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Introducing The Infinite Creative, a newsletter for those who are creative, curious and constantly looking for opportunities to learn and grow. Read what I’m learning and thinking about when it comes to being more intentional, productive and impactful as a creative - one idea per day.
Jay Clouse helps creatives thrive as business owners.
Jay created Unreal Collective which is a community of creators and he built Freelancing School to help you become your own boss. In his podcast Creative Elements, Jay talks to high-profile creators about the nitty gritty of building their creative careers.
Jay has a lot to share about building community, having built his own online community and advising other brands and businesses on how they establish successful communities of their own.
You can find Jay on twitter and instagram @jayclouse. If you enjoy this episode I’d love for you to reach out to Jay and tell him so.
Jay Clouse: How to Build an Online Community
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Matthew Carey
Hi Jay, and Welcome to Studio time.
Jay Clouse
Hey, Matt, thanks for having me.
Matthew Carey
I've been listening to your podcasts and reading your words for ages now. But for some of the people listening to this episode, this might be the first time they meet you. So, rather than me butcher it, could you give them a little introduction to who you are and what you do?
Jay Clouse
Yeah, generally, I like to explain what I do as helping creatives be more confident and successful business owners. I do that in a number of ways.
For the longest time, I've been facilitating an online accelerator called unreal collective—for founders, freelancers, people that are trying to make a living from the things that they make. And over the last year or so I've started diversifying into online courses through a platform called Freelancing School where I focus on helping people make a living freelancing. And most recently, my podcast Creative Elements, where I talk to high profile creators about how they've earned a living from their art and creativity. Aspirational creators like Seth Godin, James Clear and Vanessa van Edwards. It's been a really fun show to put together. So you can see there's kind of a portfolio of activities here, but all of them really tie into this goal of helping creatives be more confident, successful business owners.
Matthew Carey
...which is great. I want to take you back a step now. Can you tell me about someone early on in your life who really encouraged your creativity?
Jay Clouse
Oh, wow. You know, the thing was, I had a deep seated belief that I was not creative until about 2017. And I can't think back really earlier than that when I had somebody overtly encouraging my creativity, other than maybe a guidance counselor that I had in college who encouraged me to take an independent study with the student newspaper, because I told her I like to write. But I had such a deep seated block around creativity until I worked with a coach actually in January of 2017.
Matthew Carey
Were there people quashing your dreams of creativity, or it just didn't feel like something you wanted to explore?
Jay Clouse
It just felt like something that I didn't have. I think systemically, we kind of protect this walled garden of creativity for some of these traditional art forms, like painting and drawing. And that was never a skill set that I had. And for some reason, I really conflated the idea of creativity with traditional art forms like that.
But I realized in college and then shortly out of college, that I was really, really good as an operator and someone that could execute on things. And so somehow, perversely, that just reinforced this narrative of what I was and what I was not. It just built this block around. “I'm a really great executer. But I don't have good ideas, I don't have the ability to create things myself. But if I have a plan, or if I have a goal, I can really, really do that.”
I don't think there was any good reason for why I had that block. But I really had to become very acutely aware of it to get past it.
Matthew Carey
Was there anybody around you, Jay, that now looking back from your perspective today, was modeling some sort of creativity that maybe you didn't recognize that way when you were younger?
Jay Clouse
Early on in college, while I was dabbling in journalism, I had this very strong desire to do comedy. And honestly, my love and respect for comedy and comedians is still very much there. But I looked at the lifestyle that comedians had, and the way in which they looked at the world and I loved that. I loved the idea of creating something funny out of nothing. The first club I tried to get into when I was in university was the Improv team, and I just couldn't do it. I got rejected every time that I tried out, and eventually, the people that were on the improv team (it was a pretty tight group), they created a satirical magazine. And I was able to get into that group because I was a better writer than I was improviser. And so all along the way, I was really interested in comedy and my sister who I think I really learned a lot from—I get a lot of my personality from my sister. (She's four years older than me). After college, she spent a couple years in Uganda in the Peace Corps and when she got back, she had spent this time listening to podcasts—she was listening to You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes—she got back and she was like, “I want to do comedy, and I want to write for TV.” So I've also been kind of living vicariously through my sister Emily's journey as she tries to break into comedy. She was doing stand up for a little bit here, then she took improv classes. Then she tried to get into sketch comedy, and now she's trying to break into writing for television comedy. So I think I've learned a lot from her modeling on that, but honestly, just comedians generally was this very pure art form of creating something out of nothing, based on the flaws you could see in the world around you.
Matthew Carey
I like that. That's it. That's interesting. Jay, a lot of the stuff that you teach, is designed for freelancers. And I think that's how a lot of artists and creatives identify. But, I'd love for you to explain what your definition is of a freelancer.
Jay Clouse
Yeah, to me, a freelancer is anybody that's getting paid to create an outcome or solve a problem on behalf of somebody else, and that's not in the form of full time employment. And that's a pretty flexible definition., purposefully.
Generally, if someone is paying you to solve a problem for them, create something for them, and you're not full time employed, you're not on their payroll, you're not getting benefits from them, but you're still earning money. To me, that is freelancing.
Matthew Carey
One of the things that strikes me, that the people that listen to this podcast—the creatives, the performing artists—a mindset that we share as freelancers is that where one man or one woman or one person team, and that we have to do everything on our own, but that's not really practical.
