#193 – How to Earn 100 True Fans and Your Financial Independence with Jay Clouse of Unreal Collective
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What's up, everybody? This is courtlandt from ni hacker's that com. And you're listening to the andi hackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.

And on this show, I sit down with these andy hackers to discuss the idea as the opportunities and the strategies they're taking advantage so the rest of us can do the same. Today i'm talking to j clouds. J first popped on my radar when he posted on andy hackers that he sold his community to pat flin from smart passive income.

And you typically don't see communities get acquired. That's because acquires or really investors, they want to buy your thing and then they want to see you get much, much bigger in the future. And communities are kind of a tRicky beast wear.

There's no guarantee there's still gonna good as they grow. In fact, a lot of communities get worse as they grow. So something that might be working really well at one hundred people or thousand people might turn into complete other chaos, ten thousand people, one hundred thousand people.

And so to be able to sell your community means that whoever is buying IT has the utmost faith and trust in you. And they really think that you're battas and you're going to be able to not only grow this thing, but hold the ship together as IT scales. And j is indeed a bad as so in this episode we talk about his journey as a creator.

We talk about, uh, these new audio platforms, clubhouse, twitter spaces, how to use those to build your audience. And we talk about the journey from basically making zero dollars as a creator to being one hundred percent financially independent and able to do whatever you want. Enjoy the.

I got a million and one things what i'd talk to about, but you had like kind of a cool year and you described to me a few weeks ago that like this was our biggest year. As a creator said, you first at first year, he had six figures in revenue school. If I share that, I say that.

yeah, let's go. Yeah.

six figures in revenue is a creator that's great. As an up, you clearly don't have to work a for the man. You can do whatever you want.

It's true. And then I won't got a job for the .

ban yeah got a job for the man basically but like the good man, like the bad man, you don't want to record there's patsy like the the ideal personal work with. So I guess that's the second exciting thing is that um you tweet about this you posted on any hackers about this, that your community got a quiet and exactly you phrase IT.

And your tweet was when we pulled up, he said that your virtual accelerator and private community just got acquired by a smart passive income and we talked about this. So which one is more exciting to you? I guess, the fact that you had this huge years a creator or the fact that despite having a huge year, you now a technically you have a job and your community got a quiet mean.

It's it's tough to say they are both equally exiting. They're into place. So well, let's start the creator side first because this is this is like crazy me. I mean, for the last four years, I was trying to get to a point where it's like, okay, I want to be very comfortable independently and have a lot of optionality.

And really, honestly, even just like the last four months have been where that really, really came on in that at the same time, I I kind of unlocked that opportunity like hit that mythical six figure mark. But the opportunity that I had with S. P. I, what I could do there, well, also being encouraged by them to continue my creative work, is just like having my cake and eating IT too. IT was amazing.

So just what you mean when you say optionality like you don't want to have to quit anything and you want to have as many possibilities, why? Why go for optionality?

So I can, this S P, I think happened like the perfect time. Where was like, okay, well, I I proved that I could do this. And now I have this great financial economic engine of my own building over here that's growing an audience that continue to build upon itself.

But at the same time, I see this really special opportunity at this point in time to focus what i've learned about building community inside of an even greater ecosystem, to prove out a lot of that. The series, I have our community and some even more people, which therefore ally could also feed into some of the stuff that I am doing. So IT just felt like this is a really good fit for me.

I remember um have a good friend, David Sherry. He and I ve been good friends for long time. He started death to the stock photo and he told me one time that he thought my superpower was building community.

And this is like three or four years ago and I just like wrote IT off as like you have a who cares about that? Like that something I do and like doing in a power stuff up, but nobody cares about that. And now people care .

about that big.

Oh yeah, it's like, oh, now now this seems like like I can like really step into as a strength and step into incredibly and I feel like i'm fighting upwards to say, like pay attention to me for this is more like i've done this all right about this. You can pay attention if you want, but i'm like a very confident that I can step into IT and talk about this, right?

I don't want to say sell out, but why sell? Like why you have, you know, this entire career life you built for yourself, you finally got six weeks in revenue. If you maximum optionality, you can do anything that you want.

You literally have no one who's telling you what to do. You can quit anything. You're totally free. How do you even think through whether or not you want to sell your community to when acquire or stay independent to other things?

I wasn't thinking about IT. I wasn't shopping around. I wasn't seem like what would the market value of this thing be? Honestly, I have been working with the S P I team for like six months, and we had the beginning of something pretty special with S P I pro. But I was a contractor and we are going to appoint whats like we are both looking at like what okay. So what happens now after the transitions are do you go to another contract?

So you're supplementing like all your cator stuff because you also a podcast, you also saw courses and you've got community. So you're supporting now doing contract work with S P I and presumably other client state and mostly S P I.

they I had mostly dialed back to just working with them and then earning enough of an income from my other stuff that was enough to get by. But IT gets the point where I was like to look like for you to join the team full time is like something that you d be interested in. And I was like, I don't know, I got too much stuff and fly like, I got this community, i've got my own projects is all going really well.

