Hello everyone and welcome to the Jim Kroft Podcast where I explore the intersection of solopreneurship and creativity. Like many of us, I've arrived late to the newsletter game. It's easy to regret and hard to act but if there's one thing I could pass on to artists and solopreneurs, it's to put the past aside and get started today. For me, starting my Substack at the beginning of the year unlocked a fresh wave of creative potential and has helped my work to find a new audience. In my quest to better grasp the possibilities of newsletters, I enrolled in a master class with today's special guest Jay Clouse.

A true legend in the world of the creator economy, Jay founded Creator Science, a go to resource for those seeking financial success through their creativity. In this episode, Jay shares insights on overcoming self doubt, navigating the creator economy's challenges, and mastering the long term game, and all while building your presence in a crowded digital space. Whether you're running a podcast, newsletter, or business, today's episode will fill you with new ideas and courage for the path ahead. Finally, if you'd like to follow my personal reflections on creativity and entrepreneurship, please feel free to subscribe to my Substack. Okay.

I'm thrilled to present you with the warm and brilliant man that is Jay Clouse. If you're ready, then let's dive in. Jay, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah. Excited to be here, Jim. Thanks for having me.

It's kinda wild for me. Right? So I was checking out your early days on your podcast, and my eyes nearly popped out my head. Why? Because I couldn't quite resist but printed up.

So just for those who are on audio, I've got a little printout because right at the start, Jay had Seth Godin as his as his very first podcast. Correct me if I'm wrong here. And the second, James Clear. And I was like, man, that is absolutely amazing.

That is true. That is accurate.

I I definitely wanna dive into that a little bit later, but the main thing to say, because actually, like, I know that you know KP from Building Public, and he had Gary Vee very early on for him. And so I was like, okay, KP. So you're my Gary Vee. So I think, Jay, you're gonna be my James Clear. Thanks very much.

Love that. I'll take that. I'll take that comparison.

Yeah. Amazing, man. Well, I wanna jump in the deep end, Jay, because I've just been kind of absolutely diving so deeply into your work. I mean, I've known your work for some time and came on to your newsletter, Masterclass, which blew my mind, and and we got in touch after that. And and then I was doing all the research, and of course, you're wondering where you're going to start.

And then you just put out this post the other day, and I thought, man, it just it hit me so hard, and that's quite unusual, like, with a Twitter post. It just kinda stops you in your tracks. So I've actually got a second printout. I couldn't resist it. This was on the 07/29/2023, just a couple of days, and it was you posted this picture.

So for the audio people, it's a printout and a tiny scrap scrappy bit of paper. It looks like purple writing, but that's probably my printer.

And No. That's true, actually. Think it was a purple pen. I think I grabbed,

like, the

nearest pen and it was purple.

But you know, it's like this is such a small bit of paper that, you know, Picasso couldn't have even done a sketch on it. It's, you know, it's like it's like literally like a thumb, like the size of a thumb. And it says, I am not an artist. I don't have good ideas. I can't do creative work, and I'm less valuable because of it.

And then there's a wonderful story that goes with it, but I don't wanna tell the story, Jay. I just wanted to use that as an invitation because I think people know this type of moment in their lives. So I just I'd love you to recount the story.

Sure. So in in January 2017, I was working in a job. It was at a startup company. Mhmm. It was venture backed.

And that came on the heels of starting and selling my own company.

Mhmm.

So in, like, a six month period, I went from, okay. I was a cofounder of a company. We sold it. We had a good financial exit. I'm in the room for all major decisions.

I'm making those decisions. To once that was over, I didn't make enough money that I could just, like, retire or something. I had to go find something else to do. I had an opportunity to join this company. But within that company, I was a leader, but not like the highest group of senior leaders.

You know, I wasn't in the c suite. So my reality changed quite a bit, and it was kind of humbling, and it was a different experience to go from I make the rules, I make the timeline, I make the decisions to now I need to manage up and make my boss look good and make a case for the senior leadership to make decisions. And I just didn't even really agree with where the company was going. So I felt really stuck. And I had this itch that I wanted to go back out on my own, but I had that experience with the previous company and Mhmm.

Even though it went well, it was also exhausting and it was something that I was not gonna take lightly and go into some other new idea Mhmm. Without having a really good idea of what that would be. And there I was just really, stuck thinking, I don't like what I'm doing. I wanna do something on my own, but I couldn't get myself to like do anything, to take any action to make that real. So I hired a coach who had been referred to me probably a dozen times at this point.

He is locust local here to Columbus, Ohio. A lot of my friends had worked with him, had great experiences. So I hired him. His name is Chris McAllister. I hired him within his program.

One of the first weeks, he was like, I want you to go for a walk. Mhmm. Don't take your phone. Don't have any headphones. No music.

No distractions. Just take a notebook and a pen and try to just listen to whatever is going through your mind, whatever tape is playing, I believe is what he said, that you're talking to yourself.

Mhmm.

And after a few minutes of walking, this is what I was hearing. I was hearing this story of myself saying, I'm not an artist. I'm not creative. I don't have my own ideas. You know, to this point, I'd been really good as an operator and taking other people's ideas and making them real.

Mhmm. But I didn't feel like I had the ability to form my own ideas. And that was what was preventing me from taking action and doing something to get back out on my own.

It was something that really hit me because what I love it's not just what you said. It's that sort of courage for other people to expose that vulnerability because it's such a sort of, like, deep thing to say, you know, I'm I'm I'm not an artist, and everyone has a different thing that they wrestle with. But it just kind of like, you know, so for me, it was actually just this capacity to be vulnerable and to kind of encourage other people with whatever it is that they're going through. And what I love about the story and about your your coach's prompt was it's it's about the noticing, like you said about, you know, listening to the mad monkey in the mind as goes the Buddhist talk about it. So if you were to go right now, and so much has happened since then, but of course, you know, with those very sort of old sort of limiting beliefs, some of them, in my experience, I've I've been through psychotherapy over a long period, and I know that some of these things can kinda, like, take such a long thing to iron out.

And, I'm just wondering, so when you revisit that now and you look at that and you think about that statement, what are the feelings that kinda come up? Where are you at at the moment with it, with so much having happened since?

Well, now I don't have a shortage of ideas. Ideas are actually pretty easy to come by. Now everything is about decision making and resource allocation. These are, like, big financial words sort of. But really what I'm saying is, how do you wanna spend your time?

How do you wanna spend your money to get to the outcomes that you want? Mhmm. And you get to a point where you've you've built your idea muscle where you have more ideas than you have resources to see those ideas through. Right. So now ideas aren't the issue.

And I'm glad. And, you know, it's it's really you know, the next exercise that my coach put us through is, okay. Typically, these stories we tell ourselves, we can flip them on their head and create evidence to the contrary if that's something we want to disprove. Mhmm. So my evidence to the contrary was to start writing a daily newsletter and shipping it literally every day.