You're essentially a one man business, but I wonder as you've been thinking about that, what things have you taught yourself to do so that you can do them in your business? And what things have you looked to outsource?
Jay Clouse
This was a real blind spot for me actually. Because that narrative I mentioned earlier of being so deeply confident in my ability to execute and operate.
When I started freelancing, my goal for freelancing was actually to earn enough money, while preserving as much of my own time as possible to kind of explore my own creative interests. And so I always had this tension I struggled with, of, well, if I want to preserve more time, then I need to keep my costs low. And if I want to keep my costs low, then I can't really outsource much or hire for much. And so in the beginning, what I really did was build a lot of systems around myself to scale my time as much as I could.
Things like getting really, really good at scheduling. Getting really good at time blocking and theming my days. So that I could get the absolute most out of every minute or every hour of my day that I possibly could. And, you know, it eventually becomes unsustainable.
So the first thing that I actually outsourced, was, I believe, audio production on my first podcast Upside. I did that because I had no confidence that I could actually edit audio and make it sound as good as I wanted. That finally felt like a task that, “Sure. I'm sure I could learn it.” But the time to learn it was not worth the trade off of just paying someone who's really good at it, who could do it right away.
That opened a door. Now I outsource more things. I have a couple of VAs, they still mostly helped me on the podcasting front more than anything else. But as I've created new projects, I've been much more open to outsourcing small pieces of that, realizing that okay—I want somebody to make the cover art for the show, I want somebody to make this design element for me. Someone to do my brand for me, someone to edit this video for me. It's more of a project by project basis now and not something that I have consistently outsourced. But that's actually been one of the greatest joys of building Freelancing School. As I'm building this platform to help other freelancers, I've been employing several freelancers myself to help me build that platform, both in writing articles, doing the design, cutting the videos, helping with copy. That's been really, really great.
Matthew Carey
Yeah, I wondered whether those things fed into each other. I'm curious, there are some things that we do, outsource naturally, like, we don't try to do our own dental work. But when it comes to stuff that's related to our business and our careers, it can be harder to let go. And I'm wondering, what was that process of letting go and outsourcing the audio production for the first time? What was great about your experience there, and what were some of the challenges?
Jay Clouse
Well, what I'm learning and I experienced this with Nathan my audio engineer, and now I experience it more and more as I hire really talented people. The people that I want to work with and the experiences that are really great when you outsource something—is when you find somebody that whether you vet them yourself or they've been referred to you, you trust them to be really, really good at what they do. And you can kind of step back and just say, “Here's the outcome that I want. Here's the timeframe that we need to get it done. You tell me what the process should be, or what we need to do from here.” Because if you have to give extremely specific direction, it's going to be a less fun project for the freelancer. But also, you're just taking more and more steps down the road of doing it yourself. So the more that you can find people that either they've been referred to you with high enthusiasm, or you can vet them some other way... If you can trust that they can lead the process—and that's what people want when they hire a freelancer, they want someone to come in and lead the process—then give them the outcome, give them the timeframe and let them go to work and do what they do best.
Matthew Carey
That's great advice. I think that's great advice for us to keep in mind if we're looking to hire someone to do work for us. But it's also great advice to keep in mind when we're showing up, being the freelancer. There is some leadership involved in making sure that you guide the process that you're in charge of as much as possible, rather than necessarily waiting for instruction the whole time. I guess you balance those relationships differently depending on who you're working with, but it's a great thing to keep in mind.
Jay Clouse
Yeah. At the end of the day, we are faced with infinite numbers of choices. And so most times we actually don't make a choice because we're afraid of making the wrong choice. So when a client is far enough down the path of hiring you that they're giving you a chance to talk to them about the project, they are looking for signals that they've made the wrong choice, and they're looking for signals that they made the right choice. The best way to give them a signal that they made the right choice is to step in, and be very confident, be very calm, ask good questions, get the information you need to step forward as a leader and say, “Okay. It sounds like you want this outcome. And it sounds like your constraints are this. I can do that. Here are the next steps.” When you can give that breakdown and be concise about it, you're giving this very strong signal that you've been here before, you're going to get them the outcome that they want, and they've made the right choice. Ultimately that signal makes them more and more confident to step back and let you run with it, which most creative people want. We don't like it when the client is micromanaging and really overseeing everything. That comes from their own worry and lack of confidence in you. If you step forward early and show that you're a leader and that you can be trusted and that you feel confident that you can get the outcome, they'll step back.
Matthew Carey
I love the way you have of explaining things like this. There's something else that I want to ask you about. I've got a real admiration for the volume and the quality of work that you share with the world. You've been writing consistently for years and have produced two great podcasts.
I know that this stuff doesn't happen by accident, and that you have a practice of keeping promises to your audience and to yourself. A lot of us talk about getting better habits or upgrading our habits. I know that you've got a slightly different perspective on that. And I'm wondering if you can explain how that helps you to do the work that's important to you.
Jay Clouse
I love that you bring this up. I think habits are a great concept. And when you can create them, that's awesome. But I think too often we look at habits as this automation or easy button that we just have to basically flip a switch and now all the hard stuff that feels hard every day is automated and will happen because we built this habit.
But to me, there are ways to make this easier, but at the end of the day it's more about commitments than habits. If you want to build a running habit, it starts by being committed to running every day or running three times a week, whatever it is.