And you like, well, we're really interested in this, this, in this. What what if we acquired unreal collective? And I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. I thought about that.

So you've got a very tangled web here of a million different things that you're doing. And i'm curious like how that has that all start? If I want to be a creator like j, what's the very first thing that you do? A podcast, of course, blogging.

not a podcasting. I love potato. Have, of course, on podcasting, but IT point that things are really long game and it's good to get started now because it's going to take a while free to build an audience for sure. But to me, you start with services, you start as a free answer or you start if you have like some authority and some recognition and people who would already want to pay for something under a collective the acceleration program was basically a mastermind program, is a coaching program. And in that, I got to scale my time across five people at a time, which was a pretty great hour rate, which saved a lot of time and space for me to create these assets.

So it's like being a service provider like god say, you're a software engineer for like one company at a time, but you can make decent man of money, but not that much because it's one client at a time. But if you decided like to teach five people, you can bring them on one community. You can basically charge five times as much because you get five people to time.

What do you get those first five people for? Unreal, collective. Like I did anyone even know that you are offering the same and and decide to pay for IT?

The first thing that I did was I did A A twelve week program for free for five people that I thought we're working on something interesting that would stick with IT and show up even though they weren't literally invested in IT and would have interesting stories coming out of IT. And so after I worked with those five people, I documented their stories and their progress. I put that into a sales page.

And then that became when I went out in in, had as social proof to do the first paid program. And even then for the first couple of cohorts, IT was a lot of the outbound email to be onest. Like I I had already built a relationship over years of a lot of people in my own city who are business owners because I was organizing like, start for years, and I send a short email to people who I thought be fun to work with, I thought would benefit from the program.

And I said, hey, I have membership opening for unreal collective IT can help you go from a to b on what you're working on. I think I would really fit fit you well is your pressure, is your expectation. But if you have any interested in all, let's go on call, like very short. And the win was let's go on a call.

And then I would asked them a lot of questions about, like, okay, so what's going on in your business? How are things going? What's a priority for you? They would talk and talk and talk in a good way.

And I would learn a lot about their struggles. And I could very quickly see like, oh, you're actually dealing with the exact same thing as a net, who is also in this cohorn. I think you get a lot out of this.

Would love to have you against your pressure expectation. Like I never hard sell anybody. I just affirm for them like hearing you in situation.

I can tell you that this will work for you if you want to do IT. And if you do, that would be great. And that, and that worked for the most part. And then I got easier every the following coho got a little bit easier because there is more social proof, like, I do a really good job of capturing testimonials from almost everybody who went through the program and turn them into a success story for, like, everybody who went through the program did a testimonial.

So you go the website and you like, is j like, just blow and smoke as is really work and you like, oh, here are forty, forty people who you already did this twelve experience. And this is the results that they saw. This is great, but services income is always going to be the fastest way to income. But you need to embrace being a business owner. You need to embrace being like a freeLance business owner so that you're actually getting yourself enough money and time to build the thing that you want to build.

I love this like high touch model because lot of people start and they just want to start like step five, like i'm building a scalable software, are product as an ni hacker, like that's really hard. You're got to going to like market IT, like people like know what they should use your thing and it's competing.

And so as other scalable software built by other people who have bigger teams and you and bigger budgets, but if you're just like literally reaching out to people wanted a time and you can give them this like really crafted pitch, like I know exactly what you're working on and I want to hear your here about your problems in your chAllenges. You're just going to be able to provide something way Better than somebody is trying to make some sort of one size fits all product. And you can also charge more out of the gate, like you are probably charging in at least of two hundred box or something, whether or where as like people software try to charge you know five, ten or twenty box .

month yeah I I mean, I did the math. The beginning. I was like, if if this is twelve weeks, which the program was, how much would I have to make from how many people and do this three times a year to get by, if this is my only means of income? And I did the math, and over time, I literally double the Prices.

I started that I think four hundred dollars for twelve weeks of just the group calls. And at the end, IT was nine ninety nine for the base level. But I knew that I was going to have to deliver this experience in this outcome for people, and I was going to be staring out am in the face for an hour every week, for twelve weeks.

I wasn't going to try to sell them into something that I didn't think I was going to set them up for success, that I going to be a fun time. anybody. And because of a group call, if they not have having a good time, they could very well make IT so that other people to call. We're having a good time too. So you you genuinely had to make sure that they were a good fit in the best way to do that was to have these calls.

Would you describe unreal collectivists like you? You describe IT as an accelerator described as a community. I guess that as a community, because kind of the value comes from the people on the calls, not just you like monolog ging at them and telling them what to do there, each talking to each other, what would you say something that you learned about community by running these communities that you know the observation doesn't understand?

And any other reason that why I was a community was after the program, you were still invited to stay in the slack channel and he was incredibly active, like everybody who had gone to the program was still in there. And because IT grew like fifteen to twenty people at time, to answer your question, everybody got to know everybody really, really well.