And that built a muscle and a practice of creativity and ideas. And so there's just a muscle there where ideas are no longer an issue. As we're talking here, Jim, literally, have a Notion document open with page of bullet points underneath the heading, content ideas. Because there's a good chance that you asked me a question here that is something that I haven't thought about in a while. Mhmm.

That I realizes, oh, that's that is useful and and helpful to other people. And I've forgotten that that is something that I take for granted. So there's there's ideas all around you. It's really just figuring out when do they happen, how do they happen, how do I capture them when they come. Yeah.

I studied history of art and architectural history. I've been in the art my my whole life. It's always such a fascinating contemplation for me, what art is, what creativity, where it comes from. And in terms of that question, one of the things that I look at you, because I I see creativity in whatever the hell art is, it's a very sort of inclusive house, it's a very wide canvas. And there's this wonderful quotations from the Zen Buddhist, which is it's about finding the the face that you had before you were born.

This sense that all of us have a true potential or a true self that often society or nurture or whatever it is that pulls us away from that. So when I looked at that quotation that you beautifully put out into public, I'm not an artist, I was like, oh, wow. It's it's it's like there's an because it says to me there's an aspiration towards something, and then there's a block. And one of the things you said at the end of the post was you can change your beliefs, and by changing your beliefs, you can change your reality. And for me, that was such a sort of lovely nutshell of, for me, what I've sensed just because it's very hard to put just one umbrella over your work because I feel like you're giving a gift of helping people, other people to realize their potential.

So where would you see the the essence of your work being at this point? Because it's because it's on the one hand so focused and so tangible, and yet on the other hand, it's so kaleidoscopic and so relevant to what people are going through in society. I'm just wondering if I was to say, okay. Where are you at with that? What would be your response?

Well, there's like the the contrived, here's my document laying out the vision for my company response, and then there's kind of the gut feeling response. You know?

Right. What's the gut instinct?

The gut instinct is that I encourage and empower people to take the steps towards, you know, their true expression. Mhmm. Mhmm. Creative science of business, you know, the the umbrella of that, the container of that is meant to be a resource that people can enter it no matter where they are on their journey, and I should be able to walk alongside them and help them get to a point where Mhmm. Their creativity is fueling creating a financial engine for their life.

Right.

You know? It's it's very much like I will teach you to be a professional creator. Mhmm. When I think about the content that I am most drawn to make and and make most readily, it's more often encouragement more than anything else, you know, because like, I love practical, tangible advice as much as the next person. But I feel like there's almost no shortage of that on social media.

I open it up and it's like, here's an entire feed of eight ways to do this. And it's Yep. It's like, okay. But I actually don't even have time to do the eight ways threads that I see just on my screen right now. Yeah.

You know?

I think more often than not, like, we have what we need inside of us. What we need is some encouragement and some courage, which I haven't really thought about this, but it seems like those share a root word. And that's what I try to provide a lot of times.

I think that's one of the things I admire how you're doing it because there is such a sort of guru culture out there. You go on Twitter and it's like I mean, actually, since sort of chat GPTs come out. I mean, it's like every other person is copywriting all this kind of guru advice and so I think that becomes this kind of sense of overwhelm and there's so much pragmatic practical tip advice and yet so few of it is actually reaching into the spirit and giving you that sense of buzz. This you could be potentially and this is how you're going to do it and so that's something that I really feed from the how behind your work, because you're really trying to distill the mystery of what so many people aspire for and to in the modern world, and then to reach out and give them the tools step by step to do it.

There's also a level of honesty I aspire to because I think a lot of the, you know, you used the word guru, but a lot of this talking head practical advice isn't very honest. You know, it's not it's not a lie, but the things that it omits are misleading. You know? There's a lot of omission of Mhmm. Of luck or, unfair advantages or the the breaks that people make for themselves by forming forming relationships, you know?

Yep. This isn't a game of simply information or even simply creativity. There are a lot of facets to this game that some people conveniently omit because they realize, well, it's hard for me to speak to this because it's not actually available to everybody. And yet, it was still important to their journey, maybe even paramount to their journey, but it's it's not spoken about. And so I I really try to have a level of intellectual honesty that's different from others to say like, hey.

Actually, this might not be a path for you. This might be Mhmm. Harder than you think. Here are some trade offs and compromises that people you're looking after, looking up to, you're modeling after that they are taking on that you may not realize. And, I don't know.

I it it probably isn't in my financial best interests because I think it repels some people away from the path, which Mhmm. I honestly think is a good thing. Because to try to be a professional creator, to try to make a living from your creativity like this, there is a level of entrepreneurship you must embrace. And not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Yep.

I mean, I I I'm sorry, but it's not that you can't, it's that most people aren't willing. Yep. And if you're not willing, I want you to recognize that now and save yourself the heartache and financial hardship that often comes with going down that path.

Well, and risk and loneliness and, you know, all of the different qualities that actually come about when you're trying to build something, whether it's in the arts or as a solopreneur on your own. I mean, that mean, I I think this is why it's so fascinating for me to speak with you because you're like a bridge for me between these creative pain points that sort of artists, struggling artists who are sort of trying to reconcile with the digital economy, and the solopreneurs and, you know, people trying to set out, and, you know, you're right there trying to figure out in very pragmatic ways. But I think just to reflect on what you just said, Jay, I would actually look at it differently that it might not be financially practical for you because I think that's one of the reasons why you've built up this enormous sense of trust within your community, because you're a straight, you know, you're a straight shooter, and you say it as it is. And if you're challenging someone who thinks that they want to go, you know, on, let's say, the arts path or the the the the creator path or whatever it is, it's no bad thing to be challenged by someone down the line because then you have to look inside yourself and you have to

Totally.

You've got you've got the reality, then you can make your choices because you're not putting a block in the road, you're just putting a tough argument out there.

I often try to talk people out of things that are difficult because you have to tell me that you don't care and you're gonna do it anyway to show me that you have the the attitude and the fortitude to get through it.

So you've run so maybe you could just for anyone who doesn't know your work from from my audience, I was about to ask you about sort of the pain points that you're coming across at this point in Creator Lab. But just before we go into that, maybe you could just give them a very quick summary about what the Creator Lab is so that they've got a sense of context, and then we could go to the question of what are the pain points that you're coming across in Creators out there at this point?

So the Lab is my membership community. It's a 200 person membership community. We have a cap of 200 members. We're currently at that cap. Started it in March 2022, and it is a membership for professional creators, places where they can experiment and grow together.

So in that community

Sorry to interrupt. I'm just wondering what types of experimentations do you run there just out of interest?

I mean, people are doing their own experiments all the time. Things like, hey, I'm going to unpublish some of my paid products and see if I can sell more of this one. Or Mhmm. Hey, I'm going to take a month off of social media and see what happens. Or hey, I'm gonna spend a month going extra hard into threads and see what happens.

Mhmm. So I think really the only way to break through as a creator and build a living doing this is that you have to build a culture of experimentation in yourself, in your own business. Because things are changing all the time. What's working changes all the time. You have to be willing to innovate, experiment, understand the results of those experiments and change your process based on those results.