I like to think about things in that frame—as this is a commitment I'm making, I don't expect that this will become habitualized, or automatic, like you're always going to need to make some effort. There are ways to make that effort feel easier by changing your environment, or changing your schedule, making the right choice, the easy choice. I think that the work that James Clear does in this space is really, really powerful. But I just want to caution people who look at habits as this, this holy grail or this status of “I just need to do x and y and then I'll no longer have to worry about it because it will become habitual, alized and automatic.”
I just don't think that really happens. It becomes easier, but at the end of the day you're still making small choices to make those things happen. And so to me, more powerful than habits is just commitments. And when I make a commitment to myself, when I make a commitment to others, I take that very, very seriously. To the point where I am slow to make commitments, because I know when I do that, that means I'm going to have to follow through and there is a cost to doing that. So yeah, I think commitments are just a very, very strong declaration that you make to yourself and others. That, ultimately, is what powers a habit.
Matthew Carey
Do you have any examples of a more recent commitment that you have decided to make?
Jay Clouse
Yeah, any client relationship that's like a retainer—that's a commitment for sure. That's an easy one.
But let's talk about content creation. I am publishing (like you said) two weekly podcasts and two weekly newsletters. That's not habitualized. I mean, I know that there are certain times of the week that I should get started writing. I know what that process looks and feels like. But it happens every week, because I'm committed to doing it every week. If I wasn't committed, my own resistance to writing tomorrow's LinkedIn newsletter would kick in, and I wouldn't do it.
I can't imagine a world where that becomes so habitualized that it's automated. There is input I need to put into the system, and I do that because I've committed to people to say “You can expect to hear from me in this medium, on this timeframe—every week.” Content habits like that where you're making a commitment to share something on an aggressive timeline, like a weekly basis. That's a serious commitment. That's a huge cost every week.
Matthew Carey
Yeah. This is just one way of looking at it, I suppose and maybe not everyone would agree but when I think about habits, a habit is something I do today, because I did it yesterday and the day before. Whereas when I think about commitments, it's more forward facing, and it's looking towards the outcome I want in the future, and who I want to be in the future. So I'm making a commitment to that future version of myself, which means that I have to take this action today.
Jay Clouse
Yeah, and I think there are some actual psychologically triggered habits that have very low need for input, like, biting your nails is a habit in my world. That's because that can happen without you thinking about it.
But for most creative work, for making things...I don't know that you can create a writing habit. Maybe you can get a journaling habit, maybe a habit where you sit down at the computer every morning at this time and open a blank document. But even from there, I think there's a pretty high threshold of beginning to write.
Ultimately, if you're making things and you want to improve your life, I think that takes commitment.
Matthew Carey
Yeah. Now, we've talked about your two podcasts. The first, Upside, examines startup investing outside of Silicon Valley. And more recently, you launched Creative Elements, which bridges the gap between art and business, by talking to high profile creators about the nitty gritty of building their creative career. Now, Jay, I recently asked a bunch of podcast friends to share some insights that they'd learned from launching their shows. And so I'm really interested in what you set out to do better or differently with the second podcast you produced.
Jay Clouse
Well making a podcast is a lot of work, as I'm sure you've realized at this point. It's the same amount of work, whether you have a lot of listeners or no listeners. Upside has been successful in its own right, and it's even made a little little bit of money for us. But I wanted to do two things. I wanted to have a larger potential audience (Upside is a very niche show), I wanted to make real revenue from a podcast, I wanted to align that show more with my overall day to day business (like I said about, helping creatives become more confident, successful business owners), and then finally, what I've realized for the last couple of years is I've built some really great relationships with very successful, difficult to access people. And I had no reason really to collaborate with any of them on anything and I wanted a way to do that and to meet other people like them. So all of that entered into this mixing pot of, “Okay, how can I create a new show that fits within all these constraints, that is worth the time investment that goes into it.” And so Creative Elements is what I came up with to talk to these high high profile creators who can help other creatives that are already in my target audience. Help them make a living from the things that they make, whether it's a physical product or digital products online.
It was really just kind of pulling all these pieces together, and then going step by step, learning all along the way up through launch. And, yeah, happy to say it's been really, really successful. It's been the most positive feedback I've gotten for anything that I've ever made before, which isn't a low bar, but it's very exciting.
Matthew Carey
I'd like to say that I think you've done an incredible job of it. I've listened to episodes of Upside, where you talk to people that I haven't heard on podcasts before, and you make compelling episodes there. But what is interesting about Creative Elements is that you're speaking to people that I have heard on numerous podcasts before, but you're finding a way to make those conversations feel fresh and really interesting. The podcast you did with James Clear from Atomic Habits is the best interview I've heard with him. I mean, I think it was great.
Jay Clouse
Oh my gosh, that means so much that you're saying that. And I'm so glad to give a specific example. So I know you weren't just saying that to be nice. That is exactly the goal that I want on the show. Because these people that I talk to, are in fact, pretty regular podcast guests. In fact, a lot of times people show up for these recordings and they have better audio equipment than I do which—you know—talk about kind of humbling. Oh, please come on my show. “Oh, you're in a sound booth with the highest level microphone that's on the market? Great. I'm sitting in this kind of echoey room with Yeti.” That's how this all started.
