At its core, I organized my 5 day virtual summit about Navigating the Future of Entertainment to help us creatives, artists, and storytellers answer two key questions:
What the hell is happening to our beloved film industry? And how can we shape the future of cinema?
In this episode, I talk with Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science and one of the leading voices in the creator economy. Jay has helped thousands of independent creatives turn their passion into sustainable businesses—not through hacks, but by showing up authentically and building trust. We talk about creating real value, choosing the right platform, and embracing the messy truth of your process. Jay also breaks down the three types of creators, and why not being an “expert” might actually be your biggest strength. If you’re caught between being a creative and being a creator, this conversation will help you be both.
Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, a leading voice in the creator economy. Jay has helped thousands of creators turn their passion into sturdy businesses through observation, experimentation, and iteration. His work spans a newsletter, podcast, membership, and YouTube channel, reaching a global audience.
In 2023, Jay was named “Content Entrepreneur of the Year” by The Tilt, and the Creator Science podcast earned a 2022 Signal Award.
Jay has also invested in 10+ startups, including Kit, RightMessage, Maven, Carry, Kick, and Gumroad. Through the Creator Science Syndicate, he helps his audience invest in platforms that empower creators.
Before Creator Science, Jay built and sold a ticketing startup (Tixers) and later sold his community, Unreal Collective, to Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income, where he designed membership and course programs.
Jay’s Youtube | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Tiktok
Jay’s Website
Jay’s Podcast
Zack Arnold: So first of all, I just wanted to thank you tremendously for giving us your time, your attention and your expertise and having today's conversation. Of course, happy to so one of the reasons that I was drawn to you immediately, as soon as I discovered your work online, I was really drawn to both your authenticity and your vulnerability and really sharing. What does it really take to build a creator business? What does it mean to be a creator? What are the challenges that are associated with it? And I think one of the other things that drew me to you is very much your kind of humble Midwestern nature, because both you and I are born and bred Midwesterners. So actually, I wanted to thank you for coming on to this conversation despite the fact that I'm a Michigan Wolverine, oh, boy, like I'm hoping that
Jay Clouse: We've both had a good couple of years. We'll just put it that way.
Zack Arnold: It goes back and forth, right? But the reason I say that have jokingly is because, you know, born and bred midwesterner in Ohio, you are an Ohio State buckeye. But to me, the reason I bring it up is this idea of especially in the football community, as soon as somebody says they're a Buckeye or they're a Wolverine, oh, oh, I just, I hate that person. Like, there's just so many assumptions you make about them. And at the end of the day, it's like, This is dumb. Like, why are we doing this? Right? We're all people. We all have similar goals, we all have similar challenges. And I feel like the separation between creatives and creators. I don't know what it looks like on your end of the fence, but on my end of the fence, creator is kind of a four letter word right now. So really what I wanted to do is I wanted to dispel that myth, and I wanted you to really help creatives understand what it means to be a creator, what the content ecosystem looks like, and how we can be valuable to each other.
Jay Clouse: I mean, what we're really talking about here is identity. Identity is a really interesting, loaded topic, you know, to your Ohio State, Michigan, example, if you are marking your identity by being a Buckeye, that means that to feel a part of the tribe, you now have to be anti Michigan, right? I forget who said it, but they're basically like, you shouldn't hold your identity so preciously because it makes you defend it in conversations where you might not necessarily actually hold the view that you feel like you need to hold. So does this idea of creatives versus creators. These are also just identity markers, but we're really talking about people who are much more the same than they are different, and even within those communities, you know, a lot of people may not identify as a creative. They might identify as a designer, as a photographer, as a videographer, they might not identify as a creator. They might identify as a YouTuber or an influencer. So all of these are just words, ultimately, and so really, what I think it comes down to is, what are you trying to accomplish? Who has accomplished that, and can you learn from that person to get closer to that goal yourself?
Zack Arnold: So if we were going to define these two just in relatively simple terms, how would you differentiate a creative from a creator?
Jay Clouse: Well, on the Creator side, I typically see a Creator as somebody who says, I am making content for the purpose of attracting attention, for the purpose of selling some product, right? Like the the attention is the business model. It's the distribution system that brings people to a transaction, which is the business. I see creators as a subset of entrepreneur. So it's like a pretty small population, ultimately creatives. They are doing some sort of creative work, which is a huge swath of possibilities. I hesitate to even just like start naming things out there. And to be honest, for a long time, I didn't like the term creative because I wanted to be a creative is what I later discovered, and did not feel like I was a part of that. That group, that identity, I didn't feel like I had the right creative skills to take that on as an identity. So typically, creatives, I find they don't as often identify as entrepreneurs as well. I think a lot of the tension here is actually between this identity of artist versus entrepreneur. I think that's where a lot of the tension lives. And I think creators kind of sit right in the middle, where there are equal parts both,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I'm so glad that you brought up this idea of the artist versus the entrepreneur, because this was one of the articles that you had read that really kind of helped me crystallize understanding a lot of the challenges that come with like like me, I perfectly straddle this line where on the surface, my identity has been as a creative for, you know, 25 plus years working at a very high level in Hollywood, you know, working on multiple number one television shows. But then as I started to transition to it wasn't even called the. Creator space 10 years ago, but when I was just kind of like, creator curious, like, Oh, I'm gonna launch a podcast and I'm gonna talk to my editing buddies about fitness in the editing room and, like, just stuff like that. And never, never even thought to myself, I'm a creator. I'm creating content. I was just trying to put out resources that I thought were valuable to people. And then all of a sudden, a few years ago, I was like, Wait a second, am I a creator? Like, Oh, hold on, a second. Like, it, like you said, coming back to identity, I wasn't sure that I wanted to assume that. And when I say the word content with my audience, like, oh God, don't use the word content. Because very much, if we're looking at the artist, entrepreneur, scale, it's all about the artistry. It's all about the storytelling. And I think that for my audience, myself included, is that it? And I'm gonna basically blatantly steal this from a recent podcast guest that I had, Scott Barry Kaufman, who's one world renowned psychologist and understanding intelligence, understanding the creative mind. And I asked him, What's the difference between being creative in being a creative and he said that if you're creative, it's an act of doing. If you're a creative, it's an act of being right? And it's this need to tell stories and create emotions for people that are going to last, wanting to make a film or a series that people are going to watch 1020, 3040, years from now, as opposed to, like, quote, unquote, I'm going to throw this word out there, disposable content. That's just part of the conveyor line of getting people's attention. But there's so much more to the Creator space than just I gotta throw up another social media post on Twitter or x or whatever the hell it's called, by the time you and I release this right and trying to find meaning in that work. And you said something that really, really hit hard for me. You said that creating content is nothing more than transfer of emotion. Let's talk about that, because that transfer is of emotion is what creatives are seeking as well.
