you set your boundaries forsaying, This is what this is
what it takes to have access to my energy.
This is what it takes to overcome my other obligations.
(15:32):
If you lower that bar just so that you get a yes, you aren't
even getting what you wanted to say yes to yourself, correct
your it's a yes for them, but it's really deep down and no for
you, yeah because you lowered the bar of your requirements,
your desires, your expectations.So the fact that you moved that
(15:53):
boundary means that it Yes, it was it turned into a yes for
them, but it's not really a lessa yes for you, you settled you
moved the goal post, you loweredthe bar, you rejected your own
standard in favor of theirs. I Jay Clouse: had this
conversation a lot because people who are developing
memberships or courses or whatever, they'll say, Hey, I'm
(16:13):
getting feedback from my audience that the price is too
high. Should I lower the price?
And what you need to realize with pricing is there are two
components to pricing. There is the price and there is
the perception of value that youhave created in the mind of the
consumer. When someone says your price is
too high, what they're actually saying is there is a
misalignment between the price you have named and my perception
(16:35):
of value, of how much it's worth.
So you can lower the price to meet their perception, or you
can alter the perception. You can also their perception
through your actions. And for some people, so what?
What you have to then consider, what are the things they're
using to evaluate and determine the perceived value?
Yep. And so that may not always be a
(16:55):
function. People think that that's a
function of features and benefits.
I would argue that it often is about the perception of status.
Could be the perception of status.
It could be the way that you literally frame package the
value itself, like actually, when you talk about features and
benefits, you're usually undervaluing the thing.
What you actually want to be talking about is benefits and
(17:15):
outcomes. Correct?
Roberto Blake (17:17):
I agree with that.
Here's where I'll go on the status thing, because, again,
there's such thing as the prestige or premium of a brand,
but also the association with that thing.
A primary example would be in the Creator space.
There are creators, and one of the reasons some of them will
actually lower their prices on the negotiation of brand deals
is because the perception of what it might look like to be
(17:40):
associated with that brand and to be a brand ambassador or
featured creator of that company, that perception of
prestige and status is enough for a creator to lower their
requirements and standards. Oh, I would normally charge 5000
for this, but to work with you, if you need me to what's in the
budget, I'll what's in the budget.
I'll do it and that and that. I don't necessarily have a
(18:02):
problem with that, per se, but Ijust wanted to throw that out
there, the fact that somebody's requirements might change.
Yeah, if there is something thatthey value more than money,
which is to your point, if they value this thing more than
money, and it could be status, or it could be an outcome, yep,
if they value that thing more than money, could be access,
yeah, could be a network. Could be the association, if
they value something more than money, and you know what that
(18:25):
thing is? That's the thing to offer.
Yeah, Jay Clouse (18:27):
people value different things.
So if they're saying your price is too high, what they're saying
is my perception of my values and what I think I'll get from
this does not match that price. And it could be saying like,
Well, do you know that we are this brand that you want to work
with? Do you know that?
Or do you know that we have these results?
Yeah, these results. Do you know that it's like the
(18:48):
difference? A lot of times people,
especially in the course creatorrealm, they'll be like, this is
a six week live course, and like, that's how they'll frame
it. It's like what sounds like work
actually, that doesn't sound that's hard for me to value.
Like you're asking me to value spending time on something,
whereas if you say like this gets you this outcome in six
weeks. Now I'm valuing this as a new
version of me, a possible futurein a short period of time.
(19:12):
I value it differently or Roberto Blake: again, the reason
I might want that live cohort versus a DIY course is I might
want more nurturing. I might want the access,
support, the accountability, even, or a time constraint,
because what if I'm the kind of person that I'll do a DIY, but
I'll spin my wheels and not execute, but if I'm in a cohort,
there's assignments, there's a timetable, there's
(19:34):
accountability, I have to produce something and show it to
the group and be audited on it and have peer review or
evaluation. Well, now, okay, hey, present
your project to the class. Like, that's a different thing
than just turning in an assignment or not even having
that option. Yeah, so there's for, I think
that with cohorts in particular,and you know this, like, you've
(19:55):
done it a lot, like, I think therelationship value in that.
And. The Accountability aspect of it.
That's the, like, a key selling point of this versus that, Jay
Clouse (20:06):
yeah. And on the flip side, I
recommend doing live experiencesto creators all the time,
because you have, there's more margin for error in that.
Like, if you're delivering the education and you recognize, oh,
I think I lost this person. Yeah, you see it, and you can
intervene, and you can still, like, personally, help them get
(20:27):
to the outcome, whereas in a self paced version, you're
probably just gonna tune out andnow that I didn't get anything
out of that. Course, do Roberto Blake: you
find that also that those live experiences, I'm glad you're
saying it's live experiences, and one on one coaching?
Do you find that helps for better product development,
because you've experienced a variety of problems and a
variety of needs that help inform the more broad thing that
(20:49):
you're making. Generally, Jay Clouse: I would
just say it's a tighter feedbackloop, because you get to apply
your your method to a real situation, and you get to see
what happens from there, becauseyou're watching in real time as
they apply it. So like you see body language,
you hear objections, you hear questions that are asked.
You see where people's eyes light up or their eyes glaze
(21:09):
over. So like the feedback loop of
learning, am I explaining this well?
Am I explaining it in the right order?
Am I explaining it comprehensively?
You learn all that by deliveringthese things live and seeing
somebody react. And once you start seeing a
pattern of like, okay, every time I deliver this live in this
order, in this way, it just works, that's when you can start
saying, let me produce it. And that's Roberto Blake: not
(21:31):
abstract in the way that maybe even a survey, a survey has a
limited scope of questions, versus this feedback loop has
more variability, in the sense that people aren't limited in
the type of feedback they can give or to a specific question
set. So it also takes some bias that
your own exit survey might have if you sell a course.
(21:51):
So I think that's that's good feedback and value.
But let me ask you a question. You've coached a lot of
different creators. We've talked a lot about
monetization models that I thinklend themselves better to
thought leaders, per se, versus influencers who might be in the
entertainment sphere. Because, like, one of my things
in the dichotomy of like, okay, well, what is a creator is,
well, you could have, well, there's really three paths, but
(22:13):
most people focus on two, the thought leader path, which is
professionals that you know, Andrew Huberman, for example,
James clear, obviously thought leaders.
We would be thought leaders. But then you have influencers,
which would be the entertainmentbase, which is your like, your
Mr. Beast, your Logan Paul's, what have you.
But then I would say there is a third path that might be more
(22:37):
abstract than both that well, there are people who are
artists, who then just happen tomonetize what they're doing as
creators, per se, yeah, but thatmatter, the expression aspect
would matter more to them, versus, I would say that, um,
the influencer optimizes probably around.
They want the validation, they want, the wreath, they want, the
(22:57):
big numbers. And then I would argue, to some
degree, maybe the business is a secondary like priority to some
degree. I think that thought leaders,
not all, but most probably, comefrom a professional realm where
they are intrinsically thinking equally about reach and revenue.
I think artists would like either, but they just really
want their thing to exist. Yeah, if we will look at
(23:19):
influencers who are entertainers, what would you
say, and what monetization advice would you offer to them?
And what business model do you think works for those Well, I'm
Jay Clouse (23:27):
not gonna say don't do advertising or brand deals
like, yeah, of course it works. There's a lot of precedent for
it, but it's also like, in some ways unreliable.
So I'm always trying to say, what is the direct form of
monetization, I can find that's just a pure transaction between
me and my audience, right? And it is tougher in the
entertainment realm than the education realm, yes, because
(23:49):
you're probably not going to do a course or some sort of like
info product, but I am inspired by people who do some form of
physical product, and like you have the extreme examples like
feastables and joy ride or whatever, right?
