How To Become A Professional Content Creator (feat. Jay Clouse)

Hey, everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of the Building Public Podcast. I'm KP, your host, and I am thrilled to have Jay Clouse with me. Welcome to the show, Jay.

Hey, excited to be here, KP. Big fan of your work, of the show. Fun to be on here.

Jay, I've just expressed my fascination towards your work and like, you're just— I'm a huge fan of the fact that you are so disciplined in all the streams of work you put out. I'm curious if you perceive yourself as that, but it seems very, very much like that from the outside in. Streams, the surface area you cover in terms of content is insane. And a huge fan, low-key envious, but in a good way. And there's so many questions that I have. A lot of my audience are also on the path of becoming professional creators or like operator creators, people like me, you know, I have a job, but also I create a lot. So I think that's kind of the mix of content that I want to go after today. But yeah, tell me a little bit about sort of your principles around creating content, especially around discipline. And like, I think a lot of people underestimate how much focus and discipline it takes So what's your, what's your take on

it? You hit the nail on the head. That's 100% true. I recently chatted with a couple of girls who run podcasts on YouTube called Creative-ish. Shout out to the Creative-ish podcast. Because I had said something in a show, I'm like, does Gen Z even read email? And they're like, we're Gen Z, come on our show. I'm like, that's great. Anyway, they asked me about this and my answer to them was, we want to believe that creating things can become habitual. Like, we love the idea of habits where you just do something enough that it becomes easy and it just happens because of muscle memory. But in my It still sucks to some degree. There's always willpower involved. You can lower the bar so that you reduce the amount of willpower necessary as low as possible, but there's still willpower and there's still creative input that you need to decide on. So really it's discipline that's driving the bus most of the time. Right. So I think for me, I'm lucky that I spent a little more than a year studying journalism in college before I moved into business, because what that taught me was a ridiculous respect for deadlines. Because in the world of journalism, You are built around print materials. Like literally, they— there's this whole process. High stakes. High stakes. If you don't have your writing done, your editor can't edit it, which means they can't send it to layout, which means they can't fit it into the paper, which means the paper literally goes out into the world with an empty space. Like stakes were so high and you'd lose your job, by the way. Right. So like you just learned that if you are given a deadline for something, when you're in a journalistic world, you're going to hit that deadline or you're no longer on staff. And so I got out of college with just an immense respect for deadlines of any kind. It's just like, well, if I said it's going to ship by this time, there's no choice. Like maybe the quality won't be as good, but the deadline is the certain thing. And what I've come to realize is people don't have that same respect. So you have to build that for yourself because then everything else gets easier. It's not a question of when will I ship this or even like really what will I ship? It's how good will that thing be and what are some of the details involved?

Which is a much better problem to have, right? Yeah. Because you've covered the basics, which is consistency. Actually, I want to touch on that consistency aspect. There's a lot of questions that I keep getting asked, and, you know, I'm sure you feel this every day, is they talk about there's all these nuances around like, what skill do I need to master as a content creator? What's like, you know, how do I find my voice? And all these, you know, all these skills. But I think the real meta skill that covers— and I'm nowhere close to a professional creator that I know you worked with and the people that you see on a daily basis or weekly basis— but the one thing that kind of got me going and kept me going the 4 years is just, I've just been consistent. So that to me is the meta skill, right? And everything else comes secondary. Like if you're not consistent, it doesn't matter if you could write like Shakespeare or sing like Beyoncé or dance like whoever, or I don't know, create side projects like whoever. It's just, you're not gonna be part of the conversation ongoing. How do people trip up about that? I know deadlines is one aspect of it, right? But I actually don't have the deadline pressure, but I do have an insane drive to be consistent. Like, I just don't want to ever— I don't want to create today. So, I'm curious about that.

What is consistent to you if you don't have a deadline?

So, to me, it's just showing up every day.

There's a deadline, right?

Which is a deadline, I guess. But showing up, I feel like there's a lot of— I put that on a pedestal, you know, and that's sort of my word because a lot of my success in my life came from everybody writing me out. And I was always feeling like I was not smart enough. I didn't have the IQ of like the Elon Musks and the top 1%, et cetera, et cetera, in my class in school. But I always got number one in school at the end of the year, surely by showing up. I just showed up at library. I just showed up at these. So I just got in early, got out late, and I showed up. So to me, I think the character flaw as a kid, which has come back now as a superpower, is that I just show up. And I'm shocked at how many times I have to tell people on the podcast or my coaching or whatever is that how many tweets have you made in the last one month? And they're like, 4 tweets? I do that on a toilet like last night. Are you kidding me?

See, I think, I think you have an implicit deadline. You have, you have an unstated but very much there expectation that you will show up today. And that's your deadline. It's not a question of will I show up today? It's not, it's not will I show up today? It's what will I show up with today?

