#230: How much do I make? How much do I work? Do creators keep their best tips secret? [Ask Creator Science]

Summary

Creator Science Podcast Summary: Episode #230 – "How much do I make? How much do I work? Do creators keep their best tips secret? [Ask Creator Science]"

Release Date: December 10, 2024
Host: Jay Clouse
Guests: Connor and Rudy

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Introduction

In Episode #230 of Creator Science, host Jay Clouse, along with his co-hosts Connor and Rudy, delves into community-sourced questions about the financial aspects and work-life balance of being a content creator. This episode provides transparent insights into the revenue streams, work habits, and ethical considerations creators face, ensuring listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the business side of content creation.

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Revenue Insights: "How Much Do I Make?"

Breakdown of Channel Revenue
Connor provides a detailed account of the channel's earnings, citing specific figures from sponsor integrations and AdSense:

• Sponsor Integrations: "$22,099 in sponsor integrations for the year through October." (02:02)
• AdSense Revenue: "$28,727 from AdSense."
• Total Direct Revenue: "$50,825 from integrations and AdSense." (02:29)

Unattributed Revenue Streams
While direct revenue appears substantial, Connor acknowledges additional income from core sales and community memberships that are challenging to quantify. "I would actually be losing money on the channel this year so far. But I know that that's not actually the case." (02:44)

Future Revenue Goals
When asked about future earnings, Connor emphasizes a long-term, investment-focused approach: "We’ve been investing for two years, but it’s not the money maker in the business, so to speak." (03:40)

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Sponsorship Strategies: "Average Sponsorship Rates and Upselling"

Sponsorship Pricing
Connor outlines the typical sponsorship rate for a single video: "around $3,000." (03:40) He notes that rates can vary based on the advertiser's goals and the perceived return on investment.

Leveraging Multiple Platforms
To enhance value for sponsors, Connor discusses bundling sponsorships across various platforms such as YouTube, podcast, and newsletter, contributing to higher overall engagement:
"If we do three videos or two videos and a couple of newsletters, it de-risks the investment." (08:44)

Renewal and Relationship Building
Maintaining strong relationships with sponsors ensures recurring partnerships:
"The longer you have a positive relationship with a sponsor, the more freedom they'll give you to suggest how to run the campaign as a whole." (09:59)

Staff Insight on Upselling
Rudy adds that upselling packages to include multiple advertising channels "builds a better relationship and gets you in that mindset of upselling and whatever." (05:39)

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Monetization Ethics: "Can You Over Promote Paid Products and Erode Trust?"

Long-Term Trust Over Short-Term Gain
Connor stresses the importance of prioritizing long-term relationships with the audience over immediate revenue:
"If you are promoting a paid product for the short term revenue of the sponsor at the expense of long term relationships with your audience, it's not a trade you should make." (43:20)

Selective Endorsements
He emphasizes endorsing only products he genuinely believes in:
"If you don't believe in the product, I wouldn't do it because that will erode trust totally." (44:33)

Audience Feedback and Transparency
Listening to audience feedback is crucial to maintaining trust:
"I've gotten notes from people in my audience who said, hey, I know you have high integrity, you have good intentions. Did you know this about this sponsor?" (45:07)

Avoiding Over-Monetization
Connor advises limiting the number of promotions to prevent audience fatigue:
"You don't want to promote 10 things this week. Instead, promote one or two that people are more likely to engage with." (47:03)

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Sharing Knowledge: "Do Successful Creators Keep Tips Secret?"

Transparent Knowledge Sharing
While some creators may withhold proprietary information, Connor advocates for sharing actionable insights:
"I try really hard not to do that... I really try to fight the, like, hoarding instinct as much as I can because anytime I go, I go like, super specific, tactical." (60:29)

Protecting Brand Assets
However, brand-related elements are safeguarded to maintain a unique edge:
"Sometimes people ask for specific design elements, but I protect key branding assets and won't share them publicly." (60:54)

Case Studies and Practical Examples
Connor references specific episodes and guest interviews that offer valuable, yet underappreciated insights, emphasizing the importance of packaging over hiding information:
"Our interview with Justin Moore on sponsorships is critically under-viewed but holds immense potential." (55:17)

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Political Content: "Creators and Political Discussions"

Non-Political Stance
Connor explains the deliberate choice to keep content non-political to maintain broad appeal and avoid alienation:
"The business is a non-political business... We don't touch politics unless it directly impacts the creator economy." (15:43)

Personal Beliefs vs. Content Purpose
While personal political beliefs are held privately, they are generally not expressed in content to retain neutrality:
"I don't have an ongoing agreement to avoid politics; it just doesn't come up in our content because it's not relevant." (17:24)

Challenges of Political Engagement
Engaging in political discourse can lead to negative audience reactions and potential loss of subscribers:
"Once I featured a guest with strong political views, it led to a surge in one-star reviews and backlash." (21:55)

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Work-Life Balance: "Managing a Creator Business with a Newborn"

Time Management Challenges
Connor discusses the difficulties of balancing a growing business with parenting responsibilities:
"There are fewer hours in the day and fewer large, uninterrupted blocks of time." (31:06)

Efficiency and Focus
Having a newborn has heightened his efficiency:
"I realize how unfocused I was before... now I get a clear action plan when I find a block of time." (33:39)

Leveraging Limited Time
Strategic planning and prioritization become crucial with limited availability:
"With less time, where can I apply my effort and have the highest impact?" (31:28)

Impact on Personal Relationships
Increased business demands have strained personal relationships, necessitating deliberate efforts to maintain connections:
"The larger the audience, the smaller my inner circle has become... I have to make an effort to keep relationships open." (90:10)

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Creator Challenges: "Balancing Specificity and Breadth in Creator Offerings"

Non-Specific vs. Specialized Content
Connor expresses concern over being too general in servicing creators, fearing that specialists might "eat away the edges" of his offerings:
"There’s opportunity for somebody to come in and own each of those individual things." (24:09)

Imposter Syndrome and Focus
Rudy highlights fears of becoming a "one-trick pony" and imposter syndrome, stressing the importance of maintaining diverse skills:
"Being a one trick pony with imposter syndrome is a common fear among creators." (24:37)

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Misconceptions in the Creator Economy

Overhyped Revenue Sources
Connor identifies AdSense, sponsorships, and affiliates as often overhyped revenue streams:
"Most affiliate deals over time go to zero after a quick break." (11:44)

Visibility vs. Profitability
High visibility doesn't always translate to high profitability, as seen with channels relying heavily on AdSense:
"AdSense average is $2,873 per month with 111,000 subscribers... but it requires a lot of views to pay off." (25:24)

Diverse Success Metrics
Rudy emphasizes that success varies greatly across niches, with some creators thriving financially despite modest view counts:
"A lawyer's YouTube channel with 10,000 views might bring in hundreds of thousands in clients." (26:06)

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Audience Interactions and Personal Relationships

Negative Interactions
Connor recounts experiences with challenging audience interactions, including unsolicited follow-ups and negative feedback from parasocial relationships:
"Someone threatened to get arrested again after feeling a false sense of relationship through the podcast." (80:13)

Managing Parasocial Relationships
Rudy discusses the impact of parasocial relationships, especially in education-focused content, and the necessity of setting boundaries:
"Parasocial relationships can lead to unhealthy interactions and scammers taking advantage of perceived authority." (85:24)

Maintaining Professionalism
Both Connor and Rudy agree on the importance of maintaining professionalism and empathy while navigating audience feedback:
"Respond thoughtfully, but recognize when it's not worth engaging further." (83:22)

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Pricing Strategies: "Adjusting Subscription Prices Without Alienating Audience"

Grandfathering Existing Customers
Connor recommends maintaining existing pricing for current subscribers while introducing new pricing tiers for future customers:
"Grandfather the early customers or legacy price the early customers into their current price." (96:59)

Value Addition with Price Increases
If raising prices, it should be accompanied by added value to justify the change:
"Add something of value to the product and then announce the new pricing tier with increased offerings." (97:53)

Long-Term Planning Over Quick Gains
Emphasizing the importance of long-term relationships over short-term revenue, Connor advises against sudden price hikes that could damage trust:
"Show what has changed, talk about how prices have not raised in a long time, and give a long lead time." (100:05)

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Final Thoughts

Episode #230 of Creator Science offers a transparent and honest exploration of the financial and personal challenges faced by content creators. Through candid discussions, Connor and Rudy provide valuable insights into revenue management, ethical monetization, work-life balance, and the realities of audience interactions. This episode serves as a crucial guide for aspiring and established creators aiming to navigate the complexities of the creator economy with integrity and strategic intent.

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Notable Quotes:

• Connor:
  "If you are promoting a paid product for the short term revenue of the sponsor at the expense of long term relationships with your audience, it's not a trade you should make." (43:20)

• Rudy:
  "There's no one general trend on YouTube; everything is happening on these different micro-communities." (53:22)

• Connor:
  "The biggest lie about building an audience is that you have to become a reply guy to get your name out there." (65:10)

• Rudy:
  "There isn't one right personality that you have to mold yourself into to be a successful channel." (67:09)

• Connor:
  "All businesses are like a loosely functioning disaster, even the folks who are thriving." (27:13)

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights shared in Episode #230 of Creator Science, providing listeners with actionable knowledge and a deeper understanding of the creator landscape.

Transcript

[Jay]

When you started your journey as a.

[Connor]

Creator, I bet you didn't think about bookkeeping as an essential part of the job.

[Jay]

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[Connor]

Kik is actually free to start.

[Jay]

There's no reason not to give it a shot. I've also partnered with Kik to offer.

[Connor]

You 50% off your first year if.

[Jay]

You sign up for a paid plan before December 31st. Head to Kik Co J, that's J A Y and use code JAY to get 50% off your first year on Kik. That's Kik Co J and promo code.

[Connor]

J to get 50% off your 1st.

[Jay]

Year of self driving bookkeeping. YouTubers keep a lot of secrets, but that's not really my style.

[Connor]

So last week I asked my audience for questions that creators are typically too afraid to answer. How much does this channel make? What are my politics? And how much time do I actually spend working? In this video, my producer Connor and I answer all these questions and more with complete transparency, starting with this.

[Rudy]

Alex Sakaya asks, how much money are you currently making off the channel? All combined. AdSense sponsors, affiliates, clients, et cetera. And how much are you hoping to make?

[Connor]

Eventually I can give a very exact answer to this because I have really good records. So let's just sum this up real quick.

[Rudy]

And you do in the lab, you go over this every month in a retro in your community? Yeah.

[Connor]

So I'm literally looking at my KPI dashboard that I go through every month in my Retros for the lab. And so on the YouTube side of things, we've had $22,099 in sponsor integrations for the year through October and $28,727.

[Jay]

For AdSense for a total of $50,825.

[Connor]

From integrations and AdSense.

[Rudy]

Directly from the channel.

[Jay]

Directly from the channel.