And, yeah, I think there's a really interesting thing
happening right now that we saw with like Marques Brownlee,
where, like, you have brands that don't have a face and faces
(24:14):
who don't have a product, and like, they meet, and that's,
like, really cool, yeah. And Roberto Blake: we saw this
before that, even with Peter McKinnon.
So we have Marcus Brownlee, Peter McKinnon, with these kind
of partnerships. I just seen with blue, Condor or
Condor blue. Sorry, Condor blue.
So I love this idea. I think it becomes to some,
(24:36):
would you agree that this could be extension of what starts with
a traditional brand deal relationship, Marquez in
particular, and Justine as well.So I feel like that becomes a
natural progression or extensionof something creators are
familiar with. Here's another form of brand
(24:58):
partnership that. Extends outside of just triple
sponsored content. Yeah, to product partnership,
yeah. I Jay Clouse: think, I think
creators can kind of approach brand deals the same way that
Amazon approaches Amazon originals.
You know, where it's like, I have a sense that my audience
cares about this type of product, let me partner with a
(25:18):
brand that provides it. And if that proves to be true,
consider developing your own. Or, you know, go to them and
say, I think I might develop my own, or cut me in, like, let's
be partners on this. Yeah, because, like, doing
manufacturing and producing a product that's a huge, that's a
big undertake, creators typically don't have
specialization or expertise. It's, like, inaccessible to
somebody who hasn't done it before.
So it's easier to work with somebody who already has a
(25:40):
systems built, and you have, like, a percentage you're on the
board. Percentage, you're on the board,
you're on the cap table. That's like ideal, and I think
you can wade into that with affiliates or brand deals to
start. So I think that's like a good
place to start. But I also think that most
entertainment based creators have an opportunity for
memberships. I wanted that Roberto Blake: for
sure. I would agree with that the
success of Patreon is a platform.
(26:01):
Jack Conte, great entrepreneur, yeah, Jack, if you're watching,
yeah, we'd love to have you on, but I believe you spoke with
Jack Conte and other folks in the development realm around
memberships. What would your advice be to
entertainers? And then we could circle back to
thought leaders on approaching memberships, because a lot of
(26:21):
entertainers don't get like the inside baseball on this, yeah,
I mean memberships, you have to think about what is
my audience value? How do I form this so that it
doesn't take over my life? And I would put memberships on a
spectrum between, is this premium content focused, or is
this like relationship focused, so access?
Well, I would even say relationships between members.
(26:44):
So community, yes, like, do you want to be more peer to peer and
the value that you're promising,or do you want to be more
premium content? And most memberships will offer
a blend of both, but you're going to want to go one side or
the other. Primarily interesting when you
do peer to peer, and you're like, This is a community for
this type of person, and we makethe experience really good for
(27:05):
people who care about this thing.
You can tend to charge higher prices for that, because that's
a harder thing to pull off. I'd agree retention is higher
more difficult to market, though, Roberto Blake: community
is more unique than any product offer, yes, yes.
But Jay Clouse (27:17):
like, in opposition to SAS.
Like, yeah, to continue to create value in a community, you
have to, like, just foster the conditions.
It's You're never done. You're never like, Okay, we did
it. Like the community exists and
it's great. Like, you have to continue.
It's like, it's like pool chemistry, like you can get the
community can be off balance, and things can go bad.
(27:38):
There's no like, I made it. It just works.
You have to continue to foster whereas, whereas with SAS,
there's a there's a baseline, baseline utility, a baseline
utility that's pretty static, that's pretty static that, like
it will continue to solve that problem in that way.
But community, if it's peer to peer, especially like you have
to continue to help me form relationships and make this a
(27:58):
place that I want to spend my Roberto Blake: time.
And it has to be the culture hasto be maintained.
It has to be curated. It's Jay Clouse: ultimately out
of your hands. You can't, you can't control
fully if people are participating, if relationships
are being made, if you do premium content, you can control
the fact that you're going to make more premium content,
right? So that's a little bit safer.
Roberto Blake (28:17):
So you're choosing essentially between
content as a service or community as a service?
Yes, yes. Jay Clouse: And a membership,
that's generally what you're trying to do, interesting.
So I think most entertainment based creators, especially, are
more on the side of content, because content is like
basically creating extended access to you.
Yes, sometimes you will do live sessions, and that's special and
unique. Content based memberships tend
(28:39):
to be lower priced. You're going for scale?
Yep, they tend to be higher churn, yes.
But you know, if you go that way, like there is more control,
and I think most creators can design a membership where there
is extended access to you, more content from you, but it's
controlled, and how much time you're putting into it, yes.
And so it's Roberto Blake (28:59):
a scale.
It's a more scalable and easier to sustain model, yes, but it
also, again, requires it to be alower premium, yes, for access.
So it's like volume of transactions versus value
transactions. And so that's a volume based
model. And then the value based model
is community. Yes, that's Jay Clouse: that's a
good way to put it into so you have to decide where you want to
(29:22):
fall on that framework, and generally, like a lot of people
will run the math and realize, Okay, I'm gonna charge $5 a
month my Patreon. I have a good audience, but, you
know, we've got 100 people, and that's a great outcome, but
that's $500 per month, and I'm putting all this time into
creating new stuff, and it just doesn't make sense.
It's like it doesn't feel sustainable, because it doesn't
(29:42):
feel like it's rewarding you forthe amount of effort that's
required. So when you introduce a
membership, is a key question tomake sure that it is financially
incentivizing for you to do the work necessary to make it good
enough that people stick around.Roberto Blake: No, that makes
perfect sense, because the churnrate is the thing that would be
up with. And stand for those not familiar
with churn rate, we're talking about, are you losing more
(30:03):
members than you're gaining month over month?
Yeah. And is that net positive?
Yeah. So.
And are you maintaining the numbers and retention of what
like you have, as far as your community?
So that's, I think that's very interesting.
Let's get into a little bit of that around education based
content. One of the pushbacks on
(30:25):
education based content, whetherit's courses or even cohorts or
communities, is there's this belief that everything that you
ever need is already accessible.Why would you pay for it?
What are your thoughts on that argument around this?
Yeah, Jay Clouse (30:37):
I mean, I would also say that you could,
you could change your own toilet, or you could hire a
plumber. You know, we value time and
efficiency as a species. We just do, yeah, so, like
courses are about time and efficiency if you would like to
(30:58):
learn something better faster than trying to do it on your
own. If you have to curate the
information, to curate it, not just curate it, but also order
it. Yeah, Roberto Blake: so I'd have
to curate it, create continuity.I'd have to consolidate it.
I'd have to that's a lot of effort before I even consume the
thing that I want and execute on.
It's Jay Clouse (31:16):
a lot of effort to understand, like, what should
I pay attention to? How do I curate it?
What order should I consume it in?
And like, what do I lend credibility to so yes, you could
do all of that. You can do it.
How Roberto Blake (31:26):
much of that do I have to do to distill it
down these things? And how would I know that I've
done that effectively Jay Clouse: totally and why would
you believe that you can do it as effectively as somebody who's
been doing it for years and has already immersed it like the
best course I've ever taken, by far, Roberto Blake: and had
other people vet it by hack, then other people have bought
it. Yes, best course Jay Clouse: I
take it by far is Seth godins marketing seminar.
(31:47):
Okay, hour for our incredibly value, and this is this man's 30
years of marketing experience distilled into one course.