So this is a place where we can kinda aggregate and share those those experiments together.

That I I I I I love that you're creating this space and that you're limiting it because there is no way to look after too many people, I think, at the same at the same time, and I think that's just a wonderful point. So within that space, just to give me a little overview, if I were to if I would say, yeah, what pain points are you noticing at this point or are typical that you see? Just a little overview there.

I mean, I think most creators would say that they are struggling with either reach or revenue or resonance Mhmm. Or relationships. Like, it's these four r's that I think about.

Nice.

How you know, where where are things falling apart? People often have like a financial problem, which they equate to a reach problem. They think, well, I'm not making enough money, which means I need to get in front of more people, which may not actually be true. You know, if you if you have a resonance problem, the people you are getting in front of aren't resonating with your content and taking action from it, that might be what solves your financial problem more than reach. So it's it's generally one of those four things whether they've correctly identified which one of those things it is or not.

It's usually one of those four.

There are rather a lot of artists who follow me in my audience because I'm very interested in the sort of spirituality, if you like, of the creative path, the blockades that we come across when we're trying to create something. And one of the things I've noticed, Jay, so so I for me, I'm very late into even considering the content creation game as something that I was even thinking about. So what I mean by that, so I'm a bit older, in my forties, grew up without, you know I think Facebook was like 27 when it kinda came out, and so I was kinda like, what's all this stuff? And then I guess I was kind of like, in some ways you could say like an old fashioned artist in the when the as a full time musician and the world was going to putting out one song every six weeks because that's what the Spotify algorithm likes, I was putting out long form albums. And then when the world was gravitating towards Snapchat, I was off going 15,000 kilometers across Russia, you know, on the Trans Siberian Express doing gig after gig after gig and hammering it the sort of old fashioned way and shooting shooting documentaries.

So I was I was always kind of, like don't get me wrong, I was using social media, but and I think this is something that's quite a regular pattern for artists that that and and I think I've I've I recognize it as I'm not saying that it's correct, but it's an assumption. It's like if I do great work and if I put it out, the world will find a way to to notice, and the sort of older that I've got, and you know, I've been in this lucky position at different times, I've had kind of occasionally some big players behind me. It was on sort of a major label and had a worldwide publishing deal, so I had, you know, what I was coming up through as a musician had some clout behind me, and, know, you get some of that stuff kind of taken care of you. But I think for a lot of artists, there's still the hope of finding a way through the gatekeepers of the world, so to speak, that you might get that big record deal or with the film, you might get that breakthrough moment. Whereas I think there's a kind of like different mindset that I noticed in the creator economy because the creator economy has more of a kind of, as you said, an entrepreneurial approach to it.

It's like, okay, this is something that you have to recognize that exists and that we have to work out how to do in order to get our work or our art or if it's a YouTube channel or if it's a business, whatever it is, it's that kind of state of reality that you kind of have to you have to deal with. So the question that I've just got at the moment is artists, for instance, let's say you're a painter and you're putting out your your paintings and and so on, and you know you're doing great work, you know that you've got that fire in you, and you know you spent years with your talent. You're developing your talent, putting it out into the world, but you're just you're just hitting a wall in terms of algorithmic reach, and I'm just sort of wondering what would be your reflection for artists who are in this point where they're doing great work and they know that they're doing good stuff, but let's say they've got a kind of resistance to really going deep into figuring out this creator economy stuff because they know that the more time you spend, you know, doing a podcast, doing a newsletter, showing up every day on social media, well, what's the consequence of that?

It's diluting the time of going after the godhead or however you wanna put it in terms of like that artistic thing. So I'm just what would be your reflection to those artists who are in this gray zone with social media, but they know they should do it, they're kind of doing it, but they're not committed. And they might even have some very reasonable reservations about doing it because it takes away from that time with their art.

Yeah. Well, I I like this direction to come from because what I see more often is people being really, really active on social media, making short form content, but there's not really a there there. There's nothing afterwards. There's nothing that they're like compulsively doing. I think it's better to come at it from a place of, hey, I have this this creative practice where I'm creating larger, what do call it, long form or project based, you know, creative act.

Yeah. So the thing you gotta realize about social media is people care about things that like mean something to them. This is where a lot of traditional artists, I think, get stuck is they aren't necessarily creating with the consumer in mind. So why would the consumer care most of the time? Yep.

You know, most of the time, if you're making something that isn't for the benefit of someone on the other side of the screen

Right.

Someone on the other side of the screen isn't gonna care. Mhmm. Mhmm. You know? And so you have to ask yourself, who is my art for?

Am I making it for me?

Mhmm.

And come what may, in which case, you get what you get and you can't throw a fit. Or am I making this for the purpose of impacting other people and having this be enjoyed by others? Mhmm. If you do that, then you need to ask, well, who are those others? Mhmm.

Who is who is this for? Well, then also do for them?

And and also, if I may just interject, to be very careful about noticing the point of dilution because I think what's so interesting is that when you're creating something in the arts, you can be having a sort of you know, I know some artists who I think, I mean, I'm like, how the hell is this artist not known worldwide? Because there is such a power in there and and, you know, and I can diagnose, like, I can see they're not packaging it just like you're saying, they're not packaging it for giving this obvious value to the person who's going out. And so my I'm sorry to interrupt there, Jay. I just wanted to kind of go into it because I find this such an interesting area. So they're putting it out, but what they're not doing is creating the bridge necessarily to the consumer of the art.

And this is why I just I find such an interesting area because artists have that resistance. And so part of my messaging has been, look, you've got to actually look at the the messaging itself as a part of the work. Because like you said, if not, you know, it's just chance. The world might get it, and some artists go absolutely mental, but some very talented ones just don't kinda get anywhere, and so I but I just find it very interesting because it's that that point of of, yes, that's a it's a really good strategy, but there's a danger of dilution when you start doing something too much out of expedience of wanting something as a result, if you understand what I mean.

Yeah. I mean, look, social media is a competition. There is a finite amount of space that will be utilized to serve the amount of attention that a global consciousness is putting into the platform on a daily basis. Yeah. You are literally competing with everything else that's out there.

So if you're doing that, your work has to do a better job of connecting with people than the other work can be for that attention because those platforms will surface the things that

Mhmm.

Hold people's attention the best. That's just that's just the reality of it. There are people who have what I would consider lower quality creative work who get a lot more time, of attention in people's eyes because they have figured out how to use that product and connect with people in a more effective way than people who might have what you see as higher quality creative work. It's just true. Like, I it's it's it's the way the game is played.

If you're going to play these games and every social media platform is a game and there are games within the game Mhmm. If you're going to play these games, then you need to learn the rules. You need to learn the other players and understand how you win these games. Yeah. Like, that's it's unfortunate, but it's true.

It's not a meritocracy. There's almost no meritocracy in this place. Are there some people who have work so good that it just shines through without that? Maybe. Yeah.

But I think Yeah. Less often than the than the inverse.

Yeah. Well, you know, what's something I really enjoy about what you're saying is the brutality of the diagnosis. Because it's it's like, you know, you're putting it very straight there. It's like, look look at it as a competition. You know, it's a very competitive thing.

