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85 min read · 17,384 words- 0:00 – 1:01
Intro
- AAAli Abdaal
Hello, Jay. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
- JCJay Clouse
Hello, Ali. Good to see you again, my friend. Doing well.
- AAAli Abdaal
Likewise. Thanks for, thanks, thanks for taking the time to hop on. Um, I thought we would do a bit, a bit of an experimental format of Deep Dive. Um, I'm trying to be a bit less optimized when it comes to how I do my podcast, and a bit less, like, growth hacky with it, like we've been for the last couple of years. And now I wanna transition it more towards just having cool conversations with people who I wanna learn from. And if people in the audience can get value from those conversations, then that's great, and if not, then that's also totally fine. I think our conversation today will be quite niche, but that's okay 'cause I was hoping to talk to you about creators and communities and this new, this new wave of people making money on the internet through communities. How does, how does that sound?
- JCJay Clouse
It sounds great. I'm excited about it. It's, uh, it's been transformative for my business and a lot of folks in my community, so happy to chat and help how I can.
- AAAli Abdaal
Sick. So, um, for people who might not know who you are, can you give a quick intro? Um, and w- yeah, who are you, and what is your background in this
- 1:01 – 7:15
How Jay started
- AAAli Abdaal
whole community thing?
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah. My business is called Creator Science. It's a media company helping people become professional creators. Uh, a lot of people are very good at creating content and even getting attention. Fewer people, in my experience, are good at directing that attention in such a way that provides value for the audience but also captures value for the creator and builds a real business on it. So what we try to do with Creator Science is help people to do that. And our main revenue driver is our membership community, which is called The Lab, and it's a 200-person membership. It's capped, but it does about a half million dollars in revenue per year, and we've done some really unique things with it. Um, not that we'll be prescriptive for you by any means, but gives us some different levers to pull and look at what you're trying to do and see if it makes sense.
- AAAli Abdaal
Sweet. How, how did you get into all this stuff? Like, h-how did, how did life lead you to this point?
- JCJay Clouse
[chuckles] That's a good question. Um, I started in startups because my parents were, uh, high school teachers, and my entire extended family growing up were actually, like, K through 12 teachers. And when I went to college, that was the only, like, path that I knew. I figured I would pick a major, I would work somewhere for 35 years, get a pension, and that's just what being an adult was, right? Um, but at that time when I was in college, that was when, like, Uber and Facebook and Airbnb were things, and I shared a wall in my dorm with a couple of guys who had started businesses in high school and just, like, blew my brain wide open. I did not know that you could do your own thing. So they introduced me to entrepreneurship. I thought entrepreneurship was, like, tech startups, did software companies for a few years, and then around 2017 realized, hey, wait, I've always liked to write. Writing is kind of a product. Like, I had gotten in my mind this product lens because I did software products. But I realized that writing was a product, but I didn't have to rely on engineers or designers to take my vision and make it a real thing, and that was just so attractive. Because in software, the thing that you set out to make is almost never what you actually end up making because there are compromises and technical feasibility. But when it's writing, and then eventually it was podcasting, and then eventually it was videos, there's a lot more artistic and creative control. So once I kinda set my eyes on, okay, content is a product, I think I wanna do content, then I just started being very analytical of what do people... Like, how do people make that work? I was just very, uh, analytical in looking at how do content businesses work, and soon it just became, oh, Jay's really good at breaking down how content businesses work [chuckles] and that became the business itself.
- AAAli Abdaal
Interesting. So how did you s- how did, how did you first start making money from writing?
- JCJay Clouse
In the beginning, it was actually group coaching. Um, I did some freelancing right off the bat because in the beginning, you know, the, the fastest way to generate any revenue is selling your time. So I was doing WordPress websites. I was doing, um, email copywriting, essentially, and tying those two things together so people had a actual marketing funnel. And outside of that, I was building this mastermind program, essentially, where I was working mostly with freelancers, and that opened my, my eyes to, well, I'm repeating myself a lot. [chuckles] There's a lot of things that people come in and I'm saying the same things. What if I just productize that, put that in a course?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
I had had an opportunity to work with LinkedIn Learning as a course author back in 2017, and that got me thinking, okay, well, if I can create courses with LinkedIn, I could create my own courses, and people are already reading my emails, so I have this group of people that I could market this to. And that was step one, you know. It was writing emails, running group coaching programs, starting to create courses, getting more people into email. I waited way too long to do social media or YouTube, um, but now, you know, that whole machine is working.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
And, and it's, it's a great life, I gotta say.
- AAAli Abdaal
Interesting. Nice. That's, that, that's super interesting and interesting to hear. One, one thing that strikes me as you, as you were speaking is that I think a lot of us in this sort of creators coaching other creators space, um, fro-from the outside, it can seem as if the only way to make money as a creator is by coaching other creators. Um, and it's... I don't know what, why, why this thought came to me recently, but actually, it, it... That's just how it looks like because the only people talking about it are the ones who are coaching other creators. [chuckles]
- JCJay Clouse
[chuckles]
- AAAli Abdaal
And so if someone is listening to this or watching this and does not know anyone doing a service-based agency or selling online courses, it might seem as if the only people selling online courses are the ones who are selling online courses about how to make money on the internet. But actually, there is, like, a whole huge-
- JCJay Clouse
Totally
- AAAli Abdaal
... massive, massive, massive industry of people selling online courses for all sorts of things and doing coaching for all sorts of things, and it's only the ones who are [chuckles] like, like you and me who-
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... coach other creators that you actually hear from, and so it can seem as if, oh, these guys are just making money teaching other people how to make money.
- JCJay Clouse
Well, because we're also really, um- We can make really good use of platforms to talk about these things. There, my membership, 200 people, the majority of them, vast majority of them, are teaching very specific skills. Like we have this member, Claire, she teaches people how to become runners on a plant-based diet. Very specific, very niche thing. She mostly reaches people through Instagram. So if you're not on Instagram, you're not gonna see her stuff. If you're not interested in running or a plant-based diet, you're not gonna see her stuff. We had another guy, Craig, who, uh, teaches high school football coaches. Like, he creates content for high school football coaches who teach defensive line techniques specifically.
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs] Wow.
- JCJay Clouse
So like a lot of people who have the creator business model are very, very specific and very, very niche, and I think actually there's bigger opportunity there for those people than the creators teaching creators. You know, there are times when I, I genuinely have distaste for my-- the, my own meta nature of the business. But ultimately you look at, am I getting people results? Are people glad that they're here and that they're learning from me? And when the overwhelming response is yes, you press on.
- AAAli Abdaal
Sick. Um, so
- 7:15 – 9:55
The history of “The Lab”
- AAAli Abdaal
how, what was your... How did your com... Uh, I guess what was the history of your community, The Lab? And where did the name come from?
