Kickoff Sessions
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Kickoff Sessions
#264 Jay Clouse - Why Most Content Creators Fail & How to Fix It
Generate high-quality leads from a podcast each month: https://voics.kit.com/qualified-leads
Most creators fail before they even start.
Why?
Because they jump straight into creating content without a clear premise, strategy, or system.
This week, I sat down with Jay Clouse for my second Dubai podcast. (And my second podcast with Jay.)
Here’s what we broke down:
- How to build a profitable content business in 2025
- Create a repeatable system that turns content into revenue
- Avoid the #1 mistake keeping creators stuck in the hustle
What we covered:
- Your premise is your foundation.
- If your content isn’t legible, interesting, and differentiated, you’ll struggle to stand out in the sea of creators.
- Non-linear returns.
- One well-executed piece of content can deliver a 10X or even 100X impact.
- It’s not about creating more content—it’s about creating smarter content.
- Focus on transformation, not just value.
- Your content should solve real problems and create tangible results for your audience—not just add more noise.
Jay shared why most creators fail to gain traction and revealed the systems he’s built to scale his content and community without burning out.
If you want to build a creator business in 2025, this podcast is for you.
Connect with Jay Clouse: https://www.instagram.com/jayclouse/
(00:00) Preview
(00:40) Building Creator Science with Jay Clouse
(01:14) Defining Your Premise as a Creator
(03:08) Jay Clouse’s Creator Framework
(06:40) Why You Should Avoiding Niche Hopping
(08:15) The Science-Driven Approach to Content Creation
(12:32) The Evolution of YouTube’s Algorithm
(15:45) How to Optimize for Clicks
(20:20) The Benefits of High-Quality Content
(23:18) Audience Targeting: YouTube vs. Audio Podcast
(25:14) Crafting the Perfect Titles and Thumbnails
(31:20) Leveraging Email For Audience Engagement
(36:18) Why Audio Podcast Listeners Are More Engaged
(38:13) How to Build Personal Authority
(41:36) How to Grow Communities
(45:47) Connecting YouTube to Business Goals
(50:26) The Power of Small Group Experiences
(55:41) Pricing Strategies for Membership Growth
(58:13) Scaling Communities Efficiently
I tell people we're going to start on YouTube, the first thing you should really try to master is how to get clicks on your video. If you can get a high enough click through rate, you will be rewarded with more impressions, and when you have more impressions, that's more data. But if you don't have a high enough click through rate initially, you're not going to get impressions, you're not going to get views, you're not going to have great data about how good the video is, because not enough people gave it a chance, because none of the people clicked initially. The more videos we put on YouTube, the more sustained traffic we get to our YouTube videos. It really feels like you're building a library of assets, whereas short form it's very much a treadmill. It's a what have you done for me lately? Type of world. The people who listen to the audio podcast listen to a lot more than video viewers watch.
Darren Lee:Jay Klaus is the mastermind behind Creator Science, where he helps creators turn content into thriving businesses. Today, we're breaking down how he built his audience, crafted offers that sell and scaled his programs, all while revealing why most creators fail and how to avoid it. What I want to do is I want to make this like a proper roadmap for a creator. So how do they go from like not necessarily zero or zero, but have a roadmap, start to finish, and what would be your exact guide to become a creator and a creator business and be successful in 2025? What's your step?
Jay Clouse:Deal. Step one, step one. So I think the most important thing is understanding your premise as a creator, which is a lot of people hear the word niche. The niche word is OK, it's like well-meaning advice. I just think it's a little bit incomplete because when people hear the advice of starting a niche, what they end up doing is carving off this tiny like part of a market because they think, well, this is a an underserved, specific type of person that I can target. Let me start there, which isn't a terrible idea, but as more and more creators join the scene, these niches get tinier and tinier and tinier and kind of like really box you into a corner. That's uncomfortable.
Jay Clouse:I like the idea of a premise because if you think about like a movie or a TV show or a book, someone says, hey, have you watched Penguin on HBO? You'll say no, I haven't. What's that? What's that about? And that question what's that about is the opening to describe the premise of the movie, the book, the TV show, whatever it is. Having a clear premise is what makes you referable, just like this example I was sharing with you. And your premise doesn't have to be like a small, specific avatar or niche necessarily. It just has to be your unique take on something. So I think every creator, starting today, needs to understand how am I unique, differentiated in the marketplace? Because if you're not, you're going to have a really hard time breaking through Still difficult, but I think about these three concentric circles which are legible, compelling and differentiated. You have to be in the center of those three things to have a shot of breaking through. And I can kind of break down each of those three if you want.
Darren Lee:Let's use an example. By the way, I love your framework, I love your, your, your just mental approach to this, because this is, most people don't think about it this way. You think it very. You think through these things very like, um, logically, and it's also not based on, you know, just tactics. It's more like emotion. So that's why I really kind of want you to kind of almost like elaborate on your own ideas, sure.
Jay Clouse:So when I say legible, what I mean is when you hear it, you have an intuitive understanding of what that means. I think legibility is super important in everything you do as a creator, because if it's not legible, then people just can't interact with it. They don't understand what you're doing. So you, as a creator, your premise, has to be legible. We have to understand what you are doing. So if you were to say I help podcasters start video shows, it's pretty legible, it's pretty easy to understand. If you were to say something like I help podcasters reach their potential less legible, like it, just it means a little bit less their potential. Less legible, like it, just it means a little bit less, right, um, compelling. Compelling means that when you talk about what you do, people's eyes light up and they have this feeling of I want that. Not only do I get that legible, but compelling, I want that. Um. Compelling in some markets might be like I help you increase your revenue $10,000 per month, Okay, pretty compelling.
Jay Clouse:Again, if you were to say something like I help you reach your financial goals, it's a little less clear, a little less compelling, it just doesn't make you as excited, right, and then differentiated it's. I haven't heard anybody talk about this this way before you know. So a lot of people fail one of these three things. And if you fail one of those three things, then you have a problem, a competitive problem. Usually, if you're legible and compelling but not differentiated, people are probably going to outcompete you. It's just like a competitive marketplace. If you are legible and differentiated but not compelling, nobody cares. If you're compelling and differentiated but not legible, nobody understands what you do. So you have to have all three of these things, and that doesn't mean that you have to have these all to start to start like posting content or whatever. But what I see is, until you get clear on these three things and how you fit within them, you have a really hard time getting real traction or having like real infinite potential.