Yeah.

So I do think deadlines are very, very important. I think they're like paramount. But to your point about consistency, I agree with you. It's a game of how long can you continue to show up? Right. And there's an implicit part of this too, which is, but you also have to be willing to take feedback from the environment and improve on it. Like you can't just show up status quo, never improving, expect to get results. Like you—

There's no slope, right? There's no rate of growth. Yeah.

Yeah. But if you have even a small willingness to improve and you show up consistently, then it's your game to lose. Like if you just do that, you'll, you'll get there. And I've been blown away over the last just couple of years. I try to surround myself with people like us, people that are working and creating and making stuff. And almost everyone that I started being in like close contact with a couple of years ago has given up. And they had like been doing it for years before then. But like most people just give up. Like you can earn so much, not just because showing up every day is going to make you better, but because this is a war of attrition in a lot of ways. And a lot of people will just stop. Right. And it's kind of depressing. It's kind of sad and it's kind of lonely, but like, that's also the opportunity, you know?

Right. I fully agree. So tell me a little bit about sort of— we touched on the consistency as a great sort of value or virtue to be a great professional creator. The other one you touched on is deadlines. Give me the full gauntlet. What are some other unique virtues/values you respect and you admire, or you try your best to embody so that you produce a body of work that you're proud of?

I've been spending a lot more time lately thinking about, like, thinking through this lens of, is this actually aligned with what I'm trying to accomplish? Like, it's— I look for Alignment and increasingly long-term thinking a lot of times. It's kind of sad, but I think maybe the best episode of my podcast is episode 2 with James Clear. It's the one that I think about still constantly.

Wait, I haven't watched it. I love James. I was just reading his book for the 18th time last night.

It's incredible. I mean, it's audio only. You can't watch it on YouTube, but—

Okay, but I'll listen to it. Yeah.

It's incredible. And he said a couple things that just like stick with me still to this day. The first one being that in the beginning, you need to let the schedule drive the work. And that's what we're talking about here of like consistently, more important than anything else, if I say I'm I'm going to show up in this way, on this timeframe, in this frequency. I'm going to do it even if the quality of the work isn't where I want it to be in the beginning. You have to build that muscle so that you can earn the right to be more flexible with your timeline to make better work.

Right.

That was a great insight. The other great insight that he shared with me was in terms of like alignment and long-term thinking. When he was writing the book Atomic Habits, the subtitle is literally How to Form Strong Habits and Break Bad Ones.

Right.

More or less. And so as he was in the weeds of writing chapters and things, when he would make revisions or when he was thinking about, is this even important? He would ask himself, does this help the reader form good habits or break bad ones?

And

so more and more as I think about my mission of helping people become professional creators, as I'm making work, whether it's writing or podcasting, whatever, I just ask myself, is this thing that I'm about to make going to help someone become a professional creator or not? And if the answer is no, Then scrap it. Same is true even for tweets. You know, it's more important to me that the people I attract on Twitter are really aligned with the creator avatar than just building a big audience. So when I write anything, the question is, does this help someone become a professional creator? And if no, it's actually going to water down my audience and make it harder for me to meaningfully reach the people I want to reach. So I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

That's a great one. I think it speaks to focus, right? Focusing on the North Star that you've, you know, you've assigned in this product. I mean, in this particular pursuit, how do you feel about— there's the other thing that I see, and I'm curious for your take on this, which is putting in like the reps and sets, but not just like putting reps and sets, but just being a nudge, being a little bit, a tad bit more prolific than the average Joe. I feel the kind of creators that I resonate with surprisingly create a lot more, even though it It's not fully visible to the world how much they create. And it just so happens that they are the ones who are having the most reception, but it's only like a tip of the iceberg that they created.

Yeah.

You know, one popular example comes to mind. Of course, this is not content creation, but like Peter Levels, the great indie hacker, I think he had shipped 70+ MVPs, side projects, and the 2 or 3 of them that made like his entire content— I mean, empire work were Nomad List, And then now he's doing something called Remote OK and then Interior AI and stuff like that. But they were like just the tippity top of his huge body of work. And this is another big myth that I find a lot of especially rookie creators find themselves in because they're trying to create one bet and they want that bet to be the Nomad List. And you're like, I have— my experience has been I've publicly shared that I have 15 side projects, but those are the ones I can link you to. There's about 30 of them that I can't link you to because the domains are dead.

Yeah.

So I'm of the camp that you just have to create a lot.