Like you can have Seth godins 30years of marketing experience
distilled into one chorus, yes, you could probably go through
his entire archive of everythinghe's ever done, but some of
that's going to be dated, some of that he's changed his own
(32:08):
mind on. So it's just, yes, you can do it
for free, but it's inefficient. At some point you need to value
your own time. Roberto Blake: I think that time
is the most irreplaceable thing.I think there's a over I think
people I'm speaking for myself when I say this.
I've had various incarnations ofa unhealthy relationship with
money that comes from scarcity, bad experiences growing up
(32:30):
without money, being an adult that didn't have money, all
kinds of debt. It creates these money traumas
that I think then skew the lens of how we perceive money, and we
think that, Oh, if we spend thismoney, this money will never
come again. But inevitably, if we work hard,
it does, if we're consistent, itdoes.
If no tragedy happens, it does. And often we've spent more money
(32:53):
on more useless or worthless things than the things that are
in personal development. I feel like books are always a
good investment of money. I feel like a gym membership
tends to be a good investment ofmoney and everything like, I
mean, your evidence right here, Jay Clouse: I've put a lot of
money into the home gym. Yeah.
Roberto Blake (33:08):
So the I feel like personal development, which
gets a bad rap, self improvement, I think career
development. I think if you were trying to do
anything like, for example, outside of content creation,
people understand the investmentof career development, and how
many 1000s of 1000s of dollars. But I think in our industry, a
lot of people take for granted this idea, because in their
(33:28):
mind, there's this perception behind the scenes that this is
very luck based, which I would disagree with.
I think that most things that are broadcast as luck are
undisclosed privilege, undisclosed nepotism,
undisclosed resources. I don't think enough credit goes
to teams that are behind people,tools that are behind people,
and to opportunities that were not given to everybody a lot of
(33:49):
times. And Jay Clouse: if you pawn
things off on luck, that's a very disempowering belief.
I agree. Because if you just believe
things are luck, then like, what?
What reason is there to do anything?
I Roberto Blake (34:01):
take it to a weird extreme.
When someone says they're lucky,I don't think they're being
humble. I think they're trying to say
that God loves them more than you.
Yeah, that's a mic drop, right? But, but thing is, think about
it, if it's not in your control,then it's in the control of
something bigger and more powerful, and it's picking
winners and losers. Yeah, I would never want to
believe that message. I Jay Clouse: mean, like, chance
(34:22):
and probabilities are a thing, yeah, and sometimes those play
in your favor. But there are other ways to
like, improve your odds. You can stack the deck, yeah,
your favor. There's a lot you can do to
like, be more probabilistic to get the outcome that you want.
Roberto Blake (34:37):
Yes, I think that the rarity of outcomes that
people look at also is a rarity of inputs.
And the thing that also convinced me this, and I'd love
your thoughts on this as we start to, you know, wind things
down, but like, if you look at AI, for example, its outputs are
only as good as its inputs. You cannot be somebody who's
like, you know, if someone's already smart, this thing will
(34:58):
have exponentially more valuableto them.
That if they're below average, and I think that a lot of things
are the difference between a lotof undisclosed effort that is
above average or outlier effort,meaning that, I think that it's
under reported how many hours people put in doing something to
(35:18):
get like most people do not understand that a lot of the
successful content creators thatthey see, it's their third or
fifth YouTube channel, yeah, andthey've undisclosed to you.
You saw them and ran into them when they're 18.
They've been trying to since they were 12, and they failed
their way up. Yeah.
Jay Clouse (35:32):
And even while they were failing, they were learning
things that allowed them to do things in smaller amounts of
time, and like time savings compound.
They Roberto Blake (35:41):
do they but that's with everything.
That's with athleticism. And no one talks like, think, if
you think about it, just realistically, the more you work
out, the more you do an exercise, the more you do a
martial art, the effort compounds.
And the thing becomes easier dueto muscle gain, muscle memory,
repetition, the fact that you'redisciplined in your mind, of
like, okay, this isn't so bad, becomes a thing.
A lot of people don't. If I put it into real terms for
(36:03):
content creators, Mr. Beast made460 videos to get to 10,000
subscribers. Do you realize how abnormal it
is to keep going? If you have, if you make 460
videos on YouTube, try your little heart out, and you don't
even get to 10,000 subscribers, you realize how many people
would give up? Jay Clouse: Oh yeah.
Before they hit 400 videos, I would have given up at video six
(36:23):
they. Roberto Blake: A lot of them
give up, most people, even if they, most people give up at
video 100 if they do not hit theoutlier thing, if they don't hit
10,000 subscribers by video 100 they give up.
And the reason I know this is because that has been audited.
90% of creators never hit 10,000subscribers.
(36:44):
About roughly, depending on whatyou want measure is active
channels. You could argue between three
and 6% monetize, because, according to CEO Neo Mohan, 3
million globally in the partner program, there's over 100
million channels on YouTube globally.
Social Blade only tracks about 69 million of them.
So people look at that as the active channel number, okay, if
(37:05):
I go with the conservative version, 6% of all people in the
world who try to do YouTube get monetized, and get the partner
program and get, you know, the watch hours and the
monetization. And that's after they lowered
the bar, by the way, in the to 500 subscribers and 3000 watch
hours. Okay, so it's between three and
6% like, Okay, that's pretty devastating.
That sounds bleak. That sounds like, yeah, you're
saying it's a lucky break, but it's not.
(37:27):
It's that most people don't qualify because they quit too
soon. Yeah, Jay Clouse: you gotta
think, am I going to put in moreeffort than 94 to 97% of people?
And actually, that's very achievable.
Most people do not put in extraordinary effort.
They don't, yeah, I Roberto Blake: think that's been
provably true. I mean, it sounds harsh, or it
(37:47):
sounds elitist to say, but it's,no, it's provably true, yeah,
because we can measure it. Yeah, Jay Clouse: the bar is,
like, low for trying, but like, the the wind does not come from
simply the activity. You can't simply upload a video
and think, Well, if I do that 100 times, I get the outcome.
You have to like work to make every video better.
Roberto Blake (38:06):
Of improving, it's the improvement by at least
1% every time one new thing learned every time it's the
natural progression. And that's why I liken it to
things like athleticism or artwork or just even any form of
personal development self improvement that you do.
It's improvement that you do, it's the compounding of the
effort with the intent of improving and becoming more
(38:28):
effective, more efficient. It's becoming a better editor, a
faster editor, a better script writer, a better on camera.
I sucked on camera like even learning to perform, even
learning how to speak. I sucked on camera.
I sucked at public speaking. I improved with effort over a
duration of time. Jay Clouse: Yep, and that
improvement is a decision. Roberto Blake: It that is a
choice that you that is the controllable variable out of the
(38:48):
things you were talking about, because you went to controllable
variables, like how you can control, for example, your the
price that you set, you can control that you can control
certain levers in the perceptionof your value by, you know,
improving on a thing, and understand it's a choice to
understand what your audience values and why and so on and so
forth. So no, I would agree with you on
(39:08):
that. So Jay, where can everyone find
you and learn more about your content and resources?
Jay Clouse (39:14):
Right here on YouTube.
Search. J Klaus, the channel is called
Creator science. The handle is at creator
science, y t because someone gotto add creator science before
me. Otherwise, you know, search for
creator science wherever you like to consume your things.
Do Roberto Blake (39:28):
you have some final thoughts or something you
want to talk about today before we wrap up?
Jay Clouse (39:33):
Yeah, if I were to ask everybody watching us to do
one thing, well, maybe two things, it would be to like and
subscribe. Nice you.