Darren Lee:Just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can enjoying these episodes. Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year. Thank you, how do you think about that in terms of when you create the content? Is this to educate people, inform people? The way I describe it is like you kind of want to solve a painful problem for a specific user that's easy to find online. So, like in your instance, you're helping creators create content businesses. That's a pretty big problem to solve because everyone, for the most part, can't monetize their audience. So how do you think about specificity with the avatar?
Jay Clouse:because this is the stuff you do before you press record yeah, you know well, the reason I think about this stuff so deeply is because I think the market I operate in is very competitive.
Jay Clouse:I think the online business space is incredibly competitive, and if you want to have a chance of standing out, breaking through, being more referable than other people in the marketplace, then you have to be differentiated.
Jay Clouse:And so you know, if I were simply to say, you know, I help creators build content businesses legible, maybe compelling, not necessarily differentiated so my point of differentiation is actually built right into the brand of creator science, where I try to take a much more rigorous, analytical, process-based approach. Right, that's what I think is my unique spin on the creator business. Sometimes, though, that starts to make things a little less legible. It's like, well, what does that mean? But I think it also adds to the compelling angle, like creator science what do you mean by science? Because this is a creative type of thing. So, yeah, I had to think about this very deeply because I found myself just kind of in a sea of other people really doing, or purporting to do, similar things, and, you know, I wish I would have known these frameworks, this way of thinking about things earlier on, so I could have done it a little bit smarter out of the box, because it really does set you up for much faster success.
Darren Lee:How do you break that down to someone who's building a creator business in the beginning, so it doesn't overwhelm them, like the analytical part? They come to you and say, hey, jay, I have a background in fitness and I want to build a creator business. How do you help them see the analytical side, to plan out that initial stage? Because creator science is an amazing term, because I can see it so vividly. You have videos out, you're checking the analytics, but how do you get them to that way of thinking before they even start putting out content?
Jay Clouse:I think you can break it down to a really simple level in the beginning, because I think literally any piece of content you publish can be an experiment and like, implicitly, sort of, is it's a question of do you want to approach it that way? Because content you publish can be an experiment and like, implicitly, sort of, is it's a question of do you want to approach it that way? Because everything you publish you're going to look at like, how did this quote unquote do, how did it do, how did it perform? And you will judge that by some sort of metric, whether it's quantitative likes, comments, whatever shares, qualitative. I got great feedback.
Jay Clouse:People are saying this about it. Most people are analyzing the performance of their post at least in that way, and they're probably making tweaks to how they continue to publish based on that. You know, oh, I saw when I talked about this subject it got more engagement. I'm going to talk about that subject more. That is a science driven approach. That is, you had a hypothesis about what creator, what content to create. You observed the results, you iterated your approach based on it.
Darren Lee:You know, observe, iterate.
Jay Clouse:Sorry, observe, experiment, iterate. That is kind of the core of what I try to teach people to do.
Darren Lee:How do you do that without niche hopping and without completely going 180? Because I'd love to ask you about this too, in terms of. You know, sometimes I like the. The posts I get the most engagement are not the ones that contribute to the bottom line, you know. So how do you think about that in terms of? Because I get this question quite a lot in my community too, which is, I put out these five pieces of content, and one of them was on fitness, one of them was on personal development, one was on mindset, or one was on my offer, and the other stuff took off. How do you crystallize that for someone? Because they're thinking well, this worked right.
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Jay Clouse:I think that level of experimentation in terms of, like, what is the nature of this piece of content, that's something good to do in the beginning when you're figuring out the premise. But as you become more certain about what it is that you stand for and talk about and who you are for I about what it is that you stand for and talk about and who you are for I think you want to limit the aperture of those things a little bit more, because when you start niche hopping I like that phrase you run the risk of if you make something that is pretty far outside of what you would typically make and it goes really well, that could actually have a negative impact on you in a big way. I saw a lot of people who built large followings on different platforms because they were really good at tapping into a broadly accessible idea that got a lot of engagement and people follow because of it. But if that person doesn't have some amount of consistency, some through line into what they talk about, then people aren't going to stick around and stay interested.
Jay Clouse:And on discovery platforms, social platforms, if you collect a following that doesn't actually understand what you stand for or consistently is interested in the things that you talk about. It actually becomes this like albatross around your neck weighing you down, because the way most of these platforms work is you publish something. That platform will show that piece of content to a subset of your followers. First, because the idea is well, your existing followers should care about this more than anyone else. Let's judge the quality of this content by how your own followers engage with it and if that goes well, we'll expand the aperture out to a larger audience. If your followers are this wide mix of people who are interested in very different ideas that you shared, it's going to be really hard to find success with any piece of content thereafter, because there's no targeted, consistent interest uniting that following behind your ideas.
Darren Lee:I felt that. I felt that quite a lot because, you know, I've had like an online business podcast and then I've been. You know, now it's much more dialed in on audience growth, building offers, creating content, but at the same same time, I've opened it up more into like almost like relationships for entrepreneurs. So it's kind of like tangential, but at the same time, that shot me in the foot, you know. So like I'm speaking from like experience a lot of times with this, but I've observed I would like your thoughts on this as well about how specific YouTube is now becoming, whereas before it was like, okay, you could have a vlog, you could have a channel with some vlogs and then some info videos and some education videos, but now it's. I find that it's putting people really inside a specific bucket.
Darren Lee:I spoke with Brett Malinowski with this. He's such such a smart guy that comes to YouTube and it's like YouTube are just trying to basically put you into that bucket and be like, okay, this person helps people with X growth growing on Twitter. Now he's talking about something completely different. It's not really validating that purpose anymore. I'd like to get your thoughts on that, because YouTube does seem to be evolving very rapidly towards searchable content.
Jay Clouse:I don't think I agree with the idea that is evolving towards searchable content. I think what happens is youtube will look at the, the profile of somebody who is engaged with your past videos, and basically say, what is, what do we know about this person's interests? And let's say, you have actually. I'll use a specific example. We have this video that's by far and away the most successful video on our channel. It's with jennyos. Such a good video.