Well, I think anything is a numbers game. Everything is a numbers game. You know, like there is almost no way to lose if you take more shots on goal than anybody else. But they have to be shots on goal. You know, like people think, oh, I just got to take shots. Well, okay, let's take a sports analogy. If you're kicking a soccer ball at a goal, if it's not actually at the goal, it doesn't matter how many shots you take. Like none of them are going to score. You have to take good shots. But if you take a ton of shots, like you're bound for some of them to work out. Now, I think that's like a near-term strategy because once you get the nomad list, you don't necessarily want to continue taking the same volume of shots. It's actually better to consolidate your time and attention and focus on the thing that's doing pretty well.

Right.

So I think there's a time and place for volume for sure. I think you can accomplish a lot with volume, but I don't think it's a panacea or like this is always the way. I think you can get more Strategic.

The quote that comes to mind about this is, I think Naval had one-liner about this where he talks about explore and then exploit, like explore widely, you know, and until you find resonance and signal and then just go exploit that or kind of double-click. That makes sense. So you've worked with Pat Flynn, beast of a creator. Another example. Oh my God. I like, I just see his body of work. I'm like, how the heck did he achieve all that stuff? How many podcast episodes? So many. What were one or two big Takeaways for you working with him that you still bring them into your business today?

Well, my answer might be two different answers actually, because the biggest takeaways I had were the team carries so much of the the lift. Like SPI is a team of eleven people. I was I was one of twelve people. So beast of a machine churning out this content. But Pat's not doing all of that. Yeah, and he's never like said that he was. You know, like there are some creators who will purposefully. Mislead.

Yeah.

Not talk about the fact that they have a team behind them.

I spoke to Thiago Forte and then he was like, he was saying, KB, I have like 25 people working for me. I'm like, oh, okay. That's fair. Right.

Like,

yeah,

it's such a game changer. So that was one takeaway. The other takeaway, like Pat's content was incredible. Timing also played an important factor. And it's not just Pat, it's most people who succeed. Like there is an impact or there's an aspect of timing that's really, really important. I had Tim Urban on the podcast.

Yeah.

And people tell me all the time, like, I just want to be a creator like Tim Urban. I want to write like one thing every 6 months and just go super deep. And it's just amazing. Tim Urban's story is, yes, he wrote great content and he was consistent in the beginning.

Right.

But he took off because he was publishing his articles on Facebook in 2015 when they were trying to show the reach they could give to published articles before they started doing paid ads. So he was the benefactor of this moment in time That was this huge boon of distribution. Right. And that has allowed him a ton of optionality.

Right.

Pat was doing the first income reports in 2008. That was very innovative. That was a time when a lot of people weren't doing this online business thing. That got a lot of play in the community. And he's inspired so many people now. Right. But not only do you need to create great content, but you need to figure out why is now the time for me And in what way can I exploit that? Because it's not a meritocracy, unfortunately. You have to find advantages and exploit them.

Right. Yeah, I love that. I mean, think like a businessman, not like an academic, right? I mean, you have to be smart enough to pounce on an opportunity that opens up. We're seeing that with the rise of generative AI tools. That's the thing that comes to mind. If you were an AI developer for the last 4 years, everything was like mild, you know, not so much. And then suddenly, boom, here's a window that opened up. Right. So tell me a little bit about the niche that you chose, which I watched the episode with Josh Spectre. Shout out Josh. I love how he's like, so he's such a teacher and such a professor. He's like, no, no, no, I want you to niche down, niche down. Like, tell me specifically. I was like, oh my God, I have an episode coming up with Josh. I'm like, I'm going to be TED Talked and lectured by Josh. I'm just kidding. But he kind of suggested, and you both workshopped this in public, that what's your niche and how tight it should be? Where do you think you are with that now? Like, Do you feel like you've arrived at a very specific type niche? If so, what is it and why do you care about that?

I do think I've landed in a niche, but I don't think I can claim it yet, which is a weird answer. But let me tell you what I'm thinking. So I think about the world of creators, broad term, in basically a Venn diagram at this point where you have creator educators who are like information products selling transformation, helping you learn things and become a better version of yourself. Then you have creator entertainers, people like MrBeast. YouTubers who are just like, here's my personality, I make you feel good, I help you pass the time. And of course, in the middle there's like a hybrid where not only are you a great entertainer, but now you also have products that are helping people achieve some sort of transformation. So my niche is the creator educator, but I don't think that's a term that yet has market awareness.

Yeah.

So I basically say that I help people become professional creators. My typical pathway is helping people sell information products for the most part, or building things that are like leveraged means of income.

Right.

And those people typically are what I would classify as creator educators. But I don't think like I can use that in a meaningful way yet. So part of it is me socializing that term and writing about it and helping people start to use it and adopt it. And then hopefully that comes back and like, this is the first guy that was talking about that. That's what I would say I've kind of honed in on.

So give me a pitch of— because this is, you know, there might be some segment of my audience who might want to, you know, get into your space. So can you give us a 30-second, 40-second pitch of what's the value prop? For this creator educator, you know, that you offer right now?

