Build a membership or community with Jay Clouse

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In 2022, Jay Clouse made over $300,000 in revenue. Almost half of this came from his paid membership, The Lab. In this episode, Jay shares how he built his community. He covers everything from community engagement, pricing, and when to start a membership or community as a creator.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Akta: Today's episode is brought to you by Riverside. We've been using Riverside to record all of our conversations with our creative guests remotely. Remote recordings can be really stressful if you or your guests don't have the best internet connection, but Riverside is able to keep high quality video and audio no matter what your wifi is like.

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[00:00:39] Jay: It really came down to like, okay, at what stage do I want to help people? What's the price point that makes sense for this so that, uh, the size of it doesn't have to be big for it to be worthwhile and worth my time? Cuz I also didn't want it to be really big. And as you know, we capped membership at 200 total members.

[00:00:56] Jay: So it was a lot of like playing around with numbers.

[00:01:08] Akta: Jay Clouse is a creator that helps other creators with his newsletter, creator Science, his podcast, creative Elements and his community, the Lab, he's helping other creators to become professional creator. If you are creator who's considering a membership or community, then this episode is for you.

[00:01:27] Jay: My business is called Creator Science and I'm basically documenting all the experiments that I'm running as a creator.

[00:01:34] Jay: All the experiments that I'm talking to creators on my podcast about so that future creators can really shorten the learning curve to making this a full-time professional thing for them. and it's a lot of fun. Uh, I, I write a weekly newsletter. I have the weekly podcast, which is audio and video, and now I have the membership community called the Lab.

[00:01:56] Akta: Yeah. And when I think about you, I, I really do think about community because you are building such a strong community with what you do at the lab. How did you learn how to build a community and to manage a community? Where did that experience come from?

[00:02:10] Jay: I think it actually goes back to 2012 when I was organizing startup weekend events here in Columbus, Ohio.

[00:02:17] Jay: Those events were like weekend long events, and the idea was on Friday night, a bunch of people would pitch ideas, forms would, or teams would form around those ideas. And then by the end of the weekend you would have like a functioning MVP of a startup company. And we had like 150 people at these events most of the time.

[00:02:37] Jay: And so the community building there was really in instructive because the organization as a whole Startup weekend was a global organization that had events in like hundreds of cities all over the world. And they did an incredible job of connecting their global community at different levels. Like they had the attendees and they had organizers and they had facilitators, then they had the internal team at startup weekend.

[00:02:59] Jay: So I learned a lot from that experience and then it probably, um, I learned a lot then also. In 2017 when I started doing this program is like a 12 week mastermind called Unreal Collective. And on the back end of that we had a community that wasn't very like intentionally done at first, but really taught me a lot about how to do community online.

[00:03:22] Jay: And

[00:03:22] Akta: And what did you learn from Unreal collective like that you've taken now into the lab?

[00:03:27] Jay: Well, it started with, I had like five people in a. and we met once a week and I just thought to myself, it would be great if we can communicate when we aren't like on the live calls. So I put together a Slack community and basically said in this Slack group we can communicate between calls.

[00:03:45] Jay: And then when that group finished up, I had three other groups start, so I had 15 more people and I brought them into Slack. And then, you know, 12 weeks later I had another group of 15 or 20 added the Slack. So I was very slowly growing the Slack community and it got up to be about 115 people over like a three year period. And what I learned was one, like how to make those communities of vibrant and how to connect people even across different groups. And two, like the value of integrating people slowly into communities if you're really trying to have like a peer-to-peer aspect to it. Um, because a lot of people will, like a lot of CRE creators especially, they have an audience and they see that there are community platforms now that didn't exist when I was doing this originally, and they'll think.

[00:04:32] Jay: I can just throw my audience at this platform and a community will form. But it becomes like this shouting match of a bunch of people competing for the creator's attention and then like shouting at each other and it's not great. So it, it taught me a lot about the value of growing slowly and integrating people and building real relationships between people.