Jay Clouse:Man has almost four million views and has contributed literally half of our subscribers on the channel. So half of our subscribers came from a video that's interested in YouTube shorts. Youtube looks at that audience and says, ok, let's build a profile of the viewer who liked this video and when Jay posts a new video, we're going to show it to his audience first to see how they engage with it, as I was just saying. And if his audience does well, we'll expand it to a broader audience that doesn't already subscribe or hasn't watched his videos before and they're going to expand it to similar audience profiles as to what have looked at my videos in the past. So if the typical viewer who subscribed to my channel from that Jenny video is clearly interested in shorts by their viewing behavior across all of YouTube.
Jay Clouse:Youtube will find other viewers who have similar viewing behavior and if this new video I post is not about YouTube shorts, when they get shown that video, they're not going to click on the video and so CTR is going to drop and it's not going to be interesting. Youtube is just trying to do their best to connect your videos with the people that will like it and they judge that based off of the people who have already shown to like your videos. So when you are very consistent kind of the topic, the premise, the ideas of your videos, youtube is more likely to be correct in their targeting of new potential viewers. So when you really go all around and there's no connective tissue between the videos that you make and the packaging of those videos, then YouTube gets really confused.
Darren Lee:That's interesting because I would observe that Jenny Hoyos video and say people are broadly interested in content. And you know just like these are, people are interested in content overall and that specific use case is of short form.
Jay Clouse:I think so, um, but it's hard to say because it's it's such an outlier video that it really has the power to skew things. Now I am glad that it's within the the zone of content creation because, like, let's say, I had made a video about, uh, relationships, you know like and that video took off. Suddenly. Half of our subscribers are about something that I'm not going to continue to create content around, so we had a very um.
Jay Clouse:There was a moment after that video, like, really popped off, because it popped off immediately where the incentives would be you should make another video about shorts, you should make another video about something very closely related to that video. That just did really well, because chances are that video is going to do really well too. And this is where a lot of people get stuck is this is called audience capture, when you make a video that does better than you expect and now you're incentivized to make more videos like that. If those weren't videos that you wanted to make more of, then you shouldn't have made that first video, essentially, and it can be really hard to get away from.
Darren Lee:You call that the regret test.
Jay Clouse:Yeah well, as the creator, you would regret that as the viewer, it's just going to be confusing. Um, this is why like this is really really bad for people in the political realm, because politics are such tribal interests that if you have a video that really appeals to one side of the political spectrum, you're going to be pulled to do more and more videos in that way, in an increasingly extreme ways. So it applies to every type of creator, though. Like if you create a video that really resonates with a type of person you're going to want to create, or you're going to be incentivized to create more videos like that for that type of person.
Darren Lee:Let's go a little bit deeper on that. So that polarizing view and I spoke to Jenny Hoyes about this, actually which is how can you have an opinion that is top provoking, it is perspective shifting, but it doesn't alienate you or be controversial in a negative light. How do you? How do you do that? Cause you kind of just stand for something, right, yeah, um.
Jay Clouse:I don't think of polarizing and controversial as synonymous to me. Polarizing is you are taking a strong enough stance that some people could disagree with it. Um, controversial to me has, like, this undercurrent of like intentionally antagonizing in a way, right. So I think both of those things are viable strategies for engagement because, um, there's this great book called the chaos machine. That is, uh, an uh a journalist who, like, really went into understanding the incentives behind social platforms, namely Facebook, youtube, and what they found was these platforms have really been engineered, not necessarily intentionally, from the standpoint of we think about how this impacts human emotions, but the incentive structure of what performs better and retools the algorithm, incentive structure of what performs better and retools the algorithm.
Jay Clouse:Outrage is the number one driver of human engagement, and so, leaning into controversy or polarizing ideas, it will work, quote unquote for getting engagement in your content, but if you don't want to attract that type of viewer, then don't do it. You know, I talk about this with creators all the time. If you want to lean into outrage, you will see success faster and you'll get more engagement, but it will collect an audience that wants to participate in outrage, which is not something I personally want, and so I choose to steer clear of that.
Darren Lee:It's like the email. You know your business is a reflection of you, but to do a content, your content and your audience is a reflection of you. So if you're creating something that's as completely as controversial, no shit, you're getting a load of shit on the internet. Um so, with the Jenny Hoyos video and I'll put a lot of your videos you know whether it's Patti Galloway or whatnot, they have an asymmetrical return. So you put in the effort and they've gone crazier, so they have like a nonlinear effect. Have you read? 10x is easier than 2x.
Jay Clouse:I haven't read it because it strikes me as the book, the type of book where, like, you hear the title and you're kind of like I get it.
Darren Lee:Yes. So whenever I recommended people, people say that and I'm like, yes, but you kind of have to look at the examples or the case studies or the examples they have in the book. And it's an amazing book, it's from Dan Kennedy, but one of the pieces is about content. So most guys will gloss over this part in the book. But it's Mr Beast talking about content and the idea was, if you just take that extra bit of time with the video and you just do a small bit more, let's say, it's like it'll end up being like two times or three times or four times as good, because you just reviewed the title, the thumbnail again and the intro and the hook. But that will have a 10 X to a hundred X nonlinear outcome. So when you're going through the humdrum putting out episodes, putting on YouTube videos, if you just slow down and make those small directional changes, you can have a hundred X of an impact. And it's the same input because your new baseline of standard is a higher and I noticed that with your videos you know the editing that your producer does over it. It's very unique for a podcast on YouTube.
Darren Lee:Um, how do you think about that? Because that's been the success of the Jenny video in many regards. That's more, I looked at it and I analyzed it, even when it came out initially, which was like a year ago, and, like I said, the editing was amazing. Well, thank you, that's what made it was really good, because she explained the storytelling concept. Yeah, and you could see it like it was visual on a screen we.
Jay Clouse:I believe the same thing about um, on youtube specifically, or any discovery platform. When I say discovery platform, I mean any publishing platform that has a built-in mechanism for discovery. Typically it's going to have an algorithm. Typically it is fueled by advertising. So on any discovery platform, there are non-linear returns for how well a piece of content does.