And IT wasn't like all the sudden, the people who would invest a lot of time and energy into this community were now overwhelmed with one hundred new people who wanted to do things a different way. I didn't know the adequate IT IT was all very smooth and slow and you can integrate people well. And so like this is this is the thesis is of joining S P. I, is now that i've seen how to take small groups and build a community slowly and have high touch connection and make them really love IT. How can I meet the middle with a large audience and a larger community to try to scale that experience, which is like in inherently very difficult thing to do, but you have to have experience at the low end to be able to try, thank you.

Start gone minature like White comminatory to get a match of founders and entrepreneurs and put them together in these sort of cohorts and help each other and connected to each other. And you don't need look at you huge brand to do that. You just seem to like these sales emails and your own persons reputation and kind of these, uh, testimonials from people who'd one IT before.

And I just becomes more and more valuable than more people you get into IT because like we said, they're in the slacked group. And then I think there's so many there's like so many ways that capitalized on that. Like you can just charge basically a straight fee like you are doing to different people.

There are also these are really huge community. So I don't know if you're familiar a with like these executive peer groups. There's Y P O uh Young president organza E O treatment org ization, and like people are often like sleeping and how big these things can get with their membership fees.

So for example, Y P O it's like only for C E O yet to be C E O to join. They have thirty thousand members and it's like thirty five hundred dollars a year, something to be a member. And the people who joined at all CEO are all super rich, is like of course, we'll join this thing.

And they making that one hundred million dollars basically a year they're making from a community that's really, really scaled up entrepreneurs. Organza is kind of the same. I think there are also like you have to be a founder or an owner of the company is doing the community and revenue or something.

But it's like two thousand, five hundred hundred years, they have tens of thousands of people, same thing. And then they have kind of like the scale out community experience that you did where they just have like these discussions of like five to ten people and they train like volunteers from within the community to leave these discussions so super scaled up. And they just make a lot of money and also provide a lot of value from people who want to like meet their peers. So like that kind of one way to scale community.

some of things you're pointing out is like underlying important things to understand knowing who your people are in what like their thresh hold for, what meaningful versus non meaningful membership do this, right? So like with unreal because my people were um early stage creative service providers. I'm not going to be to charge thirty five hundred dollars year.

This is not going to work. There is like an inherent ceiling on what I can do for membership is so that's important to know if you're trying to build a paid community is like who are these people and what can they actually pay? Because there there needs to be a match of Price to value to like where they are.

As far as like how to scale things, I really do think that you need to put a lot of energy into very unscalable aspects of IT. Like one of the things that I that I call back to a lot is the idea that when we think about building an online community, we aren't thinking often enough about, like, well, what worked offline. Because if we start to think about your online community as a meet up that happened in your hometown, when people show ups that meet up, they probably drove across, down.

They put fifteen and twenty minutes in the getting there. As soon as they get in the door, the first thing they do is they look around four people they know and are familiar with so that they start to feel comfortable in the space. But if they don't see that, they'll probably stick around because they already made the trip in an online community.

If they show up and they look around, they don't see anybody they know and they don't necessary feel welcomed right away. It's so easy to live, so easy to live. And you never, you might even know, know they can.

So it's really about like, how do you welcome people in the space and get them to feel like they belong there? And I think know somebody there. And if they go missing that they're gonna missed.

And it's really hard .

to do without putting like a lot of intention and honestly like resources into a whether it's people or money is all kind of the same thing.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of advice on days like you should build an audience, I get a giant audience or is um a communities on a salan audience. It's like people talking to each other rather than just listening to you. But I think it's super valuable because there's a sticky connection of like the people in your community if you do or what you're saying and like make sure they're welcome and then they feel missed if they're gone.

They just develop these relationships for each other and they like probably not gona leave because like these relationships are so important and hard to find IT elsewhere. Where's that an audience of like the only value you're getting us a message that somebody he's writing or emAiling to you like that's super easy to find elsewhere and you could easily just leave and like, no one is gna miss you. And so I think starting a community is super important to do what you're saying and basically realized that like yeah, the value comes from these connections, but you'd to do a toner work up front to make sure that people are forming these connections and eventually IT becomes really scalable, like eventually, I want say that you would have to do very much.

But like you with audience, audience building, you always have to be putting out content. You can never really get off that trigger with community. You can eventually sort of setback a little bit.

And people will talk to each other. Like these other organizations I mentioned, basically the people they're training who repay these members dues. The one's leading the sessions with andy hackers.

We had like our offline community, which is all these meet ups recovering like sixty seven metus a month. And like I didn't tell anyone what to do, everybody just ort did you know their own scalable thing. And I think that's the value of community, the scalability. But you can't really skip ahead.

That's such a good insight because I think I think community scales when the community scales itself, like if you're trying to scale IT as the one person pushing IT forward, like is probably not scale yet. One of things I think about a lot in the space too, was like as creators, we can look at the growth of the music industry and artists in that way as like where things can go. Because think about the beetles, they had a tone of fence.