[Connor]

What's difficult to attribute is core sales or memberships in the community. And it's not zero. I think, especially for the lab, it's.

[Jay]

Fairly significant, but it's super hard to attribute.

[Connor]

Basically, I would only be able to track that by when people apply. A lot of people do mention the podcast or YouTube in their application. So just looking at that, if we just looked at integrations and AdSense, I would actually be losing money on the channel this year so far. But I know that that's not actually the case. So to the secondary question of how much money do you hope to make? As much as possible, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a strong goal there. Like, I'm not making videos with some arbitrary number in mind. I just know that based on what YouTube does for discovery, for the business as a whole, and kind of building.

[Jay]

The brand of creator science and getting.

[Connor]

My face out there more places, it's an investment that I've been making for two years, but it's not the money maker in the business, so to speak.

[Rudy]

Baldly, Rudy asks, what's the average sponsorship rate that someone of your size and caliber can expect? Or maybe want would be a better word? Just curious.

[Connor]

Well, if Rudy's asking how much I.

[Jay]

Would want, again, as much as possible.

[Connor]

But at this point, our videos go for typically about $3,000 per video. Sometimes we'll cut like a discount for buying in bulk or buying sponsorships on other properties in the business, like the newsletter or the podcast. But the typical, like, base rate if you wanted to sponsor a single video on the channel right now is around $3,000. And I think that's higher for some channels, is lower for some channels. It completely depends on what is the.

[Jay]

Thing that's being sold by the advertiser.

[Connor]

Because at the end of the day, the sponsor, the advertiser is looking at a simple math equation of money in.

[Jay]

Money out, and they will continue to.

[Connor]

Invest in you if the investment to sponsor your videos is less than what they're seeing on the back end as a return. If you're able to drive a high return, you can charge more. This is kind of the rate we've landed on for. Not only are we able to sell sponsorships at this rate, but we're able to renew sponsorships at this rate. And that renewal point is really important.

[Rudy]

And something I want to touch on that I think is really important for people to understand is that One of the things you do really well is like upselling a package. So generally when people are like sponsoring, you know, creator science, you are selling slots in your newsletter in other places or the audio podcast in addition to video. So that like 3,000 price isn't like a total ad sale. That's generally broken down into just video. And that's something we learned from the Justin Moore episodes is trying to put together these packages where you can upsell for brands that's giving them more value and giving you more money on, you know, a single contract or whatever you want to call it.

[Jay]

Totally.

[Connor]

That's what I try to do with every inbound opportunity or outbound opportunity that feels like a good fit for the brand as a whole is I say, let's talk about your goals and let's look at the properties we have to work with here. Typically YouTube, podcast, newsletter. But I've even been looking at LinkedIn recently because a lot of people are.

[Jay]

Asking if they could sponsor a LinkedIn.

[Connor]

Post, which I haven't done in the past, but seems to be some real opportunity there. Yeah, those campaigns work better, especially towards.

[Jay]

Renewals, because you look at the campaign then as a whole. And again, money in, money out.

[Connor]

We put this into the broader campaign. Here's what we earned on the back end. And a lot of times if I have a sponsorship in the newsletter or the audio podcast, that might be the second time you hear from that sponsor because you've already heard about him once in a YouTube video.

[Jay]

So it's that multiple touch point thing.

[Connor]

That is usually what reminds people or nudges them or gets them to think more seriously about investing with a sponsor.

[Rudy]

And what's the general response from a sponsor if they say, hey, we want to sponsor your YouTube videos. And you come back to them saying like, hey, that's great. What if we did this other thing where you're proposing them spending more money for these other, these other integrations that they weren't originally planning on.

[Jay]

Generally open and curious.

[Connor]

Because what I find is there's not a lot of people that are having larger discussions with sponsors. Usually creators are like, here's the price for this thing that you asked for specifically. And sponsors are generally kind of open to thinking, well, what else is possible and why would you recommend that?

[Jay]

This is something I learned when I.

[Connor]

Was doing more client services. People like to be led in a process. And when a sponsor comes to you and says, we want to sponsor one of your YouTube videos, if you take.

[Jay]

The position of leading them towards the goals that they Want and say, well, tell me what you want. Here's what I would recommend to get to those goals.

[Connor]

They're generally open to it if you have a degree of confidence and even better if you have some historical data to back it up. So now that I've been running sponsorships for years, I can look at the data and see like, well, based on past sponsorship campaigns, the clicks we're seeing from your sponsorship campaign are overperforming or underperforming. And that gives me confidence to make suggestions for how to move forward with the sponsorship. And generally, people like being led when they feel like the person leading them knows what they want and knows the best path to get there just to.

[Rudy]

Get rid of some fears people might have. Have you ever had a negative experience where like a brand, not only like, some people would say no, but anytime that they were like, no, of course not, or like had some negative response?

[Connor]

Literally never. I mean, they're always willing to hear other options and sometimes they're like, oh, we're just not really interested in that. Totally fine. But it's never, it's never rude one and it's never the end of the conversation.

[Jay]

Like, they're still going to at least.

[Connor]

Want to talk about the thing that they came to in the first place.

[Jay]

And sometimes if you're able to say.

[Connor]

Well, if we expand the campaign beyond this one YouTube video, we can actually.

[Jay]

De risk the campaign.

[Connor]

This is a word that I found really resonates with people. If you're trying to sponsor one YouTube video, there's a lot of pressure on the performance of that one video. And if you say, well, if we do three videos or we do two videos and a couple of newsletters, it.

[Jay]

De risks the investment because all of.

[Connor]

Your spend is not in that one.

[Jay]

Piece of content performing well.

[Connor]

Yeah, it goes across multiple pieces of content. And in newsletters and audio podcasting, the return is a lot more predictable because there's not the boom and bust of what happens on YouTube. Like you have a set number of subscribers that typically engage with that piece of content no matter what's in it. And so it really helps to make the investment feel safer.

[Rudy]

And I think that is a really good point with how we approach sponsorships too, is not not seeing it as a one time transaction, but trying to have like, consistent partners, which I think just builds a better relationship and like gets you in that mindset of upselling and whatever. Because I'm not trying to, you know, squeeze as much out of this one deal right now as possible because I am anticipating more deals with that partner in the future. So you want to keep that relationship good.

[Connor]

And the longer you have a positive relationship with a sponsor, the more freedom they'll give you to suggest how to run the campaign as a whole. Because there's a broad spectrum of sponsors who have very clear, specific, rigid talking points for the creative and others that are like, we trust you. Do your thing. We like to work with sponsors that are like, we trust you. Here's our goals. Do your thing. Because we know our audience best and.

[Jay]

We know content a little bit better.

[Connor]

Than most sponsors do. But sometimes you have to earn that by showing them one, hey, this campaign performed, or hey, the ad creative you wouldn't let me deviate from is underperforming. Can you now let me suggest some changes?

[Rudy]

And this kind of goes to a question from Tyler Reed, another one we had, which is, what would you say is the most overhyped revenue source for creators? And I think my answer for that would generally be AdSense. And to some degree, even brand deals, especially if you're operating a channel like us where we're very like, I treat the YouTube and how I operate with it as very top funnel that I'm like, all kind of awareness focused. And something like we started doing to even try and deepen that is experimenting with putting links to your email signups and like pushing some of these other email captures or things like that. So we can, like, not necessarily like, we won't be able to directly see the money that comes from that, but at least we'll get a better idea of who is moving down the company funnel or the audience funnel in Jay's universe to, like, build out some of these more robust revenue sources like courses, you know, freebies, clients, coaching, things like that.

[Connor]

I would agree with AdSense, the average of what we've earned in AdSense for the past 10 months is $2,873 per month. And that's with a channel that now has 111,000 subscribers, 5 million views. And a lot of that Adsense candidly is coming from our Jenny Hoyos video or has historically, you know, so a lot of people, they're like, I want to get monetized on YouTube. I want to hit the partner program. And that's literally a starting point where you now are eligible to make money. But that does not mean you. You're going to make money because you have to drive a lot of views for AdSense to really pay off. And of course, you can bring in integrations. Like, we have too. But the integration average is $2,200 per month, which is less than Adsense. So I look at non direct means of revenue, meaning the transaction is not between you and your actual audience. I look at those forms of revenue as generally overhyped. So AdSense is one of them. I think sponsorship generally is one of them. But I would also put affiliates in that because most affiliate deals over time go to zero. After a quick break, we talk about something I never talk about politics. So stick around. We'll be right back.

[Jay]

Hey, it's Jay. And whether you enjoyed episode number 71 with Steph Smith, an indie creator who formerly led trends at the Hustle, or you simply like to keep up with the future, you you should check out the A16Z podcast hosted by Steph the chart topping show from Andreessen Horowitz features some of the world's most influential people movers who have a track record of being both early and right, like Apple co founder Steve Wozniak or co founders Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz themselves. Not to mention folks you don't typically.

[Connor]

Get to hear from from the very.

[Jay]

First CTO of the CIA or the chief security officers behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind. These guests tackle the most important trends in technology and business, from space to supply chains and beyond. If you want to understand the science and supply of GLP1s, they recently broke this down. If you're curious about the 3 billion record Social Security breach, they've got you covered. And if you're wondering if autonomous vehicles are still miles away, listen in to find out. So go ahead, eavesdrop on the future by following the a16z podcast wherever you get podcasts, I am once again inviting you to join our membership for professional creators, the Lab. Of course I am biased, but Andrew is not. Andrew has been a member for about two years now, and this was a testimonial he sent me unprompted.

[Connor]

Joining the Lab has been the single best investment I have made in my business and in myself since I started doing this going solo 17 years ago.

[Jay]

If you benefit from the conversations here on the podcast, you'd love the things.

[Connor]

We talk about in the Lab.

[Jay]

In fact, some of the past guests of this show are members themselves. The Lab helps you keep a finger on the pulse of what's working and what's changing for creators right now.

[Connor]

I can tell you about all the.

[Jay]

Things that are included, like all of my courses, including Build a Beloved Membership podcast like a YouTuber, the newsletter masterclass you get a complimentary copy of Creator hq, our operating system built in notion. But the best thing is the people incredibly generous, incredibly kind, incredibly smart and accomplished people are in the lab. I could go on and on about this but just know there is nothing more important to me than continuing to make the Lab the absolute best community for professional group creators. You can join the Basic tier now, which is an absolute bargain, or you can apply to join our standard or VIP tiers. Just visit creatorscience.comlab to learn more and get started. That's creatorscience.comlab. it's in the show.

[Connor]

Notes.

[Jay]

I hope to see you there.

[Connor]

And now back to the show.

[Rudy]

Keiko Sono asks timely question what is your stance on political topics in your podcast and other content? I have never heard you or your guest go there and it's a different niche, but is there an ongoing agreement not to talk about it or mention it on your posts?