Jay Clouse:Youtube, and especially the way that we do our videos where we shoot a remote podcast which are not visually interesting out of the box, like, how often do you go on YouTube and watch a side by side zoom recording? Basically never. So to make a remote podcast interesting, you really have to do a lot of editing, in my opinion, and so we have limited resources. We have one editor on the team. He's also my producer, he of editing, in my opinion, and so we have limited resources. We have one editor on the team. He's also my producer, he's also my script writer, and so he's great. He's great, connor's great.
Jay Clouse:Our bottleneck on the YouTube side of things is Connor's capacity until we hire another editor. So we made the decision that, even though I produce and publish podcasts every week because I've been doing the audio show for five years now, I produce and publish podcasts every week because I've been doing the audio show for five years now. We couldn't maintain that pace in video because it limits what he can do in post-production on those videos and we realized it would make more sense to spend more time on the videos we think are highest potential than trying to just publish something in video every week, because there would be a clear trade-off for how well we could edit based on our resource constraints so what's your litmus, test and filter for what goes on?
Jay Clouse:youtube. We think about our audience. We know the core audience of our youtube channel is interested in youtube itself and so anytime we have a video that has some relation to YouTube or an interview, I should say anytime I do an interview that has some relation to YouTube, we know that's going to perform better than if I were to talk to an author, you know that's crazy, right, and I saw you on your podcast too, and that happens.
Darren Lee:It's happened to me a lot too. The other podcasts are the most insightful, but they just don't perform well.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, because a YouTube audience cares about YouTube, at least when you're talking to creators, as I do. So we think, like, is this guest someone that is recognizable by their name and face on YouTube, or is this topic something we think is interesting to the typical audience on YouTube either? And a lot of times the answer is like yeah, maybe either. And a lot of times the answer is like yeah, maybe. But if we have a few interviews that we think are slam dunks, absolutely we're going to put more resources there.
Darren Lee:So, speaking about the nonlinear, tell me about the giving people candy versus vegetable approach, because that's for YouTube 101.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, so YouTube. In my opinion, the first game you've got to learn to play is the packaging game. Youtube in my opinion, the first game you've got to learn to play is the packaging game. How do we package a video title, thumbnail, the idea inherent, in such a way that we maximize click-through rate? Because, first and foremost, I tell people we're going to start on YouTube. I'm like the first thing you should really try to master is how to get clicks on your video. If you can get a high enough click-through rate, you will be rewarded with more impressions, and when you have more impressions, that's more data. Then you can really get more reliable data on how retentive was this video, because it'll impact AVD down the line. But if you don't have a high enough click-through rate initially, you're not gonna get impressions, you're not gonna get views, you're not gonna have great data about how good the video is, because not enough people gave it a chance, because not enough people clicked initially.
Jay Clouse:So we think about the packaging of the video from the standpoint of um. This has to be something people really want to watch when they see it, and we have this idea. Like people prefer candy to vegetables. Uh, we have to make this because our videos are very educational. So we're like we have to idea like people prefer candy to vegetables.
Jay Clouse:Uh, we have to make this because our videos are very educational, so we're like we have to make this vegetable look like candy so that people will eat their vegetables. And you know, for better, for worse, what people want to click on are big promises, um things that are going to be, uh, to achieve big outcomes, big dollar amounts. You know they like they want things to seem amazing with very little effort. So our packaging a lot of times is leaning into the most aspirational, exciting aspects of a conversation to get people kind of in there to continue and give the video a chance well, my friend often says to me he's like, um, the thumbnail sells the title and the title sells the intro, you know, and it has to have that complete direction down.
Darren Lee:But I think the titles have just been taken out of context. This more, but sometimes right, because the people focus so much on the dream outcome but, like hermosy, and it's like what's the dream outcome? What's the effort and sacrifice nothing. What's the time? Delay now? And how can you get started, which is immediately so? Do you? Do you recommend people have a bank of titles to work off? Do they rework the titles based on what's successful? Because I often see you can take. You can take something from, like the finance niche and put in the personal development and vice versa.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, I mean we think about packaging broadly before we ever do the episode, even before we do the outreach for the guests. Like we will have. We come up with video ideas from one of two angles. Either I have access to somebody that I think would be interesting to a YouTube audience let's figure out what the best direction for the conversation is or I have an idea that I think will be interesting to a YouTube audience. Let's find the best person as, like, the vessel of that idea. Because we think about our videos as conversational education.
Jay Clouse:I really want people to basically show up and teach a workshop without having to prep, so I have to guide the conversation and also pick the right person who can teach effortlessly, anyway. So once we have one of those ideas, we will start thinking of titles that we think are interesting and that we can come up with a thumbnail concept. For, thankfully, with interviews, the thumbnail concepts are pretty easy. Like, you actually want some familiarity with the viewer that this is an interview. So you know, for better or for worse, the tried and true is like here's somebody's face on one side, here's a little bit of text on the other side, and that's pretty much. Much it right? Um, so we will think about titles before we do the episode and we'll come up with, you know, 15, 20. We will sometimes look at titles from other niches or even other interviews. Um, but you know, when you're predominantly an interview show, the, the titles are less like from other niches and more just like what's the message of this conversation.
Darren Lee:it's the overall team right, like what's the central message that runs through the entire video, and I guess you could bake that into the title beforehand, but it's just making sure that it delivers on. I think that's a challenge with interviews, is that anyone who's doing long form video? We've got to make sure that even this, like the pacing of this conversation, flows into the title, and I have like 15 titles already sketched right. But we've got to make sure that people I remember hearing Colin Samir talk about this it was yesterday. I saw this which was you want to respect people's time, so when the title, you sell the title and then you want to have that respect time basically. So the metric is that someone doesn't click off of this and think, oh, that was average.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, the propensity or the uh, the tendency for a lot of long, long form interviews is to say like this is a wide ranging conversation with this person, in which case you're really depending on that person's identity to be the thing that drives people to click.
Jay Clouse:And if somebody doesn't know who that person is, then that person's absolutely not going to click that video. They really have to know that person is for just their identity to be what makes them click. So the better approach is to take the overall theme of the conversation. But if you have on the back end an actual wide ranging conversation, then people are either going to leave after you've paid off the title and the early part of the interview or if you leave the thing that the title is talking about till late in the interview, they're going to click in and be like where are you going to talk about this? And maybe give up before it even gets there. That it's much better to pick like a narrower theme or idea that we want to explore in a conversation and really go deep on it, rather than trying to cover a lot of ground with a person.