Jay Clouse: I mean, okay, so let me get this out of the way. Also, my mom was an English teacher growing up. I actually had my mom in high school as an English teacher, so I have a deep appreciation of words, and a lot of times the words we choose are just the best fit term to capture as much of what we're trying to get across as possible, right? So this comes up when you talk about content, because content could be a lot of things us having a conversation right now is content. My words that you're hearing are content. Of course, this is being recorded as a podcast, also content. I would argue that the thoughts you have in your head is content. So it's just a word, and I find that if you get too upset about a specific word. What you're upset about is your connotation with that word. And maybe we should loosen that a little bit and see is that even the intention of the person using that word to your point of content being a transfer, transfer of emotion. I think, I mean, I think about this first and foremost, as when you make something, you are imbuing it with meaning, with soul, with, you know, some you're basically taking the chemical reactions that are happening in your brain and saying, How do I get these chemical reactions happening in the brain of somebody else. And your best method of doing that is forcing it into the technology of language and what other, whatever other form of communication you can and so you take these just like electric firings of synapses and whatever, and you think, oh, okay, I think the way I would describe this is these words, or in this imagery, or in this scene of dialog, and you force that into language, or you force that individuals, and you put that in front of somebody else, and you wait and see. How does that land with them? Do they have the same reaction to it that I did? And a lot of the choices you make in that communication are subtle. They're subtle methods of communicating, a feeling, a thought, an idea, you may not be able to articulate in language, in terms of like English or Spanish or whatever, exactly what you're feeling, but it has informed the actual act of creation itself, and the way it's felt, the way it's received, it might light up the same synapses and neural pathways in the in the brain of the person receiving it, right? A lot of this is like ineffable magic that artists do, and that's part of what makes this so special and so exciting, and one of the, you know, longest forms of communication that the human species has. So
Zack Arnold: first of all, as a side note, I didn't realize how much more in common we had than I thought. My father was my principal in middle and high school, so he wasn't my English teacher, per se, but he was both my principal. And my math teacher, so I'm starting to understand you on a totally different level than I have as just, you know, somebody that's helping me better understand the Creator space. Yeah, we might have to talk more about what it means to be the teacher's kid sometime, because I bet you've got some stories too. But I want to go even a little bit deeper into this idea, the idea of the dichotomy of the artist versus the entrepreneur, because what I hear so often from students in my community and students in my academy is it's all about the artistry. But for example, one of the questions that I'll ask whenever I do a speech in front of a group, whether virtual or in person, one of my very first questions, how many of you are the owner of a small business? Get a couple of hands. I'm like, let me double check, make sure this is on. How many of you are the owner of a small business? Couple more hands go up. Let me say this one more time, like, oh. And then everybody kind of raises their hand because they don't think of themselves as an entrepreneur or a business owner. They only think of themselves as an artist. And there is no world anymore where we have the safe path as the artist. We have to be both, right? And I would say, if we're looking at the balance of them and the creator space, I would argue, by and large, it's more balanced towards entrepreneur and less artist. But you have to have both. And in my space, like for me, I'm more artists than entrepreneur, and where I struggle is the entrepreneur side, which is why I've joined your community and I want to learn from you, but I still consider myself both, but trying to help other creatives understand that when they've had one skill for their entire careers, that in order to move forwards into this new world, they also have to embrace being an entrepreneur and the CEO of their own business. It's a really hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. So let's talk a little bit more about this balance of the balance of these two.
Jay Clouse: Well, back to my parents being high school teachers. I had no business training growing up. In fact, the only time the idea of business entered the household was when teacher negotiations were coming up every few years, and they had a representative from the teachers, you know, union negotiating with the school board and the administration for what are the salaries and step increases going to be for teachers? And the prevailing mood was, basically, the business interests are to keep salaries down, and therefore business bad. And so I grew up with the idea business bad money, hard money, scarce. And it took a lot of unlearning and reprogramming to change that mindset. When I went to college, I think the money stories we are taught and we learn implicitly growing up really hard to unlearn without actively trying to do so. But yeah, I mean, the core tension here, I would say, is, where does the act of creation come from? What are you trying to do when it comes from a place of pure expression that's much more the artistry side. You're scratching your own itch. You're doing this because it pleases and tickles you. And there's nothing wrong with that. Entrepreneurs are creating from a place of, how do I create value so that I can capture value. It's value creation so that I can capture some of that for myself. And if I were to say to you, hey, Zack, I'm going to give you 10 dollars the only catch is you need to give me two of those dollars. Would you take that trade?
Zack Arnold: Durr, I mean, but my first reaction would be like, there's got to be a catch, but, sure,
Jay Clouse: Sure. But that's, that's, that's business, that's value creation. It's not as simple as, like, I'm going to give you 10 dollars you give me two back. Because if I'm giving you 10 dollars then you know I'm losing money on that. I guess I should say I'm going to create 10 dollars from you, for you, I just need two of them back. Entrepreneurs are saying, I'm going to create value where there was not value before, and you're going to be better off, and because of that, I'm going to be better off. But there's this fundamental understanding that I need to make this person better off so that I can capture this value I'm creating for their needs. And the Creator sits at this in between saying, Yes, I want to indulge my creativity. I want to express myself, but if I but if I don't create value for the person on the receiving end, I don't get paid. It's just an understanding, if I don't create value, I don't capture value. And again, it's okay to create from a place of personal expression and interest and curiosity, but if you're not creating with the needs of others in mind, don't be surprised if you're not capturing value from other people either, because you're not creating anything of value to them. It's not a it's not like an objective, meritocratic judgment of your work. It's just saying, if I don't value the thing that you made, you're not going to capture any value from me from having made it. And it's just a little bit of a flip of a switch that takes a while for people to kind of grasp. And if you don't want to take into account what other people's. Desires, needs, problems are again, that's okay. I would say you can still be an artist, but you're not going to be a very successful entrepreneur, small business owner, creator.
Zack Arnold: And this, to me, was one of the big clinchers, because about 10 years ago, I was going through a very similar transition, dare I say, existential career crisis, where I had made my living, my entire career, only doing one thing, and I was working on the number one television show at the time, Empire, realizing I don't want to be stuck in a position where I am my entire livelihood and supporting my family is determined I'm doing one thing that was also completely and totally burning me out that was in misalign with all of my values and my priorities. And I started looking into what does it mean to monetize your knowledge, and I was playing around with the podcast at the time. But one of the things about if I had had this vocabulary 10 years ago, one of the things about the Creator space that terrified me was, oh my god, now I have to be an attention whore, right? Like you said, it's all about I gotta put myself out there. I gotta, like, my entire life becomes asking people to to smash the subscribe button, right? Like, that's not me. But then when I realized it was an exchange of value, and the exchange was so in favor of the people receiving the value, whereas, you know, you're really good at getting into the numbers I can build a business on which I make a living and support my family, where I give away about 98.5% of my content for free. And if there's 1.5% of people that say I want to learn more and I'd like to dig deeper, and I'd like to work with you and your community. I make a living doing that. I love that. And when people say, I can't believe you're doing all this for free. I'm like, I know I love it. To this day, I still haven't figured out how to actually have my podcast make money and be profitable, but because the podcast, as you talk about, is my discovery platform. That's where people learn about me, and that's also where I get so charged up and excited about having conversations like this, like, I don't need to get paid for doing what we're doing now. I just love talking to brilliant people and trying to figure out life together. But if I know that roughly 1% of the people that listen to this say I want to try out your products or your services, that to me, is an amazing exchange of value, and I can live the rest of my days knowing that that's the way that it's structured. But as soon as it becomes I'm part of the content machine, I'm just throwing things in the endless stream of Instagram or YouTube, and it's all about vanity metrics. Now you scare me away, and you say, I don't want to have anything to do with this whatsoever. So how do we dispel some of those fears that I know, that I both felt years ago, and a lot of the people that are watching right now are feeling as well.