But my goal on that show is to talk to these creators and not about their work. Because you have guys like James, who have done incredible work around a topic and his case, it was habits. When he goes on a show, almost every interviewer asks him to go through the highlights of what he's written about a ton of times in his books, and his blog posts, on other interviews. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to focus on instead, “How did they actually build the business and build the audience behind these things that has given them the time and space to focus this type of effort into this topic area.” I want to talk about “How did you actually build a business around this?” And in the process, I also want to be remembered as a unique interviewer. This is one of my secret goals of the show. I want people to think of our interview together as an enjoyable time, remarkable in a sea of interviews that they've done. I want to talk about things they don't often talk about and at the end of the day, I want the final episode to be something that—if they do choose to listen back through it, and listen to all the things I've added in narration—they're like, “Wow, this is really, really good. This is different. I'm glad that I took the time to talk with this guy.” Because it's not a small ask to get 45 to 60 minutes of these people's time. And I want them to be not just at peace with their decision to do that, but grateful for their decision to do that.
Matthew Carey
Yeah, that's such a good point. The time they spend talking to you is time that they can't spend talking to anybody else outside of the listenership of your podcast. And really, it's important, as collaborators, to think not only what value can I get from this interaction, but what value can I give to this interaction. So thank you for sharing that.
And let me go back. I would recommend that conversation with James Clear to anybody. The way he talks about the decisions he made to grow his blog and the decisions that he made about the blog so that he could create the best book he could, and make the impact that he did with that—it's fascinating, it's great.
Jay Clouse
That interview has stuck with me ever since we did it. And we did it back in October of 2019. It is lodged into my brain. Just the way he thinks about doing A+ work, that has haunted me over the last several months. Because when you when you make the commitments to be as prolific as I've chosen to be... having two newsletters having two podcasts… Every minute that I put into Podcast A is time I can't put into Podcast B . Every minute I put into Newsletter C is time I can't put in a Newsletter D.
I am making all of my content slightly worse, just to be able to do all of it. And I know that I'm not clearing the exceptional bar that I could be setting for myself if I focused a little bit more. I struggle with that a lot. I obviously haven't chosen to cut out three of those four things and focus on the one. I'm sure it will get narrowed a little bit over time. But yeah, that line he talks about—the difference between A+ work and A- work is really, really powerful.
Matthew Carey
Something that I did take away from it is that by the time he was making some of those decisions, he'd already accumulated quite an audience for his blog. There were people there that were waiting to hear what he had to say next and he had the deal for his book lined up. So he knew that once he could produce that book, that there's a system to get that in front of more people.
I think that he has an advantage that he's worked towards that perhaps you or I don't have to the same scale yet. And that what you're doing and I’ve heard you talk about this—is finding ways that the different parts of your work can feed into each other as much as possible.
Jay Clouse
Yeah, and something else that I've noticed as a pattern of guests on the show. This is not intentional, and it's probably not necessarily a rule but it is a pattern. These creators that I talk to—obviously, they get on my radar because they have some level of public profile and some level of public success. But when I dive into their stories, they all started around the same time. They started mid 2000s, by writing or doing something online—in a space that was just not crowded yet at the time.
Often, they got the benefit of—not only were there not a lot of voices competing for people's time and attention—but there wasn't as much content for the internet to even index so it was easier to stand out in search engines. And I say that not to be a bummer and say, “Well, these people were successful because they got started at the right time and caught a wave.” But more so to say, “I don't think it necessarily matters the specific year they got started. I think more powerful is just the amount of time they worked at it. Before they really caught a break.”
In my interview with Vanessa van Edwards, we spent a long time in that interview talking about a business of hers. She ran that business for six years of her life, and I didn't know it existed. But it completely laid the groundwork for everything that she's doing now with The Science of People. It taught her everything she needed to know about creating things online. And you probably won't be able to find any evidence of that business online. But six years she spent working on that. I'm Year Four in business right now. I am two thirds through Vanessa's failed business, that was the groundwork for her real business that I'm aspiring to. It just takes a lot of time.
Matthew Carey
It gives you a sense of the bigger picture. But hopefully it also gives you a chance to give yourself a break every now and then when you feel like “Oh, I wish this was growing bigger. I wish I was Seth Godin already.”
Jay Clouse
It's taken a lot of pressure off of me. Because I know from these interviews, I'm doing the right activities. I'm investing my time in the right areas. I'm doing the right things. A big part of this is just time. Will I commit to doing these activities? Will I commit to doing these right things for another 10 years? And if so, I'll be in a good spot. But we get so caught up in “I want this now. I want what this person has. Why can't I have this? My work is as good as theirs.” It’s true, but you need more time. You need more time to get in front of more people. You need more time for some of these breaks to happen for you. And you just can't compress it in some ways. And so it's taken a lot of pressure off just to say, you know what—if I'm creating things, and I'm helping people, and I'm getting positive feedback, and I'm making enough money to survive, and you know that line is even going up into the right a little bit—I'm good. I'll just keep doing this for years. I'm happy. I'm enjoying it. And if I'm happy and I'm enjoying it, and I'm making enough money to get by and I'm getting the right signals—there's no rush. It will happen in its own time.
Matthew Carey
Going back to the idea of the two podcasts, how did you think or how do you continue to think about whether to juggle them both? Did you ever give any consideration to quitting the first one before starting the second?
Jay Clouse
I mean, honestly, I'm always giving consideration to quitting everything that I'm doing. If you're managing multiple creative projects, you should always be having a conversation, with yourself at least, of “Does it still make sense for me to be investing my time here?” At the end of the day, everything is resource allocation. Your money, your time, your attention. Every day, I'm choosing to allocate across a portfolio of projects, but arguably, at any time, it might make sense to change that level of allocation. And so I thought about it, I think about it, I'm still thinking about it. And I will continue to think about it.