Darren Lee:Yeah, for sure, and that's the idea. With specificity. It's even with your niche, right? Everyone thinks, well, I'm in the personal development space. It's like no, you could go into the meditation and then a specific type of meditation within there, and then you realize, within the depth of that niche, there's so much for you to explore for 10 years of content. That's the reality, you know. So one thing that you've really nailed is the offer on the back of the content.
Darren Lee:So the last question I have, on the content specifically, is we talked about YouTube, but you also have your newsletter and you also have LinkedIn and that's where I would often see you. So you remind me of what you do on LinkedIn. How much emphasis do you play on that? Because for a lot of creators who are trying to go like full-time and pro with this, it's like managing so many spinning plates. So we talked about our team structures earlier. You know, for me it's a little bit easier, I would say, because I have 10 full-time people not to do the shit for me, but just to alleviate the pressure. So like, how do you set the top of the funnel, which is awareness, and how do you set the priority of which channels to go after?
Jay Clouse:So you've heard me say discovery channel, a couple, or discovery platform a couple of times. Here I think about broadly all the places you could publish as either a discovery platform or a relationship platform. Discovery platforms again are any platform that has a built-in mechanism for discovery. It basically says we serve up content to content consumers. We as a platform are incentivized to connect to the best content with consumers because it keeps those consumers on the platform. We sell more advertising, so anything with an algorithm. We're talking about social media and YouTube and you could even put like articles that are getting SEO traffic into this bucket.
Jay Clouse:Relationship platforms are platforms where there is a much more reliable means of communication between you and the end consumer because they have opted into direct communication from you. There's not a third party platform guiding the traffic to them. These are podcasting, audio podcasting, email, SMS and private communities SMS SMS. Once people opt into that and you send a message through those channels, it's going to show up in front of them in a linear way. It's not going to be algorithmically chosen based on what is most engaging. You get a feed of messages from people you've opted into and that's a reliable means of communication. So my strategy is discovery channel or discovery platforms are at the top of the funnel, Then the goal of discovery platforms is to reduce your dependency on discovery platforms.
Jay Clouse:You want to de-platform them into a relationship platform where you have your own means of communication. It's a means of distribution that you own and control, and then that really de-risks your business, because then you have a much more resilient, sturdier form of communication. So when people are getting started and they're overwhelmed by all these platforms to choose, I ask them okay, what form of content creation are you most drawn to? Do you want to do text-based? Do you want to do video? Do you want to do audio? Because some people are predisposed and interested in some other than the others. Some people are really allergic to video. Some people love video and don't like text. If you really love video, then your discovery platforms pretty much open to anything you want, because every platform is prioritizing video right now, but historically it's been like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. That's where you.
Darren Lee:that's not even a start, if you think about. Tiktok is still so recent yeah.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, if you really like, text X, linkedin. Now we have blue sky, we have threads like we're all over the place, but I ask them to start medium first text or video. Choose one discovery platform that you want to get really good at and one relationship platform. I encourage everybody, for the relationship platform, to really lean into email, first and foremost because I think it's the easiest of those platforms to grow. Also, it's historically the most reliable for building a sustained audience and being able to sell something on the back end.
Darren Lee:What's some of the metrics you've had with that? Because I know you've had your email list for quite some time. What's the average amount of leads you would see coming from YouTube into your email list? How would you think about the performance of your email list versus direct response on LinkedIn when you're pushing a product Like? How do you think about that? Because I know you're you're a science driven guy.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, I, um, I barely do direct response on a discovery platform. To me like the optimal outcome, the optimal optimal call to action on a discovery platform is some way to get them to email, and it probably shouldn't be as simple as like subscribe to my newsletter. That works, okay, but it's going to be a lot better if you promise some more compelling bit of value, some sort of lead magnet, some sort of resource, that to get it you have to enter your email to get it. Um, youtube has been the most powerful discovery source for us in a very short amount of time, because the shelf life of those assets, those videos, are much longer than anything short form.
Jay Clouse:It's an inverse relationship right, uh, in what way? What do you mean?
Darren Lee:So the performance of youtube accelerates true time or it increases true time if the video is performing well and it will pay dividends to, whereas for linkedin and the other platforms have a deceleration, they'll work off backwards in the best cases.
Jay Clouse:Yes, that's true, even even youtube. I find often there is like a moment where things kind of go flat.
Darren Lee:Of course, and there's there's always a.
Jay Clouse:There's always the opportunity that it could go back in the other direction as YouTube starts to fine tune who it's showing the video to. But yeah, you're, you're right in that the the more um, the more videos we put on YouTube, the more sustained traffic we get to our YouTube videos. Like it really feels like you're building a library of assets, whereas short form it's very much a treadmill. It's a. What have you done for me lately? Type of type of world.
Darren Lee:I want to ask you on that, because a big thing that we try to help people with is running an interview show but not having to just be the interviewer. So everyone's like. So what happens is you get in this treadmill being like, oh, who's the next guest, who's the next guest, who's the next guest? The way it was described to me was you shouldn't have a podcast that someone says, oh, jay is on a podcast. It should be what will Darren ask Jay? So it's almost like people come for you maybe as a discovery, but then they stay for the quality of the questions or the interaction. How do you think about that? Because you know your channel's fucking huge and it's based off you interviewing people, but there's small subtleties in like how you show up. That's built a very strong tribe as to why people come back to you.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, I think that's definitely where you want to get to as an interviewer is having people come to you because they want your perspective on something. I mean, as time has gone on, we've seen how authors in particular will really leverage podcasts as a way to get the word out about a book or some big project. Right, and if I go into my podcast app and see that, um, uh, malcolm Gladwell has written a new book, because he's showing up on all of my subscribed podcasts, I'm probably not going to listen to 10 Malcolm Gladwell interviews, you know. So who do I choose? I'm going to choose the interviewer that I think gets the most interesting and unique information out of that person. So that that is definitely what you want to build to. I think it takes some time to get there, especially if you you don't already have an audience. The question is like how do I build one? Typically, you're piggybacking off of some of the name equity of your guests and that's how you audition as an individual for the audience you're trying to collect, but it takes some time. It takes some time for people to be interested in you rather than the guest act, but it takes some time. It takes some time for people to be interested in you rather than the guest.