- JCJay Clouse
[laughs] Good question. So actually think we need to go back a little bit further. That group coaching program that I started doing, that was in 2017. We were using Zoom. On the back end of that, I was using Slack to connect people who were in the program currently and who had ever gone through the program. By the time that business had run its course, there were about 120 people who had gone through that program. And that sounds like table stakes now here in 2024, but in 2017, nobody was using Slack for community, and I literally had to teach people how to download and use Zoom.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Very unique.
- AAAli Abdaal
I, I, yeah, I would not have heard of Zoom back then. [laughs]
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
I only heard of it in, in the pandemic, like most other people did, I guess. [laughs]
- JCJay Clouse
It was, it was very, a very unique use of tools back then. Um, but through that process, I met Matt Gartland, who lives here in Columbus, Ohio, as do I, and he saw what I had done with digital community on Slack. Fast-forward to 2020, we have the pandemic. Matt and his business partner, Pat Flynn, were thinking about launching their own online community, so they brought me in to consult on their community plans in 2020. They had just gotten access to this brand-new tool that was in private beta called Circle, which blew my mind. I was like, "Finally, a tool that's actually built for community," 'cause Slack is built for enterprise. It just doesn't really work. So for most of 2020, I was helping them design and launch SPI Pro. At the end of 2020, they said, "Can you come lead our community team here at SPI?" And after some talking, they acquired my community business, brought those members into SPI Pro, and then I led the SPI community team for a year in 2021. Throughout that year, my content business, which I continued to build on the side, just had a great year, and it got to the point where I couldn't do both. And I said, "If I'm gonna, you know, bet on one thing, I'm gonna bet on myself." So at the beginning of 2022, I went back out on my own, suddenly had a lot more time on my hands, was still very good at community and love community.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Decided that I would launch my own. And so in March of 2022, we opened the doors to The Lab. It wasn't called The Lab at the time, by the way. It was called the Creative Companion Club. And, um, lots of things have changed. The business was finally branded as Creator Science in that year. We rebranded the, the community to The Lab to match the science motif 'cause it's a place where we experiment together and, you know, we're about a month away from being a- active for two years.
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice. Okay, very cool. Um, you know, a- as, as, as you will have no doubt heard, uh, [laughs] Alex Hormozi is going all in on school, and it seems like
- 9:55 – 15:35
Community vs content
- AAAli Abdaal
the new... You know, in, in every era of the internet, there seems to be a hot, sexy thing to make money online. I remember, you know, when I was, like, 15, it was about, like, niche affiliate sites, affiliate marketing, and so I tried dabbling with that. When I was at university, I was building my own business, uh, completely unrelated, but I was keeping an eye on the make money online space and, you know, dropshipping became a thing. Amazon FBA became a thing.
- JCJay Clouse
Totally.
- AAAli Abdaal
A couple of years ago, it was all about start, start a social media marketing agency. Um, and now it seems to be start a community because everyone seems to be like, "Hey, if you wanna make your first 10K on, 10K a month online, the way to do it is community because recurring revenue and because community is the future and stuff." What, what's your take on community being the new, uh, the new dropshipping? [laughs]
- JCJay Clouse
[laughs] Uh, there's some truth to it, but what we're gonna see is an explosion of communities that are done poorly and, uh, an, an almost instant cratering of that as well because people are going to become disillusioned with it because they're going to have a lot of really bad community experiences. And so in the immediate term, what I tell a lot of folks who are thinking about building a community is, how can you give yourself the best chance that this is going to be the best community that any of your members have in their life? Because they're gonna get saturated, they're gonna be a part of several, they're gonna join them, they're gonna be mildly active in several of them. Then they're gonna get overwhelmed and burned out, and they're gonna pare back to one or two.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So how can you set yourself up to be the one or two surviving communities that people can't imagine not being a part of?
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
I think that's, I think that's the goal. And as long as you do that, then, you know, you don't have to worry so much about this incoming glut of communities that are gonna be done poorly.
- AAAli Abdaal
What, what sort of value do people get from these online communities? Um, and I, I ask because when we launched our YouTuber academy in 2020, I was kinda saying to my team, "Who n- who needs a community?" Like, you know, don't people just wanna, like, consume the content and then just take action on the thing? You know, that's how I did YouTube. I never had really had a community. I just put my head down and did the work. But, you know, thankfully my team pushed back, and they were like, "No, I think you're unusual. I think actually people really care about having an online community to be part of, a community of friends." And then we did the, the first cohort of the course and, [laughs] you know, in our feedback surveys, people kept on talking about the community. And I was like, "What the hell?" [laughs] It's, it's not about the content? Um, so yeah, in, in, in your experience, what do people get from this online community stuff?
- JCJay Clouse
We're social creatures. For most of human history, we literally lived in small communities of people. And, you know, now today we have like these grid systems of roads and suburbs and these giant structures that house like a very small, hopefully family unit. But a lot of people are, are still single and doing their own thing. So our culture has evolved faster than our biology, and we really need connection to other people. And if we're not getting it in our day-to-day, getting it online, where increasingly we're spending all of our time, is a close second to that. So first and foremost, connection is what people want, whether that's, you know, front of mind consciously what they say they want or not. Second to that, I would say, is transformation, going from point A to point B in a way that you can recognize. And I can give you some examples of, of all these. And then the third thing I think people seek out or really appreciate, at least when they find it in community, is a sense of identity. A lot of people don't know that much about themselves. They don't quite understand, uh, what they care about, what their purpose is. And when they have such a great experience, they begin to learn something about themselves and identify with it. You know, there's that, there's that old joke of, "How do you know somebody's into CrossFit? They'll tell you." Well, that's, that's kind of like a small example of when people get really into something, it becomes part of who they are, and they wanna talk about it, and that's powerful because that gives them purpose. That gives them a feeling of, um, understanding of who they are.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Nice.
- JCJay Clouse
[chuckles]
- AAAli Abdaal
So it's not, it's not about the content. [chuckles]
- JCJay Clouse
I think that would go under the transformation bucket.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Okay. Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
It can be about the content. If they are specifically looking for transformation, and usually that's like the most obvious, explicit thing that I can grasp onto as far as a value proposition goes. Like, if I'm thinking about, you know, if, if you have a community as a product or as an experience, probably the easiest promise to make is transformation because it's very tangible. It's very obvious.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Uh, but I would argue that a lot of the stickiness or recurrence that comes in community comes from connection or, uh, a sense of identity.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Nice. So if I were to come to you, and, and I guess I'm coming to you and being like, "Jay, I really wanna do this community thing." We've got our YouTuber Academy community already, but it's a sort of free for... well, free lifetime access once you buy the course type thing, which is somewhat active, actually s- surprisingly active. We've, we had a-- I think we had like eight, 800 active members in the last, uh, month of the 4,000 or so that we have in total, which kind of blew my mind when I looked at the analytics. But I think we could do a really good job with some sort of productivity community and, [chuckles] you know, the na- the name we've actually landed on weirdly is pr- initially it was Productivity Club, and now it's Productivity Lab. [laughs]
- JCJay Clouse
[laughs] Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, where... And, and like in, in my book, a lot of the tactics are framed, or all the, all the tactics are framed as experiments. Like there are 54-
- JCJay Clouse
Oh, wow
- AAAli Abdaal
... experiments in the book, and there's a whole ch- final chapter about like being a productivity scientist. So I think there's a lot of parallels [chuckles] completely coincidentally between your science metaphor
- 15:35 – 25:45
About Productivity Lab
- AAAli Abdaal
and my science metaphor. But I think we could do a really cool community called The Productivity Lab or something, and I would love to get this to 5 million, 5 to 10 million a year in recurring revenue.