[00:04:54] Jay: If you wanted to truly feel like a community and not just a group of people with a shared.

[00:05:01] Akta: And how did the lab come about? Did you already have the Newsletter Room podcast and people were reaching out to you about wanting to be a part of community? Or was it something that you knew would you would do because of Unreal Collective?

[00:05:13] Jay: So, unreal went really well. . And in 2020, uh, Matt Gartland, who is Pat Flynn's business partner, reached out to me to help them design and launch their membership community at SPI. And Matt reached out to me because he had been a part of that Unreal collective community, and he saw what I did to help connect people So in 2020, I come into S P I as a contractor and I help them design and launch this membership community. We hired Jill, who is just an amazing. Uh, community Mind. And in, uh, 2021 or at the end of 2020, Matt basically came to me and said, we want you to lead our community team. Can we just acquire your business, unreal Collective and bring you in to lead our community team?

[00:06:01] Jay: So we worked that out and we did that in 2021. And I led the community experience team at S P I and we had s p I pro, we had their course community. Uh, we, we transitioned their Facebook community over a circle. . So I had like a lot of experience even with Circle. Then at that point, I was still doing my creator work in the background, like the, the podcast had already started.

[00:06:22] Jay: It was already going. I've been writing a newsletter since 2017. Those were all assets that they didn't purchase, and I told them like, I'm still gonna be building this. And so this year I went back out onto my own because it just became too much to do both things. And in doing that, I freed up a bunch of time because I wasn't leading that community anymore. And I also missed it. So I decided that that could be a meaningful part of my business in something that I wanted to bring back into my life.

[00:06:51] Akta:  And how did you decide what that community was going to look like? Who was it going to be for, what you were going to offer them? What was the value of that community going to be?

[00:07:00] Jay: I thought about this a lot. Uh, going back to like November, I actually, this is pretty meta, but I actually started a really small Discord community. It's like 40 people. and the promise was, Hey, I'm gonna try to design a membership for myself and my business that's going to serve creators. I need to work through intentionally what that looks like, so I'm happy with it.

If you join this Discord, you will get like weekly updates essentially on how I'm thinking about building this. So it was a community that was watching me design my actual community, and it took me like three months because I couldn't figure out how to make it work. It's really common for people to, to like the idea of a membership and launch it and underprice it, not sell that many seats.

Jay: And so suddenly you're doing all the work of maintaining a community and, and maintaining a membership, but it's not paying you all that much. And it's really stressful because it's a lot of work. And if you feel. , all of this work isn't worth it. You start to resent this thing, it's difficult to back away from it.

Jay: So I spent like a good three months just designing what this would look like, knowing that my audience were creators themselves, people who wanted to make this like a professional pursuit. And it really came down to like, okay, at what stage do I wanna help people? What's the price point that makes sense for this?

[00:08:24] Jay: So, The size of it doesn't have to be big for it to be worthwhile and worth my time, cuz I also didn't want it to be really big. And as you know, we capped membership at 200 total members and so it was a lot of like playing around with numbers.

[00:08:38] Akta: Honestly. I find it really interesting that you had like almost this pilot group to kind of practice on where did you get those people?

[00:08:45] Akta: Was that from your existing community or did you ask creative? How did you?

[00:08:48] Jay: I, I have, I had some level of audience already, like on social media in my newsletter that I've been writing for five years, and it, it was pretty easy for me just to go out to the world in my existing audience and say, Hey, I'm gonna build a membership for this audience.

[00:09:04] Jay: I don't know what it looks like yet, but if you wanna follow along, maybe if you're building your own community, I think it would benefit you to watch how I'm going about designing this process. Because I had also run a couple of workshops last year around, uh, community building and member. and I had like 300 people go through those workshops, those paid workshops.

[00:09:22] Jay: So I reached out to mostly that audience and say, if you're still working on this, here's like a behind the scenes over my shoulder, look at how I'm going about building my membership.