Jay Clouse: I just tell people you don't have to do what you don't want to do. And in fact, if you don't want to do it, then you probably shouldn't, because it's a competitive game, and if you don't want to do it, you're not going to do it well enough or stick with it long enough to learn to do it well enough to succeed at it, and you should probably stick to things that you enjoy doing. That being said, I think most people are being a little bit close minded as to how they can experience the the activity itself. You know, I had this breakthrough on Instagram recently, because I've never been great at Instagram. I've always told myself that I am not photogenic. I don't take good photos, I don't do great on video, and I just didn't enjoy the idea of creating a script for short form video and then editing it on my phone. Basically, my brain operates too fast, and anything I have to do with my thumbs, I hate it. It's like, I don't want to slow my brain down to the speed of my thumbs. So I just left Instagram alone. Then I realized, you know, there are 1000s of people who have chosen to follow me on Instagram, and they never hear from me. And most of those people, you know, pretty loose connection, but every time I post a story, anywhere between 215 100 people view that story, and those are people who are obviously, like my most engaged, most interested folks on the platform, and there's no pressure to that, like a story cannot go viral. A story is just for the purpose of sharing with the people who are really interested. And that's something that is interesting to me. That's the same strategy with email, with podcasting, with the community. And so I realized, oh, I can use Instagram differently than I thought. I was telling myself I had to use it this way, but in fact, I can use it this way. And when I do use it this new way, I actually enjoy doing it, and it's productive for me. So you know, any platform that you're absolutely not interested in, just don't do it. The fewer platforms that you dedicate any of your scarce resources and time to, the more you can just dig in and make that platform great. So yeah, anyone that's just like, I don't want to be part of this content machine and do this or do that, okay, then don't do those things. But how can you leverage these tools in a way that serves you? How can you get your message out to people? People who need to hear it and enjoy the process of doing that, lots of opportunities at your disposal. Just choose the ones that are interesting to you.
Zack Arnold: And that's where it comes back to this idea of transfer of emotion. If you don't want to be on the platform, your followers are going to know you don't want to be on the platform. Like if I go back and I look at some I experimented for a very short period of time with reels on Instagram, and within three videos, I'm like, Nope, this is not the platform for me. This is not authentic. The idea of just having to record five of them for the week was there was so much existential dread, the thought of having to do it every single week and building an entire business model around that not going to work, right? But then I look at one of the discoveries that I made recently, not the discovery of the platform, but my discovery of it being the right fit, is sub stack. Like, I can't stop thinking about this, the stories that I want to be able to tell on sub stack, like I'm drawn to it. I'm pulled to it, rather than having to push myself where I say sub stack is my people like, I'm hoping that the authentic emotion and feeling that I have about writing on there will resonate with people, so I don't feel like, Oh God, I gotta write another sub stack. It's I get to write another one, and I'm excited about it, but you will never catch me dead on tick tock, because that is not the right fit for me to find a place to be authentic, and frankly, I would not be able to connect with the kind of people that are looking for authenticity in return.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, yeah. It's just it's tough to fight your own interests, because, again, these are competitive platforms, and you basically have to be improving every day or compared to the competition, you are getting worse. If you're not getting better, you are getting worse, and you're only going to get better if you are driven to get better because you enjoy doing it. I ask people, you know, if they're if they're trying to start making something and publishing somewhere, they're not sure where to go, I say, Well, where do you spend your most time consuming? Because that's going to be a really positive sign that you enjoy that platform. And because you're spending more time consuming there, you're more innately a student of that platform. You understand the rules, you understand what works, you understand the culture. Every platform is like a slightly different language in culture, and you have to understand it to succeed there. So starting from a place of what do you enjoy consuming is a really good starting point for choosing where you are publishing.
Zack Arnold: So given all that, just like you, I too very much embrace that if somebody wants to dive into the Creator space, it can't just be get yourself on all the platforms, because it's not just a matter of vanity metrics. I got to get the most likes to get the get the most subscribes, the most followers. Every platform is a culture, and we're, you know, for better or worse, not going to make any judgments. X is the perfect example of that, where it's a very specific culture and there's been a cultural shift. And I'm a big believer in you just at least to start, you pick one or two platforms that feel authentic, then you can build from there and experiment. But I just feel like as soon as somebody dives in, and you probably see this more than I do, they just try everything, and they never really get a sense of what's the right fit for me.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, it's, it's impractical. There's, there's a saying that if you think you can be a day trader, basically, like, if you're on Robin Hood, you're trying to make money on stocks, just day trading. It's like trying to go 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali and not having trained. There are people who have spent their whole careers playing that game, and you are the person they are profiting from, right? It's the same with any of these platforms. It's not too late to start on any of them, but there are people who have a significant head start there. And if you are not able to train at the same level that other people are training, then you are likely not going to have the same level of success without without luck, without timing, without being really differentiated. It's more likely that you will have a hard time competing on those platforms. So it's smartest, especially in the beginning, to pick a platform, a sport, where you can spend a lot of your time training, as much time as you know, the top 25% of people are spending getting good at that platform, and then you can kind of land and expand on other platforms, but it's it's a much more efficient strategy to do one thing really well and then parlay that momentum to start elsewhere, then basically start at the ground floor everywhere, and try to move forward at once.