And it's it's a global consciousness and there's all types of beautiful things out there, but essentially you're getting all of this stuff, you know, and being dumped out there and you've got to find a way through. And so in order to find a way through, you have to work out what are the parameters of the game. And this is the kind of, like, interesting thing because for many artists, there's just this kind of resistance to not want to play that game because they're feeding from a a different place. And I'm I don't mean right or wrong, don't mean good or bad. It makes so many spirits.

I mean, thank God that not everyone wants to approach their work with a sense of competitive competitiveness and a sense of expediency. But this is kind of like one of the things that I'm very interested in, Jay, because just to give you a kind of like sense of where I arrived at. So I I remember like, let's say in back kind of 2,013, I I built up a pretty healthy following on Facebook. It was about 14,000 people. It was a really buzzing community, and then the Facebook algorithm changed, and you basically had to pay to play.

And it was pretty devastating as an artist because, you know, I wasn't making, like, loads of money as an artist. I was like, damn. This just isn't working. And I've just at that point got signed by major label deal, was Apex and MacRae, got bought by it was EMI, got bought by Universal. Record came out on the Friday, and then it and then Universal bought EMI that weekend.

So the at the apex of my career, I literally lost it. And that was, you know, obviously, that was a kind of, you know, tough blow blow at the time. But much tougher was the fact that the Facebook algorithm literally around that time just changed where you had to pay to play. So I kinda had to figure it out, and I kind of stopped really kind of like using social media for quite some time. And and I just got into the business of living.

I started building up my client business as a filmmaker and a photographer. I've been so very lucky how that's gone. Shot a bunch of documentaries, and then years later, I hadn't even been onto Instagram, I kinda went onto Instagram. Said, oh, it's a couple of thousand people here. I was like, that's weird.

I I literally just put out a few few posts. And I said, okay. I put out a post, and then suddenly there's actually engagement again. I know that Meta owned Instagram, but it wasn't cutting off reach in the same type of way. I So was like, okay, maybe I've I've got I could put some skin back into this type of game if you like.

And then when the pandemic hit, I went off after the pandemic. I really sort of went deeply internal in the pandemic, kind of cut off from the world, really sort of went into sort of spiritual deep dive, if you like, wrote a a, you know, wrote a book and just kinda went so far, and then after the pandemic, went out in my van, and I was like, right. Got this kind of crossroads where it's like, right. I want I want to carry on being an artist. I know that I've been resistant to this game.

I was like, but exactly like we're talking about, it's like, right. I've got to figure out. If I'm going to carry on, I've got to figure out how to play this game. And basically arrived at the same diagnosis. It's like if you're going to play it, you've got to get skin in the game, and you've got to get out there, and you've got to get going.

And then the more that I did that, and I've so it's been sort of like this journey of step by step figuring out why I love your work because, you know, you're always diagnosing all of these pain points that I feel and that I notice in other artists, and and then I've been sort of like sharing what I learn along the way. But it's just this interesting point that I see this manifest resistance to getting in the game in that way from so many of the most I I live in Berlin, and there's just so many wonderful artists here. And I see so many of them, just a complete resistance. And I think for a lot of these artists, it's like I won't play that Faustian game because they they don't even have that sense of competition in that same type of way. So it's just a very kind of interesting thing because the problem is they end up being in this in this like, there's this wonderful world in German, which means that you're basically locked between two places.

You're neither here nor there, and you're sort of between it. And so I think that's kind of defines the experience with social media. It's neither being, you know, sort of here nor there. But your met so but your message to those people, like, what would be your message? Because you if they're like, well, you're not interested to get into the creator game for legitimate reasons, but you're deep deep in the arts game.

There's a kind of paradox there for me, not not in what you're saying, but just for these people because I'm like, if I want my work to be shown, I have to jump into this game. I just like you've said, it's like you've got to recognize this is a competitive aspect, that there's a lot of stuff going, you know, out there and you just kinda gotta go for it. But if people don't want to get into the creator game, where where would you say that leaves those artists? Because essentially yeah. But what where would you say it it leaves those people?

I mean, there are lots of different games you can play. Mhmm. The question is, the the outcome that you want, how do you achieve it? Probably through a game because there's gonna be more people who want that outcome than can achieve it. So there is some game at play.

Yeah. And if you want the outcome, you have to learn the rules of that game. It might not be the social media algorithm game. It could be the gatekeeper game. You know?

How do I get the record deal? Yep. How do I get that conversation? This is all talking about distribution, really. Yep.

How do I get my work in front of the people who want to hear it? Yep. In a lot of traditional artistic history, there is a gatekeeper to distribution. They've already built distribution. They need to basically anoint you and say, here you go.

We will allow you the benefits of our distribution. What social media and the creator games have done is make Mhmm. Distribution, more democratic. Won't say meritocratic. It's not a meritocracy, but it is more democratic.

It is more widely accessible, but it's accessible by playing those games. So if you're not willing to play those games, you're probably just not gonna get the outcomes that you want. You have to look at how are the outcomes that I want achieved. What are the games that lead to it, and which game am I most willing to play? Because if you're not willing to play it, then you need to admit to yourself that you're not going to get that outcome.

Yep. So the key thing is the diagnosis and actually just making a plan, and I is what what I'm understanding from you, and which I I really like, because I think one of the easy things not one of the easy things, but one of the things I think sort of we tend to do as artists is you have this vision, you have this idea, and then you just get absolutely dominated by that vision and you kinda go after it. And there's not that kind of stepping back of a thinking, okay, what is what is the end game? What's the, you know, what's the strategy on the one hand? And then which is the business side and how am I gonna get this damn thing shipped and out there?

And then the other side is the messaging. So so that's the kind of, I think, the sort of the blockade if you like.

The other issue is if your audience hasn't heard of what survivorship bias is, we need to talk about that because you're probably a victim of this. Survivorship bias is this idea that we often hear the stories of people who have survived what are typically perilous situations, and we take their story as the way to achieve something Mhmm. Rather than the people who had the same approach, the same experience, but did not get the outcome. So what you hear a lot in the in the business world and the artist world, you hear stories of people who had some crazy lucky break. Like, don't even know if this is true or not, I've heard a story in the past that Florence from Florence and the Machine was literally, like, singing in a bathroom or something.

And someone came in and said, you have an amazing voice and that person like discovered her. Let's let's just take the idea of discovery as a whole. Because that that story may be complete bullshit and was told to me and I don't know anything about it. But let's take the idea of discovery as a whole. It tells you that all you have to do is be talented Mhmm.

And, be really great at your work and someone will discover you and give you the floor. And that has probably happened for some number of people, but a very small number of people.

Right.

There's probably a great number of people, 10 x, a 100 x more people Mhmm. Who have taken the same approach, which is to create and try to be really good at my craft and hope I get discovered, who have not been discovered. Mhmm. The math is not in your favor. You hear a lot of these stories that you say, well, this person did it that way, so I can do it that way.