I'm trying to help people build an independent life, or at least the ability to lead an independent life where their work of creating things is adequately paying them for that effort. Because there are a ton of creators who are like putting in a ton of time, but they're not seeing a return on that.

Yeah.

And a lot of the people on the entertainment side of that diagram, they are focused on sponsorship, brand deals, AdSense. And the people that I try to serve, I'm like, Let's talk about digital products, memberships, courses, affiliate revenue. That's the type of stuff I try to help people learn and bring into their businesses to build. Right.

It's also much more achievable, I feel. Yeah. Right. And like, yeah,

it's— the economics are a lot easier.

Yeah.

Because if you think about like the 1,000 True Fans article that Kevin Kelly wrote like a decade ago, that assumes that people are paying you $100 per year and would buy $100 worth of stuff from you every single 1,000 people. 1,000 customers is a lot of customers. $100 profit is a lot of money. So like people on the creator entertainer side of the spectrum, what are they selling that's profiting $100 per year from their people? Because most of the time it's like a low-priced thing that they're selling. Yeah. So the economics just work better for people who are in the creator educator bucket who are trying to help people make transformation because that's a literal investment. It's easier to see like, yeah, I'll pay you $100 and more than $100 for one product or experience.

Right. So I'm one of those people who hasn't taken this seriously, but I have dabbled into that game and I was blown away when I sort of dabbled into it. I shared this with you at the beginning of the podcast where I kind of felt, yeah, I should have done a better or more refined job. It's part of this is like not just having great peers pushing me to like holding me to a higher standard. So what I'm trying to describe in this context is I shipped something called Building Public Swipe File last year and I did it so haphazardly, so quickly, rushed into it because I was busy at On Deck. But I built so much social capital and trust with my audience that they kind of forgave me for a work in progress thing that I shipped. But I was blown away that I made close to $10K with not much of an effort. I mean, there was an effort in the sense that I distilled my thoughts into pages and stuff, but I was surprised at the achievability of that, approachability of that outcome. Sure.

Yeah.

And at the time I had like 10K Twitter followers and I have a much bigger audience now. I'm I can't believe that that's such a feasible thing for someone to go do it as opposed to landing Nike or Adidas to sponsor your skits on TikTok. I'm like, this is such an easier path and it's less sexy, right? Because you're still like selling info products, but who cares? You make money and you, you know, you're turning something you're passionate about into a revenue stream.

Yeah. I don't know what, I don't know what sexy is anymore. Yeah. But the thing is too, and this is something I had a conversation with Brendan Dunn recently. Brendan is just incredible, by the way. If you don't follow Brendan Dunn, you should follow him because every product he makes is like for us. But something he And what he reminded me of is that once you have somebody as a customer, it's really likely they will be a repeat customer.

Mm-hmm.

So like the idea, or like the game is, yes, you can have that product and you can earn $10,000 from that launch, but you've also just proven to people that when they invest in something from you, they are glad that they did, which opens up a new opportunity for you constantly. There's a competing tension with that though, that you don't necessarily want to be constantly creating and launching new things.

Upselling too much. Yeah.

You can actually build an entire business from one product and do it really effectively. So there is some like restraint you might want to put in place there. But, you know, to me, the perfect business model that's very achievable is like, hey, I'm gonna make this free thing that's really kick-ass, and you're gonna give me your email address for it. I'm going to position to you this really accessible, cheaply priced thing that's also kick-ass that you're gonna give me a little bit of money for. And then if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, here's the a more intense, in-depth, more expensive thing that you get a little bit more of a personal touch from me and you can just build a huge business on that.

So tactically, this will— this could look like, and then correct me if I'm wrong, a lead magnet ebook maybe, or a Notion template for free. And then once they get in, maybe a 1-hour course or maybe 30-minute course, right? That's reasonably priced. And then there could be a live cohort, which is the upsell for more intense. Is this Does this sound right?

Exactly. Yep. Yep. And those things should be really well aligned. You know, you want to— you basically want to say, who is my target avatar? For me, it's somebody who wants to become a professional creator. They may be at the early stage. So you're saying my products are going to serve the entire lifecycle of trying to get to that goal. And if people are at the very beginning where they're like, what is a creator? How can I be consistent? That could be like the first problem I'm trying to solve with some free resource. Okay, now you're consistent. What do you need to do next? Here's how to position yourself as an expert. That's a the first paid product. And then, okay, now you've done that. And now that you've started publishing, when you're ready, come join the Lab, my membership community. It's a higher investment. It's for more serious people. And you just build the entire business around that pipeline.