I had an audience, and the audience would go to the shows. And like, that almost looks like a community, because now you can have interaction these other people, but you're still actually there to see the main attraction. The beetles won't like, how do I get my fans to talk to each other? That wasn't really the concern.

But if you think about yourself as a creator, and you are the beetles in this world, people might be showing up for your work as they love your work. But like, how do you make sure that they are actually talking to each other uh, that take some intention and design around the space because othe wise you're like, hey, I got an audience of two thousand people. I now have A A tool that's a digital community platform.

If I throw the two together, that doesn't make magic happen. I come on or like where is where's j where's the attraction? And it'll be fun and exciting for thirty minutes and will .

be like where my food board that's that's IT.

We're going na see a ton of that over the next two years as people just throwing their audience out of platform now understanding why IT isn't sticking right and people going to a get a bad tasting .

yeah it's like going to get a conference, uh, often. It's a combination of like audience building, a community building where people will essentially come for like a talk extensively, but then the talks over, go to the hallway and that kind of where the community is, everybody he's talking to each other, entertaining each other. But online, like that doesn't happen.

Like you send a news letter and you like I ever I came to my talk, there are my newsletter and then I got a link to a form. But I know that has any real reason to talk to each other. They're onna naturally bum into each other like they would real event. I mean.

that's one of the things that makes twitter great. Why people love twitter is because IT seems easy to bump in to people and some A D M, oh, oh, we're actually communicating now. That's what happens at in percent events a lot of the time.

So there's a speaker here I can talk to him. Access is there. You can have some deputies access. If you put a little effort forth, IT doesn't happen as much in most online spaces.

I'll talk about tools for a bit because you are building the smart passive community on circle to a super cool tool for community builders. Uh, you built on real collective on slack for the most part. And I guess zoom calls as well.

And then what else we got, we got twitter, which is like hard to build a community on, but easy to go to audience on. And then there's clubhouse, which I know if you views, but as I C have been blowing up all year, think they about like one to two million active weekly users or something crazy. And they just got like a billion dollar uia and everybody thinks the houses potentially the future of uh, community.

So let's talk about maybe twitter. Ah you get like five thousand twitter followers. How are you using twitter to build audience, to sort of feed them to hear your role as a crater?

I had really thought about IT very intentionally, like I just kind of felt like i've got to exist on these platforms early a long time. And luckily, I did build an account like two thousand and nine, which is relatively early for twitter. But I haven't really put a ton of effort into IT until maybe the last year and more even so like the last couple of months.

And also what i'm realizing is you you you look at the way people use twitter and like you see some clear patterns of oh, if you do this type of content, if you have these types of threads and you talk about these types of things and you get retweet, you get picked up, you get follows, you I got IT doesn't fit for me, which sucks because like I can see the recipe and I get the recipe, i'm equipped to do the recipe. I, you know, I don't want to do the rest. So for me, i'm i'm treating more like a community now, almost see things about me.

You are like ask questions 给 people's opinion， engage with people and they engage with you. Like, be helpful to people, connect people, you can do all that on twitter. Like really, really well, just the same way that you win your community. And so that's more and more what i'm trying to do lately.

I love the question based approach to twitter, because if you ask a question where is obvious that the responses will be valuable to read through, it's went went for both people who wants to participate and who want to just like a read. So if you like, go, how did you get your first like ten users or something? And everybody shares that.

It's not just cool to share because if you can share and maybe promote your products, what you're doing, but also you want to like read through that is somebody who's reading and almost know what is using twitter that way. It's super rare. Almost everybody d's using twitter to, like, build an audience for themselves, rather than sort of connective followers to each other.

Uh, it's actually could be a helpful like even crowds s are same super quick. I I genuinely asked, I guess i'm like, how do you guys turn your brain off at the end of the day? Because, like, we're all living in working in the same space.

So like one, the days over, how do you know and how do you like switch off? I have very hard time doing that. And I got a ton of responses and a ton of ideas, and that was really great.

What going to do.

I really like the approach that a lot of people set of, like mark a clear time at the end of day and then have like a ritual at that time. And real could be like, i'm going to spend the next minutes checking my email, super fire based, but i'm going to close out chat and to close out everything else along. People said, I just leave your phone in the bedroom, which like, is the obvious answer, and I should do that. I used to build a run because I was warm enough here. And oh, I know that I could run after .

work back in the good days of not winter yeah.

and that was like a good transition. So that was really great. And IT just feels more natural and more helpful to me than to be like i'm going to construct a twelve tweet thread.

I mean protez ing something like I get that that works and IT could be viable, especially if it's I thoughtful and it's like genuinely helpful. But this is not the format that that I like. No.

it's not super fun. And I know I know a few people who really good at twitter threats, and I talk each other about how do you good at twitter threats that are going like maximized Whiteabbey and like one of them are having a lot of fun writing these and I think they get shared really widely. They have like a mass appeal because someone of people are just regev through twitter.