[Connor]

I was hoping not to get this question because if I don't get the question I don't have to answer it and I never get the question. So I just kind of skate by because I mean I think the business is a non political business. I'm a pretty non political person, but that's not really a luxury that any of us can have. And I do look at people who.

[Jay]

Are willing to use their platform to share their beliefs.

[Connor]

I look at that admirably but also realize like it comes at a cost and that's tough. And when you're scratching, clawing, trying to grow a business, it feels like a luxury that you're afraid to do. So you know, on political topics, I don't think from the business lens, I think from like the human lens. Yeah, my friend Nils wrote this article on substack called the Normalization of Being an Asshole and it was his he called it his apolitical lens on the election and he made the point that I would basically echo, which is like I could not vote for Donald Trump for a position of office because of the person that he is. I don't think it sets a good precedent for how other people in all.

[Jay]

Walks of life, in all areas of.

[Connor]

Life should behave as people to build a productive, kind society. I don't love that the Democratic Party didn't have a primary where we could choose who we wanted to represent the Democratic Party. So, you know, like a lot of Americans, I felt like I was in a rock and a hard place.

[Jay]

My wife found this website called like.

[Connor]

Isidewith.Com and you answer a bunch of Questions. And it basically says, okay, of all candidates, here's the percentage agreement you have with each of them. Yeah, and I took that and it was like I had 20 to 30% agreement with all of them and nothing higher than that. So it's like really hard for me to be like, vote Kamala or vote Trump. I mean, I would never say vote Trump because I just can't vote for a convicted felon for President of the United States.

[Rudy]

Yeah, we're so cooked.

[Jay]

It's insane to me.

[Connor]

And you know, I. The optimistic part of me is like, this guy is old and he's a narcissist. And as a second term president, he doesn't have any incentive to actually do any work. Maybe he'll just not do anything for four years.

[Rudy]

This is like, best case scenario.

[Connor]

Best case scenario. But I worry that there's such toxic ideological stuff in the Republican Party as a whole that we're seeing in the cabinet that it could be really bad. And having a new daughter entering this world, I think that sucks.

[Rudy]

Yeah. I think in terms of like political stuff in content, there's like no ongoing agreement. I think mostly just doesn't come up because that's like, why would it come up? You know what I mean? Like, there, there have been times where people have been mentioned in interviews where I did kind of cut that section out because it's like, I don't think it really applied there. But like, let's say it came up in terms of like regulation or something like that. Like, that applies to the creator economy or like creators. I think that's a very valid conversation to have. But beyond that, I don't think politics serves a role in the purpose of our content. But that's not to say, like, I am like a political person. If you went to my Twitter or like when I'm streaming on Twitch, like, I would not, I would not hold back on my beliefs for fear of impacting content or whatever. But in terms of like the actual product we make, it just doesn't come up. And that's like the point of it. It's, it's. No one's avoiding it or anything like that. It just doesn't come up.

[Connor]

And it would be a bummer. Like, I don't, I don't judge people on their political stance. I might judge them on their ideological beliefs on some level, but like, I don't think we have good options in this country from a voting perspective. And what sucks is most people have a strong tribal reaction to politics. And so if you're yeah, it's like a sport. If we're having a conversation that's productive and great for the purpose of helping you be a better creator, and we say something that inflames the tribal response you have with politics now, you're going to throw out everything we say because of that. If it's not relevant, I don't think it belongs in the conversation. I think there's plenty of content and interesting things that can now be made around what is the impact to the creator economy going on now or what role did content play in the outcome of the election. I think that's really interesting conversation topics to go with. But yeah, for most of the stuff we teach, it just, it doesn't have a place.

[Rudy]

And I think the areas where it has come up for me is like, when I'll see a comment from like a channel that makes content that I like, I really disagree with. Like, I know for a little bit when like Andrew Tate was popping off and there was all of those Andrew Tate wannabe channels, we would have some people comment like, hey, thanks for the help. I did this and be like, oh, I didn't really want to help you. You know what I mean? Where it's like, that's, that's definitely like hurt a little bit. Where it makes me question being like, fuck. I like, should I, like, be more outwardly so, like, those people don't view the content, you know what I mean? Because it's like, I don't want to help those types of people be good at YouTube because, like, what they're doing is bad for people. But outside of that, like, yeah, it just doesn't come up.

[Connor]

It's tough. It happened at one point. There was someone I had on the audio podcast who has very strong, outspoken political views. We didn't touch it at all in the conversation, but just having them as a guest on the podcast led to a bunch of like, some of my only 1 star reviews of the podcast. And it's like, really, you're like just.

[Jay]

Seeking out every guest appearance this person.

[Connor]

Has just to shit on the show and give them a one star review. It was wild.

[Rudy]

And I think there's. I don't think compartmentalization is the right word, but you can learn things from like, bad people, you know what I mean? Like, there are some awful con men and scammers that like, were really good at capturing attention in a way that doesn't have to be bad. And I think, like, you can learn from a lot of those rage bait channels or drama channels. And things like that without, you know, endorsing them as a person. And now it doesn't mean like you have to like love the interview or love the person. But just because like you think this person sucks and is a bad person or like evil or whatever doesn't necessarily mean everything they say about every topic is wrong or not worth listening to. But I get the conversation of like, well then you're platforming them and then that gives them an opportunity to like extend those beliefs that are bad, which I understand. I think it's like, I just think there's a lot of nuance to this that's not a clear this is why or why not or something like that. Because it's like, I'm not trying to change anybody's mind. I, like, I have my beliefs, but I'm, I do not feel qualified to like argue positions or try and change anybody's mind. So I'm just going to like do my thing. I'll vote how I want to and like, if I asked, I'll tell my beliefs, but I'm not, I'm not out here trying to convert people. Tom Crate asks, what are you most afraid of? Now we can either go take this one, like are we talking life or do we want to talk about like as far as the channel or business goes? Probably the channel or business, right? Yeah.

[Connor]

I'm not going to, I'm not going to give you my greatest existential fear. My wife leaving me like in the business. I think my biggest fear is the non specificity of serving creators coming back to bite me because more specific people going much more in depth and basically like eating away the edges of what I do well, since I try to help a lot of different types of creators do a lot of different types of things in the lifespan of their creator business, there's opportunity for somebody to.

[Jay]

Come in and own each of those individual things.

[Connor]

Somebody saying, this is how you do podcasting well, this is how you do YouTube well, this is how you do Instagram well, this is how you do email sequences. This is how you create online courses.

[Jay]

This is how you create a membership.

[Connor]

Here's how you sell it. I cover all of that and resource constraints mean I can only cover any of it to a certain level of depth at any given time. And as more people get into the creator world, they're going to be people who pick off little bits of that.

[Jay]

And do it extremely well.

[Connor]

And you should learn that little bit from them. And so I could see non specificity being a long term threat to the.

[Rudy]

Business, I think mine would be, like, ending up being a one trick pony. Being like only being able to figure out remote podcasting or whatever and like not being able to develop the channel into something bigger than an interview show. And like, I think probably the imposter syndrome that comes along with that of being like, hey, all this success, it was actually luck. Like, you were right, you know what I mean? Where it's like, you didn't actually do this, it was just luck and you can't figure anything out, which I don't think is true. But I think that that is the fear of being a one trick pony that happened because of luck.

[Connor]

I can't possibly see how that would be true in your case.

[Rudy]

Sarah Hart asks from all your podcasts and work with creators, have you ever encountered someone who seemed wildly successful but wasn't actually thriving, like you would think, behind the scenes? I think this is really interesting because there's like, there's a veil of content creation where you're getting started. And especially if you get like that initial boost where even if it's a podcast where it's like, you might not know how to get brand deals, you might not, you know, be really monetized, you're still like, you're not making money from the thing that people know you about. So this actually happens, like, way more often than people think.

[Connor]

I think it's like, it's constant. I see it all the time. Because this, the business model of I'm going to teach you to do a thing only works if people trust your claim that you can do that thing. And the human species is really good at detecting lies because lies are threats. And so people have to get really good at appearing genuinely confident in their claims to have any success at all. And so confidence is something that we see as success a lot of times. Like, we see people's confidence and we're like, they must be making it work. That must be working. But constantly find that that is not the case. I mean, I forget who said it. Maybe it was like, I forget who said this, but they said all businesses are like a loosely functioning disaster. And so even the folks who are thriving, their business is still like a loosely functioning disaster. Anytime I've seen how the sausage is made, it's like, you guys make sausage in here weird.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

So I think it's constant. And it also depends on what does success mean, because a lot of people are wildly financially successful and there's other parts of their lives that are completely on fire that is not worth the Trade. That's the thing I see more often.

[Rudy]

Yeah. And there are so many aspects to creator businesses where not everyone is good at everything. So, like, you could be really good at making content and getting attention, but you don't really know how to monetize. So you could be one of those channels, you know, coming up that might have a couple hundred thousand subscribers, but you don't really know how to monetize. You don't know how to go get brand deals or whatever. So you're relying completely on AdSense and maybe your type of content that's a, you know, low rpm. So there are a lot of these different things you have to, like, consider when you're looking at somebody. And views does not equal money. Especially depending on all of these different types of channels, like, our channel could potentially make a bunch more money on the back end than, you know, an entertainment channel, pulling in hundreds of thousands of views per video. Mostly because we're not relying on that, and we have a completely different business model than them. And I've seen. I was talking to people when we were. We were down in Dallas for the conference where there are these, like, small specialty channels, like, I don't know, like a lawyer or whatever. That channel could get, you know, 10,000, 50,000 views per video, but they're on the back end making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in clients because that's where their money is. So on the servers, you see their views and you're like, oh, that's. That channel's not popping yet. They're like, probably one of the most financially successful YouTubers you'll ever meet. So it's like, there are so many different ways and so many different consistencies. It's hard to look at something and being like, man, they have everything figured out. Or like, this is the portrait of success because there are so many different things you don't know about.

[Connor]

There's like, this progression of what we realize success is in the content game. Early on, you think success is views, and then once you get views without revenue, you think actually success is revenue because views isn't doing anything for me. And then once you earn revenue but you're not enjoying yourself, you realize actually success is like enjoying the work. And so I wish you could start there, and I could tell people like, you should start with something you enjoy doing for the sake of doing it, because that's the only success that matters. And usually the other stuff will come from it. But unfortunately, it seems like something you have to learn the hard way to truly Learn it. The other thing about social media is social media rewards polarizing opinions and lots of content. And so if you think about what type of person is going to be successful in that set of incentives, you get strongly opinionated, opinionated people who are sharing a lot, which means they probably don't always have the best data or temperament. It's just kind of problematic. A lot of the most successful voices are not necessarily balanced, healthy people. Because it's not healthy just to be.

[Jay]

Spewing your opinions all day on stuff.

[Rudy]

No.

[Connor]

So I found like, the struggle that I have. As I get more eyeballs on what I'm doing, I grow as a person and I actually want to yap about stuff less totally. And so it's interesting. A lot of wildly successful people are.