- JCJay Clouse
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
What... Where, where, where do we go from here? Like how would you, how would you go about like coaching me through? Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? What, what are the sort of things we, that we should be thinking about?
- JCJay Clouse
Uh, a man with your reach and the different assets at your control, there's all kinds of things that you could do well. So why a community? What, what is it about a community that's calling out to you?
- AAAli Abdaal
Good question. Um, actually, the word community is not the first word that came to mind. I was sort of thinking, I, I wanna create a sort of Peloton for productivity. Um, I think having seen lots of people struggle with productivity and stuff over the years, uh, the main thing that's holding them back is just doing the goddamn work. Like, they know everything they need to know. It's not about more content. It's just about sitting there and like doing the thing that you know you should be doing or even sitting there and identifying what is the thing that you should be doing actually. Like, what, what, what, uh, what actually is that thing? And I found that... Like, for example, I've, I, I've been regularly seeing a personal trainer when I'm at the gym, and there's something really nice about having a personal trainer who j- where I know I'm gonna show up. I know I've prepaid for the thing. I've financially committed. I'm just gonna do the thing. Yes, I could do, do the workout on my own. But I know that when I do it on my, on my own, I either don't do it or I half-ass it. Similarly, I have friends who do, who go to exercise classes for that reason, that, you know, [chuckles] at le- it's in the calendar. You'll show up. You'll do the thing, and maybe you'll make friends along the way, but like the goal is to show up and do the thing. And so what I was thinking is, what if we had a community? Well, I, I didn't use the word community. What if we had a sort of Peloton for productivity, where every week we had like facilitated weekly reviews? Every month there's like a facilitated planning session that helps you reflect on how the month went and plan goals. Every quarter there's like a quarterly planning session because setting goals and shit is like super important. And what if every day we had like a handful of like Zoom co-working sessions that you would literally sign up to, you'd RSVP to? They would be in your calendar. You would show up. And, you know, I joined a few Zoom w- co-working sessions during the pandemic, uh, in, at the London Writers' Salon where they-
- JCJay Clouse
Yes, I love that. I was gonna bring that up
- AAAli Abdaal
It's so good. Yeah. And I made so much progress on my book in these random ass Zoom co-working sessions, which were free. So I was like, what if we bring all this together, a CrossFit sort of Peloton sort of online WeWork for productivity? That would be really cool, where people would come for the events, and if they make friends, that's a side effect, and that's like a happy bonus. But like the goal is not, "Hey, you'll make friends, and you'll talk to people about productivity." The goal is you'll show up and do the god- [chuckles] and, you know, and do the goddamn thing that you, that you've been intending to do.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah. I think, I think what people look for a lot in... Well, even just say products broadly, is they, they love the promise of, "Hey, you're trying to get to this point B, this, this outcome, and we have this
- JCJay Clouse
Basically a conveyor belt to take you there.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
You just have to step onto the conveyor belt. [laughs] That's kind of the way I think about it in my mind, is like, how do I lower the activation energy-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... to, "Hey, we've got the system. It's running. It's moving right now. If you just step onto it, you're gonna get to where you wanna go, even if it's kicking and screaming." So I love this, uh, frame of, um, Peloton for productivity. I think that's a useful North Star. So tell me more about the business constraints. If we wanted to achieve that, what are some of the things that, um, need to be true from a business perspective? What are things that we absolutely cannot do, or we don't want to do this, things that we don't want this to impede?
- AAAli Abdaal
Ooh, good question. Uh, we don't want this to impede my team, my, my content team, uh, in that, you know, [laughs] I wanna still continue making content on the internet. We also don't want this to end up taking ridiculously large amounts of my own time. Um, I've been doing a bit of an alpha testing phase as, like, a free-for-all thing, uh, in the last couple of weeks, and been facilitating a weekly review every Sunday. And that's actually quite nice, because when I'm facilitating the weekly review, I do my own weekly review. And I've done a few Zoom co-working sessions where [laughs] by virtue of me hosting the session, I actually make progress on my own stuff. So that's really cool. But I certainly won't want it to be a, like a YouTuber academy. Three times a week, Ali rocks up and delivers a sermon for two hours at a time about [laughs] some productivity concept. I, so I, I, I want it to be, like, low lift in terms of me having to do extra things for it. Beyond that, like, there's very little we can't do. Uh, [laughs] yeah, I, if, for this thing to be good, and, you know, I want this thing to scale, I think, um, we can always hire more people. We can always hire a full-time community manager. We can always get freelancers underneath that person. Like, we have a lot of resources in the business to make this really freaking good. And one, one thing I'm reluctant to do, you know, one of... Someone on the team floated the idea of m- accountability group matching, like matching people to accountability groups. But we've sort of tried that with our YouTuber academy, and unless they were led by someone on our team or someone that was, like, on our payroll in some way, they started to fall apart. Because, like, all it takes is one person to be disengaged, and now, now the whole thing is screwed, and then people blame us for matching them and for... They, they sort of have a bad community experience. So I kind of want to be quite, like, uh, [laughs] kind of like, uh, like Apple rather than Facebook. [laughs] You know, like, this is the thing. We're gonna lead the thing, and we're gonna hold your hand through the thing [laughs] 'cause we know best.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Rather than, "Hey, this is the thing where you guys can figure out what you wanna do." It's like, like, I'm, I'm much more worried about that, that model.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah, yeah. Um, I recently heard you on, um, My First Million, talking with Sam and Sean, and you reinforced this idea about, uh, separating the promise from the delivery of the product.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
So what I've heard so far is a really compelling promise. You know, Peloton for productivity. Like, this is, this is the thing where if you're willing to join this, you are going to be more productive.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
Um, the delivery here, you've just given me some constraints on how we actually achieve that, but it seems doable. So in your mind, what's the, what's the hardest nut to crack? What feels challenging about making this live based on what you've already kind of thought about? This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget. Now, for many people, money is a cause of guilt and anxiety. You're never entirely sure where all your money goes, and you're left feeling guilty about purchases, big or small. Money is often associated with restriction, fear, and uncertainty. But your money is an extension of you in many ways, and it's obviously not ideal to feel so bad about it. Now, YNAB is an app that's helping millions of people change their mindset around money. It's built on four simple habits which could transform the way you think about money. These habits are, firstly, give every dollar a job. Two, embrace your true expenses. Three, roll with the punches, and four, age your money. Now, these habits are actually really simple. Giving every dollar a job basically just means that you plan out the different things you want to spend your money on after you've been paid. Then all you have to do is stick to the plan, knowing that you already have enough to cover everything. Your true expenses refers to those big non-monthly outgoings, like trying to buy a car or a holiday deposit. You want to break these down, and you want to save in advance so that hopefully you're not hit by a big charge that you were not expecting. And one of the things that I really love about YNAB is their idea of rolling with the punches, 'cause sometimes life does throw things at you, like a piece of tech breaks and you need to have it fixed, or you get your stuff stolen from the back of your car, like happened to me, or a pipe bursts and you have to call a plumber. YNAB helps you set money aside in advance to help cushion you from life's unexpected expenses. They also recognize that we can feel really guilty for spending money. So if you do spend more than you planned, that's totally okay. Just move your money to wherever it's needed. It's yours at the end of the day. And you can even age your money, spend less than you earn, and have a nice stack of saved money waiting for your bills as they come in, not the other way around. In an ideal world, money really shouldn't be scary or stressful for us, and we actually have way more control over our money than we often think. So if you're interested, you can try out YNAB today, and you can see if this approach to budgeting can make a difference in the way that you think about money. So thank you again, YNAB, for sponsoring this episode of Deep Dive.