With Upside, that's a team effort between me and my partner, Eric. He carries just as much weight, if not more than me. So part of that is—he took on a little bit more responsibility, we outsourced a little bit more to assistants. And, we've got that show in a place where most of the operations and processes happen without much input, other than Eric and I dedicating time to get on the microphones. And you might think “Well, yeah, isn't that what podcasting is—getting on the microphones recording?” I would say that the smallest amount of time that I put into any podcast episode is the actual time on the mic. We've gotten that show down to just mic time for the most part. So it's easy to slot in around everything else.
Matthew Carey
Yeah. I'm interested in shifting gears. Jay, I read that you spent some time hosting house concerts. Can you tell me a bit about that, and what that meant to you?
Jay Clouse
Sure, Out of college, through some bad luck and then some good luck, I didn't have a place to live and found myself living then in a house with six other guys. And this was larger than any house I lived in, even during college. It seems a little absurd to have seven men living in a house together all post graduation, into their careers... But all of the people in that house were—mostly entrepreneurs—but all creatives. There were a lot of musicians, there were a couple of consultants, there were some marketers. But we had this huge living space and this huge living room that blended right into the kitchen. And because a lot of my roommates were musicians, who also happened to be very well plugged into the local music scene, they were constantly working with, workshopping, and hanging out with other musicians. And it turned into, “Hey, why don't we bring some of these guys over and do some shows in our living room one night?”
We invited other people from the community. People loved it. It was an amazing time, and that was two years of my life just doing pretty consistent shows in our living room. I wouldn't even give myself much credit for that other than creating the Facebook event and inviting people on Facebook and getting a lot of people there. But my roommates were really plugged into the music scene and set up really great shows. We would actually collect a $5 cover and give that all to the artists. Most of them were local artists. They would have two to three local artists that would open the show, and then pretty often we would have somebody touring into the city through from other cities—whether they're doing a show at a local professional venue—and we wanted to give them a chance to make a little bit extra money. That was some of the best times of my life because there was a lot of fellowship in that which I really liked. A lot of community with my local community.
It just really pushed me because I think of musicians, as consummate creators and consummate entrepreneurs. They're making something out of nothing. They're trying to make money doing it. It really pushed me to pursue my own creative interest, and again that was right around the same time that I was reckoning with this identity crisis I have of “ I'm not creative. I don't have good ideas.” This type of activity really encouraged me to push back against that.
Matthew Carey
Yeah. What was the biggest audience size you had at one of the house concerts?
Jay Clouse
I think we had—man, this is tough—I think we probably had 100 people at a show once. [Wow.] Yeah. It was a big living room, and we had people in the backyard, we had people on the front porch, we had people upstairs. It was a little wild.
Matthew Carey
And understanding neighbors?
Jay Clouse
Most of the time. We only did it on Fridays and Saturdays, I think for the most part. So we had a little bit of grace with that. But yeah, sometimes they didn't love it.
Matthew Carey
Well, that's the journey of the entrepreneur too sometimes, isn't it? To test the boundaries and see what you can get away with?
Jay Clouse
Yeah totally, totally. And ask for forgiveness instead of ask for permission. Yeah, absolutely.
Matthew Carey
Well, there is something there about creating a space or a container for things to happen, which I think is something that is a through line of your career. And I want to dig into this idea of communities that I know you've been thinking about, and it's been on my mind as well.
You've built a number of communities based around the people important to you. And you've also advised other brands and businesses on creating their own communities. How would you define building a community and how would you differentiate it from building a fan base, or cultivating a group of patrons?
Jay Clouse
I think probably the easiest way to think about it is—when you have a fan base, you kind of have yourself as a creator, as the single voice that has a bunch of 1:1 relationships with everyone in that audience. It's very much a 1:many relationship.
With a community you start to build connectivity within your audience itself. Now it's a relationship of many:many, and you actually create this giant web of connecting people to one another. And that's really, really powerful. Because stepping away from just community: one of the most powerful ways to build a strong relationship with somebody is to introduce them to somebody else that they're glad that they met. Because that reinforces their relationship to you. It creates a ton of value for them. To be the bridge that helped two people meet—and that relationship could turn into something that's incredible and a huge impact on their life—they're going to remember that and they're going to attribute a lot of that relationship to you.
In fact, even that first conversation that two people have, after you introduce them. They're going to try to find common ground right away, and the common ground they know they have, is to you. And they're not going to start that conversation with “Hey, so Jay’s a jerk, right?” No, because they know that other person has a relationship with you. So they're going to start that conversation, talking positively about you. It just reinforces your relationship to two people right off the bat.
Now, imagine that at a level of scale. Imagine doing that for a large number of people simultaneously, through this community. That's really, really powerful. And in a time when, I think, we're struggling with loneliness more than ever before. People are constantly looking for, “Where do I feel safe?” And “Where do I feel accepted?” And “Where do I feel like I belong?” They’re following people and creators, who they resonate with their message. They feel like, “This person gets me, this person knows what I'm going through, this person understands what I think about.” You, as that person, are a lightning rod for more people like that person. And chances are, they want to be connected to other people like them.
Creators who are building an audience are in a prime position to turn that audience into a community. But you fundamentally have to think about a community as a decentralized living thing, that you do not always live at the center of. That community needs to quickly leave your hands. You can't be the bottleneck of it. You need to let it grow and become what it's going to become. You can't make the community in service to you, you need to be in service to that community. And that's, you know, how I think about the differences between audience versus community.