Right. I love it. It's kind of like— seems to me like a buffet, right? You start with one thing, you can go pick that and just leave. You can go deeper and deeper. And, you know, it's really up to your appetite. Tell me about the Lab. I know we kind of DM'd about this. I love the launch and the buzz around the Lab. There was also a point where you kind of did like a super bold move where you, you announced that you're capping the number of applications you were taking in into the Lab, which is bold because a lot of creators in your shoes would be like, I will take more customers and get more revenue. Why not? So quick, introduce the Lab to us, to the audience, and then tell us about this specific incident I'm talking about.

So the Lab is my membership community where I am giving a lot of personal time attention to help people become professional creators or, you know, even and improve as professional creators. Because a lot of people have joined are already in that bucket. They've already made this like their full-time thing and they're just trying to be around more people like them. So I launched that because that's my overall goal of what I'm trying to do with my work. But that's also not something I can accomplish with like one product, you know? Like there, there is so much that's contextual to every person, every creator's journey. And also it's just a long time of— Shipping and improving and getting better and trying experiments. So I felt like the best modality for me to deliver that transformation was something that was more ongoing, and a membership makes a lot of sense. Working with Pat, I actually joined SPI because they acquired a community that I built years before and then brought me in to lead the community team. So I have a background in community. I have this transformation that makes sense as a membership. And so that's the model. I capped it at 200 people because of all the time and attention that I put into it. It's just not sustainable for me.

200 people per month or per year?

Per year. 200 active members at any given time.

Yeah. Wow.

So we have 156 as of this recording.

Right. That's awesome. Congrats. That's a great number. Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. And I mean, like, there will always be churn. So let's say we hit that cap probably around December or January if things are going the way that they continue to go. And some people will choose not to renew, you know, after a year passes. It's a year-long membership. There's no monthly option. So once somebody chooses not to renew their annual membership, a spot will open up and that will be opened up to the waitlist. But yeah, I just did that because I'm not trying to build a membership business. The membership was, I mean, it serves a lot of purposes. It helps people. It's actually added, it's doubled my revenue for the year for my business.

Right.

It's also like incredible user research for me, customer research. I'm learning a lot about what these people need, but my focus is on making a great podcast, doing great writing, building enduring Evergreen assets. So this is like a nice little financial engine to fund that work.

Right.

And so I just thought about like, at what point does this current experience break and I can't provide the same level of input? The experience is not as good for members. I'm just going to cap it there. And that was the decision.

Yeah. That was so dope to see. And a lot of people came out to support and said like, you know, you got to be in this. And so there's So even the 200, I'm sure, or 150 feel like special because they're like, oh yeah, we're inside this thing that's a little bit exclusive. So tell me about the podcast. 1 million downloads. Congratulations. Huge milestone. To me, much more important than— of course, that's great. Much more important than that is 152 episodes. Dude, that's a lot of backbreaking work. I'm at 40. I think you're 41 right now. You're the 41st. It's hard, man. Podcast is hard. So hard. And it's so much fun though. I mean— Yeah. We both know, but 152, that's the one I want to congratulate you on.

Thanks, man. Yeah, it's— I mean, it's just not a question. Like, the podcast is gonna ship on Tuesday, and 2 and a half years have passed, so that puts us at a little more than 150 episodes. It's been awesome, and it's, it's probably, you know, the most impactful part of my business for the last couple of years.

Yeah, I think so too. You know, I said it feels that way. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. And it's where I get to learn a lot, which fuels the content that I create independently, you know. Right. The thing I've been thinking about a lot lot lately is, what is my long-term competitive advantage? Because there are a ton of creators who have millions of followers who have built incredible businesses with better operations. They have more insight than I do. If they decided, hey, I'm actually done building for this audience, I'm going to create a business around teaching other creators tomorrow, then that's more competition for me and somebody who probably has a little bit more credibility. Ali Abdaal did this a few months ago with Creatorpreneur. Yeah. And I'm supportive of all of that, but it was an eye-opener of like, what is my competitive advantage? Yeah. I think the podcast is that. I think like the primary research I'm able to do with the conversations I have on that show is something that gets more valuable over time. Right. And it informs my insight in a way that might be different than other people, because now what I am creating, what I'm sharing with people is not just my experience. I'm actually sharing 100+ other high-level creators, their experience funneled into like one person's brain of understanding.

Right. I

can find patterns and trends and things. So I'm really investing in the podcast as probably the primary asset or like platform that I'm building. But it's a lot of work, you know? Right. We started putting it on YouTube this year and that's been a great experience and decision. I wish I would've done that earlier. Probably double down on YouTube in general.