- AAAli Abdaal
This episode of Deep Dive is being very kindly sponsored by Trading 212. Now, investment and trading can seem pretty complicated, especially if you're a beginner. I've made a bunch of videos about this, and the thing I always recommend is to just invest in low-cost, broad stock market index funds, which you can actually do completely for free with Trading 212. It's a great app that lets you invest in stocks and shares and funds completely for free. And what I love about Trading 212 is that it's also got a bunch of really helpful features that, especially if you're a beginner to the world of investing, it can help you kind of learn the ropes without actually putting money at risk. You can actually trade initially with fake money, and you can see how you would have performed without actually putting real money on the line. And then once you're ready to put real money in, you can always switch to the real trading interface. The other cool feature that I really like is pies and auto investing. So pies are different, like allocations of stocks and shares and funds that various people on the internet have come up with, and some of them are even like professional finance people. And then if you want, you can just copy and paste someone else's allocation of funds and stocks and shares into your own account, so you can benefit from other people's experience without actually having to do any research for yourself. Obviously, the thing I always recommend is to just invest in index funds. But if, like I do, you like to play around with like 5 to 10% of your portfolio with individual stock picking, the pies and auto invest feature is great for that. There is also support for multi-currency accounts, which is absolutely amazing. So if, like I do, you invest loads of money in the S&P 500, that is a US fund. And normally when you invest in US funds, at least from here in the UK, you're hit with all sorts of foreign exchange fees and all that stuff. And so the fact that Trading 212 has multi-currency accounts means that you can trade without getting hit with all these various fees. If you have an invest or an ISA account, then Trading 212 gives you a bonus as well, which is interest on uninvested money. The interest is paid out every day and you have full flexibility. There are no minimums or ceilings, and you can withdraw the money literally whenever you want. They've also just launched a new offer of 5% yields on GDP, 4.2% on euros, and 5.1% on US dollars and many more currencies through qualifying money market funds. With over 24,000 reviews on Trustpilot, Trading 212 is an amazing platform to get started with investing. So if you click the link below in the video description or in the show notes, that will take you a page which will give you instructions on how to sign up. And when you sign up, you'll also get a free share, which is worth up to £100. So it's free money and there's no reason not to do it. Thank you so much, Trading 212, sponsoring this episode, and let's get back to it. Okay, what feels challenging about
- 25:45 – 33:40
The challenges
- AAAli Abdaal
this? Um, w- what feels challenging about this is that it feels like there's a lot of pressure on... Like I, I, I feel, I feel a certain sense of pressure for it to be done right from day one.
- JCJay Clouse
Hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, because I know that this could be a really good thing, and I don't wanna fuck it up b- by me just not having-- not, like, speaking to the right people or, like, you know, which is why I'm, you know, I, I, I reached out to you to be like, "Hey, Jay, you know, you've been doing this community thing for a while, and I've, I've heard it's really good. What are some things to [chuckles] ..."
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
"What are some, like, traps on the, in, in the horizon that, like, I don't yet know about that you know about having been there that you can kind of caution me away from?" Um-
- JCJay Clouse
Well, I think-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
I think, um, well, the most common trap that I see in people, and I think you're predisposed to not fall into this as much, but the most common trap I see for people who are building a membership is they get really, really granular about the delivery and make that the value proposition on the sales page, and then that becomes a very rigid system that you have to fulfill.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
So if you want to have... Like you, you've mentioned a, a number of different ways that this can actually, uh, manifest in the community: weekly, uh, reviews, monthly reviews, quarterly reviews, daily sorta check-ins. That feels easy enough, and in the first month, two months, three months, like you can probably maintain that. But if you're not really planning for it, 14 months from now, are you gonna wanna keep leading these weekly reviews? I don't know. It's, it's hard to say, you know?
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So the, the better thing to do is to make the promise and the offer so good that you can figure out the right delivery over time, and people don't have a preconceived notion of, "This is how I'm going to double my pre- productivity. I just know that Ali's going to help me do that in the Productivity Lab."
- AAAli Abdaal
Ooh. Don't we need to be-- say on the sales page, "These are all the, the features"? [chuckles] Uh-
- JCJay Clouse
I don't think so
- AAAli Abdaal
... and, and we're tied into that. [chuckles]
- JCJay Clouse
I don't think so. And, um, I don't know that you think so either. Like, I think that, uh, if you have a good enough promise and you have people who can follow through and say, "Yes, I did this," that's good.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
But I would try to be as vague with the delivery as possible because you just quickly discover, you know, it's like that, that old boxing quote, "Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth." You have a plan for how you're gonna deliver this, and you start doing it, and you realize, "Hey, actually, we don't need this thing that we said we're gonna do weekly. We, we actually just need that monthly."
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Or, "People aren't showing up to this thing over here. We actually wanna get rid of it, but it's something we've promised now to people and we've sold them an annual membership, so can we get rid of that?" The, the less you specifically promise from a delivery standpoint in terms of like the actual programming-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... the more flexibility you have to rightsize the programming and experiment with stuff. You know, you're calling this a lab. You wanna experiment with even just the, the, the delivery so you can get that best outcome. Um, you can, you can certainly say like, "We have these facilitated sessions. We have facilitators that are gonna help you with goal planning."
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
"They're gonna help you with accountability." You don't have to say, "We're gonna have this session for two hours every morning."
- AAAli Abdaal
Damn. That is a really, really, really freaking useful insight. If someone's watching this and they're like, "That sounds kind of obvious," that's, that's not obvious at all. Like that's just like-
- JCJay Clouse
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
We've, we've sold annual memberships for our YouTuber Accelerator, $5,000, and then we kicked ourself three months later to be like, "Oh, fuck, that thing that we put on the sales page-"
- JCJay Clouse
Totally
- AAAli Abdaal
... we've realized that isn't... that's not actually the thing, but, like, we put it on the freaking sales page and now we can't go back from it, and now we have to-
- JCJay Clouse
Right
- 33:40 – 36:30
Jay’s approach to sales pages
- AAAli Abdaal
That is, uh, a much simpler model than the Jim Edwards Copywriting Secrets 14-part framework on desire. Agitate the desire, rigor the promise, figure out the benefits, figure out the features, do the offer stack, like the whole shebang. What's your... What's, yeah, what's your, uh, approach to sales pages?