[Rudy]

Just not happy Writer Science Asks Wondering about work life balance with a newborn do you think it would have been possible for you to build creator science to what it is today if you had your baby a few years back when you left spi? For those who don't know, SPI is smart passive income. It's Pat Flynn's membership community that Jay used to run their community work.

[Connor]

Life looks so much different with a newborn, and that is also coming from a place of we wanted to raise the baby here at home during the day. We didn't want to do daycare. So my wife and I are both here at home with the baby. We really split a lot of the responsibility. I mean, she definitely leads on this front, but I'm very involved.

[Jay]

So life looks way different.

[Connor]

There are certainly fewer hours in the day where I can actually work, and especially fewer large, uninterrupted blocks. I really have to plan ahead and find ways to create a block of.

[Jay]

Two or three hours at a time.

[Connor]

A couple of times per week. I had a friend one time describe this as popcorn time. Like, you just kind of find these little bits of time throughout the day as places where you can work. And so to be completely honest, like, I think you can I think I could have built the company, but I would not have been able to compress the timeline as much as I did working without a newborn. So I think a lot more about leverage these days also, because with less time, where can I apply my effort and have the highest impact? And all the leverage is in choosing what to work on so that you get the most impact from that time. I would have had to have been a lot more intentional about that, and it certainly would have been tougher outside of time cost.

[Rudy]

What about like actual financial cost? You Know, would you have been able to build the business and have your financial backing with you and Mallory back, you know, with. With right after you had left spi or was now like the right financial time to be able to do that?

[Connor]

Well, because we had the goal of not putting her in daycare. Daycare is a huge cost. I know people who pay many times their mortgage each month in daycare costs. So daycare itself is so expensive to do what we're doing now. In some ways it saves some money cost, but has a much bigger impact on time cost. I don't think having our daughter has an impact on financial costs. I think it's all time costs at this point. But it is really hard. It's really hard to focus. What I have found having a newborn is you realize how unfocused you were before you had a child, because we're.

[Jay]

Still getting relatively the same amount of.

[Connor]

Stuff done with way less time. So what's that mean? It means I was pretty inefficient before.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And two, it really forces you to think more during a day. Like, I think a lot of my wasted time, I would sit in front of a monitor and look at it and be like, I should do that task. I should do that thing.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And that's like the loop that repeats in your head for 30 minutes at a time. Whereas now I'm doing stuff. I got the baby in one arm. Maybe I'm rocking her to sleep, maybe I'm feeding her. And your mind can't help but, like, work on stuff.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And I think it. I think it leads to better decision making. And by the time you finally get some open, free space, you have like the action item list prioritize in your mind, you know exactly what you're going to hit, and you can kind of run through it a lot faster.

[Rudy]

So it's like forcing you to get your focus together. Otherwise you just won't be hitting what you. What you need to hit.

[Jay]

Yeah.

[Connor]

I mean, have you ever, like, gone.

[Jay]

On a walk or gone to the.

[Connor]

Gym and while you're there, you have, like, kind of a breakthrough on what you want to do, but you're away from your computer, so you literally can't do the thing right now?

[Rudy]

Yeah, all the time. That's. I pull out my phone and my notes app and I'll. I'll just like be in the gym, like sitting in a corner typing for five minutes so I don't lose that idea. I do the same thing. Like, if I, if I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. I used to be like, oh, I'll remember it in the morning. You never do. No, never do. Always. I always will take the time and effort, even if I don't want to, to, like, even if it's just shorthand note that I might not remember exactly what I meant in that time. I will make note of it.

[Jay]

Yes. And then when you finally sit down.

[Connor]

At the desk, there's like this explosion of, like, finally, I can do this thing. Yeah, that is. That is what working with a newborn is like. Because by the time you finally sit down, you're like, I know exactly what I want to do. I've been chomping at the bit to do it for two hours now. And so it is more effective. You just get fewer blocks of that and shorter blocks.

[Rudy]

It's just a lot. It's a lot of work.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Rudy]

Kate Holmes asks, how much time do you actually spend on your creator biz? What are you spending time on? Content, products, community.

[Connor]

What time at the keyboard is less than ever right now?

[Jay]

Again, newborn.

[Connor]

But I can't think of. I can't think of a time in the last eight years where I wasn't spending 75% of my waking time or.

[Jay]

More thinking about the business.

[Connor]

Yeah, that's like, where all the time comes in if I'm not actively, you know, quote, unquote, working. And in fact, there have been a lot of periods in my life where I am actively, quote, unquote, working fingers at the keyboard and not spending enough time thinking about what I'm doing. Because, again, like, highest leverage comes from the choices and how you allocate your time. So, you know, I would say so much of my waking consciousness, the vast majority of my waking consciousness is thinking about the business, the health of it, what we're doing next. And I'm not saying that's aspirational or admirable, for sure. It just is. And when I look at my peers and folks that I admire because they have an even more successful business, it's almost always the case that they have a near unhealthy obsession or preoccupation, at least with the work that they're doing, I think that's true of most people that you see in a position of, quote, unquote, success. And so you have to ask yourself, is that what success is? Because I do think it is. Again, for the most part, I won't say it's absolutely prerequisite to reaching the.

[Jay]

Levels that I am now or the.

[Connor]

People I aspire to are but it's extremely common amongst the people that do.

[Rudy]

Yeah, I think there is like a unique form of brain rot that like all like YouTubers and content creators have where it's like, even me, where it's like I'm not the face of the channel. I spend most of my time thinking about YouTube stuff and it's not even like intentional. I'm not intentionally spending the time. It's just like how my brain works and how like I ended up in this job. And you have to remember, like with a lot of people on YouTube, whether they're, you know, the actual creators themselves or they're the back end people, this isn't somewhere where you just end up. You know what I mean? Like a lot of this is intentional and like people are, you know, people with this brain rot is what I'm referring to. It is self select into these positions. Um, so it's like, yeah, a lot of time is spent thinking about it. Time at keyboard, like I spend like minimum 40 hours working on stuff, sometimes more. But outside of that, like it's, it's very hard for me to be able to like separate work and like truly get like time where I'm just not thinking about or have nothing on my plate because there's always something to be done. That, that, that's the problem with this job. There's a lot of perks. I love it. Best job in the world. But there are downsides.

[Connor]

All right, pass test.

[Rudy]

Yeah, my boss is amazing. It's incredible. There's no problems.

[Connor]

A lot of times when I talk to a creator or someone who's kind of getting started, I make, I won't say a judgment, but I definitely make a prediction on what I think their chances of success are based on what I know about them in our interactions so far. And most of the time if I make the prediction that this person isn't going to make it is because I feel like they don't have enough preoccupation or brain rot for it. Because it's just math. If I am thinking about this 12 hours a day and you're thinking about this 10 hours a day, doesn't seem like a huge difference. But that's 14 incremental hours per week.

[Jay]

14 times 52 for how many incremental hours per year?

[Connor]

And then you multiply that over years, like you just are spending far less time competing on this than I am. So it's, it's just a math problem. So to Kate's question of what do I spend my time on? I want to say the majority of it is content creation, but it's actually probably very evenly distributed between content creation, showing up in the lab, our membership community, and administrative work.

[Jay]

Increasingly more administrative work.

[Connor]

And I'm trying to pass that off more and more because it's kind of like a hydra. You cut off one head and two more heads pop up. Like, I can't clear my inbox without immediately refilling my inbox because every response gets a new response.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

So it's tough. I would like to be spending the vast majority of my time on content community and I would say relationships, broadly, completely get admin out of my world. But it's a work in progress. After one last break, we talk about whether you can over promote your paid.

[Jay]

Products and erode trust with your audience.

[Connor]

So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[Jay]

If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with branding. A clear, unique brand is such a differentiator in an attention economy that's getting more competitive all the time. Your brand is in everything you do, including your domain name. But when creators start selling products, they often get stuck behind some long, awkward URL like courses.creatorscience.com it's hard to say, hard to remember, and ultimately it weakens your brand. And that's where store domains come into play. A.com domain can be anything. But when you hear, dude, perfect store, you know it's a store. I picked up my own store domain creatorscience Store, so I can quickly tell people where they can buy some of my most popular products. It's my name, my brand store, and I'm not alone. Dot store domains are used by more than 1.5 million sellers, including top creators like MrBeast, Colin and Samir and Zach King. It does not get more direct than your brand store. And it doesn't just sound cool, it.

[Connor]

Actually helps you sell more.

[Jay]

Here's the best part. Dot Store Domains has a special offer for creator science listeners to secure your branded store domain for just 99 cents.

[Connor]

For the first year, just visit Creators.

[Jay]

Store J and use coupon code J at checkout. That's Creators Store Jay. And use coupon code J again, J A Y to secure your very own store branded URL. This episode is sponsored by ces. CES is the proving ground for breakthrough technologies from leading brands and cutting edge startups. And now CES puts creators at the center of it all with an innovative new space in the Las Vegas Convention Center. The CES Creator space, presented by Sony, is a hub designed specifically for Content creators and storytellers. Located in the central hall lobby, the space will feature a stage sponsored by Pinterest hosting talks and panels with insights from creators as well as leaders at.

[Connor]

Companies like Walmart, Wailer and TikTok.

[Jay]

Topics will include brand partnerships, content rights and AI. Now here's the best part, so listen closely. Creators are eligible for complimentary registration and exclusive access by getting a media badge. I've actually done this in years past before they had this creator space and it has always been a blast. You can be boots on the ground making content at the show with all the newest technology, you'll be able to access the CES creator space during the show January 7th through 10th and even media days happening January 5th and 6th with the first looks at product announcements from global brands. To learn more and register, visit CES Tech that's Cesar to register for complimentary media credentials.

[Connor]

And now please enjoy the rest of our Q and A. Tyler Reed asks.

[Rudy]

Have you ever worried that promoting paid products could erode trust with your audience? How do you gauge when you're over monetizing or over promoting?

[Connor]

You got to think long term, you got to play long term games. So if you are promoting a paid product for the short term revenue of the sponsor at the expense of long term relationships with your audience, it's not a trade you should make. So increasingly, and this is tough because we have more inbound partnership requests than we've ever had. It's and it's and it's more than we can even possibly service. And so I am getting much, much, much, much, much tighter on who I say yes to because I have to come from a place of I'm not just saying this brand sponsors the channel. I am willing to give an explicit endorsement over this brand and product because it's implicit anyway. And an implicit endorsement comes at the same cost to your audience as an explicit endorsement in some ways. And so I'm really leaning into explicit endorsements and I'm experimenting a little bit with, well, what if I just promoted my own products in that space versus sponsored content? And those tests have been wildly successful, leading me to believe I should do.

[Jay]

Fewer partnerships, even fewer partnerships, get even.