Right. Everybody I know who is a podcaster says the same thing. Like, oh man, just, I wish— I think for a while YouTube was not like the place you went to for, you know, like entertainment. It was pure entertainment like TikTok and some like long videos. But now YouTube's got like a great niche within YouTube, a great subset of audience who are in this entertainment where they want, you know, of course they want like some fun videos, but also they want to learn, you know, like I'm shocked at that too. I'm like, wow, that's just a crazy pivot. So about the podcast, while still on the topic, what I want to ask you there is, do you remember who was your first guest? I'm sure you know, but who was the first guest that came via a cold email? Was your first guest through a cold email or was it through a warm connection or—

On the podcast generally?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. I mean, my first guest was Seth Godin and that was a cold email. And the second guest was James Clear.

Wow. Okay. Tell me the story. I'm a huge fan of Seth. We both know each other, but I'm a huge fan. So tell me, he's one of those people who would reply, so I'm not shocked, but tell me more.

I mean, every guest has been a cold email. So with Seth, he did a program called the Podcasting Fellowship back in 2018. Where it was like, hey, I think you should be doing a podcast. And so take this course. It was under the Akimbo umbrella. It was before they'd done a lot of courses and like, we're going to structure this program to help you launch a podcast.

Right.

I had actually already launched a podcast at that point. It was called Upside. It was about a month old. It was interviewing startup founders who were not based in San Francisco.

Right.

But I thought, well, I want to make this successful. What if I go through this podcast fellowship and still apply what I learn and say like, hey, we were a member of So I did that. And for a period of time, we actually got that show featured in Fortune Magazine and a couple other places. So I emailed Seth back in 2018. I'm like, hey, thanks for the Podcasting Fellowship. As a result, this podcast, our podcast that came through it, was featured in Fortune. Here's the article. Just wanted to say thank you. Didn't ask for anything. Was just like, thank you. He took that and used that on the sales page for the Podcasting Fellowship. It's like, hey, we've had shows like this come through and it's been featured in Fortune. Right. So when it came time for me to start recording for this new show, I replied to the same email thread. And said, hey, it's been a couple of years. Just so you know, I'm launching another podcast. This is the context. I think you'd be a great guest. He responded in less than 8 minutes and we had a discussion.

Yeah, that's one of those. Yeah. And I'm not shocked, but it's such an endearing thing to hear, right? He's one of those people who's such a— he's such a giver. He's such a— he's like an uplifter, you know? He's done that to me personally. So many email replies back and forth. And he's again, back to the classic example of consistency, right? He's done this for 20 years writing at 5:00 AM, just mind-blowing.

I will say for anyone listening to this, like, yes, I think he does have a rule typically that like a show needs to have 50 episodes for him to consider it. Right. I think I got away with it because I had already built another podcast with 50+ episodes. But don't be disappointed if you email Seth and he says like, hey, here's my rule.

Right, right. No, I mean, he— I think that's another thing too. He'll like just be candid and, you know, it's not like you're gonna get a yes. It'll be like very candid and tell you You know what he thinks. So I love the Seth example. I was gonna ask you like who was the cold email, but it seems like— who was the perfect cold email? Like this still is warm, like because you had some insight or some view into his business or like the podcasting fellowship. Who was one of your first ever absolute cold emails?

Man, almost all of them.

Believe that this person landed on your show, like what got you giddy early on? I have an answer for me, but like I'm curious for you.

The one that still stands out to me is Rishi K. Shirway. He's the host of Song Exploder, which is an incredible podcast. Right. That's like the one that still sticks out to me. But that one I did find an intro to. I like cold emailed asking for an intro and then they got me to do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like they've all been— I'm looking through the guest list real quick.

So what's the lesson here? I'm curious, like if somebody was starting a podcast today and they're like, KP and Jay, I don't know anybody. I don't have a network. I only have 200 followers on Twitter, but I have a good intention and I do want to create something valuable. What's your answer to them?

The answer is that cold emails work. You know, again, a numbers game, shots on goal. Cold emails written well are shots on goal. So if you take enough of them, like pretty ridiculous people will say yes. And of course there's an element of timing here as well. People who are actively in a promotional or marketing state are more likely to say yes than someone that's in a build state. I've gotten a lot of responses from people who tell me, hey, this sounds great. Right now I'm finishing up this thing. Please follow up.

Right.

And I get that because now I'm at a point where I'm that creator and people reach out to me and it's like, hey, I'm working on this. Please reach out when this happens. Matt D'Avella, I think, was an early one that was like, oh wow, I can't believe Matt said yes.

Nice.

But I mean, the key is you want to write an email that's short enough people can read it with one thumb scroll on their phone. The ask needs to be very specific and direct. They need to know what you're asking for. Right. You need to have as much social proof as you can as to why this is a good use of their time. But also you can't pretend that this is going to be a good thing for them if it's kind of a favor to you. People can suss that out. So don't be like, this is going to be so awesome because you're going to get in front of 100 new people. Most people that I've had on the show, this show is not moving the needle for them. So it's all been goodwill. The key is being direct, being personable, also offering them an out. I always say no expectation or pressure from me. Love it. Thank you for the consideration.