Zack Arnold: I love that you're using the training analogy, because I, too, always equate everything to sports and training. And for all of my longtime listeners and followers, they've probably heard way too many analogies to life in the American Ninja Warrior obstacle course. Won't go there today, but I like this idea of training, and what I want to bring up next, which, again, is this like. Economy of artist versus entrepreneur, I see by and large that entrepreneurs have a much higher threshold for failure. They're just so willing to dive in and say, All right, I'm gonna throw a bunch of content out there. Nobody watches this one. Nobody watched this one. Oh, this went viral. Let's figure it out, right? Like Mr. Beast is the quince quintessential scientist. He's like, let's look at the algorithm, second by second, minute by minute. How do we maintain retention? How do we A, B, C, D and E, test our thumbnails, right? Like I know multiple people that were on his early editorial teams, and even though some of the worked on beast games, it's down to a science and really understanding content consumption. Artists, on the other hand, ooh, were fragile. Oh, it's scary to put ourselves out there, we got massive imposter syndrome. So the idea of publicly putting ourselves out there when we've always been the creatives behind the scenes in the small, dark rooms, that's terrifying. Now you compound negative feedback and haters in trolls. Nope, I'm not going anywhere near that. So how do we help the entrepreneurs bring a little bit more of that growth mindset to the artists that are so terrified of putting themselves out there and experimenting in training that they won't even start
Jay Clouse: Well, I think we can look at what it is an entrepreneur does. Entrepreneurship is basically trying to create, again, value out of thin air, which is a difficult proposition. You're basically saying, Hey, you have no roadmap. Figure out this thing that's in your mind, because if there was a roadmap, then you wouldn't be an entrepreneur. It would be, you know, going through another pathway that's already been carved for you. Entrepreneurship, by nature, is failure. I think what makes you more comfortable with failure is experiencing failure. It's not comfortable. It's not something you want to do. And I think the older we get, and the better we get at some skill, the harder it is for us to start at zero acquiring some other skill. You know, I have a lot of friends who love to golf. They frequently ask me, Do you golf? Do you want to go golfing? And I find a way to shoot that invitation down, because I have golfed once, and it was not good. It was embarrassing, and I was very bad at it, and I don't like being bad in public. I think that's true for a lot of adults, frankly, but if I were to ever get good at golf, I would have to practice and I can practice privately. I can fail privately, and it's a lot safer and it's a lot less embarrassing. It's still hard, it's still painful in some ways, but you can fail privately, and that will make you more comfortable failing publicly. And really, for for artists out there, it's just, it's just exposure therapy. What can you do and try and recognize that it may not work, and also recognize that that will be okay. You kind of have to experience it. You have to experience the okayness on the other side of failure, it's be like, that wasn't that bad, and actually nobody was paying attention. And I'm not in a worse position than I was before that failure. In fact, I'm in a better position than I was before that failure, because I have a new experience, I have new data, and I have a better shot the next time I try this. So I think it's just fully trial and error and experiencing the failure that makes us more comfortable with it.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with all of that. I talk about exposure therapy all the time, and I was, I became very, very good at failing publicly for many years and sharing. It wasn't just here's the result of years and years of training for American Ninja Warrior. It was watch me fail every Sunday as I try to figure this sport out and sharing all of that. And what I actually found was immense liberation when I started to put myself out there authentically. And it wasn't like, oh my god, Zack isn't perfect. He doesn't have it figured out. It's Holy shit. He's just like us. He's a big, giant failure too. That was so liberating for me to then start creating content where I didn't have this identity of I am the expert. I am Mr. Optimize, as opposed to, we're all digging through the same trenches. I'm just trying to figure it out like you are, and let's help each other through it.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, and I will say, in this creator space, there is an incentive to share the wins, because the wins, they perform well, meaning that when you share a win, you get a lot of feedback. We'll call it loosely. You get a lot of response from your connections, your followers or subscribers, whatever. That feels very positive. It feels good. And you think, huh, I should share more of that, because that's what people like to see. But I actually think the dark side of sharing mostly or just wins is that you're creating envy, and I don't know that it's consciously registered. By people. But even though they may give it a like, they may comment on it, you have seeded this feeling of, I want that. Why am I not having that? That's actually a pretty toxic emotion to pass on to somebody, and eventually, I think this is what contributes to like schadenfreude and people wanting to see you not share a win. The other side of this that I'll say every time that I have shared, you know, the the non wins, the things that are not easy, that I'm not doing well, the insecurities that I have, I actually get a larger anecdotal response. Those may not get as many of the like, you know, quick thumbs up, likes, emotions, reactions, but they do get much deeper and more frequent replies. And I think that's actually a better sign of engagement to optimize for anyway, when people are, you know, so moved by the thing that you said that they are going to take time out of their day share some of their own vulnerability most of the time, and how this connected with them, helped them. And so, yeah, I think it's important to be more transparent with the messy parts, because similar to this, this kind of movement we've seen on Instagram of Instagram is not real. That's true for every platform we operate on. Everywhere we show up, we are curating what our appearance is, and in the moment, it feels like you're getting a lot of positive feedback, but I think you're actually creating this toxic emotion of envy that long term is not positive for your relationship to that audience.
Zack Arnold: And one of the reasons that I wanted to go deeper into this, and the one of the many reasons I thought it was so important to bring you on, is again, dispelling all these myths about the Creator economy, what it means to be a creator. And one of the conversations I've had with my students when I really dug in and asked them, like, what is the aversion to the word content or creator? And like, oh, I don't want to become an influencer. And what I want you to help me and help everybody else understand is that there's such a wide breadth of all the various ways you can create content the different kinds of spaces like it's not just I've got to be an influencer that has brands and pedals products, so just kind of help us better understand the Creator economy, from your perspective, the kinds of content, and also, much more importantly, how there's so many diverse ways to generate income that are not just based On likes and subscribes.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, when I look at the landscape of what types of creators are out there, you know, historically, I said you have entertainment, you have education, and I think there's actually a third group down here somewhere that's kind of like companionship. It's it's certainly not education, and it's not even quite entertainment. It's more just like, pass the time, feel like you're connecting with somebody. It's like a social outlet. Influencer, I think, is like kind of a an old word that I don't even see used all that much. But if we again, word nerds here, if we look at the idea of being an influencer, what does that mean? It means that you have some level of influence over the people that are viewing your content. And I would say probably most people creating content actually lack much real influence. But I don't know what more you would want than influence from your work. Like, wouldn't you want people to be so moved by what you're creating, that they take some action that benefits them, and then you get to capture some of that value also. So, you know, most of the people that I work with tend to be more in the education camp, where they're saying, I have learned a skill, I have learned some sort of ability. I know that I can teach that to somebody else, and they can benefit from that, Billy as well. And you know, a lot of the people getting the air time, I would say, are much more in the entertainment camp, because that's the big spectacle. It's the flashy it's, you know, the lowest common denominator can reach the most people. You don't have to make a fool of yourself or create a big spectacle, or even, you know, have a huge audience to create work you're proud of, put it out into the world, have it impact people positively and capture some of that value for yourself. I think actually, the lifestyle most people would want is one where you are completely in alignment with what you're sharing is creating value for other people. You are financially successful enough to have, you know, financial freedom more or less, and you actually retain a lot of privacy. You don't want a lot of fame. You can influence people and not have to reach a lot of them to do so
Zack Arnold: I'm really glad you broke this down into kind of these three separate camps, the education, the. Entertainment, and I guess, like, the social companionship. That's not a world I know well, but is that, like, an example of, like Twitch, where it's like, people watching people watching, watching people doing things while they're watching people like that kind of are
Jay Clouse: Exactly it's, it's Twitch, it's, you know, some of these trends we see on Tiktok or Instagram, where it's like, get ready with me, you know, where you're just kind of along for the ride of this person's day. And I guess you could probably make an argument that you are entertained to some degree, but it's not the same as you know, I was on a 1 dollar boat versus a 1 billion dollar boat. Like it's a different level of interaction,
Zack Arnold: Sure. Okay, so I'm glad that we clarify that, because I think it's the two areas that I wanna dig into are education and entertainment. And my fear is that a lot of people that are creatives are thinking, Well, neither of those is really a great fit, because most people, at least the creatives in my world, this idea that, Oh, I could never be an expert. I could never help others. I'm not an educator. I'm not a teacher. An end of the argument, the other end of the argument is, well, I create entertainment for a living, but I create entertainment that goes in movie theaters, that goes on premium streaming services, and the thought of doing like the I'm gonna be on a 1 million dollar yacht, they're like, just shoot me in the face like that. To our world that wouldn't be considered. And I don't want to speak for everybody here, but I think I can speak for most people coming from my world. The thought of working on that kind of a video is not what they would consider working on entertainment, right? And I'm not saying that that's the case. That's just the perception. So if we're coming at a first from the education angle, and again, I know that you have a lot of lot of feelings about education in general, I really like your approach to how to help somebody overcome this imposter syndrome of, I'm not an expert, so I couldn't put myself out there and teach things. So for those that have plenty of knowledge and skills and experience to share, how do we help them overcome the barrier of, I could never be an educator or a content creator on the internet.