Matthew Carey
Jay, can you think of some examples of either creatives, or brands, that are doing communities really well? And conversely, do you see anyone out there that is missing an opportunity to really create more of a community around the work that they do?
Jay Clouse
I actually want to go back to music. When I think about my favorite bands, when I go to their live shows, it's for two reasons: I want to support the band. But also, I know that I like the people at those shows. I'm thinking specifically my favorite band, which is called Murder by Death (not nearly as intense as it sounds). Every time I go to one of their shows, I'm just blown away by how awesome their fan base is. And as that band has existed now for 20 years and done a bunch of these live shows, they go through hardship like we all are right now...they were completely fine. They were taken care of. Their fan base is so strong and loves them so much. That band will put out a Kickstarter once every year or two for a new album, and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in pre-sales. That's incredibly, incredibly powerful. When people talk about Dave Matthews Band and going to his shows, that's also a lot of times about camping out, and being around people. So I think bands were originally really, really good at turning audiences into communities and still are to this day.
Another model, fortunately, or unfortunately for those of us in the United States, is politics. If you look at people at the center of politics, they have for years, created movements and momentum around their ideas. Yes, they're at the center. They are creating the talking points, they're leading the movement. But at the end of the day, they're organizing a ton of people to work together in local markets and state markets and national markets. That becomes a community in and of itself. Because you look around you say “If I identify with this community, I know that the other people around me have the same ideology and I am safe to talk about what I think and what I feel because I know these people around me feel the same way.” But if you think about any movement—that is fundamentally based around community, people saying I identify with this cause, identify with these ideas, we're going to gather together, we're going to build something bigger than any one of us through community.
Matthew Carey
I wanted to ask you more about that Jay. There's a particular article that you've published on your website, which I'll certainly put in the show note because I think it's worth a read for anybody that's at all interested in this. But you talk about the idea of when members of the community identify with an idea bigger than themselves, it can actually call the members to action and create a movement. Now, how important is that sense of identifying with an idea bigger than ourselves? Maybe not necessarily just in a political community— how important is that in the communities that you're building?
Jay Clouse
I think it varies a little bit. I think there's a spectrum of what a successful community looks like. And it kind of falls into the jobs to be done framework, if you're familiar with that. When people join a community, they're joining it for a specific reason. And sometimes it's just because they want to have a support network to get literal answers to their questions. Sometimes they want to specifically meet other people like them and form 1:1 relationships. But a lot of times whether they realize it or not, people join a community, because they're looking to learn something about themselves, and to root themselves in some sort of identity. They don't know themselves well enough, they don't know what they care about a lot. But when they find an idea, when they find a space, whether it's physical or digital, and they enjoy being there, it teaches them a little bit about themselves. They start to think, “Okay, maybe I am a Crossfitter. This is a strong part of who I am and what I'm about.” And that's a really powerful thing to give them a better understanding of themselves and a place to root their own identity. Is that aspirational? Do I think that all community builders should be looking to create something that people's identities hinge on? I don't know, I think that's actually a really big responsibility. And you need to be a special person in a special community, organizing around a special movement to want to take that on, because that is a big responsibility to take in somebody's life. But a lot of people are looking for that. And they don't even realize it.
Matthew Carey
I'm interested in this, that community is a thing that is decentralized. So you don't necessarily want to insist on being the center of that community at all times. When I think about communities, there are some that we've joined by default, that may be because of our educational institutions, our workplaces, our geographical locations and families—and then there are the communities that we join intentionally because they offer us opportunity to be someone or something else. As somebody that is creating a space in a container for a community, how intentionally do you think about what the purpose of that should be? And how much do you create it and let the community sort of decide for itself? What's your level of attachment to that?
Jay Clouse
I think it's really important to have a high level of intention from the beginning. And then a very high level of openness and attention to how people are operating based on the space that you've created. Because if you go into something without intention, it's hard to signal to the right people that, “Hey, I made this space for you.” You don't know what success looks like, and you don't know why you're doing the things that you're doing. It's hard for other people to get the sense of, “I'm here because I believe in this” or “I'm here because I'm trying to achieve this” if you haven't laid that out explicitly as the purpose.
That being said, the best communities are those that the members of that community quickly begin to feel ownership and responsibility over. And when they do that they start to self organize and self govern and do things their own way within the confines that you set. And by the way, if you set confines that are too restrictive, they'll begin to find ways to change that.
A lot of creators who find themselves in this position, sometimes they get afraid of giving up that control, and they'll stifle that opportunity. They will say “No, this isn't the way we do it actually. Thank you for reaching out, but let's keep doing things this way for now.” And now you're sending a signal and you've set a precedent of, “Oh, this is centralized. This is controlled by this person, this isn't controlled by us.”
And I think a lot of communities get into a place of risk, where if you do stifle what is organically happening with the people there, they might not feel like it's a place for them anymore, and they might leave. And so, like I said, I think it's important to have a high level of intention in the beginning to pull people in and give a clear reason for why they're there—but then very quickly, get tuned into “What does this community want? What does this community need?” Help provide that for them, but also, if they're starting to do things on their own, and it's not infringing on other people—step out of the way, let them do that. Let them feel some ownership and some identity over this space. Because you're not going to want to be the engine that's powering everything behind this community. It's not sustainable, it's not scalable. You need to let people run with their ideas and build based on what they know the community needs. And if you stand in the way and you try to be the bottleneck to that, it's at your own detriment.