Yeah, yeah, same thing.

I ask them if they have time in the next couple of months. Yeah, a lot of times people send me an email, it's a great email, and I'm like, yeah, I'll do that. And they'll say, do you have time next week? No, hell no, I don't have tomorrow week, right? Yeah, it's like, I don't have time 2 weeks from now. I'm protecting that with my life. But if you ask me if I have time in the next couple of months, of course, of course I

consider, right? Who was the guest you had to wait the longest?

Tim Urban, I think.

How long?

I mean, he Once I finally even got scheduled, he was scheduled out 3 months later, I think.

Right. But to get to the scheduled part, how long did it take?

Even to get the scheduled part was like a series of DMs and conversations. I haven't been super good at playing that game. I'm trying to get better at it because the key is you want to have—

What do we say? Follow-ups?

The game of willing to book out far in advance for big name people. Like, there are channels you have to work through. You have to think about timing.

Yeah.

And if you're really concerned about your pipeline and like, I got to have stuff for next month, then you can't play that game. I'm not in that position. I've got enough things scheduled and recorded already that I have pipeline. So I need to get better at the game of like, who is the PR person? When are they publishing the book? Or how do I get them to schedule something 6 months from now?

Right.

It's hard though, because as the show gets more successful, I feel pressure to reach out to higher and higher guests. Which means a higher likelihood of a no or no response at all. Rejection doesn't get that easy. You know, it gets easier, but it always sucks. So like the fear of rejection prevents me from doing outreach sometimes because I'm still doing most things cold.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I can relate to that. Here's one insight that I think our listeners today should take away from the last 10-minute segment. This blew my mind. This is a very counterintuitive thing. I did not know this. And if you told me 3 years ago about this and I I would be like, what? And here it goes. Practically everybody who ever said on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, saying that I'm writing a book in 6 months, the book's coming out, will come do a podcast for you, period. Well, 100%. And I did not know this. If you look at my lineup, I think about 70% of them are authors. And I did not know I would get so many authors, but it would in fact to a point where they actually want to be on your show. Even if you have 45 listens, they don't care because they want to sell. Yeah. 8 new books because they're obligated. I mean, not obligated, but like they're really pressured to sell X number of books so that they can meet their minimum bar of whatever advance that they were paid. From there, they make the profit. This is how the, you know, author world works, which I only recently found out, which means they're very, very clearly incentivized to get as many people to buy the minimum number of books, which means they have to do a certain number of shows and episodes and podcasts. So they're much more likely If they're in the promotional— if you catch them right about the promotional phase, anybody will be happy to come on and do— I mean, not anybody. Maybe not Barack Obama, but I'm saying most of the people that you think are out of reach are actually within reach if you just ask them about the book.

Yeah. And beyond the advance, which is a really good insight, there's also a period of time. All presales of a book count towards your bestseller launch number.

Yeah. Yeah.

So they're always like blitzing pre-sales.

Yeah.

There's also, I feel like this.

So while you put, let's put a pin on while you say that I've actually changed gears in, 'cause I used to approach some of these big names and don't forget what you're about to say though, right? I hope you remember I was coming from a place of no leverage when I would approach some of these people 'cause they were big names and I would be like, ah, I hope they say yes. It's so game-changing. And I got a little arrogant now that I actually cut down half my cold email and it's literally the ask I make it one line about who I am and like my link, because I'm like, I know this is important for you. And that's such an unbelievable insight. It makes you feel confident as a host because you know you're on the same level playing field because you're doing them a favor. I mean, not a favor, but like you're at least on the same page. But in the past I used to be like, oh my God, this is like a godly figure who just bestowed my podcast. But that insight changed the game for me. It's like, it's actually good for them to do as many episodes as they can, especially with diverse audiences. Right. If they're not all the same kind of groups. But anyway, I just felt more confident and had felt like more leverage after I learned that insight. So back to you. Sorry, what was the point you were trying to make?

I would just say, have you ever been to like an in-person conference? I'm sure you have.

Yeah.

Right. So

last one before COVID

Yeah. When you go to these conferences, you have committed to be in a place for like 3, 4, maybe 7 days. And you have like some stuff on your calendar that you know you're going to do, but then you also feel like this intense pressure to get the most out of the rest of your time. And so you just say yes to anything. Someone's like, hey, you want to go to this thing? Yes. That fills up some of that time that I feel like I need to fill and make this worthwhile. I think the same is true for authors in presale mode. It's like, yes, I've got to fill up all of this time. You can help me fill up some of this. Great. Yeah. But then that's not true for all of them because I will tell you, I recently tried to get Ryan Holiday and Scott Galloway on the show, and I was actually routed through the correct sources, going through their PR people, the publisher, And I don't know if I timed it wrong or if the show's not big enough, but I didn't get either of them. So, there is some—

There's always that chance of like, you know, not— I mean, that's another thing too, another insight that I'm sure you feel now with 150 episodes is it's still a TBD. I sometimes write these emails, I'm like, I still don't know.