[Connor]

Tighter on that, and do more of my own personal products because not only do I obviously know everything about those products, but I have full control over what happens after the point of purchase. So you know, if, if you don't believe in the product, I wouldn't do it because that will erode trust totally and over monetizing. To me, that means you're like, I don't think you can over monetize unless it's coming at a cost that's not worth paying. And the cost that's not worth paying is a trust.

[Jay]

And you have to listen to your.

[Connor]

Audience, their feedback on sponsors. I've had sponsors on the show before and I've gotten notes from people in my audience who said, hey, I know.

[Jay]

You have high integrity, you have good intentions.

[Connor]

Did you know this about this sponsor? And gave me new information that actually.

[Jay]

Changed the way I felt about that.

[Connor]

Sponsor and I would not renew with that sponsor because of it.

[Rudy]

And to hit on the point of believing in the product, there have been several times where we've been presented like tools to use, whether it's like creator tools or editing tools that you would hand to me and being like, hey, do you like this? Or whatever. And then I'd come back and be like, it's fine, like, like I wouldn't use it. And then we'll decide, like, we shouldn't really promote that because we're not, we don't feel strongly enough about this product that I would actually recommend it to somebody, which is like the threshold of accepting a sponsorship because that's what you're doing. There can be like this misconception among creators where you're just like, oh, it's just an advertisement. Like, they know it's just an advertisement. It's like not that big of a deal. But I think going back to like, the parasocial side of content creation is people do take your word for it and like, they trust you because that's like, why they followed. So it's not just like, oh, this person paid me to promote this thing and people know, oh, he's just taking money. There is that implied, like endorsement that, yes, I actually believe in this thing and that's really important. And as far as like over monetization goes, I think the biggest thing with like over monetizing whatever would just be like less effectiveness of just being like, oh, this, you know, he's promoting. He promoted 10 things this week rather than like trying to promote one or two that people would be more likely to click on. Because then the more often you're promoting stuff, it's like, the less like, what you always talk about how there's less opportunity cost or whatever of like missing that thing or whatever, where it's just like, oh, he's just promoting another product. Like, I'm not even going to look at this.

[Jay]

Yeah.

[Connor]

I mean, another tenant that I have is. I don't Promote competitors especially not simultaneously, but usually just in general because that gets confusing for your audience. Like, well, I thought you were recommending this tool for this thing and yeah, that's a great point. I would say to you if you actually asked me that it's tough because usually the stuff that you don't really want to promote makes the biggest offer and you're like, well, maybe just this one time. But you really can't do that because you want to really stand behind something with your audience because that relationship, that.

[Jay]

Trust, is all that matters.

[Connor]

And if the goal is renewals with your partners, which I think it should be, you want to give the most effective ad read or endorsement of that product as possible, then you can only do that if you really stand behind it.

[Rudy]

Yeah. Now there's a running joke that in the entertainment space, it's that way with mobile gaming companies because they have so much money that they'll just throw it like tons of money with the most rigid restrictions. So I actually interviewed to be like a, this was like years ago, before we started working together. I interviewed for one of these like ad agency companies that worked with mobile game and they're like, they have some rigid instructions, like there's your creative freedom. But the, you know, the, the, the positive of that, taking that as a creator is it's a bag. Like it's, it's a lot of money, but it's not an ideal sponsor. So there's like, it's hard to make that decision. It's not always super clear.

[Connor]

We saw it with a lot of crypto stuff a couple years ago. We're seeing it now with like sportsbooks. I would not touch sportsbooks. No, I get a lot of requests for like financial services companies and I don't, I mean I'll work with like some accounting tools.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

But if I, the rule is if I use it, I'll endorse it, but if I don't use it, I'm not touching a financial services company. So yeah, it's something you got to think long term, which is tough if you're in a short term cash crunch. But that's why I really over index on your own products and services so that you don't have to make this bargain in the short term.

[Rudy]

Question from Rohan Lark. Is the creator economy mostly falling into eating itself? Creators selling to others who want to be creators rather than creators actually connecting with their existing or previous niche in a meaningful or impactful way?

[Connor]

I see this question all the time and I would agree that there are a Lot of creators for creators, myself being one. There's going to be a time when there's creators for creators who create for creators. You know, like the reason you see all of that is because you are a creator. You are the target audience of those people.

[Jay]

So what you're seeing are there are.

[Connor]

More and more people targeting me, but that is not the extent of the creator economy or creators. If you don't like gardening, you're not going to be targeted by all the creators who are doing things in the.

[Jay]

Gardening niche and sub gardening for literally.

[Connor]

Any interest or any desire on the planet. Most of the creator economy are people.

[Jay]

Who have very particular interests and skills.

[Connor]

And are teaching people those interests or those skills or sharing that interest or skill. And if you're not in their target.

[Jay]

Audience, you're just not going to see them.

[Connor]

What you see are the people targeting you. And I agree there's more of those than ever and most of those will go to zero. I mean the reason this exists is the same reason I got into this. I was a 20 something year old who wanted to do online business, didn't have a lot of skills, didn't have a direction I wanted to go, got so obsessed with the idea that all.

[Jay]

I was doing was studying online business.

[Connor]

And suddenly the thing I know best is what I have learned about online business. And that's just what happens with a lot of people. And most don't create enough credibility or.

[Jay]

Last long enough to turn the corner.

[Connor]

And since it is really competitive, that will continue to be the case. So if you are really interested in.

[Jay]

Being a creator and you're learning a.

[Connor]

Ton about it, instead of turning around and teaching that to other people, apply it to one of your other interests.

[Jay]

And you're destined to do better.

[Connor]

Because if you pick a more specific interest, there's bound to be less competition. And also the expectations are lower when you're a creator for creators, the expectations of the quality of your content is so high, as it should be. But if you are a creator for people who are really interested in Lego, maybe the expectations for your content from a production standpoint are a little bit lower.

[Rudy]

Yeah, I think this is a like a good example that you need to be very careful about extrapolating like general theories from your own viewing experience because like you said, you are their target audience so you're going to see it. And something that comes up all the time in our episodes about how there is no one general trend on YouTube, everything is happening on these different micro communities and that's like what YouTube is now. It's. There are so many different corners. Like you could say the same thing about like, you know how golf has blown up on YouTube over the last three years and being like, oh, is, is, is this golf niche too saturated or whatever? And it's like, well, if you're interested in it, of course you're going to see all that stuff. And I think there's a general kind of attitude that being, you know, a creator for creator is easier or just like talking about YouTube generally gets views and that's not the case at all. Like, I know this sounds like, and we're just like protecting ourselves or whatever, but like, generally it's like it's hyper competitive. You know, there's only so many things you can talk about but like, not everybody succeeds. You know what I mean? Like there are tons of shows like ours that don't get views. There are tons of shows like ours that get more views than us. There's a lot of different things. I don't think there's one area that's necessarily easier. And I also don't think like creators for creators is some existential threat to the creator economy because there are just so many other robust areas.

[Connor]

Yeah, most creators for creators will go to zero. But if you think about the creator economy is eating into traditional media and commerce.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And anything that is for sale, that is a successful business, selling something to somebody that marks an interest that you could create content around and probably be successful. And the more like kind of obscure and non obvious it is, probably the less competition is going to be and it might be easier for you to get a little bit of a foothold. Granted, the total addressable market might not be as big as other things, but the creator economy to me is eating traditional media and commerce and that is huge in terms of potential.

[Rudy]

Yeah. I think the only way you could, or like the only area where you could say like, I think it really needs improvement is with like employment stuff like making sure people are getting paid fairly, making sure there's good labor practices and things like that. I think as the creator economy gets bigger, that could be an issue on like how it's, you know, harming itself. But outside of that, like, I don't think it's, I don't think content's the problem. I think it being so new and growing so fast could, could lead to some problems. But it's definitely not eating itself. Andy Wang asks, what's one of your episodes that you love and feel deserved more? Views?

[Connor]

All of them. First of all, all of them. All of them. A couple that stand out to me. I think I'm going to re air soon. A conversation I had with Dan Pink, who's like a New York Times bestselling author several times over, really gave a great interview on the audio podcast about writing a bestselling book. I think our interview with Justin Moore on the channel around sponsorships is critically under viewed.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Jay]

And it didn't do terrible.

[Connor]

It's not our worst video on the channel in terms of views by any means, but I feel like that video has huge potential.

[Rudy]

It's so good.

[Connor]

We did an interview with Nusayer Yassin on the channel who I had never spoken to before and he was so honest about the downsides of his life as a creator. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, this is great content. That's one of our lowest viewed videos on the channel. So this happens a lot. Packaging is often what's at stake here. But you know, it is what it is.

[Rudy]

I think mine would be probably the Jamie Ross Thorne episode where he takes through a lot of like yoink and twist is basically what it's called, where it's like looking, evaluating other people's formats and adapting to your channel. About how he did that with his old channel, the Zach and J Show, which is now just Zach Alsop after he left. And it's really good. It's like he breaks down exactly what they did to hit what it, what it was. It was like 900k subscribers in like a year or a year and a half or whatever. And I think it was the episode before our Patty one, which is like where the channel kind of blew up and the packaging isn't great. I think that's something we should revisit eventually. But that video is so good that like nobody watched. And then Justin's episode is like with brand deals. It's just like I, I feel like we can't harp on it enough about like how good, how good that is and people just like, I think sometimes it's one of those things where it's like people don't necessarily recognize what they need to hear unless it's like right in their face or unless they experience that problem right away. And brand deals and that just an episode is like right along that line. Whereas even if you don't think you need it right now, that episode will like provide so many insights to help you in different ways and just how you're approaching thinking about your own content.

[Connor]

Also, our most recent episode with Chef Piguet which such a unique conversation around creating physical products, creating merch or physical products, whatever you want to call it for your audience that nobody talks about. He's doing extremely uniquely and just died right out of the gate because regular channel viewers, you watching this right now didn't watch the video. And I'm telling you, you should have. You'll like it.

[Rudy]

Yeah. That video paired with Sarah Renee Clark and how she developed Color Cube. Sarah Renee Clark video is a bit older, so there's a bit more background information and stuff that in episodes now that we would cut. But it's like there's so much packed in there and it's those weird corners of products that are just so unique in how their channel operates that I think you just don't know that that's a story that is good to hear until after you hear it. Which ones I get?

[Connor]

Those are the ones I get most excited about. The ones that are super specific. Our Angus Parker interview about building a team for YouTube. Those are the ones I get most excited about. Because this content doesn't exist. You don't get to hear from these people about this. And we did it and yeah, and it's not sexy.