But what's likely at play here is survivorship bias where they are one of a small minority of people who found success in this way, and there are far more people who did not. Mhmm. And you can play that game, but recognize the outcome of that game has very low success rate. I have a lot to

with luck.

Mhmm. Or you can play a different game and try to influence the success rate by taking a different approach, a plan, as you said, Jim. Yes. Most people do not have a plan. Their plan is luck.

Their plan is I hope to be good enough to recognize and be the beneficiary of luck, and that is not a strategy.

Yeah. Well and and actually don't I think are so fixated in in a wonderful way deep in what they're doing that there's not actually a plan in the first place because I think I think the sort of the the danger in the arts, the illusion is that when you're really feeling it, that thing that's out there and you're going after it, you believe you know, I think it's you know, Lennon talked about this of music of the spheres. I mean, obviously, you know, extraordinarily talented individual I'm saying. But what I mean is that when someone's so deep into that creative fire and that thing, there's a sort of, like, an assumption, I think, that can kinda go with it that it will find its way. I think one of the things I think we have to recognize about the digital economy is that that has changed.

I talked a little bit about this with KP because I was like, well, how do you deal with the digital economy if you're just resistant to it, if you're just old fashioned? He was like, well, you you you just have to recognize that this is a part of how we exist nowadays. And that kinda leads me to my next question, Jay. So, like, I've been you know, I'm sort of, like, deep on this sort of hunt. I mean I'm in a lucky position that my client work goes well, and I've got different revenue streams coming in from sort of music in different areas, and it's going good enough, but I'd like to sort of like push it forward.

But I'm sort of sharing all the things I'm learning along the way as I reconcile with the digital economy with different ways of how to do it and doing it. So what I would just love to go through a pathway with you that taps a little bit more into your expertise so that if someone's listening and they're going, okay, right, I recognize I've been in this gray zone, I need to get out, I'd like to kind of give them like a sort of, you know, tap your brain miniature master class in the different pathways and what's before them or what the options are, and just to kind of because what I would like to do is help people get out of that blockade and go, look, it's really empowering and exciting to you know, you're already essentially a solo business because you're an artist, because to be an artist is essentially to be a solo business. It just takes a little shift of perspective to activate the muscle to kind of go on the journey where then a lot of different opportunities and possib possibilities exist. So what I thought I would I would do is just ask a starting question, and then you can either ignore it and go, okay, well, that's an interesting starting point.

So I'll just shove it out there, Jake, and it's it's like what's I've heard you talking about the difference between relationship platforms and discovery platforms, and I find that sort of a really interesting distinction between the relationship platforms like podcasting or newsletters and discovery like Instagram or Twitter. And I would anyway, you can take that and come into it later or whatever, but it's like, let's just dive into, k, what are the options for this this artist, whether it's a artist, musician, struggling actor, illustrator, someone who's who's reached a bottleneck in their career, and they're like, no. I know I've got to get into this game. How am I gonna do it?

Well, I think we've actually been spending a fair amount of time on the first step, which is to identify well, let's say let's even start with like the outcome that you want. Mhmm. Because you can't reach any destination without knowing what that destination is, you know. So I think it's really important that people are clear and honest with themselves as to what the goal is here. What what is success?

What am I trying to achieve? That doesn't have to be numerical. That could be a feeling of sort. But I like to have it be tangible. Something that you could definitively say, yep, I have achieved this.

Such as sustain Such such as like, I wanna earn a living from my music and maybe even put a number on that. If I could earn Mhmm. $45,000 per year from

this

or 50,000 or whatever it is, whatever number you want. This is this is what we're going for here. Okay. Great. How does that happen?

Well, let's reverse engineer that then. Mhmm. Where does money come from in this thing I'm making, you know? Yeah. Where does money come from?

If it comes from streams entirely, then you're gonna have to get a lot of streams. And you can recognize that and say, okay, how do I do that? And figure out how to play that game. Or you can say, let's actually change how money happens here. Mhmm.

Let's find a more efficient, more impactful path to revenue in the business. You know, it's it's all about where am I going? How do I reverse engineer it? And then you start to get down into some of these binary or or smaller choices within the games. You know, you mentioned relationship and discovery platforms.

That comes into play if you've opted into this direct to consumer creator game that we're playing. You know? If you are trying to have direct relationships and distribution to your audience that you own, which I think is a worthy game to play, it's the one that I've chosen to play for sure, Then you start to ask, okay. How do I do that?

Mhmm.

If you're willing to play, this distribution game where you build your own distribution, you're not playing the gatekeeper game, then what you've mentioned, Jim, is this distinction between relationship and discovery platforms.

Mhmm.

You shared earlier how you had built up distribution through Facebook, and Facebook basically changed the rules on you Yeah. And said, actually, this is our distribution and we're not giving it to you anymore.

Yep. Yep.

So Facebook is a social media platform. It owns several social media platforms, Instagram, ThreadsNow, where you can build distribution. And it's great because there is built in discoverability. It is in those platforms best interest at least at certain times in their evolution to help the creators on the platform get in front of new audience. Mhmm.

Because your work connects to that audience. It keeps people on the platform. It incentivizes the platform to do that. I call social media platforms like this discovery platforms Mhmm. Because this is the game where you are building distribution more quickly.

Because there are people who are looking to discover other people and you are someone who has work ready to be discovered.

Yep.

This is the way people build distribution quickly. Mhmm. However, as we noted, that comes with risks. There is some inherent loss of control. Social media platforms are a gatekeeper in their own way.

Right. I would I would put search platforms like Google and even YouTube in this category as well. Then you have relationship platforms.

Mhmm.

These platforms are distribution mechanisms that you own and nobody can take away from you. Namely, that would be email, podcasting, SMS, and a private community of some sort. These are great because there is no Facebook to come in and say, hey, your 14,000 email subscribers? No. You can't reach them anymore.

Those people have opted in to receive communication from you. They've shared with you direct contact information that you have the option to communicate with for as long as they continue to give you that access. Yep. So the game that I play is how do I leverage discovery platforms to get in front of new people quickly and in large numbers.

Mhmm.

And then how do I move those people from that discovery platform into a relationship platform? Namely email is what I care about the most. And over time, you know, every day that I'm posting on social media, multiple platforms per day, you know, every week, every month, every year, I am adding a lot of new people into the distribution system that I own and control, which is email, which is podcasting, maybe SMS one day. That's the game that we're playing here because then you have reliable, consistent communication with your audience directly for as long as they want to continue to allow it. Mhmm.

And that is what you monetize. Instead of selling streams, you say, hey, I just launched a Kickstarter. One of my favorite bands is called Murder by Death. You can see their artwork over my shoulder here. Every time they release a new album, they do it on Kickstarter.

Mhmm. And to those Kickstarter backers, there's a limited number of seats to an underground cave concert. Again, that's where this artwork comes from.

Mhmm.

And that's awesome. I get a notification from them. Hey. We just released our new Kickstarter, new album. You can come to our next cave show.