Hey everybody. This is Roberto Blake, and today
(00:00):
I have the one and only Jay Clouse here, here to talk about
monetization, long form and short form and all things
creator economy. Jay, welcome to the show, Jay
Clouse (00:10):
dude. Roberto, thanks for having me.
Yeah, Roberto Blake (00:12):
no, awesome.
So we've known each other for a while online.
We've met in person a few times,great conversations, but you are
the man, but for the five peopleliving under a rock in my
audience, tell them a little bitabout yourself.
Give them your hero or villain origin story.
Well, it Jay Clouse (00:30):
begins dark and stormy night when a man and
woman, I mean, my parents love each other very much.
So my name is Jay. I'm the founder of creator
science, and new thing I'm playing with is I'm saying this
is advanced creator education. I Roberto Blake: love it.
I love it. There's a lot of beginner
education. So I love advanced creator
education. Yes, good standout, because Jay
Clouse (00:50):
I am really big on analytics and data and making
data driven decisions. So really, creator science is
saying my origin story is someone who did not consider
himself creative. And the only way that I've been
able to build the following, theattention that I have is because
I have been so deliberate in experimenting, learning,
(01:12):
innovating and just getting, like, tiny increments better all
the time, 1% Roberto Blake (01:16):
better every upload like we like
to say, totally Yeah. So no, that's great.
Can you tell us a little bit more about creator science and
the lab and what you're doing, and then I'm going to get into
specifics around sure monetization options for content
creators, because you guys know what I say.
I'm here to help you improve your reach, your reputation and
your revenue, and I think Jay can help us with all of those.
(01:36):
But I really want to hone in on the revenue piece.
You know, we know that we all need money, which makes world go
round. So tell us a little bit more
about the business side of creator science, if you don't
mind, and the learner. Jay Clouse: So I actually
identify as a writer more than anything else.
Love it. So creator science started as a
newsletter and evolved into a podcast, and it was only then
(01:59):
that I realized, like, oh, social media could actually be
helpful, and maybe I should try YouTube.
So now we're like on all the things, but it started from
email and podcasting, which are notoriously difficult platforms
to grow. And Roberto Blake: so you
actually technically went hard mode from beginning, because
email writing extremely hard. Podcasting without previous
(02:19):
social media, and for distribution, very hard Yes.
Then YouTube, yes, the hardest thing out of all content
platforms. And so hard mode in the
beginning, but nightmare mode from the beginning.
And like, Jay Clouse (02:30):
there's, there's an argument to be made,
a really good argument to be made, actually, that like, you
should do the hardest things first.
Yes, because if you do the hardest things first, then like,
you can really snowball your efforts.
So I think I lucked out in some degrees, but I also definitely
shot myself in the foot in a lotof ways too.
Roberto Blake (02:46):
So Avalanche method, but for creation instead
of debt payoff. Dave Ramsey, avalanche versus
snowball. Interesting, Jay Clouse:
interesting. We're Roberto Blake: doing
snowball. You went avalanche?
Yes. I think that for those of us who
came from previous backgrounds in the industry, like marketing,
sales, business, we are kind of more predisposed, I think, or
someone with social proof. Let's say you were a lawyer like
(03:06):
Emily D baker or legal Eagle. I think those people can take
advantage of avalanche as professionals over 30, yeah,
versus like creators with no resources or experience over 20s
or teens, Snowball Method, yeah.Jay Clouse: I think a lot of
people that get into the Creatorspace, you know you're inspired
by the people whose content you were consuming and learning
from, right? And so for me, it was a lot of
(03:28):
email based creators, and, course, creators.
So like, I saw that as the path,and it's definitely a path, and
it's a good path, yes, but that was the path I emulated.
And a lot of the rhetoric in that space is like social media,
bad. Social media rented land and
like so true, but they were so extreme in that rhetoric that I
didn't touch it at all. Oh, wow.
(03:49):
And, you know, you come to realize, like everything in
moderation, everything has its place.
You just need to be you need to know what something is good for
to play the game correctly, but in its proper place.
Yes. Right sizing.
Yes, Roberto Blake (04:03):
right size. I always say, Make YouTube or
make content creation right size.
In your life, a lot of people that take over their life
totally. A lot of people are inspired by
people who've let take over their life, but they never hear
the downsides totally. But there's also sometimes too
much doom and gloom, too much negativity.
In your case, the negativity around social media hindered you
in the fact that it was a missedopportunity Jay Clouse: for yes
(04:25):
correct, like I could have grownso much faster if I would have
embraced social media faster. Because it turns out like the
best way to grow your email listyour podcast is to grow on some
other platform that rewards you with free attention, Discovery
platforms, as you would like to say, right?
Discovery platforms as I like tosay, and then redirect that
attention towards the systems ofdistribution that you Roberto
Blake (04:45):
own, the relationship platforms that you would have.
What often some people call it relationship platforms, some
people call it networking platforms.
Yes, I like the idea of relationship platforms that
feels better, that feels more humanistic to me.
Yes. And.
And for those watching, you described, I think, examples of
relationship platforms very eloquently.
(05:06):
Do you want to run us through real quick?
Jay Clouse (05:08):
I think that there's really only four relationship
platforms, and you could make anargument for YouTube and call it
four and a half, maybe. But I would say email,
podcasting, SMS and private communities.
These are systems of communication and distribution
that you can control. They're reliable means of
communicating with the people who have opted into that
situation, right? And Roberto Blake: you own the
(05:29):
relationship itself, because youhave access to the people not
controlled by an algorithm. My biggest frustration, yes,
right? You have Jay Clouse: direct
access to their contact information.
They control whether or not theystop hearing from you, not a
third party intermediate. And we Roberto Blake: used to
call this direct marketing back in the day, and like, in the in
the business world, like, you know, things creators don't like
(05:49):
like. So let's, let's get into this,
because this leads to the monetization piece.
So the reason that we want to dothis is, I call something very
similar to, like, what you have,I have, trust, sorry, traffic,
trust transaction, traffic, trust transaction, that's how I
got three T's. Where's yours?
Is your attention? Trust or no?
(06:10):
Sorry, awareness. Trust transaction, mine is.
Traffic, trust transaction, I'm gonna be honest.
I kind of like yours better, butmine has the alliteration, you
have the acronym that's a little bit better, but,
yeah, same same idea, same idea.Roberto Blake: The reason this
becomes important is for creatormonetization.
We need the traffic the platforms provide, and they do
(06:31):
give us an opportunity to build trust.
But I feel a lot of creators fall down on the transaction
part, because they're not pursuing a transaction.
They're just looking at Platformrevenue and sponsorship that
doesn't require any commitment from their audience in terms of
a transaction. Yep, and I feel that a lot of
creators have been socialized inthat way by the Creator culture
(06:53):
to not sell anything. Oh, you're a scumbag, you're a
scammer, you're a sellout. Blah, blah, blah, how dare you
ask me for money. It's enough that I give you
attention with my eyeballs don'tis ad revenue not enough for
you? Oh, why is everything sponsored?
I think that transactions and the audience voting with their
dollars is actually really important totally.
And I think that there's a deeper level of intimacy and a
(07:15):
commitment between somebody thatyou've exchanged value with at
that level of a transaction. That Jay Clouse: is the key like
this is another difference in the world that I came from,
which is in the world of direct marketing, of email courses,
whatever like, the implicit assumption is that you earn
money from the audience. It's a transaction.
(07:35):
It's an exchange of value, as you said, and so many people
from the I would even say, just like video side of the world,
yes, they think the model is traffic or attention monetized
by a third party sponsor, yeah, Roberto Blake: subsidized by
advertisers, beholden is to somedegree to the corporations of
the ad appliance and the sponsorship that which, those
(07:57):
are the same things that's brands paying You instead of
customers. But then who are you beholding
to them? Yeah, Jay Clouse: exactly.