[00:09:31] Akta: And you've already touched on your pricing model, but you recently increased your prices. Was that always part of the plan or did you kind of see the value of the community start to change and so you changed your prices according?

[00:09:44] Jay: It was always part of the plan to some degree. I actually thought for a while that I was going to have much more frequent and consistent price changes. Like I thought for a while I would, I would price it in such a way that the first 10 people got this price and then the next 10 people got this price and the next 10 people.

[00:09:59] Jay: So like almost raising it every 10 or 20 people. Uh, and I still think that's a decent model because that creates some level of urgency all the time and reason to join because they don't do like an open and closed launch. The challenge with that is actually messaging that and, and doing it, it, it, it just seemed difficult to message to people like, Hey, the price is gonna change every 10 people and this is where you should keep track of how many people have joined.

[00:10:27] Jay: And it just seemed complicated. So I decided instead to, to still add price increases over time, but I wanted to do fewer of them and I didn't wanna make it like an explicit part of the marketing consist like all the time. I just wanted to, every once in a while say, Hey, the, the membership price is going up.

[00:10:46] Jay: And the reason, another reason why that's effective and powerful I think is because it rewards your biggest fans for taking a leap of faith with you early, because the earlier that you decide, yeah, I'm going to join this thing. , the cheaper it is. So, um, as I raise the price, my biggest fans are just like, oh wow.

[00:11:09] Jay: It's, it's a good thing I got in early and I'm glad that I trusted you on this cuz this is awesome. And now the cost is, you know, 50% higher or something. So I, I think it's, I think it's a good strategy, but I'm not gonna do it a lot.

[00:11:24] Akta: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And you did say that when you were thinking about the pricing, you had to think about what made sense for you, like, you know, in terms of what, how much time you were putting in and everything like that.

[00:11:35] Akta: What about in terms of like the value you were gonna give to the community? Like how did you decide on, you know, I'm gonna do like a, a weekly call or you know, the monthly overviews and things like that. How did you decide what was gonna be worth that price? .

[00:11:50] Jay: The bigger challenge for me is boundaries, because I give of myself a lot in these places.

[00:11:57] Jay: Yeah. So I, I honestly probably deliver the value of like a $10,000 per year membership. So it was more a question of like, what, what price can I use that I think is palatable for my existing audience, but also plays the role of filter. For somebody who has the right level of commitment and the right stage of their creator business.

[00:12:24] Jay: Um, because genuinely, like I, I see the same type of membership priced all over the board. Like some people charge less than $10 a month for their membership. Some people charge $20,000 a year from the membership. The membership. And I, I didn't think I had a big enough audience to charge like $10,000 a year or something.

[00:12:46] Jay: But I do think, you know, it's, it's a bargain right now because I price my own hourly rate. If people are like, Hey, can I hire you to consult for an hour at $500 an hour? And right now people can join the lab for $1,500 per year. I guarantee everybody in there is getting more than three hours of my time throughout the course of a year.

[00:13:06] Jay: So it's, um, the value's never really been a question. It's just been, it's just been kind of, , what do I expect? People who are at this stage of their creator journey who want to be professional creators but may not quite be there yet? What do I expect? They'll be willing to invest in me based on the trust I've built with them for a year long period and is worthwhile for the amount of time that I know I'm gonna put in.

[00:13:33] Akta: Yeah. And I find it quite interesting because I've been part of other communities before, but usually there's like a whole team involved in that community in order to manage it. Whereas I'm part of the lab and it's just you running the actual community. But it's really good because everyone is very active and even if you don't reply straight away, you'll always get replies from other people.

[00:13:55] Akta: How did you facilitate that kind of community where you, you know, you, you are obviously running it, but you know, the rest of the community's also going to be equally active.

[00:14:04] Jay: You have to earn that. You have to, you have to earn that type of support and culture from your community. And it really comes down to this idea that's called modeling in the community world.