- JCJay Clouse
To be honest, I think to a fault, I, I do leave a lot on the table, because I tend to really do a lot of no-sell selling, uh, for better or for worse.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
So I, I am, I'm always trying to build so much trust that the need for selling doesn't really need to exist that much.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
And I would rather just show that I have delivered on the promises that I make than really, like, agitate the problem and get people, you know, in a, in a heightened state of need. But again, like, I think that's to my detriment in a lot of times, that I don't do at least more of that.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Um, so, you know, it's a spectrum. It's a spectrum of how, how far you want to go in terms of, like, you know, really selling, and I think anything is valid. It just kind of comes down to, to your style. But I think ultimately, when we make decisions, we are more likely to take the opinion of a third party who we see ourselves in or we already know and trust-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... than the, the language of the person selling me the thing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So in general, like, the more, the more case studies, the more testimonials that you have, the more successful it's gonna be anyway.
- AAAli Abdaal
Right.
- JCJay Clouse
And if I'm just seeing the sales page that is just covered in testimonials with specific outcomes that are outcomes that I want from people who I can identify with-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... that's gonna be more compelling than anything else.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. As I was browsing your, um, the Lab sales page, I was struck by just how many testimonials there were. And I also loved how you sort of leaned into the video thing.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I was like, "Huh, I don't really lean into videos on our sales pages," but I don't know why, 'cause our, our videos are, like, really good. [chuckles] So like-
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... I should just... Video is my thing, not like-
- JCJay Clouse
And it's hard to fake.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
Like, it's, it's getting so easy to create content, you know. I use that term loosely.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
But, like, it's getting so easy to produce things-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... that people are having, you know- Higher and higher, like a, a higher guard of do I trust this or not?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
And when somebody records a video that is just off the cuff and just talking about their experience, we can feel that honesty.
- 36:30 – 46:30
Price: to cap or not to cap
- AAAli Abdaal
thoughts on price point and to cap or not to cap?
- JCJay Clouse
This is one of the things that, like, really slowed me down from launching my own membership. I spent three months doing exactly what we're doing now, like thinking through, like how is this going to work? And I built this kind of gnarly spreadsheet because I wanted to pull the levers and say, "If I have this many members at this price point," and I even had tiers. Like, if I had two tiers of pricing and I assume that this many people will go for this tier and I have this many members, what does that look like in the first month, the first three months, the first 12 months?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
So it's, it's worth actually doing some spreadsheet work on this. But, um, we have to go back to the promise a little bit. Because when you think about a membership, I also think about this as kind of a spectrum between is this really content and programming focused or is this connection and relationship focused?
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- JCJay Clouse
When you do the connection relationship focused as like the primary driver, of course like most memberships are gonna have elements of both. But depending on which one you really lean into-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JCJay Clouse
... it sets a, a bias and a pre-framing for what people expect from it and how they expect to engage with it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
When you, when you go the more connection relationship side of things, scale is challenging.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep.
- JCJay Clouse
Like success in that model actually presents new challenges as time goes on.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep.
- JCJay Clouse
So I have an assumption that with Productivity Club or Productivity Lab and what you've told me so far, that's gonna be more on the content and programming side.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
Is that accurate?
- AAAli Abdaal
Content and programming, yep.
- JCJay Clouse
So I tend to see those, uh, memberships priced a little bit lower than the relationship side, and they're a little bit less retentive on average. I'm just saying on average. Um, a lot of people go for volume and so they make pricing a little bit lower. I think any of these things can be overcome with a really great product and some intention. So you know, I would be s- I would say think about the market who would be buying this. Who are your users? Who are your customers?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
What do they have precedent for paying for in this realm, you know?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
Are these people also hiring personal trainers at $200 or $300 per month? Do they have that level of resource? Because you have to pick a price that the market can literally bear and then, um, then it's kind of how good of a job can I do of selling the value of this and delivering the value of this. So-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JCJay Clouse
... what are your, what are your current thoughts in pricing?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
Or maybe even we could start with how would you describe the target customer for this?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, great question. How would I describe the cu- the, the, the target customer? Um, a phrase [chuckles] that came to mind is something like ambitious entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals, but that is like very, very broad. Um, in reality... Okay, so there's kind of two things here. Number one, it's, it's sort of like who is the sort of person who would invest in doubling their own productivity? It is probably not a corporate employee unless they can expense it to their workplace, in which case sure, yeah, why not? Um, it is pro- like the, the, the way we think of our audience is that our, our audience is broadly in three buckets. We've got like the professionals who are like, you know, corporate employees. They want to thrive in the nine-to-five but also have a work-life balance outside of work and they care about personal growth and stuff. Then we have the side hustlers who have a little bit less of an appetite for work-life balance. You know, they have a nine-to-five, they enjoy the nine-to-five, life is good, blah, blah, blah. They're not like desperate to quit the job, but they also want some sort of creative side hustle and, man, if that could make money, poof, we're off to the races. That's so good. And then we have the entrepreneurs who are like, "I don't, I don't have any requirement for work-life balance. I'm gonna grind and hustle on the weekends and evenings until I get to my freedom number and so I can quit my job and live a life of freedom. Uh, I wanna quit my nine-to-five so I can then work 24/7." You know, all that kind of stuff, [chuckles] um, which are people like me broadly. [both laughing] Um, although I started off as a side hustler and then became that kind of guy. And I think the audience of people who will pay to double their own productivity are mostly the entrepreneurs, but also the side hustlers are also liable to invest in things like our YouTuber course even 'cause it's like, oh, I've... You know, the average age of our YouTuber Academy is like 36. They've got jobs, they've got money, earning like 100K a year. They're like, "Cool, paying a grand or five grand for this YouTuber course to help me achieve my potential in this thing that I thought I might wanna do, and now I trust this guy to help me get there," it's like, why not? Uh, and so but at the same time, I don't want this to be an entrepreneur's club or the entrepreneur's lab, although that could be a future product. Um, I want it to be the Productivity Lab where I would love for this to be a sort of almost like mass market product, and not mass market in terms of the pricing 'cause I generally lean towards higher ticket than lower ticket. But mass market in terms of I want a professional working, uh, for Accenture or McKinsey or something to get just as much value from this, assuming they can expense it, as an entrepreneur for whom even just doing one co-working session a week [chuckles] will radically improve their productivity 'cause we tend not to just make time for deep work. I don't know if any of that made sense.
- JCJay Clouse
It does. Um, how much of this is based in direct data versus, uh, assumption?