Jay Clouse:I've started doing a lot more solo episodes, especially in audio, but I want to bring that to video as well. This is an entirely different video production process, but in audio, like what I've been doing now for the last few months, is I will record these like one take. I call them voice memo episodes, where I just sit down and literally open the voice memos app on my iPhone and record like three to seven minutes on an idea, push that directly to my podcast host and the whole thing is done within, you know, 10 minutes and those are the most popular episodes on the podcast. Now they're ad free because there's very little time involved and it's just an idea from me and it's very, very efficient. It's a very small ask of the listener to check that out, but that I know is reinforcing people's interest and respect of my viewpoint rather than just you know the vessel that interviews the guest.
Jay Clouse:I think the other nuance here is if you are doing a podcast with guests Trying to shift your frame from I'm interviewing this person to I'm having a conversation with this person.
Jay Clouse:It seems like a very small nuance, but People like to listen to something that feels like these people are friends because to them now they're in a conversation with friends rather than they are hearing an interview.
Jay Clouse:This is why, if I were to ever start a new podcast, specifically audio, I would do it with a co-host. Co-hosted shows just grow much faster because there's natural rapport in every episode, there's a consistent set of characters in every episode and these two people who are friends feel like you're friends, whereas if it's just a solo host, either they're interviewing somebody in that same level of rapport it's really tough to get with somebody that you don't speak to very, very frequently or if you're doing solo episodes, it's a lot more intense because it feels like it's directed straight at you and so you almost have to be like more attentive, whereas if I'm just listening to one of my favorite podcasts with these two co-hosts talking and they're having a good time, I just enjoy being in the experience yeah, and I've heard you you must be very difficult for you to do that as well when you're fully remote.
Darren Lee:I'm still doing a lot of remote episodes as well, but it does seem like that extra bit of difficulty because you're hopping on riverside or stream area and it's like all right, let's go. You know, whereas I think I heard you put it as you want to view the guest as a teacher, versus was it versus like someone you look up to. What was the phrase you had for that?
Jay Clouse:um, well, I call it educational or conversational education because I do think of like the guest as basically like a guest lecturer, but I want it to be very cozy, like I don't want it to feel like they are lecturing you, but I want it to have the effect of I just learned a lot and it's really easy. I want it to feel like your favorite high school or college professor, like someone you just enjoyed hearing talk about something, because they explained it in such a way that was easy for you to understand.
Darren Lee:Okay, that makes a lot more sense. So, on the conversion so when you're deplatforming users, you've had your community. How have you used the content as traffic into the email list to build a community base Like, how have you pieced that together? And it's kept on growing right? It's been growing for many years.
Darren Lee:At this point, the majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years. We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online. Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you into how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year.
Jay Clouse:So you have the discovery platforms at the top of the funnel, that's social media and YouTube. I'm trying to get them to email and then I try to grow the podcast, the audio podcast, through my email list predominantly, and then what is that?
Darren Lee:It's an important point.
Jay Clouse:Well, because audio podcasts are really hard to grow. They have to come from somewhere. You basically have to push listeners to your show from somewhere, because there's no discoverability and even as the YouTube show has grown, it has not had much of an impact on the audio show at all. So you really have to push people from somewhere, and I found that email is typically where I have the most success other than guesting on other people's audio podcasts.
Darren Lee:Question for you is why do you want to grow on audio as well? Would you not double down on just video?
Jay Clouse:The people who listen to the audio podcast listen to a lot more than video viewers watch. So this is interesting. I can reach more video viewers. I can reach more people by focusing on video because it will get in front of new, unique people. But an audio subscriber will listen to the majority of my episodes, whereas a new video viewer might watch that one video and never watch other videos.
Jay Clouse:If you looked at your own analytics, you might be surprised too. Own analytics, you might be surprised too, but what I see is a huge number of non-subscribed views to each of our videos and it's not at all a certainty that people will come back and watch another one of them, whereas if you do get into audio, you've already probably been following me for a while and you're interested in my perspective and now you're like, really in it. So when somebody joins the lab which is the membership, their application there's a line that says how did you hear about the lab? By far and away the majority of responses is the podcast. So the podcast is the highest impact bottom of funnel conversion tool that I have. So you know the logic is, if I get more people to like me enough to want to listen to the audio podcast. That's going to grow the product. Yeah.
Darren Lee:That's such a. It's a so well because it's just true for every business. You know, I had Ravi Avula on a podcast two weeks ago and the dude is he's just such an operator but he's tracking everything like every single piece of data. Someone goes on a journey and something like 60% of his high ticket clients, which bear in mind, is like 40k a day at this point, probably 20k a day is coming from YouTube a day. At this point, probably 20K a day is coming from YouTube. The last point is a 50 to 70 minute video he has and then they book a call and he tracks everything to a T. So it's not up in the air, it's not a hypothesis.
Jay Clouse:I think I could probably get there. I haven't done a very good job of connecting YouTube to the rest of the business. To be honest, it's been just haven't. It's been like a blind spot. And also we've been focused on sponsorships on the channel more than selling our own offers on the channel. So that is actually a change we're making this year.
Darren Lee:If you think about it, though, what you could do there is just have a lead magnet which brings them into there, and then the flow on the backend. So, like me and Tim Stoddard have a different opinion on how the email sequence should work. His approach is like you know, you have the YouTube video, you put them on the email list, and then the first ask is to join the community. Mine is more like a seven to 21 day drip, which is like telling my story, my journey, what I've done, and then there's the ask.
Jay Clouse:You know so, but that's just a very simple way to disconnect it, and then it's just all connected you know, it's a big miss on our part is not having like a very clear every video that we publish has a clear call to action to some resource.
Darren Lee:It's in the top of the description that gets them to email. We should absolutely be doing that, I think. Uh, just to give you a little bit kind of advice on this, I think the the best performing lead magnets I've seen are one lesson from the program and it's like a 40 minute video and it's one lesson part of like the 60 lessons and it's that's it. And I've literally bought programs, very expensive, high ticket programs, because they gave away a full lesson and it was like a mural board. He went over everything and he stripped it out. It takes like a convert kit, it takes like 10 minutes to make you know, and that's what that.