Oh, yeah.

And I like— I feel like a child in a— playing the roulette or one of these like silly things. I'm like, I don't know what I'm getting. What kind of candy am I getting out of this machine, right? Yes, it could be a ghosting. That ghosting sucks. It hurts. Actually, I feel ghosting hurts more than no, because no clears my brain mental capacity and I can move on. The ghosting is what gets me.

I agree. I agree. Ghosting sucks. It's fun though if you send. So, one habit I've tried to get into is I used to say, hey, if you're interested, reply. I'll send you the scheduling link. Now, I put the scheduling link in the email and say zero pressure or expectation. And the great thing that happens is sometimes I'll just get an email from SavvyCal like, hey, new interview scheduled. It's this guy that you never I expected to say yes.

Right. Me too. They just thought it over. Yeah, they had a conversation with the publisher and they're like, yeah, I need to hit the sales again. No, I think— no, you're right. I mean, I've sometimes been surprised, like, wow, Savvy Kal shows up like at 4 AM my time or something. I'm like, whoa, somebody wants to have a chat. But the elasticity of your calendar and schedule is another thing that I didn't know going into it. I thought like everybody who were doing a weekly episode were like so— like all the ducks were in a row and like everything was flowing smoothly until I got to like number 30 episode or 32 or something. I'm like, ah, it doesn't Just record the thing with the person when you can and put it in the order that you want. Oh yeah. More convenient for you. I used to do the opposite, which is like an idiot. I used to schedule everything in the way that they appeared to record the interviews with me. So now it's like, it doesn't matter, right? Nobody knows.

Way ahead, schedule as you want, because then you can also ask the guest at the end of every interview, like, is there any particularly good timing for this for you? Because sometimes they're like, yeah, actually, if you could put this out by this time,

That's a good idea.

It's a great gift to give them at the end of the interview.

Yeah, I haven't thought about that. That's a good one. Okay, so one last question and then we'll wrap. Tell me about your lessons and insights that you've learned about sponsorships for the podcast. So let's say I'm a rookie founder, I'm a rookie podcaster, just started a podcast. I had like 10 episodes. Do I broach the topic of getting a sponsor at all yet, or do you want us to get enough reps in the set? What's your approach? How do you lock in sponsors?

So there are 2 games you can play in the sponsorship world. The one is the CPM game, which is cost per mille, which means cost per 1,000 impressions. You can't really play the CPM game unless you're doing millions, 10,000 downloads per month, probably, because it's just not gonna give you much money and people won't take you seriously. So if you're, if you're not at that level of like 10,000+ downloads per month, The sponsorship game you want to play is like a per-episode baked-in ad that will live there enduring. And then you want to ask yourself, who wants to reach my audience and does it need many conversions for that to be worthwhile? So we did this with Upside, the first podcast that we did, and the listeners of that show were startup founders, startup employees, investors. Right. So our sponsors that we sold were law firms, accounting firms, executive recruitment firms, Because all we needed to do was have one person convert to make that sponsorship well worth it.

Because it's a high ticket, it's a high ticket thing for them.

Exactly. And like sometimes we can actually introduce our guests themselves to those sponsors. And that's well worth it. So that's what you want to do. Because if you have a smaller audience, you can't really sell like me undies and move the needle and make that worthwhile. You need to figure out some other way where fewer conversions equal more money. And the other thing I'll say is if you're just getting started, super

small

I mean, you want, you want people to renew. So like, people renew when it was a good return on investment.

Make them look smart, right? Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing I'll say is when you're getting started, I would plan for ads as early as possible because when I launched my show, I had ads in it and I filled up all the spots. Not all those spots were paid spots. Sometimes those spots were cross-promos. Sometimes those spots were for my own products. But as a result, Ever since anyone's been listening to the show, they expect there's gonna be ads in the beginning, there's gonna be ads in the middle, ads at the end. There was never this moment of like, hey, this show didn't used to have ads, now it has ads, this sucks. If you just plan and make that part of the format from the beginning, then nothing changes and people aren't upset about it.

I love it. I love it. Another counterintuitive insight. I definitely think a lot of people think the opposite of this too, you know. So brilliant. Thank you so much, man. I know we're at the end of the hour. I want to say thanks for your time. For your insights and just, you know, just your energy, man. I love it. Thanks for being on the show and hope to see you again.

Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. It's fun.

Awesome. Bye. Take care. Bye.