You don't. You don't take their money.
They can't tell you what to do. So with your audience, you, you
need to be good at value creation, which most creators
are, I create value, but you also need to be good at value
capture. Yes, and say, I'm creating value
for you, and I'm going to capture a small bit of that for
(08:20):
myself, and we both come out winners, Roberto Blake: yes,
because then I can build more ofthe thing that you like, and you
also get to know that you participated, and have the right
to have influence over the way in which I pursue doing it, Jay
Clouse (08:34):
even beyond that, like if I told you I have a button
you can press, and if you press this button that I brought to
you, you'll earn $5 how much would you be willing to give me
to push that button? Like, like, you would probably
be willing to give me up to $4.99 because otherwise you
wouldn't make anything right. So, like, that's really easy to
quantify in in money terms, but the idea is, if you create net
(08:58):
new value for somebody, you should be able to capture some
of that, and they're still getting net new value, and so
are you? Well, Roberto Blake: that's
that's why I like affiliate marketing for creators.
I like affiliate links. Amazon influencer program is the
obvious and easy one for to get people get into.
But I like the better ones, because then you get more of
that value. Because I've always likened it
to, if you're an employee, imagine how different your life
(09:19):
would be if you had captured 10%of the value created for your
employer, yeah, for every dollaryou created for your employer,
you got a dime, okay? For every $100 you got 10, you
know, got 10 spot for you, yep. So how much is your life
different if you've made your employer, um, millions of
dollars, then in that case, you earned hundreds of 1000s of
(09:41):
dollars if you got something like 10 to 30% that's life
changing, if you think about it from that perspective.
Yeah. So as a content creator, you are
getting a fraction of the value that you create for advertisers
and sponsors on average, but then they don't pursue things
like affiliate marketing, and then, well, what's better than
10 or 30% of the value you create?
What about nine. 90% of the value you create.
Yeah, it's about selling your own product or having your own
private Jay Clouse (10:03):
community. Yeah, yeah.
And like, you just gave the sponsorship example, but a lot
of times you're creating value for your consumers, the people
who are consuming your content. Yeah?
And like, there's no reason to believe that you should not be
able to have a positive relationship with them while
they are also paying you for some of the value they have
received. And it's voluntary
participation. Voluntary participation.
Voluntary participation, obligated to buy anything
(10:25):
correct, you know, but you're just like putting the
opportunity in, whether that's in a community post or you do
your own insert, you act as yourown sponsor, you do your own
insert in your podcast or your YouTube video or whatever.
Yes, we're talking about commerce.
Like I have a lot of creators who have, like, pricing anxiety.
Who talk to me? Talk to me more about that?
Well, it's like they worry aboutthe dialog that will happen when
(10:47):
they tell their audience they have a thing and here's the
price. And I just try to make it like
as stark of a comparison as possible.
I say you walk into a Starbucks because you want a coffee.
There's no barista like twistingyour arm and saying you need to
get this coffee. It's this is what we have.
Do you want it? And you say, Yes, I recognize
that the value of having that thing is worth more to me than
(11:07):
the cash in my pocket right now.And I transact.
That is no different for us. I Roberto Blake: tell creators,
you're not saving your audience any money by not selling
something. You're just deciding to opt out
of that conversation altogether,because somebody's going to get
that money so it's not going to sit in their pocket.
It's going to go going to go to a faceless corporation.
It's got to go to Starbucks. It's, you know, going to go to
target, it's going to go to someone.
(11:28):
And all you're doing when you don't sell to your audience is
saying someone is more deservingof your audience's dollars than
you, and you're out. And I'm Jay Clouse: reacting and
riffing a little bit here, but what you're also saying is
implicitly that you don't value your own contribution, and so
they shouldn't value your contribution either.
I think Roberto Blake (11:44):
that it's largely imposter syndrome, and I
think that's fear based, yeah, and I feel that creators don't
feel they have permission to do it, yeah, because they've been
socialized by a culture largely of and this is no offense they
might the largest content creators have created that
culture and created that idea ina lot of their their audience,
who looked up to them. And you said it yourself, people
(12:07):
become the facsimile to some degree, or who they're inspired
by, who their heroes are, who they consumed.
They want to be like them, yeah.And therefore, to some degree,
they don't feel they have permission to do this if their
hero didn't do Yeah. Jay Clouse: Now the other thing
that we should talk about is, ifyou do want to sell direct to
audience, yeah, I actually thinkthat the best time to do that is
(12:28):
ASAP. Like, I think a lot of the
backlash, I think people wait till they're a certain size to
feel they've earned the privilege to do that, right?
But if you wait till you're a certain size because and think
you've earned the privilege, what you're now introducing is a
new expectation that people might not have had.
So also, Roberto Blake (12:42):
if you start from the beginning, you've
socialized the expectation. You've conditioned the
expectation, yes, of this is howit you've already, Jay Clouse:
like, set the terms of relationship of saying, like,
Hey, welcome in. I make things for you.
By the way, I sell things. And so in the future, when you
sell something, that's not a surprise.
Roberto Blake (12:58):
I get it. There's no code switching.
No, there's no code switching. Nice.
I Jay Clouse (13:02):
think this is why we saw like the exam, monetize
from Day Zero. Monetized from day zero.
And it goes even beyond this, like any precedent that you
expect to have in the future, like I started a podcast four
years ago now, and from day one,we had ad units in there, even
if they weren't paid for by sponsors.
It could have been just like me saying, like, hey, subscribe to
(13:22):
the newsletter. But the idea being, you know
that there are promotional messages at the beginning, in
the middle and in the and over time, as you earn the ability to
sell more paid units, like, it'snot a format shift, it's not a
change Exactly. Roberto Blake: There's no
interruption in service. It's how it has always been.
Yeah. So there's continuity.
I love this. This makes sense.
(13:43):
This is consistency from Day Zero.
I like this idea. It also means for future
proofing and Future Planning, the units are there, the price
increases with demand and performance.
Okay, so it always is there, andyou have predictable inventory,
you've set your own destiny. You have a plan in place, yes,
for monetization, and we used tojust call this, oh, well, what's
(14:04):
your business plan? Totally, and creators, and
creators, if I ask most creators, well, what's your
business model, their answer is ad revenue, sponsorship, and I
might get into merch, because that is the pre approved in
their mind, in the culture, thisis the pre approved model of how
you're allowed to make money, and, Jay Clouse: you know, have
appropriate expectations for howmuch you're going to sell.
(14:25):
But here's the other thing, likeeasy thing that you can sell in
the beginning, from day zero, isaccess to you.
Could be your time. Could be 30 minutes with you,
one on one. And if people value that, they
will value that. But here's the thing, by nature
of having something for sale andnobody knowing how much of it
you're selling, people are boundto assume you are selling some
amount. So even if, like, from day zero,
(14:46):
you're saying, Hey, you can booka one on one call with me, and
you don't sell a single call forthe first six months, everyone
who is aware of the fact that you sell that call has probably
assumed that you've sold some ofthem.
Yeah, and that's good. That's like.
Getting them to understand thereis value in your time, and
eventually someone will book it.And you've set that boundary,
you've set that boundary, set that expectation, somebody will
(15:07):
book it, and now you can have even more confidence Roberto
Blake (15:10):
in marketing it. It's also okay if no one
currently qualifies for the boundaries that you've set.
Say more, because, you know, well, think about it, if you
lower the goal post, then you'renot getting what you actually
wanted instead of your boundaries.