- AAAli Abdaal
A lot of it is assumption. Um, some of it is data based on all the, the students that we have in our YouTube accelerator, our 5K a year kind of offering. Uh, some of it is based on, like, when we poll our audience and just do casual surveys, like... Or if I, if I'm giving a talk and I'm like, "Hands up if you're an entrepreneur. Hands up if you identify as an employee. Hands up if you're a student. Hands up if you aspire to be an entrepreneur. Hands up if you wanna be financially free." Everyone puts their hand up. "Hands up if you wanna be a creator." There's this sense of like, okay, this, th-th-these three sort of buckets, and then there's the students that aspire to one of th- one, one of those three buckets as well.
- JCJay Clouse
I think a lot of the opportunity that you have in front of you, especially with the new book-
- 46:30 – 52:40
Higher ticket, lower volume?
- AAAli Abdaal
day to double your productivity, which is kind of cute. But even, like, $1,000 a year lets us say it's, like, $19 a week to double your productivity or, like, $2.74 per day or s- you know, w- however, however the maths works out. And, you know, I spoke to Jordan, who is part of your lab as well, and he was like, "Yeah, you know, generally hi- higher ticket, lower volume makes for a way more, uh, le- a way less stressful business than lower ticket, higher volume." But I'm... Yeah, I'm curious what's your take on that?
- JCJay Clouse
I think that's absolutely true. Um, one thing that I would ask myself in your situation is when I assume that this is going to be more work and chaos and stress on the business, is that because I'm assuming that I am going to be taking on all of that capacity? You know? There's, there's a world where you do a good job of hiring, training, and-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep
- JCJay Clouse
... the way that you interface with this community doesn't change at all, regardless-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... of who it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep.
- JCJay Clouse
Does it still impact the business? Yes. Is it on your shoulders? No, not if you design it to not be. Um, I would be thinking about the broader-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JCJay Clouse
... Ali strategy and vision three years from now, five years from now, because everything that you produce and Put out there is building some understanding of the Ali brand. So if you go in the entrepreneur direction with this, that is going to at least add a small bit of, uh, perception that Ali serves this specific audience rather than-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
-the broader audience. So if you are-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
Um, and I'm kinda saying this 'cause I watched your, your most recent video about wanting to write books, and it seems like you're trying to go broader generally as a person and as a business.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
And I think if that is true, I would be creating products and experiences that back up that vision.
- AAAli Abdaal
Interesting. Um, what are your thoughts on sort of the more, like, barbell approach, which is that the thing is either free or it's very expensive? [chuckles] Um, like, I like the idea of 99.9% of my stuff being free for all, and the business being funded by a smaller number of people paying higher ticket prices, because then the free stuff becomes very, very accessible. Um, but I've always sort of shied away from, like, mid-ticket pricing because mid-ticket pricing, unless the numbers are huge, it, it doesn't move the needle for our revenue. And huge numbers of paying customers is more faff, [chuckles] and I may as well just do stuff for free then, which is what I'm planning to continue to do, which is why I've been sort of flirting with, with, with, with high ticket. So what's your... Yeah, what, what's, what's your view on, like, the barbell approach in that sense?
- JCJay Clouse
I think there's merit to so many different approaches.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
And it, like, ultimately comes down to which one appeals to you the most, and let's design for it. So if, if, if that approach is what's appealing to you, then there's probably something there. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
I think any choice you make, you have to then counter that with some intellectual honesty of, okay, if I'm saying, "I'm gonna do the high price membership for the more sophisticated affluent customer"-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep
- JCJay Clouse
... what does that mean for the free offering that I'm offering to the broader public?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
What, what am I doing for free to them to also help them-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep
- JCJay Clouse
... double their productivity? And if you have a plan for that, and this customer, this product subsidizes that, um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JCJay Clouse
... then I think it, it makes sense. If you don't have a plan for that, then it sounds like you're justifying a decision [laughs] without necessarily following through on the model.
- 52:40 – 1:02:40
How many people to bring into the community
- AAAli Abdaal
take on how many people... Uh, I've, I've, you know, watched one of Pat Flynn's talks at some thing, and he was talking about kind of doing an alpha test and then stabilizing, then letting a few more people in beta test, stabilizing before... ahead of the public launch. Um, you mentioned private community, public lau- uh, private, um, opening-
- JCJay Clouse
Private opening
- AAAli Abdaal
... public launch.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, do you have a sense of, like, numbers that are li- like, w- what is a good number of people to bring in the, in the private opening?
- JCJay Clouse
Well, again, this is kind of rooted in to what degree you wanna lean into the relationships and-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... connection side of things. Because if, if you are listening to this and you wanna have a community that's built more on the relationships and conversations between members, the slower you integrate people the better. Because literally the, the retentive and, uh, incentivizing mechanism for people to post and meet each other really is benefited by one-to-one connections.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
The fewer people that are in there, the less I feel like a number, the more I feel like I know the people here. Uh, you can have, like, Zoom sessions to literally let people meet each other. But someone at your scale who you can probably go out and get hundreds of people at a pr- in a private opening, like with one email or something, then that's a harder thing to do. If you're gonna lean more in the content side, I don't think ... the, the limit matters quite as much. Um, I would just say where most communities really fall apart is they under-bake the onboarding experience and, like, just the first experience with your thing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
When people swipe their credit card, they have peak excitement and also, like, peak anxiety of-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... did I just make a huge mistake?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
And what a lot of memberships will do is they'll be like, "All right, here's the playground. Have fun." Um, and what you really wanna do is say, "Hey, welcome in. So glad you're here. Let me show you around. Let me introduce you-"
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... "to someone new. Let me help you feel seen and comfortable with the space and how to use it."
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
Because when you just get thrown into an empty playground and say, "All right, everything is here that you could want. Have fun with it," people feel overwhelmed, and they say, "Actually, let me come back and do this later." And they click X. They close out. They've built no level of habit or expectation with that membership. They might not ever come back literally again.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So in your circumstance, I don't think I would worry so much about how many people is too many people unless you have designed the onboarding and, like, first day experience for somebody. And if you feel like there's a limit on how many people you can support in delivering-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... that great experience, then that's, that's kind of the, the threshold. Um, but for you, you know, I think it's just, like, really good hand-holdy training of you're here. This is the next step you should take. This is the next step you should take. This is the first event you should attend. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... and you could accommodate quite a few people, I think.
- AAAli Abdaal
That's a great idea. How, how do you guys do onboarding for new members?
- JCJay Clouse
So when people come in, the first thing that happens when they swipe their credit card is they actually get a scheduling link to schedule a one-on-one call with me. This only works because I charge pretty high ticket and have a small number of members. But the, the point of that is they don't know that's going to happen. And so at this moment of peak excitement, peak anxiety, to say, "Hey, welcome to the community. By the way, I would love to do a one-on-one call with you. Here's where you can book it with me," that's a pretty magical first experience.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep.
- JCJay Clouse
Then they are, uh, kind of walked through a web page experience of training, of like, here's what you can expect, here's your dashboard, here are the next steps you should take, and here's the link to get into the community. That link is a Circle invite link that gets them right into the community.