And I'm giving them hundreds of dollars at a time. Mhmm. I could listen to their streams, and I would contribute probably less than a penny to their bottom line. Mhmm. Or because I have given them my email address, I give them literally hundreds of dollars per year probably Mhmm.

For merchandise, new albums, experiences, things like that.

And following on from that, Jayna, correct me if I'm wrong, you are slightly unusual in that you have built up your following more from relationship platforms, namely your newsletter to start with and the podcast, which I find very, very interesting and a little bit unusual nowadays because obviously, sort of people are so social media conscious and trying to sort of break through and work it out. I think I remember a pain point of view, maybe this was six months or a year ago, going, well, if there was one thing I could have changed, I would have got more into discovery platforms Totally.

Earlier and

done it in conjunction. So maybe you could just walk us through that. First of all, why you went to email? And also, man, because it's like, you know, I've got really dis disciplined about Substack, about having a newsletter this year. I have the the opposite, and I wish I'd really gone for my newsletter years ago.

A,

because I

absolutely love reading it, and I get so much value, and also because it just it interprets my ideas, it breaks them down, it pulls them out of the ether and it puts it into a communicable form where you can really start affecting people's lives and reaching them and having a great relationship with them. So I just wonder if you maybe you could just say, well, why did you go to newsletter so so early, which in retrospect to me seems quite a luminous choice, but comes with the pain point that you have of like, oh, damn. I should've gotten a bit of social media as well.

Well, these these games aren't new. So when I was starting my newsletter in 2017, I was tuning into creators who weren't calling themselves creators at the time, by the way. Mhmm. But I was tuning into online business people, and they were all about email. They they were showing me that, hey, courses is the model, email is how you sell courses.

Mhmm. So to me, was like, okay, guess I'm gonna build email. And they those people are also staunchly anti social media. They're like, build your email, build your email, build your email because social media is rented land. That's true.

But they they were overemphasizing it.

Yeah. I'm just jumping in there because I'm like, okay, you don't have a social media following and you start an email list. Now a lot of people who listen go, well, that's great, but if I start an email list, okay, I could pop mom and dad in there tomorrow, but how the hell do I reach anyone else? So what was your strategy? Like how many people did you have in 2017 when you started out?

What was your strategy? Because I mean, think you've got like am I right in saying this about 30,000 like

Yeah.

Subscribers, which is wonderful and like so amazing how it's built up. How the hell did you do it? And especially before you got into social media game, because for me, that sounds like a mystery.

Well, listen. I mean, in the beginning, it was a lot of direct hand hand combat. I I actually really love the advice that for your first a 100 subscribers, like, out to a 100 people directly through text, through email, people you know, say you're doing this thing, and ask them if they wanna subscribe.

Like get your mates down to your first gig when you've got a concert type thing.

Yeah. Totally. Totally. I didn't have a strategy over time. You know, what I was doing was I would do some free, events for a while and it'd be like, hey, to join the session, you have to register on Zoom or Eventbrite or whatever it is at the time and that pulls you into the email ecosystem.

I would create lead magnets or email courses, things that were like outcome driven but delivered via email. And it was slow, you know. I I think I probably launched it on social media first and said like, hey, I'm writing a newsletter. And in the beginning, people are excited, people share it, it's fun. Mhmm.

But I know I switched over from Mailchimp to ConvertKit in August 2020. Mhmm. And in August 2020, I had 1,800 subscribers. So in the first, you know, three years, less than 2,000 subscribers total.

But that's so inspire that's really inspiring, Jay, as well because you hammered out the hard work. I mean, that's an amazing growth since then. So, I mean, for me, it just my reflection just to butt in is like, man, okay. You did it hand to hand combat, but then look how it's gone since then. So it's really inspiring story.

Yeah. Things aren't linear forever. Like, if you if you play these if you play these content games, it may look linear in the beginning because the numbers and absolutes are just very low. You know, know, going from one subscriber to two subscribers or three to four, that's a very linear small slope. But what you don't realize underneath that is Mhmm.

Hey, 1% of these people, they absolutely love this and they share it with people. Mhmm. And so when you have a 100 people, that's one person who's out there spreading the word. That's gonna happen pretty slowly. But when you have a thousand people, that's 10 people that are spreading the word.

When you have 10,000 people, that's a 100 people that are spreading the word. And if one of those a 100 people who are spreading the word now, have their own audience, they have their own distribution, things can hit an inflection point that can be pretty powerful. Yep. So you you have to embrace the fact that this is both a long term game Yep. But when you're willing to play that long term game, you recognize that time is actually in your favor.

That if you're playing a long term game, it's only a matter of time before good things happen. So it's not like this very stressful, well, inflection point's gotta hit tomorrow. I have no idea when the next inflection point will hit. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

I just know that if I do this for long enough and I set up the systems and the process to be something I enjoy and can sustain long term, good things will happen at certain points along that journey.

And I I love that message Jay as well because it's like, you know that you've got something in your area and your heart's beating for it every day, well, it's like, okay, the I think one of the problems that people have and it becomes limiting aspect is, you know, they want the fairies the fairy tale story, that kind of idea of discovery like you said earlier, whereas what you're saying, it's like, look, this is about a strategy, this is about a longer term game, but if you show up consistently and you do it over time and with that heart and that commitment, it compounds and great things can happen. And I find that a very encouraging message, and it's also a non bullshit message, because it's like, look, there is a pathway to where you're trying to get to. Have the courage to go after it.

100%. 100%. That's what I wanna tell people is like, I can't promise you any specific short term result. What I can promise is that you if you play a long term game and you set yourself up for success over long term and do things that are sustainable, good things will happen. Mhmm.

But it takes effort and it's it's a big investment of time. And some people listen to this will say, okay. I get it. I see the path and it sounds like I can do that. Some people will say, no, I'm not gonna play that game and that's totally fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Recognize what game you are willing to play and try to be good at that game. Mhmm. I I think it's easy to hear this conversation and have like a derogatory idea of the concept of games, but we love games.

I guarantee there are games in your life that you play that you love. So when I say I'm playing this game, I say it lovingly. I enjoy playing the game. I wake up excited to play the game. Yep.

Find a game that you're excited to play.

I think that when you're pursuing something with great discipline and especially when you're ramping up the pressure on it because you need it to happen, the first thing that you so often lose is a sense of fun and lightness. So it's kinda like you need not just to play the game, but to find a way to, you know, to to to have the depth, but to stay spiritually light within it. Right?

Yeah. I think if you find a game that you enjoy playing, then that playfulness will be there, you know. Games are different from jobs. A lot of time we accept jobs that we don't like, and we do what we do in them to get by and get the outcome that we want, which is just the wage. But games, there there is an innate playfulness that comes out when you recognize you are playing a game.

Mhmm. And you should choose games where that spirit is intact.

Yeah. Lovely, Jay. So so look, I I I know we've jot maybe maximum another fifteen minutes, so I just wanna, if it's cool, just kinda turbocharge and really just go after you with a bunch of questions because I think there's so much exciting stuff in here. And so one of the things that I was I read you saying was like, it's it's about what platform. Right?