And if you come across like an entertaining story here, like a bunch of like an advice, like, yeah, I might retweet IT, but like, I don't think that necessary translates into to like if you're eating needs is super fulfilling or that the people who follow you are gonna later on, like feel like they wants to buy your products or use whatever you may or talk to each other. So i'm gona write there with you. It's hard to use twitter that way.

And I think the people who do, it's hard not to compare yourself to them because if you have the same unit of measurement, like how many people follow you are how many retweet that you get. But like all, ultimately, you're doing different things. And if someone's got like a hundred times as many retweet as you're hitting, but they doing something you know want to do than like they're Better after like not comparing yourself to what are doing yeah well.

I I actually love you're take on IT recently to where you talking to. Like if you're building a twitter audience to maximized opportunity, optionality say like it's just not necessarily useful or serving you like what you do in IT. IT can be a huge time suck and it's not an asset that builds on itself over time.

You know like if you put that same amount of effort into writing a really great esa that maybe if is constructed for like a key search term, the the last like big essay that I went was about building community and why i'm really bullish on circle. And that has brought me so much value in staying power and has introduced like really interesting people into my life um in like actual monetary reward too. So I I want to tend towards that. Like i'm going to put effort into thinking through something that has a bunch of structured points. I'm going to put IT down something that can live ever Green and and continue to generate some sort of benefit.

So what do you think about clubhouse?

Have you have you used at all? I kick myself every day for not spending time on IT.

You want to do that because.

well, to do construct that like, I love audio and I love podcasting. I think I think i'm a pretty good speaker and IT just feels like this place my strength. And i've been looking for years at what is the thing is going to pop up that I can hop on early and build this unfair advantage of.

Many creators tell me that they had when I started writing in two thousand eight. And like clubhouse is the clear answer. The first one that's come around in a long time, and i'm just not spending time on IT.

And I don't know why, other than like IT seems like a big tick and it's hard to go from a mindset of like I want to craft forty five to sixty minute, highly produced, beautiful pieces of dense, useful audio for create developments. But then i'm also gonna on clubhouse and just like see for two hours with no clear agenda, I just don't get IT. But business, as I talked to, were just raving about how incredible it's been for like introducing them to a larger audience and building their audience. And I knew would come someday. And here IT is and I know that i'm a dept like I am suited for IT, but I can't get myself to get into IT.

I'm skeptical that people are building really big ideas and clubhouse. I think they're I mean, change that I think people are building big audiences on clues that stay on clubhouse. And the people have built big audiences on club outside of like then translated into like thousands of pop castle enters a twitter.

Followers are mainly subscribe. Maybe few people have in my thoughts on this. I've been spending some time in class. Number one is live, which is super fun. Like if you were to pop in and just try like you probably get addicted would be a timely for you because just being able like on demand, pull a few of your friends in a room and have a conversation about anything you want is super addictive and it's really hard to do that anywhere else like even for you and I want to talk, we're like, oh, let's schedule zoom call, put on the calendar and shift IT on club out snow like o jays online. Let me pay and we just start talking.

That said, if you build an audience on a life platform and you go live like a very small percentage, them actually ever see what you have to say. So like on twitter, like i've got like three eight thousand followers by tweet something I might get a fifty thousand impressions. Like not only is my audience see IT, but like a bunch of other people in depth ing IT on club house, it's like one percent.

You get up million followers on club house and you're going to get like you know ten thousand people see you, you're going to a thousand followers and hundred people who are going to see IT and it's just not know ten people are going to see IT and it's just not like it's going to have life is everywhere. Youtube i've seen a lot of youtube channels that people have like. I don't know, one hundred thousands subscribers and there are live videos of, I got thousand views.

So you are used to doing things that aren't live. I think clubs is going to be kind of kind of sad because such a small percentage of audience actually sees those things. And then it's totally a femoral.

People don't save a record clubs conversations and then don't like a pocket. They joined in the middle of IT. So you're like halfway you're talking about something and like people don't even know what you talking about and they joined up in a kind of is oriented and confusing. And then I know i'm just it's non stop he fest right now. Good thing.

I'm also just to see like what what is the impact on podcasting generally? Because I think audio is a kind of like a zero. Some game like you only have twenty four hours a day, you're going to dedicate so much time to like listening power.

So clubhouses continues to pick up and that's like the audio people like to tune into as like their form of radio and intimate the connection. Is that going to tank certain podcast? I don't know. Or will they rebound and say, like this was fun for now, but like I actually do miss people respecting my time and attention with thoughts.

highly paid positions yeah everything about clubhouse is the fact that like this, so much gas participation. So even if you do preppy a lot for a put clubhouse call and you bring on like the right people, people will kind of get upset if you don't bring and and people onto the stage. And then like rain of people onto the stage usually aren't that well prepared and they don't really often add a lot to the conversation.