[00:14:18] Jay: And modeling means you need to showcase the behaviors that you want other people to then mimic and perpetuate. And as a community builder, you need to be the model for your members for a long time so that those people understand what type of behavior. , okay. What type of behavior is encouraged? Which type of behavior is appreciated?

[00:14:40] Jay: Which type of behavior is helpful? And then you start to spin the flywheel because once people start taking on behaviors that you're showing and you start appreciating them for it, they're gonna do it more and more. And then other members are gonna see that those people are, are being appreciated and, uh, you know, finding success because they're behaving this way.

[00:14:59] Jay: And so it'll ripple outwards further and further to new members. Things like, But you really have to earn that. You have to sh, you have to show that for a long time. You have to make people feel like they are getting a lot from the space so that they feel not obligated, but they, they feel compelled to, to give back to it also.

[00:15:19] Jay: And that takes a while to, to spin that flywheel. Like a lot of, a lot of community builders will launch this space and they will want to, you know, take a step back and not spend that much time and hope that the community sustains itself. But they haven't, they haven't built. Behavior within the community yet cause they didn't spend enough time modeling it themselves.

[00:15:38] Jay: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:38] Akta: I love that answer because when I think of communities, I think of almost like Reddit, where you know, you've got community rules and they're laid out for you versus what you are saying, which is, you know, show versus tell. And I think that's a lot more meaningful. Um, how did you attract the right type of people to your community?

[00:15:55] Akta: So when you set out you knew the kind of creators that you wanted, how did you actually then attract. .

[00:16:02] Jay: That's a great question. I don't actually know, like, I think, I think it traces back to who I am as a creator and, and making things that other people resonate with and respect. Mm-hmm. , because the first people that joined were people that have been following my, my writing and my podcasts for a long time.

[00:16:19] Jay: Because literally when I launched the thing, I launched it in two stages. And I talk about this in my course and build up Beloved membership, but I had two member or two stages. The first one. what I call a private opening, and the second stage being a public launch. So the private opening was just me going out on social media or to my email list and saying, Hey, I'm opening a membership soon.

[00:16:39] Jay: I don't have anything to show you, but if you trust me, you can join now for half off for life. And so people had like nothing. They knew nothing other than Jay is making a membership. And the people that trusted me and leaped at that, you know, they locked in a really great. , but the only thing they knew is that they trusted me and that came from my work.

[00:17:01] Jay: So, you know that that group of people are really core to the people who join later. So those people, you know, I'm lucky that they are also talented, aspirational creators and their own right, because they're good experience and their network. Led to new people because those people, you know, spread the good word.

[00:17:25] Jay: And they said, this is really great. This is, this is more active and engaged than most of their communities that I'm a part of. Um, and it, it kind of perpetuates like pricing plays some role of filter and so does the, the purpose that you state of your membership. But it, it really kind of branches out from the original members and the, you know, the founding team or founding person within the me.

[00:17:48] Akta: and you've spoken about different types of creators on your blog before, like entertainment or educational, do you think any type of creator could build a community?

[00:17:58] Jay:  Oh, for sure. I think, um, it's going to like, I think in general when I think about the, the, the contrast between creator educators and creator entertainers, I think that creator educators have more.

[00:18:15] Jay: More roots for earning revenue than creator entertainers. And I also think that on average, creator educators can charge higher prices for things broad strokes, but broadly, I believe that to be true. But I do believe that any creator can build a community. It just depends on what that community looks like.

[00:18:33] Jay: If they're an entertainment-based creator, a personality based creator who they're building a community of people that just like love them, wanna be their friend, want more access to them. , that person probably won't pay $1,500 a year for that on average. Again, you know, broad stroke. But typically communities that I see on the entertainment or personality side are lower priced.

[00:18:57] Jay: They're more content based than they are, you know, peer to peer. Um, but still perfectly.