Jay Clouse: Just think about your own behavior when you're trying to do something that you haven't done before. I know for me, let's take like an at home project. At one point, we were skim coating our hallway walls because there was popcorn, popcorn texture on the walls, for some reason. But anyway, we wanted to smooth out. Never done this before. I go to YouTube, I start searching how to do this. I didn't go to every YouTube search result and then find the channel author and then search some database for like, a certification or some official credibility to be like this person's good enough. I just looked for content that seemed to have some measure of people saying this was good, and use that as a proxy to say, I'll watch it. And when I watched it, it gave me something to try, and it worked. That's all we need. I don't know what level of expertness that person had, but they created a piece of content, a video, that helped me solve the problem I was facing in that moment. That's all it is. There are infinite things that you know better than other people, that you can incrementally move them closer to your level. That's all that matters. You don't have to be the absolute expert in this realm to say I figured something out. I have done something. Here is something that you can do in that vein as well. Now creators typically sort of pick a lane or a universe of these things, because now, yeah, I could technically teach somebody to install a backup sump pump. I could technically help people decide, you know which backup generator to choose, but that's a little bit outside of where I actually have curiosity and interest and passion. So I'm going to find alignment between my interests things that I've learned, and say, let me go one or two steps back from that to where I was before I learned these things, and help people get up to speed there. That's really all you need to do. And of course, if you look at the marketplace of other people sharing helpful information in that in that way, the more differentiated you are, the higher likelihood of success that you have. You know, more competitive spaces are going to be harder to break in. You're gonna define how you are different. So you might wanna do kind of an audit, the things you have interest in that you feel like reasonably, you could talk about for years and say, which of these make me the most excited? Which of these have what seems like the biggest open space for me? Where is my perspective the most different? And start there. But yeah, there's, there's no, there's no like governing body that will tell you you have enough expertise that you can talk about this publicly, anyone can do it, and anybody can be helpful in doing so.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's very similar to what we talk about in the creative space, about you need to stop waiting for permission for somebody to say you're a direct. Writer, or you're a writer, or you're a composer, or you're an editor. If you want to be a director, go direct. If you want to be a writer, write stuff, right? And yes, it's going to suck at first, and you're going to get better and better at it. But along the lines of what you said, there is no world that says You are now ready to be a creator. You have enough expertise, therefore YouTube will grant you access to create your own channel, right? Doesn't work that way. And what I found, at least for me, and I know that you talk about this as well, is the power in not trying to even solve problems as much as following your own curiosity. And I'm just making content for me, and then if you're putting that energy out there and you're trying to solve a problem, other people are going to come along on the ride. Right? Right? This conversation right? Here is a meta example of that. I don't really know how to navigate the Creator space successfully. I feel like I'm doing okay at it, but now that I'm going through a rebranding process, and this is the first time I built the summit, I'm really trying to expand the people that I can work with. This conversation is valuable to me. This is my opportunity to create content. Is I pique my curiosity and I'm trying to solve a problem, knowing that if I grant access to other people solving the same problem, now we start to build a community around solving that problem. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning, because if I were chasing the algorithm and trying to hit metrics and say, Well, I guess I'm really good at this thing, and I need to creep keep cranking out expert content, I'd give up in three months
Jay Clouse: Something else I think is relevant to this conversation, or at this point in time, we are at this moment where it's never been easier to create a high volume of content, or, I should say, generate a high volume of content with AI, right? Like you can, you can have it spit out stuff that you could publish underneath your name and photo and say, This is my stuff, actually. And a lot of people are going to do that. And whether it's coming from other people or whether it's these companies themselves, generating information based content. You know, for the last, I don't know, 20 years, people would create and maintain blogs that are basically how to blogs, publishing dozens, hundreds of articles that teach people how to do something, and getting search traffic that type of information that just like pure how to AI is going to gobble that up and do a really good job, actually, of making a better experience to teach you How to do things. So educational content, as we've come to know, it, is going to have to adapt. In some ways, pure information is not enough. So what does that mean? It means that your perspective, your experiences, your personality, matter a lot. I would also say, you know, 1015, years ago, most of YouTube was like vlogs. It was people making content about their day. Then we got more of that than we had interest in, and it kind of went away, and we started doing more of this, like scripted, highly produced, spectacle style content. And I think we're actually probably going to go back a little bit more towards the personal experience, because as AI eats into more and more areas of our life, people are going to want verifiable human experiences. I hear some people have the idea of like, what's this gonna do to movies? Cuz couldn't AI just generate an entirely new movie that is specifically made for me and tailored for my interests, and just do it on the fly. And the answer is like, yeah, it'll probably be able to do some version of that in the next year, even. But what we don't have with that is a shared experience to talk about with somebody else. And I think we're going to very quickly come back to I want to know that this content was created to transfer emotion from another human I want a verifiable human experience. Sports are more valuable than ever in terms of, like, broadcast rights, because that's a very verifiable human experience. So all this to say people who are like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. I can't imagine myself doing this. Great. It sounds like you have taste and a vision for what you would do, or at least, you're starting to rule out some possibilities, the things that you are genuinely interested in exploring and putting your name and face behind. That's what's going to be able to help you stand out. But it's not enough just to be like, I won't do that. I won't do this. Okay. Well, what will you do? And maybe you should start
Zack Arnold: Now you're very much speaking my language. Now I'm getting excited, because as soon as you address the elephant in the room, which is artificial intelligence, which is a major topic of conversation for this entire summit, what I've always been interested in is number one, how can I learn the tools to leverage them to be a better creative and a better creator, but without losing my humanity, right, without getting replaced. I think that's one of the biggest fears that especially the creative community has, is, well, what if this tool, or these tools, can just do all the work that I do and I have a multitude of other conversations that go into that much more deeply? So I'm only barely going to scratch that. Surface now, but where you and I are speaking the same language is the idea that the more that artificial intelligence and information and content becomes abundant, the more human experience becomes very scarce, and we're going to crave that personal human experience, which is a side note, is why I very much gravitated to sub stack, because it's not a five step listical for how to grow your audience, or how to do X, Y or Z. And yes, there are some sub stack growth hackers, and you know, they're making their own little, you know, noise in the corner, but by and large, sub stack is a platform where you are open to be sharing your personal experiences, your challenges, your imposter syndrome, right to be real. And I think in all content, we're going to see that craving for wanting to come back to it's telling a human story about our shared experience as humans, especially in such an uncertain time. So to me, this is a really good transition from How can creators help creatives better understand their space? Now I want to ask the question, how can creatives be valuable to the Creator space. How can our years, if not decades, of experience telling some of the best, most timeless stories known culturally to mankind? How do we become valuable to you, the creators?