When you set your boundaries forsaying, This is what this is
what it takes to have access to my energy.
This is what it takes to overcome my other obligations.
(15:32):
If you lower that bar just so that you get a yes, you aren't
even getting what you wanted to say yes to yourself, correct
your it's a yes for them, but it's really deep down and no for
you, yeah because you lowered the bar of your requirements,
your desires, your expectations.So the fact that you moved that
(15:53):
boundary means that it Yes, it was it turned into a yes for
them, but it's not really a lessa yes for you, you settled you
moved the goal post, you loweredthe bar, you rejected your own
standard in favor of theirs. I Jay Clouse: had this
conversation a lot because people who are developing
memberships or courses or whatever, they'll say, Hey, I'm
(16:13):
getting feedback from my audience that the price is too
high. Should I lower the price?
And what you need to realize with pricing is there are two
components to pricing. There is the price and there is
the perception of value that youhave created in the mind of the
consumer. When someone says your price is
too high, what they're actually saying is there is a
misalignment between the price you have named and my perception
(16:35):
of value, of how much it's worth.
So you can lower the price to meet their perception, or you
can alter the perception. You can also their perception
through your actions. And for some people, so what?
What you have to then consider, what are the things they're
using to evaluate and determine the perceived value?
Yep. And so that may not always be a
(16:55):
function. People think that that's a
function of features and benefits.
I would argue that it often is about the perception of status.
Could be the perception of status.
It could be the way that you literally frame package the
value itself, like actually, when you talk about features and
benefits, you're usually undervaluing the thing.
What you actually want to be talking about is benefits and
(17:15):
outcomes. Correct?
Roberto Blake (17:17):
I agree with that.
Here's where I'll go on the status thing, because, again,
there's such thing as the prestige or premium of a brand,
but also the association with that thing.
A primary example would be in the Creator space.
There are creators, and one of the reasons some of them will
actually lower their prices on the negotiation of brand deals
is because the perception of what it might look like to be
(17:40):
associated with that brand and to be a brand ambassador or
featured creator of that company, that perception of
prestige and status is enough for a creator to lower their
requirements and standards. Oh, I would normally charge 5000
for this, but to work with you, if you need me to what's in the
budget, I'll what's in the budget.
I'll do it and that and that. I don't necessarily have a
(18:02):
problem with that, per se, but Ijust wanted to throw that out
there, the fact that somebody's requirements might change.
Yeah, if there is something thatthey value more than money,
which is to your point, if they value this thing more than
money, and it could be status, or it could be an outcome, yep,
if they value that thing more than money, could be access,
yeah, could be a network. Could be the association, if
they value something more than money, and you know what that
(18:25):
thing is? That's the thing to offer.
Yeah, Jay Clouse (18:27):
people value different things.
So if they're saying your price is too high, what they're saying
is my perception of my values and what I think I'll get from
this does not match that price. And it could be saying like,
Well, do you know that we are this brand that you want to work
with? Do you know that?
Or do you know that we have these results?
Yeah, these results. Do you know that it's like the
(18:48):
difference? A lot of times people,
especially in the course creatorrealm, they'll be like, this is
a six week live course, and like, that's how they'll frame
it. It's like what sounds like work
actually, that doesn't sound that's hard for me to value.
Like you're asking me to value spending time on something,
whereas if you say like this gets you this outcome in six
weeks. Now I'm valuing this as a new
version of me, a possible futurein a short period of time.
(19:12):
I value it differently or Roberto Blake: again, the reason
I might want that live cohort versus a DIY course is I might
want more nurturing. I might want the access,
support, the accountability, even, or a time constraint,
because what if I'm the kind of person that I'll do a DIY, but
I'll spin my wheels and not execute, but if I'm in a cohort,
there's assignments, there's a timetable, there's
(19:34):
accountability, I have to produce something and show it to
the group and be audited on it and have peer review or
evaluation. Well, now, okay, hey, present
your project to the class. Like, that's a different thing
than just turning in an assignment or not even having
that option. Yeah, so there's for, I think
that with cohorts in particular,and you know this, like, you've
(19:55):
done it a lot, like, I think therelationship value in that.
And. The Accountability aspect of it.
That's the, like, a key selling point of this versus that, Jay
Clouse (20:06):
yeah. And on the flip side, I
recommend doing live experiencesto creators all the time,
because you have, there's more margin for error in that.
Like, if you're delivering the education and you recognize, oh,
I think I lost this person. Yeah, you see it, and you can
intervene, and you can still, like, personally, help them get
(20:27):
to the outcome, whereas in a self paced version, you're
probably just gonna tune out andnow that I didn't get anything
out of that. Course, do Roberto Blake: you
find that also that those live experiences, I'm glad you're
saying it's live experiences, and one on one coaching?
Do you find that helps for better product development,
because you've experienced a variety of problems and a
variety of needs that help inform the more broad thing that
(20:49):
you're making. Generally, Jay Clouse: I would
just say it's a tighter feedbackloop, because you get to apply
your your method to a real situation, and you get to see
what happens from there, becauseyou're watching in real time as
they apply it. So like you see body language,
you hear objections, you hear questions that are asked.
You see where people's eyes light up or their eyes glaze
(21:09):
over. So like the feedback loop of
learning, am I explaining this well?
Am I explaining it in the right order?
Am I explaining it comprehensively?
You learn all that by deliveringthese things live and seeing
somebody react. And once you start seeing a
pattern of like, okay, every time I deliver this live in this
order, in this way, it just works, that's when you can start
saying, let me produce it. And that's Roberto Blake: not
(21:31):
abstract in the way that maybe even a survey, a survey has a
limited scope of questions, versus this feedback loop has
more variability, in the sense that people aren't limited in
the type of feedback they can give or to a specific question
set. So it also takes some bias that
your own exit survey might have if you sell a course.
(21:51):
So I think that's that's good feedback and value.
But let me ask you a question. You've coached a lot of
different creators. We've talked a lot about
monetization models that I thinklend themselves better to
thought leaders, per se, versus influencers who might be in the
entertainment sphere. Because, like, one of my things
in the dichotomy of like, okay, well, what is a creator is,
well, you could have, well, there's really three paths, but
(22:13):
most people focus on two, the thought leader path, which is
professionals that you know, Andrew Huberman, for example,
James clear, obviously thought leaders.
We would be thought leaders. But then you have influencers,
which would be the entertainmentbase, which is your like, your
Mr. Beast, your Logan Paul's, what have you.
But then I would say there is a third path that might be more
(22:37):
abstract than both that well, there are people who are
artists, who then just happen tomonetize what they're doing as
creators, per se, yeah, but thatmatter, the expression aspect
would matter more to them, versus, I would say that, um,
the influencer optimizes probably around.
They want the validation, they want, the wreath, they want, the
(22:57):
big numbers. And then I would argue, to some
degree, maybe the business is a secondary like priority to some
degree. I think that thought leaders,
not all, but most probably, comefrom a professional realm where
they are intrinsically thinking equally about reach and revenue.
I think artists would like either, but they just really
want their thing to exist. Yeah, if we will look at
(23:19):
influencers who are entertainers, what would you
say, and what monetization advice would you offer to them?
And what business model do you think works for those Well, I'm
Jay Clouse (23:27):
not gonna say don't do advertising or brand deals
like, yeah, of course it works. There's a lot of precedent for
it, but it's also like, in some ways unreliable.