Matthew Carey
Yeah, if I think back to the political model for a second. Let's let's think of maybe someone that's campaigning. There's the person that's at the tip of the arrow that this attention is sort of focused for, and as the instigator of this. But they can't do all the work themselves. There's some people they bring in as a team, that maybe they're employing that do specific roles. But it seems to me from my observations, that then there's this community of people that believe in that person, or believe in those ideas, that want to show up and contribute as well. And a good community in that sense, finds those people that are willing to demonstrate some leadership, willing to put up their hands and say, “I can make this happen if you empower me to go ahead and do that.” So I think there's an opportunity for us to do that in other communities as well.
Jay Clouse
Yeah, and setting some ground rules, having a code of conduct, having a guidepost for people to work off of that, again, is open to amendments, so to speak, if you need them. But holding a space, creating a space is about really building the constraints, building the walls, but ultimately spreading your arms and saying, “I made this for you, use the space how you want and how it serves you. I'll just make sure that I protect it. And I protect what you're doing here. And I continue to make this a safe space.”
At some point, they may come to you and say, “Hey, this is really great. We're doing this and this, but now we need this.” And you as the creator of that community, can go and provide whatever they need, or try to provide what they need. But I really want to encourage people to let that community become what it’s becoming if it's not dangerous or detrimental to other people. The most powerful thing that you can have in a community are other people that feel so strongly about it and they want to take initiative and lead things on behalf of it.
Matthew Carey
We used the idea of the house concert earlier on. And for a lot of musicians and performing artists, their work in community has generally been in a physical space. But you've done a lot of work of a lot of community building online, a lot of your work happens online. Online spaces can give us an opportunity to show up for the same people that we may be used to show up for in person. But we show up in a different way. And I wondered if to explore that idea—does your favorite band have an online community at all? Or how could you imagine them providing the space for their community that they do in person online?
Jay Clouse
That's a really great question. For that band in particular, they have a Facebook group that was created and moderated by fans. They have a Reddit/subreddit that was created and moderated by fans. And from what I can tell, they've always been very supportive and encouraging of that, but I don't think they have a dedicated space that they created outside of their own social channels for that fan base. I think that the fan base kind of self organized and again, to their credit, they are very supportive. And also, they’re present but not hyper present. Because I think, another mistake that people make, even when they do let a community kind of self organize—they will be so assertive and involved that it almost feels like you're stepping on the toes of the person that is taking that initiative. Or that you're being too watchful, it kind of freaks them out. So I think that they toe a really good balance with that.
But I agree that, you know, a lot of us are used to community in person. And online, in some ways feels easier, because you don't have to go somewhere. It feels easy to create, you could just create an account on one of these tools and send invites, and people are in there and boom, you got a community. But I actually think in practice, it's much harder to implement than something in person. Because when you go to a room of people in person, that you don't know many of them, you're immediately filled with a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of fear, a little bit of worry. You're looking around the space, you're trying to find one person that you know, and when you do, you go and you latch on to them, and you suddenly feel comfortable in the space. The same fear and anxiety happens when you join a digital space, where you don't know anybody you don't know the space. But it's so much easier for someone online to just say, “Nope, I'm out” and click x and never come back. And you don't even know that they were there. So it's it's difficult as a community builder and as someone that's holding that space, to really engage people online, instead of in person, because in person, people are kind of captive, and they often have to work through that discomfort on their own. And they'll do that, because they made the effort of showing up in the first place.
Matthew Carey
Yeah they made the commitment to be there in the room in the first place. So once they've done that, they sort of owe it to themselves to try and make the most of it.
Jay Clouse
Yeah, it's just a lot easier to opt in and opt out without much effort in a digital space.
Matthew Carey
I wanted to ask you, in thinking about your work, and maybe some of the work of the people you've been advising. When is the right time to start building your community, or getting formal about it?
Jay Clouse
Well, I think the answer comes down to when you have a compelling reason to make that real. Right now, it's kind of hot, to build a community. We're going to see a proliferation of online communities over the next 6 to 12 months. And everyone's thinking, “Well, I have some level of audience, maybe I should have a community.” But you need to understand why that would serve the person that is joining and why they would invest time and continue to show up to that space. If you don't have good reasons for that—if you want to build a community because you think that you should have it, it's just something to bolt on to your business and that's going to work out—you're going to quickly find that people don't show up because you're not serving them in any way.
So you really need to know and have a compelling reason for “This is why I'm building this community and this is how it's going to serve people, and why it makes sense for them to invest time.” We get so caught up with metrics of engagement, when we build a community. Are people active every day? Are they making new posts? Are they commenting? And those are very measurable things that make us feel like “Oh, the community is engaged.”
But that's a very creator centric view of the community. It shouldn't be about the numbers of who's showing up, how often they're showing up, what they're creating. You need to understand these jobs to be done. Why do they want the community to exist in the first place? A lot of people can find a lot of value in a community without making comments or topics. It's the classic lurker on Reddit who spends two hours every day on Reddit. They love their communities though you wouldn't necessarily realize that they're active by their activity.
So you need to understand why people would want to spend time in your community and what it is doing for them. Is it giving them an identity? Is it showing them transformation in who they are and what they're trying to become? Is it making them better at their work? Is it making them feel human connection? You need to really understand what that is for, and deliver on that.