Jay Clouse: Well, I think stories is a big part of it, because I do think that story based content. I'm going to keep using that word because I don't have a better word, which is why
Zack Arnold: You're free to use it. By the way, you have my permission.
Jay Clouse: I think stories are more engaging, and that's good for two reasons. It's good for capturing attention in the first place, and it's good for holding its retention over time. People are more likely to recall a story than a you know how to guide. People are more likely to recall how a story made them feel than the exact story itself. So stories are really, really powerful, and the devices for which we tell those stories, I think, matter a lot. It's kind of funny, because I do find that something like the big YouTubers, as they mature on their channel, they start coming out and saying, you know, there, there's a lot of like, storytelling. We had to figure out we and it was better for retention, like they use YouTube language, but basically talk in more legacy media terms, and it's like, yeah, a lot of this has been figured out by existing forms of media. And when you throw the baby out with the bathwater because you're like, well, this isn't working, or this isn't interesting, this isn't keeping up the culture. Some of that's true, but also, there's a lot to be learned from from these areas. So I do think storytelling will be a big part of it. I think artistry in terms of, like, how can we show something rather than tell it? I think that's really interesting and important. I love watching the behind the scenes of something. Basically every show on HBO that I watch now, I love that they include like a 10 to 15 minute thing on the back end. That's like behind the scenes of this episode, talking about talking to the actors the show runner. It just deepens your appreciation for the thing. Same with podcasts on top of shows, to hear about the process behind it really deepens your interest to the thing and makes you want to rewatch it. So I think imbuing that into content is important. But I will say, like a lot of what I hear from folks who try to hire from more traditional areas, speed is an issue. Like the the content creator is typically trying to move faster than the creative from the legacy side is accustomed to, and that creates some conflict. And again, sometimes that leads the Creator saying, this experiment didn't work. But I think, I think there's something in the middle here, because storytelling, artistry, craft. I think both sides actually care about craft a lot. They just have different definitions of what their craft is in the process, right? So the craft of being a YouTuber might mean that you are optimizing for a click through rate and a thumbnail which might be in opposition to the craft of design, which says, Yeah, but I want to do the thumbnail this way because it looks better. Well, if it doesn't perform better for what we're trying to do with this channel, you know, you see how these, these two versions of craft can be in conflict. So you have to kind of find the harmony and see what matters. Ultimately, I you know, I think creators, craft is like on top of the value creation step. They care about it, but only to the degree to which they can be successful in creating value and then capturing some of that value. Crafts, for crafts sake, is more of a. Hobby, a vocation. I think about this a lot because my inner entrepreneur and artist are in tension with image generation and chatgpt. When that came out, the entrepreneur in me is like, wow, something that I've paid hundreds of dollars for recently, I can now generate in about five minutes by tooling around this prompt that feels exciting. That's like, wow, money saved, time saved. And the artist part of me is like, yeah, on the back of a lot of work that was ingested, learned from this is going to hurt a lot of people, but the genie is out of the bottle, the tube is out or the toothpaste is out of the tube. We can't just sit here and deny the fact that things are going to move forward and there's a new way of doing work, and people are going to create new value, capture, new value. I think creatives are some of the best people who are served to make the most interesting work out of this technology, but if we're just denying it, then we're only shooting ourselves in the foot.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I've been saying the same thing and preaching to the same choir for the last two and a half, three years. And when I first started talking about us immediately embracing it, we're talking like the torches and pitchfork mob like online was eviscerated by a lot of my peers, because what they heard was, Oh, you mean, I'm replaceable. You're okay just eliminating our entire industry. And I'm like, of course, I'm not okay with that. But number one, I don't fear that that's going to be the case by and large for most of us. But secondarily, and this has been said in many industries, and I certainly didn't say it myself, but it's not that Creatives or writers or editors or whomever, we're not going to be replaced by AI. We're going to be replaced by people that are using AI to tell stories as part of their tool set. And I just wanted to, and again, this is something we're going to go into a lot more in a lot of the the other conversations in the summit, but I want to point out two things that I think are really, really valuable for people on the creative side of this conversation. To hear, number one, you just called us the legacy media, people need to just let that sit for a second. They need to understand the reality we're in. We're the legacy old media compared to this creator economy. And secondarily, you're talking about the battle between craft and commerce. For anybody that's worked in Hollywood, that's nothing new. It's always been the Battle of, is this show art, or is it show business? And it's always that constant struggle in butting heads of well, this is the best version of the scene, or this should be the music in the montage, or this is the structuring. They're like, yes, but the quadrants on our spreadsheet, based on our testing in the mall tell us otherwise. So this is nothing new. It's just in a different form. So anybody that's thinking, Yeah, but I don't want to destroy my craft and my art form by taking it to YouTube or the creator space. We've been fighting this battle our entire careers. Now, it's just with different numbers and different metrics. So this is nothing new. And like you said, if it's really about the true art form, unless you're Christopher Nolan, it's pretty much going to be a hobby.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, the reality of having a job is that to the employer, odds are you are replaceable, like they are. I just don't believe in job security in terms of having a w2 job. To me, job security is feeling like if I had to go get a job, I could get a job. I'm self employed, but I feel like I have incredible job security because I think the skills I have collected by doing this content thing make me a very valuable hire. So to me, job security is feeling secure that you could get a new job if you wanted to. I don't think you should delude yourself into feeling secure in the job that you currently are, because this is an extremely capitalistic country we live in, and we are always going to value speed, efficiency, cost savings, and companies aren't loyal to you. They're just, they're just not even audiences aren't super loyal to you. But I do think that an audience that you develop through the hard work of sharing your voice and your message probably much more loyal to you than than an employer is.