So I'm always trying to say, what is the direct form of
monetization, I can find that's just a pure transaction between
me and my audience, right? And it is tougher in the
entertainment realm than the education realm, yes, because
(23:49):
you're probably not going to do a course or some sort of like
info product, but I am inspired by people who do some form of
physical product, and like you have the extreme examples like
feastables and joy ride or whatever, right?
And, yeah, I think there's a really interesting thing
happening right now that we saw with like Marques Brownlee,
where, like, you have brands that don't have a face and faces
(24:14):
who don't have a product, and like, they meet, and that's,
like, really cool, yeah. And Roberto Blake: we saw this
before that, even with Peter McKinnon.
So we have Marcus Brownlee, Peter McKinnon, with these kind
of partnerships. I just seen with blue, Condor or
Condor blue. Sorry, Condor blue.
So I love this idea. I think it becomes to some,
(24:36):
would you agree that this could be extension of what starts with
a traditional brand deal relationship, Marquez in
particular, and Justine as well.So I feel like that becomes a
natural progression or extensionof something creators are
familiar with. Here's another form of brand
(24:58):
partnership that. Extends outside of just triple
sponsored content. Yeah, to product partnership,
yeah. I Jay Clouse: think, I think
creators can kind of approach brand deals the same way that
Amazon approaches Amazon originals.
You know, where it's like, I have a sense that my audience
cares about this type of product, let me partner with a
(25:18):
brand that provides it. And if that proves to be true,
consider developing your own. Or, you know, go to them and
say, I think I might develop my own, or cut me in, like, let's
be partners on this. Yeah, because, like, doing
manufacturing and producing a product that's a huge, that's a
big undertake, creators typically don't have
specialization or expertise. It's, like, inaccessible to
somebody who hasn't done it before.
So it's easier to work with somebody who already has a
(25:40):
systems built, and you have, like, a percentage you're on the
board. Percentage, you're on the board,
you're on the cap table. That's like ideal, and I think
you can wade into that with affiliates or brand deals to
start. So I think that's like a good
place to start. But I also think that most
entertainment based creators have an opportunity for
memberships. I wanted that Roberto Blake: for
sure. I would agree with that the
success of Patreon is a platform.
(26:01):
Jack Conte, great entrepreneur, yeah, Jack, if you're watching,
yeah, we'd love to have you on, but I believe you spoke with
Jack Conte and other folks in the development realm around
memberships. What would your advice be to
entertainers? And then we could circle back to
thought leaders on approaching memberships, because a lot of
(26:21):
entertainers don't get like the inside baseball on this, yeah,
I mean memberships, you have to think about what is
my audience value? How do I form this so that it
doesn't take over my life? And I would put memberships on a
spectrum between, is this premium content focused, or is
this like relationship focused, so access?
Well, I would even say relationships between members.
(26:44):
So community, yes, like, do you want to be more peer to peer and
the value that you're promising,or do you want to be more
premium content? And most memberships will offer
a blend of both, but you're going to want to go one side or
the other. Primarily interesting when you
do peer to peer, and you're like, This is a community for
this type of person, and we makethe experience really good for
(27:05):
people who care about this thing.
You can tend to charge higher prices for that, because that's
a harder thing to pull off. I'd agree retention is higher
more difficult to market, though, Roberto Blake: community
is more unique than any product offer, yes, yes.
But Jay Clouse (27:17):
like, in opposition to SAS.
Like, yeah, to continue to create value in a community, you
have to, like, just foster the conditions.
It's You're never done. You're never like, Okay, we did
it. Like the community exists and
it's great. Like, you have to continue.
It's like, it's like pool chemistry, like you can get the
community can be off balance, and things can go bad.
(27:38):
There's no like, I made it. It just works.
You have to continue to foster whereas, whereas with SAS,
there's a there's a baseline, baseline utility, a baseline
utility that's pretty static, that's pretty static that, like
it will continue to solve that problem in that way.
But community, if it's peer to peer, especially like you have
to continue to help me form relationships and make this a
(27:58):
place that I want to spend my Roberto Blake: time.
And it has to be the culture hasto be maintained.
It has to be curated. It's Jay Clouse: ultimately out
of your hands. You can't, you can't control
fully if people are participating, if relationships
are being made, if you do premium content, you can control
the fact that you're going to make more premium content,
right? So that's a little bit safer.
Roberto Blake (28:17):
So you're choosing essentially between
content as a service or community as a service?
Yes, yes. Jay Clouse: And a membership,
that's generally what you're trying to do, interesting.
So I think most entertainment based creators, especially, are
more on the side of content, because content is like
basically creating extended access to you.
Yes, sometimes you will do live sessions, and that's special and
unique. Content based memberships tend
(28:39):
to be lower priced. You're going for scale?
Yep, they tend to be higher churn, yes.
But you know, if you go that way, like there is more control,
and I think most creators can design a membership where there
is extended access to you, more content from you, but it's
controlled, and how much time you're putting into it, yes.
And so it's Roberto Blake (28:59):
a scale.
It's a more scalable and easier to sustain model, yes, but it
also, again, requires it to be alower premium, yes, for access.
So it's like volume of transactions versus value
transactions. And so that's a volume based
model. And then the value based model
is community. Yes, that's Jay Clouse: that's a
good way to put it into so you have to decide where you want to
(29:22):
fall on that framework, and generally, like a lot of people
will run the math and realize, Okay, I'm gonna charge $5 a
month my Patreon. I have a good audience, but, you
know, we've got 100 people, and that's a great outcome, but
that's $500 per month, and I'm putting all this time into
creating new stuff, and it just doesn't make sense.
It's like it doesn't feel sustainable, because it doesn't
(29:42):
feel like it's rewarding you forthe amount of effort that's
required. So when you introduce a
membership, is a key question tomake sure that it is financially
incentivizing for you to do the work necessary to make it good
enough that people stick around.Roberto Blake: No, that makes
perfect sense, because the churnrate is the thing that would be
up with. And stand for those not familiar
with churn rate, we're talking about, are you losing more
(30:03):
members than you're gaining month over month?
Yeah. And is that net positive?
Yeah. So.
And are you maintaining the numbers and retention of what
like you have, as far as your community?
So that's, I think that's very interesting.
Let's get into a little bit of that around education based
content. One of the pushbacks on
(30:25):
education based content, whetherit's courses or even cohorts or
communities, is there's this belief that everything that you
ever need is already accessible.Why would you pay for it?
What are your thoughts on that argument around this?
Yeah, Jay Clouse (30:37):
I mean, I would also say that you could,
you could change your own toilet, or you could hire a
plumber. You know, we value time and
efficiency as a species. We just do, yeah, so, like
courses are about time and efficiency if you would like to
(30:58):
learn something better faster than trying to do it on your
own. If you have to curate the
information, to curate it, not just curate it, but also order
it. Yeah, Roberto Blake: so I'd have
to curate it, create continuity.I'd have to consolidate it.
I'd have to that's a lot of effort before I even consume the
thing that I want and execute on.
It's Jay Clouse (31:16):
a lot of effort to understand, like, what should
I pay attention to? How do I curate it?
What order should I consume it in?
And like, what do I lend credibility to so yes, you could
do all of that. You can do it.
How Roberto Blake (31:26):
much of that do I have to do to distill it
down these things? And how would I know that I've
done that effectively Jay Clouse: totally and why would
you believe that you can do it as effectively as somebody who's
been doing it for years and has already immersed it like the
best course I've ever taken, by far, Roberto Blake: and had
other people vet it by hack, then other people have bought
it. Yes, best course Jay Clouse: I
take it by far is Seth godins marketing seminar.
(31:47):
Okay, hour for our incredibly value, and this is this man's 30
years of marketing experience distilled into one course.