[00:19:06] Akta: Is it a revenue stream that all creators should consider them? Or like, you know, if you're thinking about versus courses or other types of revenue streams, where does a community fit in? How do you decide if it's the right thing for you as a creator?

[00:19:20] Jay: It depends on how you set up your membership. Like I think, I think a membership is probably worth considering for all creators, but to me, communities and memberships are slightly different. Like a community is often the biggest. Value proposition of a membership is like, Hey, join my membership, and you get access to the community and you also get access to X, Y, and Z.

[00:19:39] Jay: But, uh, managing a community is a lot of work and it's never done, and it doesn't really get easier, you know, like, it, it, you'll have to put in that amount of work or your team pretty consistently. And if the community grows, like maybe even more work. So I think anyone should consider a membership because a membership debate can be like a, a subscription to content.

[00:20:02] Jay: Some other community experience that's a little bit less peer to peer, like a lot of memberships that operate at scale. The model is you get extra content from us on this basis. We have a, we uh, a weekly or monthly call. Otherwise you're getting like this exclusive, you know, type of content and that scale's a little bit easier cuz you're not promising that the value comes from connection to other members, which as I shared, like, has a lot to, to build and get rolling.

[00:20:31] Jay: And I think if you don't understand the amount of time that it takes to dedicate to building a community, you wanna understand that before you go down the community route. Mm-hmm. , because it's a huge undertaking. The pricing plays a huge factor, and like I said, it's just not super, super scalable. So you wanna have eyes wide open and understand what that would look like for you ongoing.

[00:20:56] Jay: because financially it might not make a lot of sense for some creators and even from like a time perspective and lifestyle design perspective that might not be worth it to a lot of creators.

[00:21:05] Akta: I feel like I understand that because I'm part of the lab, so I see what you are doing. So do you mind just like walking through your week and like sharing how much of your time is actually going to the lab and what you're doing each day, just so people can understand how much time it actually does take?

[00:21:22] Jay: It's, it's hard to calculate because. when you do, when you do community the way I that I do, and it's more peer to peer and there's a lot of yourself personally supporting people, you could bucket time throughout the day and be like, this is my half hour, hour that I'm putting into the community right now.

[00:21:43] Jay: The challenge with that is though a lot of the value that comes from community relates to the timeliness that I get response. because people often use communities as a way to support them or get feedback, or ask for help. And you know, we live in a world that wants instant gratification. So if I need help with something, I'm gonna Google it and hope that I find an answer right now.

[00:22:03] Jay: If I don't find an answer, this is what community is great for. I can ask other people. But again, like if I post in a community looking for help, I want to get help now, like as quickly as possible. So I try to keep a pretty close eye on the community at all times. So it's like all throughout the day, I might be dropping little 10 minute time chunks here and there answering direct messages or answering posts.

[00:22:26] Jay: I think in total I probably spend an average of, you know, one to two hours per day in the lab in some form or another. , but typically, you know, I, I think about the flow of my week generally. I keep Mondays and Fridays open. I keep every morning open until 11:00 AM so I have lots of like deep work time and then the lab and managing the community is what I try to fit in around all other things.

[00:22:53] Jay: Mm-hmm. because it's less predictable. So if I just like consistently check in to make sure that there's nothing that was posted recently that needs attention. Then I can, you know, move on to something else. But I don't, I don't bucket a lot of hard time into my calendar other than live events because I try to just be responsive.

[00:23:13] Akta: And you've mentioned that, you know, you didn't have a huge audience to attract your community and that, you know, you've kept your community at 200, so audience size shouldn't matter. But I feel like that would be quite a limiting thought for a lot of creators. Like, I'm not big enough yet to have a community, you know, how do they overcome that almost imposter syndrome, I guess, to know if they're ready or not?