You're struggling artists and you're like, okay. I'm gonna get into the game. What platform and how? Now two things. So you one of the things that you've advised is resist diversification as long as possible, meaning go after one platform.

And and I find this, like, really interesting, and I just thought and and you're also talking about how each platform has its own culture. So I thought maybe you could just give us a quick insight into the thinking behind that.

Yeah. I mean, my my thoughts on this are changing a little bit in this moment in time we are right now, but let me let me give both cases. Yep. So because each platform I view as a game, it's a big investment to win that game because there are games within the games. Let me give you an example.

You you would think that, creating great content on Instagram is what you need to succeed at the Instagram game. Mhmm. But what you might also realize is actually, Instagram has different priorities at times. When reels became new, they overemphasized reels as content they wanted to show in the feed. Mhmm.

So if you're playing the Instagram game, you need to recognize, oh, the rules of game just changed. The playing field changed. Actually, for me to succeed this game, I need to get good at reels, which might have been a new muscle for you.

I'm so slow at that. Yeah. I'm so slow at catching up.

Yeah. And also, you recognize that this is a social platform. So there are advantages to collaborating with other accounts who are also playing the game. Mhmm. You know?

So it's no longer, hey, let me snap a photo of what I'm doing and do a quick behind the scenes story in my caption. That might not actually be what moves the needle in that game. You would actually if you took the same amount of time and applied that towards making a real and or building relationships with other accounts, then you're gonna win that game.

Mhmm.

You can see how just succeeding on Instagram can be quickly become a very time intensive endeavor. Yeah. And if you apply that same thought to the other platforms that are out there, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, you gotta are you gonna do that across all those platforms?

Yeah. Overwhelm very quickly.

You know? The the analogy I like is if you're trying to be a straight a student, would it be easier if you're taking one class or five classes? Classes?

Right.

So historically, I've said pick one platform, become a student of that game, get really good at it. Because if you do get good at it, then you can leverage what you've built on that platform Mhmm. With somebody who is on the next platform you wanna conquer. And we've seen this happen before where somebody says, I got a really big following on LinkedIn. I got nothing on Twitter.

I'm gonna go to somebody who has a big following on Twitter and nothing on LinkedIn, and we're gonna support each other and we're gonna help each other grow quickly. Yeah.

Like Justin Justin Welch did that very effectively, didn't he? Going from LinkedIn over Twitter and then vice versa helping other people on LinkedIn as well.

Yep. So you have that leverage. If you don't have a platform, if you don't have an audience on either one of those platforms, then you don't have anything to trade to get there. So it it benefits you to to do that relatively Yeah. Yes.

It benefits you to do that relatively, focus. Now here's where my opinions changed just a little bit as of late. We we are now in this very interesting time where I see essentially two different modalities of content. You have short form written content, and you have short form short form vertical video. Unfortunately, a lot of, like, photography is just in a rough spot right now.

Yep. Just doesn't work as well because platforms are incentivized to push short form vertical video. But if you are creating short form vertical video, you could pretty effectively grow simultaneously on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts. Right. So I would pick one of those as a priority and try to become a better student there.

Mhmm. But you could take the same raw material, which is the produced video and cross post it with pretty minimal effort.

Increase your surface area. Increase your surface area. Yeah.

The same is true of writing right now with Twitter, LinkedIn, and, threads by Instagram. So pick one of those, and you can you can effectively be on all three. So it really, the question is if you're gonna if you're gonna play the game of discovery platforms, do you wanna play the writing game or do wanna play the short form vertical video Mhmm. And you can you can pretty effectively be on three fields of play at the same time.

Yeah. So I find that really interesting because I was all one of the reflections I was going to make is, you know, even though I sort of absolutely recognize the the validity of what you're recommending, it's obviously been in terms of getting or or you're giving both sides there, but earlier you were saying knuckle down to one and really kind of get it going. And there's a lot to be said for that, but then the interest the other side of that is so I, after about ten years, just got back onto Twitter very recently, and like you've said, it there's such a different culture there, and one of the interesting things okay. I've got the newsletter, so I can kind of populate the sort of future using Hyper Fury with like taking little nuggets out, but then suddenly it's like, okay, wow, I've got my really developed all my thoughts, and you can start putting that back into Instagram, then people really like sort of nicely sophisticated short short form text in carousels or as opposed sort of over there. So suddenly, it's like it so starts cross pollinating the message, which I find very interesting.

And the crazy thing is, Jay, I've got far few far fewer followers on Twitter, but at the moment, a lot of the growth that I'm having on my newsletter and on the podcast is actually coming from Twitter. So it's kind of like, it's so strange how

Mhmm.

How it evolves. And I think maybe part of the reason for that is that, I mean, obviously, no one wants to be promoted at all the time, but there's a very sort of useful strategy on Twitter where you can put in your podcast or your newsletter in the tweet below, and then people, if they if they like the tweet, they'll just check it out, and then every, you know, and then people will start gravitating towards that. So it's so interesting the the strategic kind of things, and so this goes to my next question. I have the sense, having gone back onto Twitter and go, man, this is like it was such so different to my experience ten years ago, you know, I was shooting documentaries, like, over in The US doing a documentary on the the the Trump Clinton election, and it was just like full of polarization and anger and hate, and I was like, damn. I'm not sure.

I kind of, like, really want to be a part of it part of this in that way, just the sheer toxicity. But since I've gone back to Twitter, I found this much more kind of supportive niche between solopreneurism and people are interested because I'm getting in, you know, I'm into the business of as a creative getting going as a solopreneur and activating some of these things that you're sort of, you know, guiding everyone on. But I wonder if artists are sleeping about Twitter, and I wonder if solopreneurs are sleeping on Instagram. Now I know, of course, there's lots of artists who are massive on Twitter, and there's solopreneurs who are, you know, doing well on Instagram, but I would you say that's a fair reflection?

Broad strokes, yes. I think that there there is a different vibe in a different audience, which is why I was so excited about threads and still continue to post on threads. Because to me, it's it's combining those two worlds. The the ability I have to do short form writing and the audience of Instagram, which I think is, comparatively less exposed to, solopreneur ideas.

Yeah.

That's right. You know you know what I mean? So Yep. I think that's exciting.

How's it going on threads?

It's been going well. If you look like, here's what I look at. Mhmm. If I look at engagement to follower ratio, that ratio is much higher on threads than it is on Twitter. Like, will get a similar response on threads as I do on Twitter.

Maybe like a third as much engagement in terms of pure metrics like likes, tweets, whatever. Mhmm. But I have, like, a twentieth of the following on threads that I do on Twitter. So that's really interesting to me. It it says that that audience is interested in that type of content, and I I think there's a lot of opportunity for growth there.

The other interesting thing about threads in particular, people think that it's threads versus Twitter. People are gonna leave Twitter to join threads, but that doesn't even have to be true. Yeah. Twitter has 400,000,000 users. Instagram has like one and a half billion.