[Rudy]

Which, which is some of the thing where it's like some of these really important aspects just aren't sexy. Like, you know what I mean? Where it's like, it's really in the weeds where the truth of building a creator business isn't as sexy. It's like it, it's kind of like the equivalent where everybody thinks these like high yield companies to invest in are these like flashy tech startups, but they're actually like fucking logistic companies or like things that do these most. The most boring things you don't even think about are the ones that are so interesting and making tons and tons of money because it's not sexy because it's just like it's needed. It's this gritty part that you can't avoid that I think a lot of the people that are stuck in. If you're a person that's stuck in that phase of like I want to think so romantically about like content creation or my business. You don't even think about this stuff until you're like really in it and you're like, man, I didn't even know I had to deal with this stuff. I'm glad this episode is here because it like walks. It walks me through exactly what I need to do in a no, like a no hype kind of way. Like even those episodes like The Angus park is Angus Parker episode. We don't hype up, like, at all. It's very much like, here's how you. You want to hire a team. Like, it's not. There's nothing flashy about it. There's nothing sexy about it. It's like, this is what you have to look for if you want to build a successful team.

[Connor]

And it's literally the questions that I wanted and needed to ask in my position right now, and that's increasing what I'm doing on the show. A lot of people are like, how did you learn YouTube? And I was like, I have an. I have a whole channel. Yeah, a whole channel to show you how I learned YouTube. It's all recorded, but we'll work on making it sexy.

[Rudy]

Yeah, that's on us. I did do a lot of complaining there, but at the end of the day, it isn't the audience. It is on us. I just want to be clear about that. I'm not blaming anybody. Another question from Andy. Do successful creators share only a portion of their knowledge to maintain a competitive edge?

[Connor]

Sometimes. And it depends.

[Jay]

I mean, again, most creators are not.

[Connor]

Creating for creators, so they have no incentive or reason to share a lot of their knowledge and at least about creating. But their whole business is built on sharing everything they know about being good at this skill. I think the creator for creators often.

[Jay]

Share or hide some of their knowledge.

[Connor]

I try really hard not to do that the times it comes into play. What I protect is brand decisions. So, like, sometimes people will write me and they'll say, hey, I really love the design of your email template. Can you just send me that? And it's like, no, no. I'm sorry, but no. That's a key branding asset and I'm not going to share that with you. Um, as far as, like, actual tactics go, I really try to pass all of that on. A lot of times it hits folks in the lab first because as part.

[Jay]

Of the value of being there is.

[Connor]

Like, this is at the edge.

[Jay]

This is low fidelity, high signal. Let me tell you what we're doing there.

[Connor]

Like, a few weeks ago I was experimenting. Well, actually we had a member who shared, hey, I'm testing, like, I'm doing polls on LinkedIn and adding a text only link in the body of the poll. And I tried that drove a ton of subscribers. I created a video about it. Then I did the same thing, but instead of driving people to my newsletter, I drove them to the workshop. We did podcast, like a YouTuber, got.

[Jay]

A ton of reach on LinkedIn for the poll.

[Connor]

Drove a ton of clicks, drove a ton of sales for us. And so like that I shared that with a lab immediately kind of sat on it in terms of going to the audience as a whole. But that's super rare for me. But I think it does happen broadly, quite a bit.

[Rudy]

Yeah. I, I think areas where it might happen are in niches where most of the differences between channels is like purely packaging. So I know like a couple people that run faceless channels and when it's not personality based and like, you don't have that edge, a lot of it is like packaging in like, very rigid structure that I know some of those people that run those don't share it publicly. Like, they'll talk about it, you know, behind closed doors or whatever, but mostly because it's like their edge is what they know in those, in those areas. And if they didn't have that edge, then the, the viability or like the success of their channel long term could be impacted, which kind of makes sense. And then the, the other thing I would say is like, I know for us, or me personally, there are. It's not holding back information. It's generally like, when do I say it? And it's like, if I'm in the middle of testing something or if I'm not like, sure on an outcome or whatever, I personally kind of hold those back because I'm not like, comfortable sharing in progress, like work in progress stuff like where you are, where you'll be like, hey, this is my approach. This is what I'm doing. I'm much more like, until I have some concrete kind of thoughts around this, because I'm still unsure of it myself. That happens sometimes.

[Connor]

Sometimes my gut reaction is to not share something because of this artist identity that I kind of mentioned. Sometimes I'll make something and put it out. Like, look at this thing I made. And the response I get is, how did you do this specific part of it? And not, hey, thanks for making this thing. And that kind of bums me out. It's like, can you just enjoy the thing? And then, yeah, I'll like, talk about how I did this. But sometimes I'm just not ready yet either because it's super fresh and I wanted to, like, share the thing itself. Or again, it's like a design or brand thing that feels unique and more like artistic than commercial. But I genuinely try to fight the, like, hoarding instinct as much as I can because anytime I go, I go like, super specific, tactical, hey, here's how I'M doing this thing performs super well because ultimately building an audience is building trust from an individual that you can do something useful for them. And if you don't prove that you can do something useful, share something useful that benefits them and isn't just like.

[Jay]

Talking about how good you did this.

[Connor]

Thing, they're not going to care and you're not going to build an audience.

[Rudy]

Caitlin Burgoyne asks, what do you think is the biggest lie about building an audience that people want to believe is true?

[Connor]

I think a lot of people teach that you basically need to become a reply guy to get your name out there and get people to find you and build your own audience. I think there's some truth to it, but I think the real advice is more nuanced. And sometimes this advice of you should reply to other people's posts serves the dual purpose of you should reply to my post the person who sold his program teaching you how to build your audience, and it does more for that person than it does the actual person learning, doing the replying. And, you know, it makes some intuitive sense because the thought is, well, this person is creating content and the people viewing it are also my target audience.

[Jay]

So if I show up there in.

[Connor]

Their line of sight, then I should get some eyeballs from those people too. And I think it's a tough, it's.

[Jay]

Like a tough room.

[Connor]

You know, it's like, it's true those people are there, but it's like going to a concert and there's an opening band and you're like, I see there's an opening band here, but I really just want this opening band to go away. Some people will be like, yeah, that was good. But is it the most efficient path to building a real audience? Are people really giving you a real shot in that context? I don't know. To me, what really helps people break through is getting a hand up from someone who's a little bit further ahead, who explicitly, like goes out on a limb and says, you guys should be paying attention to this person over here. Yeah, that's a hard thing to do. But if you take the same amount of effort that you're putting in to comment on 30 LinkedIn posts every day and say, I'm going to dedicate that time to trying to build a handful.

[Jay]

Of relationships with people who are ahead.

[Connor]

Of me, I think that might actually end up paying off more in the long term.

[Rudy]

I think mine is that you have to be, you have to be a good entertainer or super charismatic. I think that's something we Run into comments wise on the channel a lot is like, how do I do this thing if, if I'm a boring person? Or just like immediately seeing someone's success and attributing that to their charisma or personality. And that for sure plays into it. Right. Personality is important, but there isn't a correct personality. And I think that's where people get it wrong, where it's like there are tons of, you know, quote unquote boring people. I guess more like monotone is probably the correct answer that do really well because it's like that's the audience they serve. Not everyone is looking for this super charismatic, you know, Jenny Hoyos or something like that where like they're so bubbly and outgoing. You don't have to do that. Now if you want to like do that type of content, it for sure helps. But there are like tons of tutorial channels run by, you know, 60 year old guys who are just like straight shooters that want to cut the, cut the crap and tell you how to do something and that you can be successful doing that because they're not trying to be something they're not. And that's like something an audience can sniff out right away. Where if you're trying to fake a personality to build an audience, that's not good. Personality matters. But there isn't one right personality that you have to mold yourself into to be able to be like a successful channel.

[Connor]

Yeah. What is the job the viewer is hiring your content to do for them? If they're hiring it to be entertaining or to simulate a friendship and that friendship they want to be a certain personality and you're not that you're right. It probably won't work in that context.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

So you need to, if you have whatever constraints you have, you need to say what is the job my content can do for somebody where this does not get in the way and build.

[Rudy]

For that and it's a lot of it I think is because it's easier to dismiss and being like, oh my, like my personality is the problem because I can't change that and that's why I'm not successful. Rather than like having to take a critical look at being like, well, how can I just like lean into my personality and where does, where does my personality or where do my. Or where does my knowledge shine where some of these other people might not? And that like that's where you hammer home. Andrew Ellis friend of the show Friend.

[Connor]

Of the show Andrew.

[Rudy]

Andrew asks, how do you discern a fake guru from A quality creator to listen to.

[Connor]

I look for alignment in what they.

[Jay]

Recommend and what they do.

[Rudy]

Yep.

[Connor]

If what they recommend and what they do are not aligned, that's a red flag for me. I also look for real value that's being taught.

[Jay]

Like, there are a lot of smoke and mirrors creators.

[Connor]

I think this is a bigger problem that's kind of a relic of, like, early online business where this is all a big mystery, where people were able to basically say, I have the secret. And these people say, I have the secret. And if you pay for access that secret, you can have the secret too. But if that person has not actually taught you something before that point or gotten you some sort of outcome, I wouldn't trust that they have the secret.

[Jay]

I would 100% screen for who is.

[Connor]

Getting me an outcome without having to pay them first. Because if they haven't, their courses or their programs or their products are probably going to be more of the same. Or they'll like, breadcrumb you and say, here's a little bit of it.

[Jay]

But if you want the full, full.

[Connor]

Secret, you're going to have to upgrade.

[Jay]

To this next thing.

[Rudy]

Actually, I think I've always had a huge problem with people who are trying to sell the information and not, like, the packaging of it. So, for example, like with our workshop podcast, like a YouTuber, like, there's nothing in there that's a secret. Like, I don't have proprietary information. Everything we talked about, you can, like, discern yourself from watching our episodes and, like, some of it is directly from our episodes. What I have a problem with is, like, where people will come and say, like, hey, I have this special piece of information no one else has, and you need to spend money to get this, otherwise you won't be successful. I think that's generally where you run into scams and predatory behavior. When for us, if you bought, you know, the podcast, like a YouTuber workshop, you're getting a personal perspective and like a packaging of that information that's delivered to you in a way that's best or convenient for you to learn. It's not necessarily the information. And I think that's a very important distinction is like, we're never going to sell you on. We have this special piece of information. It's always going to be like, if you want to learn about our personal experience and exactly what we did, that you can learn elsewhere, but this is packaged nicely for you. Then you spend the money and then to get it, we're not trying to, like, scam people. We're not trying to play into the fears of not being successful because you didn't pay for this thing. I think that's very scummy.

[Connor]

Yeah. Someone said information wants to be free.

[Jay]

Over a long enough time horizon, all.

[Connor]

Information is or will be available for free. And I think we're in the is place right now. So what you pay for is, like you said, the, the most compact version of this, compact and legible version of this. Because you pay for speed.

[Rudy]

It's like curation almost.

[Connor]

Yeah. Speed, implementation. That's what you're paying for. But information wants to be free. So information products don't think there's going to be a ton of new stuff.

[Jay]

There that you couldn't find for free.

[Connor]

But the time you spend trying to pull it together yourself and trying to put it in the right order, if somebody says, here is the essential stuff you need to know in the correct order, that's what you're paying for.

[Rudy]

And I also think it's evaluating their past experiences and being like, did they actually do the things well that they're trying to tell you that they did well?