[00:23:39] Jay: Well, the, the first. Community that I built, unreal Collective. As I was sharing with you, I didn't have an audience at all. It was, and it wasn't a community play at first, but what it taught me was that you can certainly build a community really slowly over a period of years and have that be meaningful and impactful.

[00:23:57] Jay: So, you know, those first five people, I [00:24:00] personally reached out to them and said, Hey, I think this is something that you would enjoy and get a lot. the next 15 people. There's still a lot of like direct sales honestly, of saying, Hey, I think based on conversations we've had before, this program can help you.

[00:24:13] Jay: And, you know, 110 people out of this community over a period of three years is pretty slow growth. Like the lab had more than 110 people in like four months of time. So it's, it's certainly possible. But it, it's, uh, it can be a manual process. It can come from a lot of like conversations that you're having in direct selling almost to make that happen.

[00:24:38] Jay: And that's okay. Like you gotta start somewhere. And if you do put a lot of time into a small number of people in this community, they're gonna have really great experience. They're gonna tell their friends, you're gonna have testimonials and case studies to talk about this thing. You've gotta build the audience from somewhere.

[00:24:53] Jay: Why not on the back of. A really positive experience for a small number of people

[00:24:58] Akta: and for creators who already have that audience. If they came to you and said, Jay, I wanna set up a community, where would you advise 'em to start?

[00:25:08] Jay: Well, you've gotta start with understanding what is the purpose of that community.

[00:25:13] Jay: You know, when when we join a paid membership or a paid community, we are essentially hiring that place. to do something for us. What are people hiring your community or membership to do for them? You need to be really clear on what that is because if you're not clear, people will make assumptions and you won't know what those assumptions are.

[00:25:32] Jay: So you don't even know how you can be successful in, uh, fulfilling the promise that you implicitly made to these people. So you've gotta get really clear about why does your community exist, who does it exist for? And then you'll be off to a good start.

[00:25:47] Akta: And do you think platforms. Important to consider?

[00:25:50] Akta: Like does that affect the community much?

[00:25:54] Jay: Honestly, no. Like you wanna pick a platform that you enjoy using because you're gonna be the one spending a lot of time in it. But people love to blame platforms for inactivity or lack of engagement. But the truth is like if you create an experience that is gratifying, meaning that people are grateful, they invested the time and attention they do.

[00:26:16] Jay: they will go out of their way to go to a forum or some web-based place. Any platform will work. You should just pick one that feels right for you and your working style in the culture of your community. I do think there's a dichotomy between chat-based communities and forum based communities. We haven't really gotten to the point where there's a perfect.

[00:26:36] Jay: Merger of the two. So most communities kind of lean one way or another. Forum facilitates scale a lot better than chat does, but chat feels a lot more intimate and it's kind of easier to to grow and get people engaged. So you gotta think about what type of culture and experience feels right for your membership or community.

[00:26:56] Jay: but generally, you know, if there's a tool you like, you can make that successful.

[00:26:59] Akta:  And how do you check in with your community to see how they're feeling or you know, if you should change your offerings at all, or you know, just staying on top of the general consensus of. How people are feeling in that community.

[00:27:13] Akta: How do you stay on top of that?

[00:27:15] Jay: It's important to be open to feedback and also seek it out. So we have a suggestion box that's a linked in the forum at all times. That's anonymous. People can leave anonymous suggestions there one or two times per year, I send an anonymous member feedback survey to the membership.

[00:27:32] Jay: So those two things alone, you get a lot of. Really insightful ideas from. I also have in my onboarding email sequence and email asking for people to reply with any feedback that they have. And periodically I'll just make posts inside the community and say, Hey, here's what I'm thinking about. Or, Hey, how are things going?

[00:27:50] Jay: You know, what do you think about this? And ask for, uh, feedback publicly. So it's important to have some sort of practice and structure of regularly checking in with people. But, um, you know, most important is that when people voice their feed, , you are appreciative and you don't, uh, get defensive or make them feel like, oh, I shouldn't have said that.