Zack Arnold: And this is again, something that I've been mentioning, especially since kind of the the beginning of the downturn in Hollywood, but even before that, is that the the riskiest path of all is having one job and one skill. Right? We were taught from like, literally, preschool through regular education secondary education, like, you're going to be a widget. Who do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be in a to be an accountant. I want to be an astronaut. Whatever it is, right? We say, here's the path, here's the degree. You choose a major, you choose a concentration. You're being trained to be a low level employee at a company. You climb the ladder, and then 35 years later, you get your 401 K and your gold watch, bullshit. None of that's. True. Frankly, it never really was. But now, like you said, the genie is also out of that bottle where we realize going in one singular, highly specialized path is the riskiest path of all. And I've been talking about for years, the value of diversifying both your income streams but also your skills. And I feel like the Creator space is an endless playground to take transferable skills, knowledge experience weird, random knowledge about things that most people don't know, like the internet, is the playground you are going to find your community of people that are interested in those same things.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, yeah. I think you're talking about abundance and scarcity earlier, the most scarce resource you have is you as a person, your skills may not be that scarce to an industry. As a business owner, I am actively all the time trying to be as non dependent on members of my team as possible, because that's a liability. That's a risk, even when I have incredibly talented people that I would hate to lose. I am, you know, part of their job description is creating standard operating procedures for their work. I may not get somebody in who has the exact same skill set, but I'm trying to reduce the time it takes to get somebody back, someone else up to speed on that role as much as possible. It's just what we do. Like if you are truly indispensable, then that puts us at a negative advantage, and most businesses are trying to avoid that situation. So I think most people do not realize the degree to which they are rather expendable. And I don't want to be a bummer. I just want to, I just want to call it out. You know, if you can flip that on its head and say, I'm going to be the one that is creating value, I'm going to build a connection with people, individually, through content. No one can replace you as you if I'm coming to your channel to watch you, I can't find that literally anybody else that is that is the one singular place I can get it. As soon as AI started coming out there all these companies and still are people are like, let's make your AI clone. Let's build a chat bot that talks as you. We can make a video model of you. We can copy your voice. I haven't touched any of that because, to me, the most scarce thing is me. Why would I want to create abundance out of my most scarce resource and create the liability on top of that, of having no idea what this thing is out there, saying and giving advice that may not be something in alignment with me. So I find, you know, as people are like, scrambling to say, I want to scale myself. I'm kind of like, I really don't I want to do the exact opposite. I want to make it increasingly special to have access to me, my thoughts, my brain, and that's available to anybody. That opportunity is available to anybody. It's taken by few. It's stuck with by even fewer, but literally available to anybody.
Zack Arnold: It's funny that you talk about this idea of being replaceable, because you kind of tentatively said it. I've literally said to a crowd of 500 people, every single person sitting here is replaceable tomorrow morning. What like every single one of us is a replaceable widget. And for years, I didn't want to believe that. Oh, but no. My my talents are different. My talents are special. I'm the only one that can solve these creative problems. Nope. Yoink, we're gonna put somebody else in the chair tomorrow. It was as soon as I accepted that that I realized it's time for me to diversify. It's time for me to figure out multiple ways, like you said, that I create my own job security, rather than job security being this false sense of, Well, I guess this company is going to keep asking me to come back every Monday morning, but now everybody's seeing across all industries, like, I'm probably not getting any federal workers that are listening to this, but you want to talk about where people thought it was the most secure of all a government worker. Like, they've completely lost that Mirage, right? So talking about this idea of being expendable, that's going to take me to another area that I think is really it's it's a both a fear and a sore spot for people that are coming from my area that are looking to get into the Creator space, and that's the devaluation of the craft. It's this idea that, well, they're looking for a quote, unquote YouTube editor, and they're charging 25 dollars a video, and they want you to do, you know, 10 videos in a day, or whatever it is. And again, it's this legacy mentality of, well, well, this is my rate as an editor. And the example that I've given before is, imagine that you know, you and I were in a job interview, and you were interviewing me. Me, and you said, Well, you know, what's your expected rate? And just, you know, kind of a ballpark rate for somebody that works in television. Well, my general rate is 5,000 dollars a week. And you respond with, you know, you're interviewing for an assistant manager job at Home Depot, right? Like it doesn't work that way. And I feel like the connection between I edit in the Hollywood space versus YouTube, you're using the same tools, similar craft, but expectations have to shift
Jay Clouse: Totally. Your value is completely correlated to the value that is created from your labor. So if you are 5,000 dollars a week, that's probably because that math works out for whoever is paying you that and the value of your labor adds up to a much larger hole than your typical creator on YouTube is going to be able to afford it. It's just it's just true. So you do have to calibrate and say, what are the Lovers I can pull it doesn't mean that you have to go down and take a 25 dollars per hour job. It does mean that you need to figure out, well, where are my skills most valued, and how close to my existing rate can I get that the higher up that totem pole you try to go, the more scarce the opportunities, and therefore the more competitive those opportunities are. So you have to get more creative and how you approach them. But, you know, I think that there's much less. Should I say? I'm gonna say, I think there's much less waste in the new world of content creation, because there's just tighter budgets, like we just don't, we don't have the history, we don't have the guaranteed global reach that often comes with some of these productions. So you know, our distribution is often at the whim of the third party platform. If we're if we're talking about YouTube, our distribution, we may have a certain number of subscribers, and we might have a sense for how many of those subscribers tend to watch a new video that we publish. But that's not guaranteed. There. Everything is just calculated and correlated back to your overall reach, the overall value that's created. And it's not about devaluing your craft. It's just about finding alignment between the value your craft creates in this context and, you know, the what we're able and willing to pay?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's all about finding the equilibrium. So for anybody that's listening to this that isn't familiar with my work and my approach to this. I'm the last person that wants to devalue creativity, our creative skills and expertise in the creative process, but we have to understand that in this process that I call The Great correction, everybody's talking about all this contraction. This isn't a contraction, because contraction denotes expansion. At some point we're in a permanent correction with the way that the media industries work and think, and the creator economy is eating Hollywood's lunch. I mean, statistically, it's not even funny anymore. It's not a matter of like, oh, those youtubers like, the creator economy is destroying Hollywood, right? So we have to understand there's going to be an equilibrium. And what I'm trying to find is that happy medium between we really get to bring our creative skills to the table without it being this rapid race to the bottom of it, literally being editors are now just literally people that are Fiverr contractors. So it's like five bucks a video, 10 bucks a video. So it's a common I think it's on both sides. It's setting realistic expectations of what this new creator economy really looks like for all of us,
Jay Clouse: And I think there's a lot of opportunity, especially on the YouTube side. I find that in terms of new jobs created by the Creator economy, where there seems to be, like a dearth of talent, as editing, script writing, thumbnail design, even maybe production. But producers are tend to be a more specialized role that takes a while for a channel to build up to, to basically say we want to hire producer as a standalone role. And I know that there are people out. I mean, I get probably a half dozen emails a day of people saying, I want to edit videos for you, but it's incredibly speculative, like they don't attach anything that makes it very clear to me why they're the right fit. It's clearly not a message specifically for me, and so I ignore just about all of those that come in. I think there is space for someone to really stand out in the talent hiring process by showing your background in Hollywood, but you have to contextualize it, and you have to show what you're able to do in this new context and and this is very crucial that you're going to be someone we want to work with, like that matters more than anything else, because I have, I have trialed five different editors in the last two months. Yeah, and I might go back to one of them like and it's not that it did bad work. It's not that that work was bad. Timeline wasn't great, communication wasn't great, enthusiasm wasn't really there. They weren't bringing their own interest and curiosity to it. So you know, it's we're looking for a good fit for the culture and someone we like to work with, because this is hard. The timelines are fast, the work is challenging, we'll say. And we want to take on challenges with people we want to take on challenges with. So I think you can actually stand out quite a bit in the way that you approach your work, and the attitude and the communication and just the way you show up and contribute to the team.