Yeah. So they could just convert Mhmm. You know, a fair amount of Instagram users to threads users Mhmm. And be as big as Twitter very,

very quickly.

Now it's it's building a culture of people who use it though is the challenge.

Mhmm. But I think the other thing is is also being aware of the mind that is making the platform that you're a part of. Because when I look at some threads, when I think about the the Facebook experience, which as a page, you know, universally as pages, it's like the engagement died and you had to pay to play. And it's a kind of quite a sort of normal playbook that when, you know, everyone knows that TikTok got so massive because you just got so much engagement, and they were just that's what people want. Let's help them get it and give them the good stuff.

And whereas I think with I think there's always this sense of, like, because they've got such a massive audience with Facebook, like, you know, the reach is far down on Instagram to what it was three or four years ago. And so I'm a little bit kinda cautious because I'm like, right. I've got pretty strong audience and following on Instagram, really nice community there, what, like twelve twelve and a half k or something like this, and I and I and I really love it there. But then I'm like, okay. I could go on to to threads, but then essentially, I'm not diversifying, if you like, my portfolio of platforms because I'm like, Twitter is really offering something different for me, and it's a different type of engagement.

It's also a different type of, you know, different type of people are attracted to Twitter, to Instagram. Of course, some people crossover that self evident, but it's just a it's a just a different type of mindset. So I'm like, well, like you said about this sense of overwhelm and digital dilution. So for me, I'm trying to kind of play my battle. So, yeah, I did finally start on TikTok this year, and I'm just using it, you know, all the reels I've got on Instagram, I've gone to TikTok, and actually it's going quite quite well, funnily enough.

But it's a sort of similar thing with Twitter. I'm like, okay. Actually, I'm just gonna knuckle down on Twitter, and I'm gonna choose that compromise because I also you know, one of my pain points, Jay, is that having kind of got my you know, I've got really consistent this year, so it's not for a long time, but much more kind of, like, organized about the content creation side as in a newsletter. It's not a podcast out of sheer love just a lot. I I love, you know, yabbering away with people, but I feel like the the love of it is going you know, I have the sense it's going to be a sort of longer form type of thing.

But the only thing as as I've got more kind of intentionalized with what it is I'm doing, and as, you know, as you said, recognizing, okay, that's also the game, and it's like, if you want to be in the arts, here's the pathway in order to be able to continue and function. So I've kind of like really embraced it, but my but my pain point is that it takes it also takes so much work in and of itself. I don't mean that as a complaint. That's I love that type of work, but I must say it's eating away at the pure artistic time, whether it's going to rehearsal room with the guitar, trying to learn the piano, and, you know, going out shooting short documentary. You know, it's just that kind of thing, that that time allocation and trade off.

So that's my kind of pain point at the moment. It's like figuring out how it's gotta keep true to the artistic soul and sensibility, and then developing the other platforms, but making sure that you're not suffocating that kind of, like, more purist artistic creation if you like.

Yeah. And may maybe this is a good kinda note to wrap up on. Yep. Something that something that I see from folks right now is what I would call a sawdust fallacy. Back in 2020, Jack Butcher had this great idea.

He was like, you should sell your sawdust, is what he said. And the idea was if you are creating something of depth, a book, a long form video, an essay. Through the process of creating that work, maybe as a song, there are going to be things that hit the cutting room floor. Mhmm. Maybe you took out this verse or changed this verse.

Maybe you cut out the scene from the video. Maybe you took out an entire chapter of your book. All of that, like a woodworker or a carpenter, is like sawdust from the process of making the final thing. And there's still value in that sawdust, and sawdust makes for great short form social media content. What we see happening now though, because people see results in terms of, followers on social media, they made their entire being the creation of sawdust as a product.

Mhmm. And so I think you have to look at that and say, am I sharing the sawdust from my process? Right. Or is sawdust my product? Because sawdust doesn't actually make a very strong, enduring, beautiful product, you know?

Yeah. And if you glue a bunch of sawdust together, you can do that, but that's particleboard. It's not a very good building material.

Yep. But I think that's a lovely it's a lovely sort of like thought. It's about the sort of you've got you've got the artistic product, whatever it is you're creating, that sort of deep work, longer form creation, but it's like you cannot ignore the process of putting it out. And it's like, look, this is just how we have to be in the world is to find a way to make it work. And that means finding your audience and recognizing that not only is that part of the work, but can be enormously fun and is a part of the work.

Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. Totally.

So so, Jay, just look. If we can I just can I ask two two very short questions? One. One. So one short question.

Oh, thanks, man. So it was just with podcasts. I just wanna ask everyone one question about podcasting because you're so consistent with it. At what point do you stop going crazy before you start a podcast going, I need to research more? The reason I ask is because I'm like, you know, I I done so much research.

I feel very confident, like, you know, in in myself, but then it's like, you always want to have done more, and you never feel quite ready. So you were like with Sahil, you know, Sahil the other day, and I was like, what was your did you have an emotion do you still get that emotional feeling of go, damn, I'm not ready, or you have you just got to that point? Yeah.

No. It never it never goes away. Yeah. It's it's still there. What I've taken to lately though, like, feel like it's it's a it's a bigger problem when you are inviting guests on because of their name and not because you know and admire their work.

Yep. Because if you don't already know and admire their work, then it's gonna be a lot more time to research.

Sure.

If you know them well and you're having them on because you're a fan or a Yep. A beneficiary of their work Mhmm. Then you don't need as much research. Mhmm. Because the thing you have to remember in podcasting is you don't want to be too far ahead of your listeners asking questions because you have preexisting knowledge that the audience might not, you know.

So there there are some great podcasters who go in with very, very little research

Yep.

So that they can play the role of curious listener. But there's definitely a line to toe there because you definitely want the guest to feel like you are honoring their time, and you're you're not asking all the same questions they get asked all the time. Yep. You want your interview to be a little bit different than other ones that they've done to keep them out of conversation ruts. But

Sure. Yeah.

I I'm finding that, I'm doing less research than I used to.

That's really good to know. Thank you. And final question then is if you were just to put out a message to let's say a struggling artist out there, someone who's kind of like they've they're fired up and they know that they've got good stuff inside them, they're just hitting some walls or some ruts. Just wondering if there's a a little message from Jay Clouse to those people.

This is a long term game as as we've kind of already covered. Time is in your favor, especially if you have an eye on getting a little bit better every time Mhmm. You ship something, every time you do something. You can't just tread water and expect time to be in your favor. You do have to continue to get better.

But, you know, we don't get mad at a seedling for not being a tree. Like, it's it's going to become that at some point. It's part of the process. Some things take time. But if you are if you are growing and leaning into time and embracing time, then it will play out in your favor.

Wonderful last words, Jay. Thank you for being who you are, for giving me the shot here, and it's just so lovely to connect with you personally.

Of course. Same, Jim. Thanks for having me on the show. Congrats on what seems to be a very successful launch of the podcast. Keep doing great work.

Thanks again, man. Have a beautiful day ahead. You too. Bye, Jake.