- 1:02:40 – 1:07:05
Spaces within the community
- JCJay Clouse
outcome that the individual wants.
- AAAli Abdaal
What do you think about, um, kind of interest spaces? I guess if some people in the community wanna make an interest space about parenting or something like that, like, do you let them do that? Or, like, w- how... Yeah. How do you approach kind of, like, space design in that, in that sense?
- JCJay Clouse
I, I am kind of militant on trying to keep the number of spaces as low as possible. Not to say that there's, like, a specific number where it's like, "This is the maximum you should have," but saying that every space should serve a distinct purpose-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... and be used. And so if somebody has a desire for a parenting space, generally in the beginning, especially in the beginning when you launch a community, people are gonna be like, "This is awesome. Can we have a space for this and this and this and this?"
- AAAli Abdaal
[chuckles]
- JCJay Clouse
And I would just, I would just capture all of those ideas-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... and then run a voting mechanism to see which ones are actually the most popular. Because you don't wanna just be reactive and create spaces for whoever is asking for it, because you might not have critical density to make that space work, and now you have a negative experience for those people-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... who wanted that space to work.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So you have to find some way of vetting, is there a real density of people who want this thing? And if so, I will create it, but also I'm going to try and identify a champion for that space, probably the person who suggested it, because now they feel like, "I need to prove that this should be here." And they can kinda help get conversations started, help welcome people into that space. I think it's great when done well, but as you identified with accountability groups and masterminds in communities where you don't have a paid staffed facilitator, it's like creating a second job for somebody who's paying to be in the space.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
They don't have a lot of incentive to keep up with it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
So a lot of times, those requests, I find there's not a lot of there there. You have to, you have to really suss out which one, which ones of these are worth pursuing and putting in place.
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice. So it sounds like kind of minimum number of spaces to begin with, like minimum viable space numbers or something. [chuckles] And then, uh, very slowly over time add them in if-
- JCJay Clouse
Yes
- AAAli Abdaal
... you know, we can have some sort of, like, roadmap with upvoting features and blah, blah, blah.
- JCJay Clouse
Yes.
- AAAli Abdaal
You know, a feedback section, that kind of thing.
- JCJay Clouse
Optically, it's a much better look to expand over time than contract over time, and because that feels like, oh, this place is growing. It's getting better. It's improving. And not, oh, they overpromised and under-delivered, and now they're taking away those promises. But the other thing is when you have a ton of spaces, for somebody new who hasn't been there yet, it can feel overwhelming to know, where do I go in here? Like, a lot of people talk about a lack of engagement, is the word they use. A lack of participation is the way I would put it. And they say, "How do I increase that?" You need to think about, how am I teaching people or setting expectations of what successful participation looks like? I joined this place for a specific reason. I now need to be shown or trained on how to achieve that promise using this tool. Um, it really is like the difference between-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... a trainer-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep
- JCJay Clouse
... in the gym and just putting the equipment out there.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
So, you know, more spaces means more equipment. Um, people need to know which equipment should I be using.
- AAAli Abdaal
I like that thing that you just said, which is like, how do I help them achieve the promise using this tool? It's like the community, the membership is a tool to serve the transformation, which is, in our case, doubling their productivity, in your case, growing your creative business.
- 1:07:05 – 1:10:00
Mistakes we can learn from
- AAAli Abdaal
uh, mistakes that you've made or that you've seen other people make that we should, uh, try and learn from?
- JCJay Clouse
I don't know how much this applies to you or not, and I think this, again, might apply a little bit more on the side of things where conversation and relationships are prioritized in the membership. But I have found if you have a spectrum of people on a specific customer journey, let's take my example of creators. You have people who are just considering whether they wanna be a creator. You have people who are figuring out, like, what is my content going to be. You have people who are just getting traction. You have people who have built a full business. You have people who are scaling. Those are like the five stages of creatordom as I see them. It is difficult to serve all five of those stages in one membership product where relationships and connection is key. It's a lot better to hone in on one specific phase of a journey because then people can really relate to each other, even if they have different demographics or different professional profiles. So in your case with productivity, if we can find the common ground across different demographics and different people, that is kind of where I would gear a lot of the messaging and marketing around because then we immediately are set to find that common ground as members between each other. It's really difficult to have the wide spectrum because everything reverts to the lowest end of the spectrum.
- AAAli Abdaal
As in the beginners holding everyone back.
- JCJay Clouse
As in if you have... Yeah. If you have beginners and you have experts, very quickly, the majority of conversation becomes beginner conversation, and the experts go and try to find a very private space for themself.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yep.
- JCJay Clouse
Um, it's hard because you... Unless you literally screen and vet people, it's hard to prevent that from happening. I thought initially that pricing was all you needed to do. Like, if you make the price high enough, then it will filter out for everybody who's too early on.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
And that's true for the majority of cases.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JCJay Clouse
But there are people with high ambitions, uh, there are people with means.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
There might even be people with delusions who are willing to do that, and that can create a negative experience, like an outsized negative experience for the community as a whole.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
So for a long time, I was very anti-application or screening process because-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JCJay Clouse
... it creates friction that makes... It, it just will slow down member growth.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
But more and more, I'm thinking actually the best communities of the coming however long should probably have some experience or some mechanism for making sure that the people coming in are a right fit for the community.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm. One of my, uh, e- as, as I've been sort of thinking about building this thing, one of the, the instincts I have to fight against is the instinct to keep on adding more shit to it. 'Cause I'm always like-
- JCJay Clouse
[laughs] Yes. You must
- AAAli Abdaal
... "Ah." But, like, you know, the team's like, "Well, I don't, I don't, I don't think we've got enough content here. Like,
- 1:10:00 – 1:21:00
Giving recurring value
- AAAli Abdaal
Ali, why don't you just go make a productivity course?" And I'm like, "I mean, okay." [laughs] But, like, is... I, I mean, and, and I will, but, like, I... Is it, is it the content? And then we're, then we're like, "Okay, but we, we c- we could have a space for this and a space to post your daily goals 'cause that would be helpful, and a space to post your evening reviews 'cause that'd be helpful, and a space to post your weekly reviews 'cause that'd be help- a space to put your life vision 'cause that would be helpful." And now before we know it, we've built, like, 15 spaces with zero members inside the community, uh, [laughs] which just in theory it would be useful to have space that... [laughs] to have a space that does-
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... this specific thing.