Like you can have Seth godins 30years of marketing experience
distilled into one chorus, yes, you could probably go through
his entire archive of everythinghe's ever done, but some of
that's going to be dated, some of that he's changed his own
(32:08):
mind on. So it's just, yes, you can do it
for free, but it's inefficient. At some point you need to value
your own time. Roberto Blake: I think that time
is the most irreplaceable thing.I think there's a over I think
people I'm speaking for myself when I say this.
I've had various incarnations ofa unhealthy relationship with
money that comes from scarcity, bad experiences growing up
(32:30):
without money, being an adult that didn't have money, all
kinds of debt. It creates these money traumas
that I think then skew the lens of how we perceive money, and we
think that, Oh, if we spend thismoney, this money will never
come again. But inevitably, if we work hard,
it does, if we're consistent, itdoes.
If no tragedy happens, it does. And often we've spent more money
(32:53):
on more useless or worthless things than the things that are
in personal development. I feel like books are always a
good investment of money. I feel like a gym membership
tends to be a good investment ofmoney and everything like, I
mean, your evidence right here, Jay Clouse: I've put a lot of
money into the home gym. Yeah.
Roberto Blake (33:08):
So the I feel like personal development, which
gets a bad rap, self improvement, I think career
development. I think if you were trying to do
anything like, for example, outside of content creation,
people understand the investmentof career development, and how
many 1000s of 1000s of dollars. But I think in our industry, a
lot of people take for granted this idea, because in their
(33:28):
mind, there's this perception behind the scenes that this is
very luck based, which I would disagree with.
I think that most things that are broadcast as luck are
undisclosed privilege, undisclosed nepotism,
undisclosed resources. I don't think enough credit goes
to teams that are behind people,tools that are behind people,
and to opportunities that were not given to everybody a lot of
(33:49):
times. And Jay Clouse: if you pawn
things off on luck, that's a very disempowering belief.
I agree. Because if you just believe
things are luck, then like, what?
What reason is there to do anything?
I Roberto Blake (34:01):
take it to a weird extreme.
When someone says they're lucky,I don't think they're being
humble. I think they're trying to say
that God loves them more than you.
Yeah, that's a mic drop, right? But, but thing is, think about
it, if it's not in your control,then it's in the control of
something bigger and more powerful, and it's picking
winners and losers. Yeah, I would never want to
believe that message. I Jay Clouse: mean, like, chance
(34:22):
and probabilities are a thing, yeah, and sometimes those play
in your favor. But there are other ways to
like, improve your odds. You can stack the deck, yeah,
your favor. There's a lot you can do to
like, be more probabilistic to get the outcome that you want.
Roberto Blake (34:37):
Yes, I think that the rarity of outcomes that
people look at also is a rarity of inputs.
And the thing that also convinced me this, and I'd love
your thoughts on this as we start to, you know, wind things
down, but like, if you look at AI, for example, its outputs are
only as good as its inputs. You cannot be somebody who's
like, you know, if someone's already smart, this thing will
(34:58):
have exponentially more valuableto them.
That if they're below average, and I think that a lot of things
are the difference between a lotof undisclosed effort that is
above average or outlier effort,meaning that, I think that it's
under reported how many hours people put in doing something to
(35:18):
get like most people do not understand that a lot of the
successful content creators thatthey see, it's their third or
fifth YouTube channel, yeah, andthey've undisclosed to you.
You saw them and ran into them when they're 18.
They've been trying to since they were 12, and they failed
their way up. Yeah.
Jay Clouse (35:32):
And even while they were failing, they were learning
things that allowed them to do things in smaller amounts of
time, and like time savings compound.
They Roberto Blake (35:41):
do they but that's with everything.
That's with athleticism. And no one talks like, think, if
you think about it, just realistically, the more you work
out, the more you do an exercise, the more you do a
martial art, the effort compounds.
And the thing becomes easier dueto muscle gain, muscle memory,
repetition, the fact that you'redisciplined in your mind, of
like, okay, this isn't so bad, becomes a thing.
A lot of people don't. If I put it into real terms for
(36:03):
content creators, Mr. Beast made460 videos to get to 10,000
subscribers. Do you realize how abnormal it
is to keep going? If you have, if you make 460
videos on YouTube, try your little heart out, and you don't
even get to 10,000 subscribers, you realize how many people
would give up? Jay Clouse: Oh yeah.
Before they hit 400 videos, I would have given up at video six
(36:23):
they. Roberto Blake: A lot of them
give up, most people, even if they, most people give up at
video 100 if they do not hit theoutlier thing, if they don't hit
10,000 subscribers by video 100 they give up.
And the reason I know this is because that has been audited.
90% of creators never hit 10,000subscribers.
(36:44):
About roughly, depending on whatyou want measure is active
channels. You could argue between three
and 6% monetize, because, according to CEO Neo Mohan, 3
million globally in the partner program, there's over 100
million channels on YouTube globally.
Social Blade only tracks about 69 million of them.
So people look at that as the active channel number, okay, if
(37:05):
I go with the conservative version, 6% of all people in the
world who try to do YouTube get monetized, and get the partner
program and get, you know, the watch hours and the
monetization. And that's after they lowered
the bar, by the way, in the to 500 subscribers and 3000 watch
hours. Okay, so it's between three and
6% like, Okay, that's pretty devastating.
That sounds bleak. That sounds like, yeah, you're
saying it's a lucky break, but it's not.
(37:27):
It's that most people don't qualify because they quit too
soon. Yeah, Jay Clouse: you gotta
think, am I going to put in moreeffort than 94 to 97% of people?
And actually, that's very achievable.
Most people do not put in extraordinary effort.
They don't, yeah, I Roberto Blake: think that's been
provably true. I mean, it sounds harsh, or it
(37:47):
sounds elitist to say, but it's,no, it's provably true, yeah,
because we can measure it. Yeah, Jay Clouse: the bar is,
like, low for trying, but like, the the wind does not come from
simply the activity. You can't simply upload a video
and think, Well, if I do that 100 times, I get the outcome.
You have to like work to make every video better.
Roberto Blake (38:06):
Of improving, it's the improvement by at least
1% every time one new thing learned every time it's the
natural progression. And that's why I liken it to
things like athleticism or artwork or just even any form of
personal development self improvement that you do.
It's improvement that you do, it's the compounding of the
effort with the intent of improving and becoming more
(38:28):
effective, more efficient. It's becoming a better editor, a
faster editor, a better script writer, a better on camera.
I sucked on camera like even learning to perform, even
learning how to speak. I sucked on camera.
I sucked at public speaking. I improved with effort over a
duration of time. Jay Clouse: Yep, and that
improvement is a decision. Roberto Blake: It that is a
choice that you that is the controllable variable out of the
(38:48):
things you were talking about, because you went to controllable
variables, like how you can control, for example, your the
price that you set, you can control that you can control
certain levers in the perceptionof your value by, you know,
improving on a thing, and understand it's a choice to
understand what your audience values and why and so on and so
forth. So no, I would agree with you on
(39:08):
that. So Jay, where can everyone find
you and learn more about your content and resources?
Jay Clouse (39:14):
Right here on YouTube.
Search. J Klaus, the channel is called
Creator science. The handle is at creator
science, y t because someone gotto add creator science before
me. Otherwise, you know, search for
creator science wherever you like to consume your things.
Do Roberto Blake (39:28):
you have some final thoughts or something you
want to talk about today before we wrap up?
Jay Clouse (39:33):
Yeah, if I were to ask everybody watching us to do
one thing, well, maybe two things, it would be to like and
subscribe. Nice you.
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