Matthew Carey
Yeah. We need to be pretty intentional, because it's the metrics that we measure that we try and optimize. And if we're optimizing a metric that isn't contributing real value, then we're not serving anybody. And for engagement, it's a matter of trying to trying to understand what the quality of the engagement is. Whether it's just hitting the like button, which doesn't really take much energy and it doesn't really mean much, versus having some sort of conversation or being a part of a community that really changes how you feel about yourself or changes how you approach your work.
Jay Clouse
I think engagement started with good intentions, because engagement was an easy way for you to proxy, “Are people enjoying this thing?” But it became this metric of time spent, and actions taken. And it was no longer about “Are people enjoying the space?” It was about “Are people doing things inside of this space?” In a lot of cases, sure, that's still a proxy for getting value. But in other cases, it may feel like, “Oh, this is a chore or commitment that I've made to show up and share here.” But if they're just doing that because they feel like they should or because they've committed to doing that, but they're not personally feeling grateful that they’re spending time. They're actually feeling stressed, because now they feel like it's another thing on their plate? That's not actually a healthy community member.
Matthew Carey
Let me preface this by saying that while this is your business, that I recognize that your purpose is far greater and more encompassing than just making money. Of the services and the products that you offer, there are some that people pay for, but you give away so much great quality content in terms of your articles, your newsletters, your podcasts that—it's not all about that. So with that sort of disclaimer out of the way, I wonder, how do you prioritize the path that you want people to travel through the Jay Clouse universe? Do you want them to come for the product or service and then stay for the community? Or do you think about it the other way around?
Jay Clouse
I am agnostic for how people enter. It's similar to what I was saying about my podcast guests—whenever somebody enters the Jay Clouse universe, or any of the work that I do—I just want their response to that experience to be “I'm glad I did that.” And so for some of them that's joining the community, which is free. And seeing that, “Oh, I can get my questions answered here pretty quickly,” or “Oh, I can connect with other freelancers like me here.” For some of them it's finding an article I wrote on Google and saying, “Oh, this answered my question, great.” Some of them it's, “Ah, I got this email on Sunday morning and that helped me too. Good, I'm going to continue to stay subscribed to this.” And some of them, it's “I want to learn how to become a profitable, confident freelancer as quickly as possible. I'm willing to invest in that.” And they buy a course, they work through the lessons, and they say “That was a very efficient delivery of this information, I feel much more equipped to do this now.” Whatever they're in point, I don't care. And it's easy to enter from a lot of different places, I don't actually try to push people through one singular entry point, there are a ton of ways you can enter into that universe. I just hope that wherever you come from your first experience is good and you're glad that you had it.
Matthew Carey
Yeah, it's great to talk to you. I have what I've been following your work for a number of years, at least those four years. The work that you have been presenting to the world is consistently of great quality and the way I look at you showing up, and the places you show up the places that I see—like your website has always been good, but I see you constantly tweaking it and it's getting better and better. It's one of my favorite websites to go and have a look at. I just love the way you've crafted it. I think for somebody that has a website of their own that wish was better... I've got my hand up right now... that yours is a great one to go to for inspiration about how you can create something that's very inviting with lots of interesting information but well presented. So that's me leading to where is the best place for people to meet you online?
Jay Clouse
I'm pretty easy to find. I would go to jayclouse.com That branches into everything that I do. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @jayclouse. I don't spend a lot of time on Instagram to be honest, Twitter's a lot better. So if you do social media, find me on Twitter first @jayclouse. But I'm easy to find and no matter what called out to you in this conversation It's easy to find your way there from any of my websites. I appreciate you saying that Matt because it is something that I put a lot of intention into, and continuously try to improve. So, it'll keep changing.
Matthew Carey
Jay now that I've welcomed you into the Studio Time community, I've got a question for you. This is the first time I've asked this question. Is there anyone that comes to mind that you'd like to hear as a guest on Studio Time?
Jay Clouse
Ooh. Yeah. I mean, I love hearing from comedians, generally. If you can get him on your show, before I get him on my show, I love any interview that I hear with Bo Burnham. I need to get Bo Burnham on my podcast. I'm going to do it, it will happen. But if you can reach him before I do, I would love to listen to that interview.
Matthew Carey
Well, the race is on. Circling back to the beginning and thinking about that young Jay, who felt like creativity just wasn't in his wheelhouse, it wasn't in his universe yet. How do you choose to show up now to help people see that they do have access to creativity?
Jay Clouse
I think that we need to recognize any problem solving, any operating within a system of constraints as a creative act. I try to do that in my day to day. I try to encourage people to think differently. When you're getting started, there's a ton of value in modeling after what you see other people doing that were successful. And I feel like I'm getting to the point in my career where I did enough of that, that everything I've built is solid. It's pretty good. But now I'm realizing I don't want to model off of anybody necessarily. I want to do things my own way. And that's a new level of creativity that I'm really excited to lean into. And I would encourage more people to do. Question, “Why is this done this way? What is true about this that I do want to take, and draw some inspiration from?” But also “What doesn't feel like it's necessary, that I could do differently?” and lean into that.
Matthew Carey
Yeah, I really like that.
Jay, I want to thank you so much for the generosity of your time and for sharing your ideas with me today. And I encourage everybody to go and subscribe to either or both of your podcasts and to go to your site and check out what you've got to offer there.
Jay Clouse
Thanks so much for having me, Matt. It's great to finally meet you and put a voice to the email!