Zack Arnold: Well, just as a side note, if you ever do reach the point where you think I want to look into a new crop of editors, I might know a few 100 people that might be interested in connecting. They would be really good at communication, really good at storytelling, like seasoned pros. So just going to throw that off as a side note. But I guess where I really wanted to leave this is really getting a sense of and I don't pretend that you would have the answer to this, nor would anybody else, but as we start to see this equilibrium of what I hope is going to be this blend and sharing of knowledge between the creative and creator communities, I think we're going to start to see a lot higher quality storytelling, storytelling driven content in YouTube. And I want to point out one person that I think is already kind of blending these together and doing it really well. And I want to get a sense, if you can give me some others, I think Mark Manson is doing this really, really well, where at heart, he's more of an entrepreneur than an artist. He's an author. He's built a platform as one of the top personal development you know, writers, speakers, podcasters, you name it, across the entire globe. But he's also done a really great job of experimenting with storytelling and documentaries, like really understanding how to blend these two things. So first of all, just want to see if you agree. And then secondarily, are there other areas where, if I'm seeking higher quality storytelling in YouTube, where can we look?
Jay Clouse: Yeah, Mark Manson is a great example. And he's had that Hollywood experience to a degree. You know, he had a film adapted from his book. He has resources to invest. He's willing to put a lot of extra time into it. The two other people that come to mind, one is doddford, although he doesn't do any original he doesn't do like any a roll. It's basically all B roll pulled together with third party audio and a little bit of his own narration added in, but that's very storytelling. And the last one super weird. His name is Bobby fingers. I have not seen any channel like Bobby fingers. I don't even know how to describe it. I would actually, I'm just gonna say you guys go discover it for yourself and see the insanity that is Bobby fingers. I especially like the video, I think it's called Jeff Bezos rowboat. Incredible. Highly recommend that channel. Well,
Zack Arnold: I can't speak for everybody else, but you had me at Bobby fingers, so I'm definitely going to have to check that out. I want to be very, very respectful of your time, as I know that you have many, many other things that you need to be focused on. But is there anything that you feel is vital for those that are largely in the creative community need to hear that we haven't talked about yet before we leave today's conversation?
Jay Clouse: I feel like there are a few times this conversation where we talked about like this, this supposed conflict between creators and creatives, and that may be true on the creative side, but in the Creator world, ain't nobody talking about, like, Oh, those creatives. Like, we don't care. We're just trying to, like, stop banging our head against the wall. We're trying to, like, make this thing work. And generally, what I also find in terms of, we'll just say entrepreneurs broadly, because we've experienced so much failure and so many challenges and so many dark nights of the soul, entrepreneurs tend to be some of the most supportive people that I meet. Like we just want other people to win also. And so I think, you know, if you are sitting here and you think that there is, and talking to the royal you listening to this, if you think there is some sort of like divide or feud here, I really don't think that's true. I think anybody on this side of the fence would be more than happy to try and support your own efforts and being a little bit more independent with the content that you create attached to your name, and truly, I can't imagine a better lifestyle on the other side of it, it doesn't preclude you from doing anything else through time. You could continue to work in Hollywood, if you know they continue to employ you, and you can do this solo creator. Enough with any sliver of your time that you want, that you want. Of course, you know you you will probably be able to find more financial success more quickly if you can spend more time to it, but you can take as small of a step forward into it as you want and feel comfortable with and if you don't like it, you can go back the other way. Because you know in the beginning, no one's going to be paying attention anyway, and no one's going to notice one's gonna notice. Just stick with it. Find something that's inherently interesting to you and get started.
Zack Arnold: I think all that is a great place to leave it. I just wanna emphasize one thing that is so welcoming to hear, to my side of this conversation is I just want to make sure everybody heard when you said entrepreneurs, we really are here to share the wins and we want to help each other. That's a very unique cultural shift from what we're used to on the Hollywood side of things, I've been building a community for years that's all about the rising tide. Lifts all boats. Not all Hollywood is constructed that way. It's very much a zero sum game. They're going to get that part, and I'm not. They're going to get to work on that movie, and I'm not. And that's one of the things that I've been trying to dispel for years, that we're all better off if we help each other. And that's one thing I've loved about the Creator space and the entrepreneur space. Everybody's business behind the scenes, giant shit show. Everybody's just trying to help everybody else solve all the problems. And at least in my experience, I've yet to come against one person that's trying to actively bring me down and bring my business down. All of us are trying to support each other and bring each other up. So to me, that's one of the best parts of really embracing this creator space and not thinking it's us versus them. It's realizing that all of us really have the same goals. We just come from slightly different worlds, and we're trying to do it. Trying to do it in slightly different ways. So I love that you ended it there. I really hope that this conversation helped bring together this idea of being a creative versus being a creator, and we're all kind of together in this maybe someday you and I can see if we can bring together Buckeyes and Wolverines. That's a much scarier one. I'm much less optimistic about being able to do that. But just to close for anybody or for everybody that's thinking, Oh my God, where can I learn more from Jay? He's my new Savior, and he's going to solve all these problems for me. Where do we send people?
Jay Clouse: Well, since you clearly like podcasts, I would recommend listening to the Creator Science Podcast, which you can find just by searching creator science. And I just show up everywhere under my name, Jay Clouse, so whatever your platform of choice, you can find me there. I'm pretty sure,
Zack Arnold: Well, once again, I cannot thank you enough for your time, your attention and your expertise. I really, really think that this is going to be a pivotal conversation to share with my community and my industry, and I really hope that it changes some hearts and minds. So again, thank you so much for being here Jay.
Jay Clouse: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
Scott and I make the case that creativity is a way of being—one that thrives when we let go of the fear of judgment and embrace the parts of ourselves we’ve been told don’t fit the mold.