Like it's like one intent. You really add lots of the conversation. So as a listener and much more into podcast and audio books, no, i'm going to get a particularly thing. But as a speaker, I like clubhouse because it's so on demand and so easy to just jump in new conversation.

If I was going to judge in the club house tonight and I wanted to be a guest in a conversation, how easy would I be for me to be able to get into conversations that are happening and contribute IT depends .

entirely on who your friends are and who you know. So if you know someone on the stage and the topic you want to talk about, what will happen is if you've to follow you and you will show up in the following and there's a pretty good chance to be like js on, let me invite him up to the stage. I know J, A smart guy is get stuff to contribute. If you are joining rooms, you don't know anybody, then it's going to be hard because you're going to be one of like you know one hundred, one thousand people who like might be raising your hand, you're trying to get on the stage. And like summer rooms are super open about IT, but these are often like not the room you want to join anyway because it's just a want to rent and people talking about stuff like you want there to be some curation like for unreal collective, your community like that's curated, like not everyone on earth and only like certain people can join, you know, have a lot to contribute and club house like any random person would like a million area, get rich quick scheme, get on the stage and start blow the getting about whatever their strategy is not that able.

Yeah, I just I don't know, I just can't. I don't if I get into IT.

what about I think about circle then circles, the platform even been raving about it's a community building platform. M, it's kind like, know you've got different options. You can use slack, you can use facebook groups. You can have check based communities on what's opper telegram and circles like a fully fledge kind like a web base community. Why are you bullsh on on circle?

Well, first and foremost is because the team understands me as the customer and as the user. They know my motivations and they know what I want out the platform. And they have experienced building platforms like the before, like they come from teachers.

So I know that the team knows the use case is my use case. They know what I want. And the things that are going to be shipping and shipping quickly are the things that I care about.

About three years ago, when I was doing unreal, and I was thinking about IT as a potential community and like place where I make a living, I was really frustrate with my choices of what software use. Slack has a clear limit of how many people can be in there and how I can stay tightly nit as IT is I think you, I think you get beyond two hundred people in slack. I wouldn't able to have the same relationship with them that I did with unreal.

Any other options were like discord, which is slack for gamming. Or discourse, which is like kind of a nearly old school looking for um but like very functional but felt very out of workflow. And mike networks, which actually seem like IT should be a great solution.

So i'm sitting here as like a community builder that really wanted a different platform. I I thought about building IT. This is like the closest I came to getting really into the hacking was like, okay, let me just build something and I pull together.

Like the smartest st. Uh, U X. Designer that I knew in town, I brought together two incredible developers in town, and like a really great strategist.

And we is White board all day. I like, here's what I want to do. Here's things that I want to do here, the things I been compared to to like, here's what is great about a sub reddit. Here's what's great about hackers up, about the hackers up. And I just couldn't come to a solution of like, why doesn't mighty networks work?

right? Just she's that what .

would I build that's not mighty networks? And so I just gave IT up. And honestly, like circle is a forums offer is not functionally much different than discourse.

But the U I. Is Better. They understand this specific customer Better. I know as they get like they just launched the I O S mobile yesterday as IT moves into android. Also like that experience is gonna really good.

I, I, I know that to scale a community, you need something that is more searching and threatened and can be broken down from like big into small. So a lot of what we do in in S P I pro, the S P I community, everyone in there is is a member of S P I pro. But then we start to segna people into different topic areas, into different clubhouses actress.

What we're calling them now into masterminds are like real time mining groups. So there are a bunch of different ways you can engage in small groups inside this larger group, and you can't really do that in slack effectively. You can't really do that things like, again, mighty networks just should have worked, but I could never get into IT, and I don't know why.

And now it's as we're becoming more of like a holistic business platform, IT feels like even moving away from the use case I wanted. And IT feels slow and almost like bloated. So circle dispell s like the most directionally correct for me as a creator in the use case that I have.

Yeah you know, one option. You didn't mention its facebook groups, which i've seen a lot of people, both communities on IT doesn't seem like it's Taylor made for communities definite not tailor made to like break people down to the sub groups as you try to scale up our community and you need IT to still stay personable. In fact, almost one of these tools are accept for many networks and circle like lack is not made for communities.

It's made for for companies. But there is an advantage do something like, uh, a facebook group that almost one of these options have, which is distribution. So if you want your community members to be like active and to basically like just kind of, in the course of their Normal lives, stumble across the conversations and things happening, facebook was a pretty good option because people reflexively jack facebook, and we'll see a conversation, the news.

You can be like, oh yeah, in part of this community or as something like circle or slack or mighty networks or even any hacks. I have this just chAllenge of like trying to get people develop an entirely new habit to visit a community that's not in some place where they already visit on a ring basis. Yeah.

I did. I didn't talk about facebook roup. I barely think about IT and the create developments. Listen groups on facebook because I want to learn what I was like and I had I don't have the community.