[00:28:10] Jay: Mm-hmm. , you want to cultivate that feedback, um, proactively and show people how you're open to it. Yeah. That's

[00:28:19] Akta: really wholesome. I love it. And what's your favorite thing, Ben, about setting up this community?

[00:28:24] Jay: It's really hard to find close friends who understand what you're doing. So this community honesty is where I spend most of my time online because everyone in this community understands the pursuit that I'm doing, uh, that each other are doing.

[00:28:40] Jay: So it's been really nice to give people a venue to be honest, vulnerable, and also get some depth to their problems because most people in our lives as creators just don't understand what we do or how it works. And so you can't really get to a level of. or insight into the problems that you have. So my favorite part is just being, seeing like the depth of how people ask for help and give help to each other.

[00:29:06] Akta: Yeah, I can definitely vouch for that because I think being a creator can sometimes be quite lonely and it's just, there's just so much uncertainty with what you're doing at all times. So I feel like that community is just such a nice place to go to see what other people are doing and know that you're not.

[00:29:22] Akta: and just to constantly get that feedback that you can't really ask your family and friends for. So it, it is really meaningful. Um, I'm gonna end with a quick fire round, so I'm just gonna ask you five questions, which I ask all of the creators that come on air, and I just want you to answer with the first thing that comes to mind.

[00:29:37] Akta: Okay. So what's your favorite thing about being a creator?

[00:29:41] Jay: Freedom and flexibility. Like just being able to control my time throughout the day and throughout the week and throughout the month. , it's great to just have full control over your own

[00:29:50] Akta: schedule. What's something that gives you the most inspiration for your creations?

[00:29:55] Jay: I listen to a lot of people in the entertainment and comedy world, and I like that because it, it helps me think a little less like a shrewd business person and more like an artist. And that's helpful because then I can marry that with the shrewd business side of myself, , and usually create something pretty.

[00:30:16] Jay: That's very

[00:30:17] Akta: interesting because it's very different to what you do. So I, I like that actually. That's a good one. Um, what's your favorite tool to help you

[00:30:23] Jay: create? I feel like it's gotta be notion, like most of what I do is in notion at this point. And, um, I know that's like pretty boring cuz it's like organization and notes and, uh, you know, like, uh, A writing processor, a word processor, but that's basically it.

[00:30:41] Jay: yeah.

[00:30:41] Akta: Don't worry. To be honest, most of the people that come on air say the exact same thing. So you're not alone there. , , um, what's something that helps with your creator? Work-life

[00:30:50] Jay: balance? Uh, having a wife

[00:30:55] Jay: because I can't, I can't just like work all day every day because then, uh, that's not being a very good husband. So it's, it's a good, uh, forcing mechanism for me to not work all the. .

[00:31:07] Akta: That's cute. And what's one piece of advice that you'd give to other creators?

[00:31:12] Jay: This takes a lot of time. You just have to be patient.

[00:31:14] Jay: You have to be patient and consistent and resilient because if you're, if you're patient and consistent and you're focused on getting a little bit better every day, there's just no way that you're not going to be successful. But most people are unwilling to write it out long enough to see that return on effort.

[00:31:31] Jay: So if you're consistent and patient, just stay that way for literal. and you will be. Okay. Thank

[00:31:38] Akta: you so much, Jay. This has been such a fun conversation. I really appreciate you coming on air.

[00:31:42] Jay: Yeah, thanks for having me, Okta.

[00:31:45] Akta: I love the idea of community, this idea that people are there for each other and helping each other along their journey, and I think Jay has really successfully built one, the lab.

[00:31:54] Akta: I really hope this episode inspired you. If you're somebody who is considering a membership or a community, You can find Jay on Twitter on his website, creator Science. You can follow his podcast Creative Elements, or you can join the lab, his community. And if you are a creator, check out Passion Fruit. We help you to manage sponsorships, collaborations, and payments all in one place.