Darren Lee:The reason I'm saying that so passionately is because, like, that's what we're doing for our clients is like we just give something away that someone would charge $200 for, um, and then it just works and subscribers go up and, uh, you can, of course, set up whatever sequence you want from the back end. Then how have you seen your community grow? So I've seen your charts. It's interesting because I watched your video and you said that one year you took a bit of a backstep, you went backwards, or a flatlined which three or four years ago. Um, how did you think of the growth with the vision you have for long-term sustainable growth as a creator?
Jay Clouse:Well, the community has grown pretty consistently over the last three years. The lab launched formally in March of 2022. And basically year-on-year growth since 2021 has been very rapid. The year of step-back revenue growth was 2019. I started doing this in some form in 2017, but it took me four years to figure out that premise thing I was telling you about. Same took me five years.
Jay Clouse:So year three we had a step-back in revenue because in year two I was freelancing and basically taking on anything that would pay and then I realized this is not going to work Like. I can make money doing this, but this isn't going to build any type of like jumping off point or platform for me. So I just like stopped doing a lot of that so I could focus on the content and focus on being more consistent with what I was doing. Community growth community growth again. A lot of that is driven by um, that middle of the funnel, email and podcasting. It's people who have been following my work for a long time and when you've been publishing in some form for eight years, that number is just growing all the time. And when you have a good uh, peer-to-peer member experience in your membership, there's a lot of word of mouth.
Darren Lee:Can you explain that? Because that was something very interesting you said to me this morning.
Jay Clouse:When I think about memberships and I don't use the word membership as synonymous with community I do think one of the key benefits inside of a lot of memberships is a community component. But when I think about memberships as a product, there's usually a spectrum between is this giving people premium content that they can't get outside the membership, or is this giving them peer-to-peer experiences within the membership? And a lot of memberships blend the two. But my membership the lab leans much more on the peer-to-pe peer side of things rather than the premium content side of things, and so the value is the experiences, the interactions between the members. This is a place where professional creators just don't find these type of conversations elsewhere.
Jay Clouse:You know, the goal of the lab is for members to experiment and grow together, and you and I are running experiments in our business all the time. We learn from those. Maybe we have one or two other friends that we share what we're learning with. Now imagine that in a community of 200 people who are, they're all experimenting, they're all sharing what they're learning, what's working, what's not working, some interesting insight that has been helpful to them. Those spaces, at that level of scale, just don't exist online, so that's a unique space. When people are in there and they're having a good experience, they are probably going to tell some of their friends who are not in the community about it, or maybe mention offhand like hey, I saw this experiment in podcast growth that Jay shared in the lab.
Jay Clouse:They're gonna be like what's the lab? It gets back to this premise idea. But yeah, it starts to kind of grow itself. But if you consistently talk about it over time also, then as your audience grows, there should be a direct correlation between um the scale of, like, your reach on a discovery platform to the revenue you're earning. If there's not, then you have a broken problem yeah.
Darren Lee:So this is probably a little bit too intense, but I always say it's like I say you, you can have like 1 000 subscribers for every 1 000 teary if it's, if it's in good position, because it's kind of how we kind of got it. As youtube grew, just the businesses grew like, uh, I would, almost linearly to some degree, and a lot of channels are like that. We've some channels have 25 K subs and they're crushing it. Man, we're doing like 70, 80 K a month. It's crazy. It's crazy. Uh, I actually have some channels that are doing that are sub a thousand followers sometimes in subscribers, but they're so niche that they're doing crazy brand deals. I mean like a 200, 250 K a year. Um, because they are like a, you know, they're doing crazy brand deals. I mean like 200, 250k a year because they're like a, you know, they're like a veteran of their niche. So that's kind of like a weird kind of tangent on that.
Darren Lee:But but it's very interesting to observe the way that you build that community, because I think you've done it in a very elegant way, versus, you know, throwing everyone in a school group and it's like survive Cause I felt that. I felt that I've bought into programs and I've just been thrown into a school group and forgotten about. So that was a big value for mine. And I interviewed Dakota yesterday here and, um, dakota Robertson, we kind of discussed about how you should build a community with all the stuff that you hated about the communities that you joined, you know. So a big thing for me was like onboarding calls, a one-to-one touchpoint with either me or CMS, csm, ongoing feedback, reviewing content. These are really important values for me because I've never seen that in stuff that I've bought and it sounds like that you've been able to cultivate that with peer-to-peer interaction.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, I agree with this idea of I think about it as onboarding. When people join the community, they have this moment of excitement and almost a little bit of anxiety, especially depending on depends on the investment. But you know, the lab is not the cheapest membership out there. It's $2,000 to $4,000 a year. And so, Sorry, $2,000 and $4,000? $2,000 to 4,000, depending on whatever tier you join, or is it 4,000?
Jay Clouse:Yeah, so that's a lot of money to drop, and at the point of swiping your credit card, you have taken all the risk as the customer Because your money is gone and the person who has captured that value has not yet provided the value on the other side of things. So a lot of communities will swipe the card, capture the value and then, as you said, kind of throw you into the pool and say good luck, Everything you need is here, Find it and make your investment back. And to me it's a missed opportunity. Like at the moment of swiping your credit card, you should do everything you can to get people to capturing that value on their own as quickly as possible.
Darren Lee:That's so interesting. So you might find this interesting you might have heard this before. It's that we do weekly pricing. So you could pay 4K for the year, but we're so confident that we can just help you that you can get started for $125 a week. So that pricing is very strategic because one, it's a commitment, it's a lower risk commitment, and then you can basically like go through the process of like investigating, trying it out, joining the calls and so on, and then on top of that we can discount what you've paid if you want to upgrade.
Darren Lee:So let's say, 125 by four is 500. You then pay three and a half thousand and the logic with that is the fact that if you truly believe that you can help someone, get someone started with a small thing so that they're committed, right, because you can't just give it to someone for free, because then you can do it. And when we went to roll it out, I learned it from someone. That's the reason why I did it and invent this model. My team were like but what if someone comes in and scrapes it and leave? And I was like trust me, if we do a good job, they're not going to do that and we've never had someone turn out at all Never.