I hate like the product because because if you are not thinking about how do I make such a great experience that people want want to show up, a facebook group is a great solution for, because people are onna show up anyway. But there's no threats, feels like chaos. You can have tens of thousands of people on nearing.

You feel like us the though I an community but like there's twenty posts a day, they're all in a single feed. Uh, it's on facebook, which to me is his own just because I don't trust like I don't trust the company. I T trust what's going long term.

The Younger generation doesn't have facebook. This is right to land. I think I think people have more respect and appreciation for a private space. They think the creator has a lot more control in authority over. But yes, I mean, facebook is really great if if you want something that is just going to show up in people's spaces, whether they are thinking about IT or not.

So we ve talked about scalability and growing communities, which is tough because you ve got to probably have to fight out a way to break IT down like eo is done, like y po was done. But there's other things are going to community scalability as well. I get you want the very few people to have sold a community that built.

I did IT with any hackers, stripe ones IT. Ryan, who were, did IT with product hunt, which was acquired by Angel list and has been like a few others. But in the vast majority of communities are like not that scalable and also not that interesting acquire.

And so when you posted about selling, joining uh S P I community on any acts, like I add D A long comment about my thoughts and like getting a community acquire like you want to look like and why most acquires typically don't want to buy A A community because if you are my points, probably the biggest one is that it's you think about an acquire the type they're basically in an investor, right? Do not just buy buying something. They wanted to say the same size all the time.

They're buying something because they wanted to grow and scaling a bigger. And unlike software product, a community actually changes in nature. When I get bigger tends to become a little bit less personal. A little bit harder to run, a little bit more and run a little bit less like exclusive, a little bit less curated. With whose and that what are your thoughts on having a community be acquired there?

There are couple case you could make. You could look at the really bullish case and say, well, a paid community is A R R, like it's it's M R R, A R R. It's it's recurring revenue potentially that could be like an incredible investment. But we looked at IT more so from the standpoint of in a paid community, the product you're selling and the benefit people are getting is out of your hands in a lot of ways like it's coming from user generated content and relationships and and things are happening in there.

And so it's a really tRicky line to toe because there are likely some members of any paid community that you would be happier to let them habit for free then for them to leave because they're so valuable as a community member and unrealized this incredible community. We weren't looking at IT as like an immediate profit center of like, well, this is what we can expect in membership is IT was more about these people are really well connected to each other. We know they are incredible community members.

We want to make an even stronger base of S P, I pro with some incredible, incredible members who are the same type of person. And I I told the unreal as I like, you know, everything we're doing here, we're going to be able to do A S P. I.

And even more so because we have more resources, we get a whole other, you know, a community manager. Jelly is incredible. So there's two of us now that our whole focus is making an awesome experience for you.

And not only that, like you're in the space, but we're expanding the horizons because Frankly, the average S, P, I member is further along than the average real unreal was so like it's it's all upside, but is scary. First of all, slack to circle is kind of A A culture shock, the very different community experience. And it's scary to move.

But IT IT was scary for me to tell these people like this is not like the investment of we know this is going to immediately turn into membership use. We didn't require A A credit card from to get in there. Well, like we're giving you access for a year.

And let us prove to over the next twelve months that you want to be here and this is and even Better experience what you are used to. And if you want to ue membership after that, awesome would love to have you. But it's hard because a lot of communities like their they are fragile that they they have a lot of otherness of their space.

And if you like, by the way, actually I on this, this is not a co own space. It's it's scary thing. And so I think you have to go into IT with the right reasoning, right? And not just like disappear.

Like if I was like, hey, guys, they own you know later no, i'm in there every day. Like i'm genuinely still putting all my energy into making that a great experience. Now is like not only you guys in here, you guys paid for the twelve week accelerator match mm experience of unrecovered tive.

That's a part of S, P, I pro membership. You can have that now like just you can have IT. It's all upside in that way. And we we think that you know this is a really strong base to continue to build from of really kind, thoughtful, smart, generous people who wanted get back to each other.

And I think about the communities that have been acquired. None of the founders of the community organza just peace and said goodbye. You're now our property.

You think all of us have ended up going to work because we're sort of a crucial part of the community. And people like its gradual. The community is to have positive network of factors, get more Better people in the door and the community grows. But they can also have like negative network of facts. For people say this place is dead, it's going down the drain and everybody convenes, everybody else to leave. And there has been a lot of really big communities that seemingly died overnight because this kind of revolt among the people, and unlike in real life where if you revolt into government, like it's very hard to go somewhere else, ah online is super ty easy to be like you know what dig sucks we're going to read IT or you know what like and the act or sucks now we're going to whatever the new thing is, you have to be so carefully ah not upsetting people.

Negative network effects. I never I never thought about terminology that's exactly i'm talking about like with fake communities yeah can I can go to zero really quickly? And so like as a creator of a potential community, like if you're thinking about having going to be a pay community, you need to take really seriously your own investment of time, energy in the beginning to get things going to clear stock the fire and make IT an awesome place because there's no value there. If people aren't any value there, it's it's kind of you know chicken and eg type of thing.