[Connor]

Yeah. And do they have testimonials? And are those testimonials from people like me? A lot of times you can tell a lot about somebody by who their audience is and how much you resonate with that audience. I know a lot of creators who build really large businesses on the back of naive, independently wealthy, late career people who are like, I want the secret. And if you look at that, you're like, that's not me. And it ends up being super basic information. That's someone who's a little bit more Internet literate, already knows. But you know, there's a large population of people with means that you can build a large business on those people. But is that the audience that you want?

[Rudy]

Daniel Markovitz asks, what's the biggest lie or misconception you think creators tell their audiences to appear more successful?

[Connor]

I think the most common thing I see here is finding bits of data that are true and then using them in a way that leaves an open loop for interpretation. So it's not necessarily a lie, but it's intentionally misleading. So there's like some guilt by omission. A good example of this would be I made 50 million or $50,000 last month and in the background they're running a Facebook ads funnel and they paid $45,000 in ads fees. So it's like, okay, you found an ads funnel that returns marginally more return on the spend. And so you're Using revenue figures as social proof, but it costs a lot of money to get there. That's the most common thing I see is engineering social proof that looks impressive, but you're leaving out intentionally some data that really speaks to. Well, this isn't as impressive or admirable aspirational as you would be led to believe.

[Rudy]

Yeah, my. My answer is also, like, people omitting things and not being completely honest back to the, like, you know, what makes someone successful? A lot of people, like, want to act like they're, you know, this big, financially successful YouTube channel when they might just be getting views or whatever. And then something I've seen a lot in, in, like, the YouTube, like the Twitter, YouTube strategist. I won't even, like, call them real YouTube strategists, where they'll post, you know, screenshots of YouTube dashboard with, like, insane numbers, whether it's revenue reviews or whatever. And they won't show the title or the thumbnail. And it's like, those are clearly fake or like somebody else's, where, you know, that's more on the malicious side. But it goes to what you're saying, where it's like, that's not the whole story. If you're just taking those numbers at face value, you probably shouldn't do that. So it's like kind of be wary of the omission or what they're telling you if they're not being completely honest, open and honest about their business, both the good and the bad. I think that's where you run into some issues. Daniel has another question. What's a trend or tactic in the podcasting world that you think is destined to implode?

[Connor]

I was trying to think of something kind of spicy here, but all I can really think of is I think most general interview shows are just headed to zero because you're either interviewing somebody that's being interviewed so often that it's not that interesting and it's hard to package, or you're interviewing people who aren't known, which is even harder to attract an audience to that interview. Or you need unique access to huge celebrities or big names that only a small number of people can actually access. And you're fighting with Armchair Expert and Smart Lists and Diary of CEO. So I think most interview shows are just destined to have a hard time. That format seems to get fairly saturated, and I think it's especially hard if you're not doing it in person now, because we just expect that aesthetic. And the people with access, with resources, are investing there more and more. And the platforms kind of favor it, I don't think explicitly, but implicitly the platform's favorite as well.

[Rudy]

My answer is like kind of two pronged. It's one, I think agencies, like a lot of podcasting agencies, will kind of die out, especially related to like short form agencies. I think there was a huge pop, especially with a lot of AI tools. And I have, in most cases, I just haven't seen that shorts and clips really help a channel. And that's the massive selling point for a lot of these agencies is like, hey, pay us this money. And we can not, not necessarily promised returns, but they're selling like this vision on how people thought about shorts, you know, maybe a year or two ago. And that's not that shorts and clips can't work. There are obviously examples where they do. But I think if you're like starting from zero or if you're starting from zero or are newer, I just don't think going to an agency, even if you don't have the time to do things yourself, is going to produce returns for your channel.

[Jay]

I agree, I agree on the clip.

[Connor]

Point, especially because we're just moving into time with content where volume is going.

[Jay]

To be out of control.

[Connor]

And it's going to be especially out of control in formats like this where.

[Jay]

You have a long form piece of.

[Connor]

Content and you're trying to clip and post like 30 videos. There are a lot of agencies that have tried to sell me on I'm going to create 30 videos.

[Rudy]

It's too much.

[Connor]

30 clips out of a video. I'm like, those are almost certainly all going to be bad.

[Rudy]

Yeah, for sure.

[Connor]

And if you have that across many, many shows, it's just going to get deprioritized. And even the ones you see, if they're not good, it's going to produce a response in you that you expect that type of clip to not be very engaging. So I agree with that.

[Rudy]

Valentine Farkosh asks, what was the worst audience interaction you experienced?

[Connor]

A few things come to mind here and thankfully, even though weird interactions hit me and affect me in the moment, not many of them have left a mark. So it's hard for me to recall.

[Jay]

A bunch of them.

[Connor]

But there have been a few situations where some people have responded to my emails out of a place of desperation that was actually kind of scary. Sometimes they're like, I just got out of prison and I'm trying to do.

[Jay]

This online business thing and you've helped me a lot.

[Connor]

But they don't understand how a creator business works. So they genuinely think the emails coming from me that are mostly dispatched by a system of automations are like direct one on one emails from me. And so they'll respond like, hey, got some questions, please give me a call. And they send their cell phone number. And then it gets like this one guy in particular, it really ramped up over a period of a couple of days and then he said that he was going to get arrested again and I was just like, I don't know what to do with this.

[Rudy]

So in that situation, were you like responding back to him or was this just like unsolicited follow ups from him?

[Connor]

In the beginning I responded because anybody who responds and is like, man, this is so helpful, thank you.

[Jay]

I try to respond back and say, no problem, I'm rooting for you, I.

[Connor]

Hope this goes well. But that I think created more of an issue because now it seemed like there was a relationship there that was not as deep as maybe this person wanted. So in the end it was a lot of unsolicited follow ups. I think this is just common though because it's a big numbers game. If you think, you know, pick whatever percentage of the population you think is absolutely nutso. Take that percentage times the size of your audience. How many people in your audience are just not. Well, I was watching a vlog that Ryan Holiday put up and he was showing something in Gmail and it had.

[Jay]

His whole inbox on the screen for.

[Connor]

A moment and I paused it. I was watching it on the TV in my living room. I paused and I looked at the folder structure on the left side and there's a folder called, I think it was called Crazy Person. And so I'm like, he's getting some.

[Jay]

Crazy emails and he's saving them and.

[Connor]

Cataloging them in case he needs to.

[Jay]

Report them to authorities someday.

[Connor]

And I think it's just super common. I mean, Tim Ferriss has a blog post called like 11 reasons not to Get Famous or something.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And so there's actually a ceiling on how big I want to get because you just, you have to deal with that.

[Rudy]

It's interesting you point that out because like parasocial relationships is something that's talked about a lot in like the gaming space or more entertainment space because it's like, you know, younger audiences, people identifying more with like, you know, their favorite YouTubers that are, they're like living vicariously through them and they're picking up on, you know, these little facts about them and then they start to develop an unhealthy parasocial relationship and start acting weird. And I've never thought about that in, like, the education space, but it kind of makes sense. And it's almost like what kind of allows scammers to go about is these parasocial relationships and really taking advantage of the perceived authority and experience you have on the Internet. For these people that want that thing or think they want that thing, that's weird. I never thought about that. I know. I screenshot like, funny, mean comments, and I have a folder of.

[Connor]

We do get some of those too. We've certainly got some funny and mean comments. There have been some folks in the past that had very strong negative responses to something that I wrote. And in the instances where I wrote back very thoughtfully and was, like, seeing them, those people then immediately flipped in some cases and became huge proponents of what I was doing. Because most people just don't expect that you're reading what they're writing, that you're going to respond. And love and hate are not actually as far apart as, like, love and indifference. It's just like, it's both really strong emotional reactions. So if somebody has a really strong negative reaction sometimes, if you care and if this person is someone that you could see aligning with, you can have empathy and see them, and that might change their mind. Other times, it's not a battle worth fighting at all.

[Rudy]

Oh, totally. And it's like, there are so many comments, especially because coming from me, who was like, I've been A fan of YouTube since I was a wee boy. I have never even considered posting a negative comment. It has never crossed my mind. Even on the most heinous shit that I hated or disagreed with didn't cross my mind. So it's like, there's an element to people who do that where it's like, a lot of it's projection. A lot of it's like, you know, you want attention or to feel seen or to be perceived. So. So you just have to, like, take that with any bad interaction where it's generally, like, it could be parasocial, or they're just, like, having a bad day. And that doesn't excuse being a dick on the Internet. But as like, I think you kind of have to take some of that. That. That's like, I. I hate when people say, like, oh, dealing with negativity or criticism is like, part of the job. When you make content on the Internet, it's like, that's true to a degree that. That I think you have to, like, compartmentalize that. But a lot of it yeah, just isn't good. And it's just people like acting out.

[Connor]

Yep.

[Rudy]

Jackie Brown asks, how often have you seen a big time creator who might lean on algo hacks or platform for their success, crash and burn, or just disappear? I think this is really interesting. I think I've seen this happen a lot in the thought leader influencer space where a lot of people, especially early LinkedIn, there were tons of people who were really good at gaming the algorithm and like using bots that would then turn around and like make an agency out of that. That ended up like kind of disappearing because it's like as soon as there's a platform update you have to relearn everything else and if you're not on top of that, then it goes away. And I think the other place you would see that is short form creators that don't make the leap to longer form audience building content.

[Connor]

Yeah, I see this happen a lot. Always tied to a discovery platform where for some reason or another your content is hitting people's feeds. And if that changes and it no.

[Jay]

Longer hits our feeds, if you have.

[Connor]

Not built a true audience that is not dependent on a third party distribution, it comes crashing down. I saw it a lot on Twitter over the last 12 months where the for you feed really took over and what they prioritize moved from like niche interest to broad entertainment. A lot of folks that I saw constantly on Twitter and who had built entire businesses off the back of their Twitter audience, I haven't seen them. So it's super common and a reason why I really am a proponent of.

[Jay]

Building your relationship platforms, building your own.

[Connor]

Distribution with email, podcasting, private communities, maybe SMS if you want to get into that. Because these rules can change and if you can't reach your audience, they're not really your audience. They are, they are traffic on a third party platform that was being served your content and you were kind of renting that space.

[Rudy]

Daniel Brennanman asks, what's the actual Runway you need as a creator to be successful? For the sake of this example, let's say a creator who has little to no pre existing audience or network and success is defined as 8k a month in revenue.

[Connor]

There's a guy named Dan Andrews, runs a great podcast called Tropical MBA. I've been listening to it since 2015. I'll say. And he has this principle he calls the 1000 day rule. He says in general what he's seen and he's reinforced this over like a decade now. It takes about a thousand days to replace your day job. Income with a business of your own. And I think that's a pretty good measure. There are certain things you can compress if in Daniel's example here, success is defined as $8,000 per month in revenue. Even if you don't have an audience, if you have any network at all, you could probably sell some sort of service or productized service and get to $8,000 per month in a short period of time, much shorter than, than three years. Again, especially if you have some relationships. If you don't have any relationships, it.