- JCJay Clouse
It's like, great. Capture those ideas. Let's put them on a list. Let's roll out the minimum viable version of this.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JCJay Clouse
And prove that we need to add more. Um, especially with content. If you think about other subscription businesses like Netflix-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... or Hulu or Amazon Prime, whatever, they literally... Again, recurring revenue comes from recurring value. If you created a course and put it in there, that's good value for the one time that I go through it probably, but that's not necessarily recurring value. You know, recurring value comes from, um, something that is new constantly. And do you wanna get on the treadmill of saying, "I'm gonna create a new course every month," the way that Netflix adds original programming every month? Probably not.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
But, you know, saying, "Every month we are still having these highly effective goal-setting workshops or these productivity things," like, that is the recurring value that you have there. And I think you can find, like, the level of enough of that. When you have so much stuff, it gets difficult to train people on which stuff to use.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
And also, everything becomes a little bit less valuable by, uh, comparison. Let me give an example. In the lab, I was doing an office hours call every single week because it was the most popular event we had. So I said, "Let's, let's ramp it up. Let's do more of them." But what I found was the more often I did this, the easier it became to deprioritize any single of them because there's another one just next week. And so a couple of cycles-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... of, "Well, I don't need to do that this week. I'll just go to the one next week," suddenly becomes, "Oh, I'm not using this at all." Whereas when you have fewer, um, fewer things that you know are high value, you can make each of them a bigger deal. You know, we do a town hall in the community once per year, and that allows me to say, "Hey, we do this once a year. If you're going to put time aside to do anything in this community, come to this town hall." And it drives, by far, the highest attendance of every, any event that we do because the stakes are higher. Uh, you could look at it from a scarcity and urgency perspective. But, um, if you do just a ton of stuff, I think it actually can sometimes create non-participation because there's overwhelm, but also because each one of those things now feels m- relatively less valuable.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, what's your thought on recording the calls and recording the sessions and sticking them on the... somewhere on Circle as like a archive of recordings?
- JCJay Clouse
I think generally good, depending on what the, the session actually is. Like, are you gonna record an hour-long co-working session that's just an hour of silence and put that up there? No, I don't think that's gonna be super useful. But if there's something that is teaching, that's great. That creates an asset. That builds a library of content. At some point, that also becomes a little bit overwhelming, and it becomes a challenge of how do I wayfind through the best stuff.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
So from the beginning, what I would be doing is thinking about how will this be organized a year from now when there's a ton of this?
- AAAli Abdaal
Of course.
- JCJay Clouse
How can I help people wayfind their way into the right stuff? Um, because eventually you might have enough assets that you can actually create, like, onboarding pathways. Somebody comes in, they answer a couple questions. You say, "Well, we have identified that there's, like, four or five different types of people that come in here. We have done enough programming and built enough curriculum and content that we serve all five of those things. When people come in, we want them to identify which of these five paths makes the most sense for them, and we're gonna put them down this specific path with this specific series of content that we know is gonna serve them." So the, the, the earlier you start thinking about that, I think the better off you are, but it's not mission critical to absolutely get it right right away. It's just planning for the future a little bit.
- AAAli Abdaal
How do you do payments? Do you use Circle Payments or something else to then in, then send them an invite link?
- JCJay Clouse
If I were doing it today, I would probably use Circle Payments. Circle paywalls didn't exist when I was doing it, so I actually run through m- my payment through Ghost, 'cause my website is built on Ghost, and so I just use the built-in membership. But I think Circle paywalls is probably the best way to do it because when people want to manage their membership, they wanna do it inside of the tool that they're used to using-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JCJay Clouse
... as opposed to a third-party tool. So you'll, you'll have less support cost having it in Circle.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay. So Productivity Lab leaning towards higher ticket, but I will definitely think about what you've, what you suggested and things to think about on, on that front. Like, what is really the value, the free value versus the expensive value. Minimum viable number of spaces that we can always, like, expand over time by polling the members and seeing what people want and then delivering on that. Timeliness is ridiculously important, and always keeping in mind what is the n- the, the sort of now what... dot, dot, dot thing. And, like, really kind of being almost a benevolent dictator and, like, really holding their hand. Like, "No, this is how you use the thing." Introductions were really important. Onboarding course, really important. Teaching them how to set up notifications and stuff. Set up their profile, how to, like, "Hey, introduce yourself, and then maybe this is the next event that you should attend. And, like, maybe here's the course that you can go through." We'll figure out some sort of way to do one-on-one onboardings with the team, at least for the first X number of members, just so we can actually poll people to be like, "Hey, what are you hoping to get from this, and what made you sign up?" And especially, especially at the start for the private opening, uh, when we don't have, like, a whole shebang sales page and, and everything. With, with, with your stuff, I think you have, like, Friday co-working or something like that.
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah, we do.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and a couple of other things. For us, we wanted to have, like, daily co-working and also, like, weekly review events and also, like, a guest workshop every now and then. But, like, seeing, like, look- clicking on the events page on Circle, at least until they add a calendar feature, which apparently is coming soon, it starts to get, like, a bit much to suddenly see this enormous list of things. Um, do you have a sense of, like, should we be separating out multiple event types into different event spaces or what?
- JCJay Clouse
I wouldn't.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- JCJay Clouse
I think, I think multiple event spaces is only relevant when you have tiered levels of access and events-
- 1:21:00 – 1:23:47
The importance of a good first experience
- JCJay Clouse
You gave a great summary of a lot of the key things that I said a minute ago, but I would just double down on saying the better the initial experience somebody has after they swipe their credit card, the more coverage you have to kind of figure out and make this experience awesome. Like, a really great first experience will carry somebody for months in a community believing that this is going to be different and awesome. So I would really try to over-index on making that, that feel kind of magical.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay. Brilliant. This has been enormously helpful. Um, and finally, I guess 'cause if, if anyone has gotten to the end of this recording, uh, any tips for someone who does not have a huge audience looking to start their first community?
- JCJay Clouse
I get this question a lot. I think you need five people. Uh, if you, if you want to start a community, I think you literally only need five people. 10 would be great, but I have to think there are five or 10 people in your life that you could reach out to and say, "I'm doing this thing. It's for people like you. I think you're gonna get a lot out of it." The smaller the number of people you have initially, the more I would lean on real time programming in the beginning. Like, you have the benefit with a small number of people that you can basically create one-to-one relationships and interactions between all of them by having some live events and getting them to commit to going there. Because when people have real time experiences, even if it's on video, with other people, now suddenly the, the two-dimensional profile photo and name that I see in the forum, I feel more connected to that person. I'm more likely to help them, uh, and feel invested in their success as well. So-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- JCJay Clouse
... that kind of goes back to making the entry experience really good. But you really only need five to 10 people to start, and then those people are gonna feel really close. They're gonna tell their friends. And it's gonna grow slowly, but that's okay because slow growth means a great, um, experience of integration into the community, and you can build a really strong culture and have really good retention.
- AAAli Abdaal
Brilliant. Thanks so much, man. And where can people learn more about you and your stuff?
- JCJay Clouse
Yeah. Uh, I am everything Creator Science. You can go to creatorscience.com. Um, if this was interesting to you, I have a membership course that goes even more in-depth into what we did here. Um, I created a coupon code for folks of Deep Dive. You can go to creatorscience.com/deepdive if you would like.
- AAAli Abdaal
Lovely. Thank you so much, Jay. Really hit it.
- JCJay Clouse
Thank you.
- AAAli Abdaal
[keyboard clacking] All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
Episode duration: 1:23:47
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