So talk about branding or quick. And I like to get out here. Nathan barrie has been like A A really big figure. And the craters space well before he started to convert kid, which is a tool, a lot of craters users and email, he was doing his own writing and blogging and at a newsletter, and released books at. And he has one called authority.

We talks about, like, how do you brand yourself as a creator? And there's a few different ways you can do IT. Like, you can create something that's like, and quite larger than yourself, you create some brand that to not you. So with andy hackers, it's literally andy hackers court inside n in the name or you can you can basically name after yourself.

So someone who's been super successful but doing that is somebody like James clear? Or do you think barry himself, where essentially everything James clear does is on James clear, that calm every blot posy writes on his website, his books are offered under him, and people follow him because they're really like what he's doing. And Nathan barry, I kind of came down on the side of like you shouldn't name IT after yourself because as you work on multiple projects, let's say you write two different courses in three different books.

It's sucks to create like a different website for every single one of them and everybody like none of like the brand defendant sort of a cruise from one to the other. Um and so he just decided like that the best way to go counter argument to that as how does IT ever become larger than yourself? How do you ever escape from that? You want to do something else. Has anybody else ever buy that or require that from you like you're wrapped into the brand like that seems like that's an extractable. What's been your approach .

and how you thought about this? It's been kind of both. Honestly, your name, your identity is something that you'll never separate from and that you won't sell. You know. So like i'm really excited about freely ency schools as platform that i'm building that is not me centric that i'm building as like I think I didn't make an asset here.

That's a cash generating asset that maybe could be sold someday and and just like very easily and very effectively and very like there will all be like a lot of consideration outside of like people know I know what happened, but i'm still going to benefit from that because the thing is generally the value for me and and not the person. On other hand, I know that my connection to allow the people supporting me as a creator, or supporting me as a creator, you know, like an interesting coral re here, is like on nor at NASA. Pse SHE has a named thing.

But like, he is so central to that still so in that world, like I don't I be interest talk to about about that because like on here I go, you build a thing with the name and that should be a something. But if you're still so central to IT, is there any difference? I don't know, so I I have like my courses.

I have a couple courses under freelancing school that like that's an asset and I instruct them, but IT doesn't matter. I have a couple courses now there are on uh A J K stock m play for my writing goes on j closed ck com. I'm thinking long term like I want to build Jacoby commas and asset that attracts new audience and people that I can help in will continue to do that, but that will evolve with me in in whatever form of a fashion. So i'm kind of hedging in doing both because I I know I need and I wants to personally connect with my people. I love that when I write an email every sunday, i'm just writing to friends like I literally IT feels like i'm writing a zanga post sometimes and I could just be me and it's so easy and let you be more prolific instead of putting on like the free land in school, it's just different as such.

An interesting approach to do both at the same time. And also like a good point that you made that just because something is named differently than you doesn't change the fact on the ground that you might just be that your central to with. So in law, she's very central to everything she's doing at next labs and the maker mind community is created a an opposite example might be someone like lending.

Ricky, I don't know if the familiar attempt is got a very popular news letter named lenny and newsletter, but if you look at how you runs IT, he takes questions for like how to become a Better product manager, how do you do whatever. And it's not like he's the super genius. He knows all the answers.

Here you'll go out and find the best person and have them do kind of a guest post on the topic. So theoretically, even though it's named after him, a lot of the value is coming from the people that he's kind of curation that he's doing and bring to the table and someone could come in and basically do his job and not be any. And you wouldn't know because it's not necessarily written his voice.

Every issue you might be written in someone else a voice. So yeah, maybe it's less to do with what you name in and much more to you tell you run IT. We have even we even talk about your podcast and like all the cool stories you could try to tell about how you ve got sad go and James clear to be your first interview and stuff like that.

So I hope I can have you want again. But maybe the rap things up like you've been through quite a lot as a creator, obviously biggest year ever. This past year, you've got an acquisition, you got big plans for the future. And what's your advice for other creators, slash and hackers, you know, people who want to make content or community and actually make a IT online, wasn't that they can take away from your story? I think taking .

like a relentless action, I don't think that I did anything special. I feel like every single day of my creative business has just been a struggle, honestly, like IT just feels like this is all going so slowly. And I look I look around me and like, oh, they're doing one thing.

They're doing that really well. They're going faster than me. But like at the end the day, progress compounds. So if you show up every day and you put in the time and you work hard, you'll get to a goal line maybe slower than some euros. And that's okay. Not everybody can be the break out success, but if you expand the services of your luck, somethings happen.

Yeah, I like that you let listeners know where they can go to find more about all the different things that you're doing, about what you're doing, S P. I. And your courses and your content and podcast as well.

Let's go to twitter, go to uh, at jay cloud on twitter. I'm also at jay cloud ck com. Pretty easy to fined if you searched for me, but we've not hear from you.

cool. I'll put some links to that in the shown us. Thanks again, jay.