Jay Clouse:That's good. It's crazy Never had somebody turn ever From the weekly pricing. Interesting.
Darren Lee:Yeah, and we've been doing this a year, so it's not like we've been doing this forever. But they come in and they pay weekly and guys will happily pay that. Or else upgrade Okay, upgrade Okay. Because the logic is, let's say, it's 125 a week, that's like 6k for a year or something if they kept paying it. But then there'll come a point whereby they want to upgrade. Does that make sense? So it's just. It's just giving people a get started mechanism. The reason why you do that is because, in theory, you don't have to do sales calls. That wasn't the logic with it. But yeah, you know, that model is really interesting no-transcript sheeps, clothing and things like this, which is like, if you truly believe you can help someone, you can get started for something much smaller.
Jay Clouse:Yeah, that's interesting. Oh interested to see how that plays out two years from now, three, two years from now, three years from now, I also think there's, depending on the service you're providing. So you have people come in, they have a very specific thing they're trying to solve right, and you get to work right away, basically delivering the outcome to them, because you like work hand in hand with them, right?
Darren Lee:Well, in theory, we serve the community, but, yes, they have a client success manager, you know, and we're trying to add in more accountability and stuff as well. But, um, in theory we're getting them either up off their podcast or growing their podcast and then, if this is on the community now, by the way, and then we're helping them build the offer and they're growing the offer. Interesting, you know, it's a cool model. Yeah, it's just the fact that, like most, as you've probably seen, as like most people don't really know how to build an offer. This is tough, right, it's building a business. So it's like, okay, it's just.
Darren Lee:Interesting, as I said to you earlier, is that we've gone down the path of like okay, having to help people do the landing pages and VSLs and pricing structure sequences and book a call funnels and how to run sales calls, because what was happening is like it's always. The next problem was popping up. It was like hey, we got all these calls booked off the back for a podcast. How do I run a sales call? It's like oh, actually I actually built out a sales system for our sales team. Doesn't give them that, you know. So our program looks long and it probably in it. It probably is long, but it's trying to work on the full spectrum. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting, right? Yeah, you can do anything.
Jay Clouse:You can do anything you know you can truly do anything and like. Doing things differently is a competitive advantage in a lot of ways, Because it's that differentiation point right. Not only is this offer legible and compelling, but now it's also differentiated. Oh, it's very risk-free. I can come in and just do a week and if I don't like it I can leave.
Darren Lee:Strong point of differentiation one of the areas I want to last ask you about because I know you have a lot of things you can do for the for the last day here is so the power of small communities. I think a limiting belief. Well, I want to get your thoughts on this. People's limiting beliefs of starting a community is that if what? If no one shows up or what? It's really small right, and what I found is that some of our best calls, our best interactions with community members, is when there's hardly no one on the calls. So it is like again, it's an inverse relationship. The founder thinks you need a thousand people on the calls, but the members want no one on the calls, so they get more of an intimate, almost one-to-one feel. How have you seen that in your own examples and with who you consult and coach?
Jay Clouse:I think there's a lot of ways I could take this question. So I think a lot of people want high participation in calls because they're using that as a proxy for people are finding value in this space and if people don't show up, they worry that people are not finding value. This is a leading indicator that churn might happen, but you should just play that out and see if that's true. If people are not showing up to the calls but there is high retention, is it really a bad thing that people aren't showing up to the calls? You know to your point the user experience. Of a more limited number of people involved in any experience experience is usually a little bit better because they get more attention, they get more access. The people who do show up have a meaningfully better experience because they got personalized, contextualized information.
Jay Clouse:I think that, if you like, the struggle a lot of community builders have is they have a lot of success early because people come in and it is a small experience and they feel like this is amazing, this is different. I have more access. I know everybody here. I am getting personalized, contextualized advice and that success leads to more people joining, which now starts to directly counteract the experience that people love in the first place. So the challenge for a lot of people, as they're building a membership, building a community and increasing the number of members they have, if part of the magic was the small experience, you need to find ways to continue to enable small experiences even within a larger hole.
Jay Clouse:It's tough, um, I think they're. Uh, you can either have like just more programming, because typically the more programming you have, the fewer participants on average you'll have to each individual thing. So, like by nature of that, you'll just have smaller calls because you have more of them. You could have like some sort of matching mechanism to put people into small groups or masterminds, either self-led or hiring a facilitator to have them do that. Those are the ways that work the best. They have geographic density within their membership. They'll enable or even self or like organize in-person events, which is really, really powerful for a community, even if it is predominantly online. But I don't like to be too prescriptive here because the limit is only your imagination and if you just have the frame of I want to enable small group experiences within my larger membership, you should just chase that thought and ideate around it and find ways to do it, because there's probably far more than I could even imagine or list myself.
Darren Lee:It's funny you said that because I ran a dinner for our members and our clients in New York and it was amazing.
Darren Lee:Some guys who were 60, some guys who were 19,. I came and everyone loved it, because they're still in the same pocket and I'm running my first mastermind next week in Bali and, to your point, we had to limit it to 10 people because actually my home um, so we were able to get 14 or 15 and we're like, no, no, we got to keep it to 10, um, and again it's bringing that access but not having it too. So there's no, some people run masterminds, are one-to-ones in them. There's none of that. There's just going to be like all of us and we're all going to be together and all going to be learning. And I think I've just kind of mirrored it off other people's masterminds I've attended. And that's the beauty of it when you keep it at a right size and then all these people then use their community and effectively get the most out of it, because just by getting results right yeah, and if your community is online, a lot of times the way people see each other is very two-dimensionally.
Jay Clouse:They see a name and a face and a photo, um. But once you have like a real-time interaction, either on a video call or, ideally, in person, you have a much more high fidelity relationship with that person and you start to feel almost like a responsibility for their success as well. So if you feel like you have a real connection with somebody, when you see them post in the community, they're not just a name and face. That's two dimensional. It's somebody that you know and you want them to be successful. So the more you interact, the more you create interaction between members of your online community in real time, the more successful the online aspect will be.
Darren Lee:That's awesome, man. Big thank you, dude. Yeah, thanks for having me.