[Jay]

Really depends on what type of skill.

[Connor]

Sets you can offer and how you.

[Jay]

Can package that to be unique.

[Connor]

Because it's always going to be easier to sell your time in the beginning, have like a lower leverage offering. If you're trying to get to $8,000 per month in courses or digital products, it's going to take a lot longer. I think probably longer than 3 years. I mean, my path started in April 2017. It wasn't until I'll say 2020 at.

[Jay]

Least, but maybe 2021 until I was.

[Connor]

Doing 8k a month in non service based revenue. So that's 4 years. So I think the 1000 day rule generally fits. And if you look at this and you say, I'm not willing to do this for three years before seeing that kind of return, I get it, and I wouldn't start. It puts you in a difficult financial position because it's also a thousand days, assuming that you're more or less going.

[Jay]

Full steam at this.

[Connor]

It's not like you just start a clock and say, all right, three years from now it'll happen. It's like three years of very intense, concerted effort.

[Rudy]

Ryan Furrer asks, has the time, energy and effort you've put into the business negatively impacted any personal relationships? If so, how did you traverse that?

[Connor]

How are they now 1000%. I think there was a time for sure where my wife had kind of a. She had kind of a negative relationship with the business because of the space that held in my life and took away from her. And that was really hard because it's not that I love the business more than her or love working throughout the day. It's. It's gotten to a point now where what provides for the family is the thing and I gotta take care of it. But you know, I also understand that, you know, I think about the story of the fishermen and the businessmen all the time. And the brief version of this is like there's a fisherman, he goes out in the morning, catches enough fish for the Day, in a couple of hours, decides to go home. Businessman comes up and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? If you fish eight hours a day, you'll catch more fish, and then you can sell those fish. And the fisherman says, why would I do that? Businessman says, well, catch more fish, sell more fish.

[Jay]

You build a business, you sell the business.

[Connor]

Then you don't have to work as much.

[Jay]

You can go home at the middle.

[Connor]

Of the day and spend time with your family. The fisherman's like, that's what I'm doing here now. Butcher the story, but you get the point. Yeah, I think about that all the time. You know, am I trying to build.

[Jay]

A thing that provides a certain lifestyle.

[Connor]

That I could have now by spending less time on the thing that, like, keeps me awake at night sometimes? But we've. We've gotten to a better place because now, you know, she is a part of the business. She understands more of how it works. She also sees that, okay, this is providing a lot for our family. That's just one example. I think I've also probably. I won't say lost friendships as if there was, like, a fight, but when you don't have a lot of space in your life for friendships that used to exist and you don't proactively try to work on them because, oh, here's another hour I can put into this thing over here. Yeah, that can, you know, have an effect over time. So, you know, there is this effect where this is true for me, and I know it's true for a lot of my friends. The larger the audience has gotten, the smaller my inner circle has become, for sure. And that's kind of a bummer. I don't think any of that's, like, irreparable. And, you know, I'm trying now. When I go on walks with a baby instead of listening to a podcast, I'll, like, call someone in my network that I haven't talked to in a while. But it takes more effort as you get older to maintain those, like, closer ties. But if they're not nearby and there's not the convenience of just crossing paths, it takes effort. And most people.

[Jay]

Most people aren't willing to go first. So if you want to maintain a.

[Connor]

Relationship, be that person that goes first.

[Rudy]

Yeah, I know there's. There was, like, a part in my life where I was very much like a productivity bro, where I was like, I know Dr. K talks about this a lot. Where there's that sector of productivity bros like, that I was in, where it's like, you want to maximize work now so you can work less later. And it's like that full on sacrifice, all or nothing that I used to do and it's like I definitely didn't. I was not as active in my friends lives as I would have liked to been. And I noticed that and like started to make that change where same thing as you. Where sometimes I'll put like on my calendar of like, hey, like text this person or something like that where I can just like keep that relationship open. Because a lot of like your best relationships where they came from school or whatever, you start to realize like how, how circumstances played into the strength of that friendship. And a lot of times it's like, yes, yeah, proximity for sure. Whether it's like work or school or whatever. And when that's away, like you still have these feelings for that person and like want to share that friendship, but you don't have all of these circumstances that are supporting it. So it's like you have to make the effort to put that support there that at least in my life nobody really talked about. And like I was able to fix that. And like I have very healthy relationships. Nothing was like permanently ruined. That was definitely like a huge learning curve for me where it's like it doesn't have to be one or the other. Like there's, there's that balance that I think is worth it to be fulfilled. Even if, you know, it's not like perfect, but it's, it's way better and it's like for sure helped.

[Connor]

I've heard Alex Hermozy say this. He says everybody wants you to be successful, just not more successful than them. And unfortunately I think this is true for a lot of people because you do hear people that you thought were close to you. You hear like they're talking shit or saying unkind things and it's a bummer. People really do struggle when someone like we are, we are comparison machines.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Jay]

And when we feel like the comparison we were making is no longer in.

[Connor]

Our favor, that makes us feel bad. And how do we deal with that? Usually not in a healthy kind way.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And that for sure happens.

[Rudy]

Jason Davies asks, I priced my monthly subscription product, Not a Community too low. How do I raise it without pissing people off or appearing greedy?

[Connor]

Yeah, I mean like there's a whole spectrum of what you could do. And a lot of companies have done this very, very badly in the software space in particular. And I do like that he called out that this is a subscription product that's not a community. Because I think my answer would be a little bit different between whether it's like a subscription software in a community, reason being community products that are peer to peer in nature have the potential for negative network effects. And what I mean is network effects means somebody joining the network makes the product more valuable. So somebody joining Facebook makes Facebook more attractive, more users join Facebook, suddenly it becomes the most impactful social network on the planet because that's where everybody is. That's a positive network effect in a community. If you're there for the people and somebody leaves now, you have the potential that other people leave also, because that.

[Jay]

Was such a linchpin in the community.

[Connor]

And so if you have this announcement or this change in a community product that has a negative reaction because there's so much connectivity between those people, I think you're certainly going to have a big negative outcome. By raising a price on existing subscribers. I think it's more possible to raise prices on a subscription product that is not peer to peer. But you have to be super delicate about it. And personally I would avoid it for current customers.

[Rudy]

So does that mean like you grandfather existing customers into the previous price?

[Connor]

Yes, that's what I would typically do. Unless you have such high market saturation for your target market that there's fewer.

[Jay]

Non customers available to even join at.

[Connor]

The new price than you would like. But if you still have a large.

[Jay]

Addressable market that's not using the product.

[Connor]

I would grandfather the early customers or legacy price the early customers into their current price. Otherwise, you know, I'm with you. I don't like changing the pricing structure on something that you're already getting at a certain price.

[Jay]

If I did want to raise the.

[Connor]

Price on current subscribers, I would basically add something of value to the product and then say this pricing tier is this. But we just introduced this new change which is an add on at this.

[Jay]

Price or a new pricing tier or.

[Connor]

Maybe even have a limit and say this pricing tier is going away eventually because we're moving to this, which has more value. So you basically remove the apples to apples comparison of I'm getting an apple for $4 and now I have to get the Same Apple for $5. And the other great thing about legacy pricing is it has a good effect on retention because if I know that I'm locked in at a price that I can't get anymore, I'm more likely.

[Jay]

To continue with that product if I.

[Connor]

Think I'm going to want to use it because of, I don't know if you want to call it Like FOMO or loss aversion or something. So having a higher price for new customers has a good effect on retention.

[Rudy]

Have you ever run into a situation or had a bad response from someone about price or even, let's say, like a current. Whether it's a community subscriber or somebody who had purchased your stuff that did not respond well and you had to deal with something regarding price.

[Connor]

I've never raised the price on an existing customer, but I have had prices raised on me for software, and I hated it. Because if you don't, especially if the change is something I don't have any influence over, we don't. Humans don't like feeling like we don't have a choice.

[Rudy]

Yeah.

[Connor]

So if you're raising the price on.

[Jay]

Me and I'm automatically opted into it.

[Connor]

And I don't have sufficient time to evaluate alternatives, you're going to get a really negative reaction. The best changes I see are like, hey, we haven't raised prices in five years. We've added all of this stuff. Price change is taking effect on this date many months in the future. That's like the best way to go about doing it, I think, is to show what has changed, talk about how prices have not raised in a very long time, and then give people a long lead time to react. When you do it really short term, it gives people a really negative taste in their mouth. And it's kind of like the feeling of you're dating somebody and they want to break up with you and you talk them out of breaking up with you, you're like, still dating, but it's just not good, you know, and probably never will be. That's what it's like when you raise the price on somebody without much warning.

[Rudy]

If I'm Jason in this situation and I was like, starting to make a new product, how can I avoid this situation where, like, I'm pricing this in a comfortable way? Is that like planning for the future or are there certain things I need to do?

[Connor]

Well, when people start memberships, because this is where the conversation comes up. A lot of times for me, I.

[Jay]

Do tell them to err on the.

[Connor]

Side of pricing it too low because the people who purchase early are big fans, big advocates, and you want to recognize them for their faith and trust in a new product and in you. So, like, over time, I would only want to raise prices. And so it's good, actually, I think, to start on the low end.

[Rudy]

That's really interesting because a lot of times I've seen in tech, it's like the opposite approach where early adopters end up paying a lot more for an awful product. Like an example, I think one is, I think the company's name is Humane Labs or something like that that released that the like AI pin that you put and it was supposed to like work on your hand and stuff and it just didn't work. But people paid like 500 bucks for this. And we was like, yeah, of course I paid 500. I'm an early adopter, I know price is going to come down. And it's like, why are you paying more for getting a worse product?

[Connor]

Yeah, I think it's a different relationship when you're identifying with being an early adopter versus identity identifying as being a fan of company. Because I am always thinking, how do I give the best opportunities to my biggest fans and recognize them and give them the best pricing? But there is a lot of precedent for just products generally to say we are going to release the premium version of something first to subsidize the cost of producing a lower cost version. This is like the Tesla strategy. We're going to go out with this luxury car that speaks to status and people with means can purchase to subsidize the cost to create the more accessible unit going up market and then down market. If you want to capture the entire span of people's income, it's better to go up market than down market. Because it's difficult for a low status product to become high status over time.

[Rudy]

That makes sense.

[Connor]

So it really does depend on who your market is and what type of product we're talking about here. And just like pure software, it might be nice to bring cost down over time because that is rare. But it's rare. I would, I would err on starting.

[Jay]

Lower on price because then you can.

[Connor]

Get testimonials, raving fans, advocates, affiliates. Even if you say like this is going to be priced at $50 a month, but right now it's 25. Now you've set the precedent, the expectation.

[Jay]

This is a $50 per month product.

[Connor]

You're getting in at a preferred rate, but this is what the product price is. And then eventually you can say this is, this is just at market rate now.