Become a Writer Today

What Is Creative Independence and How Can You Find It? With Jay Clouse

May 02, 2022 Bryan Collins Season 2
Become a Writer Today
What Is Creative Independence and How Can You Find It? With Jay Clouse
Show Notes Transcript

Jay Clouse is the host of the popular podcast, Creative Elements. A couple of months ago, I took one of Jay's podcasting courses, which changed how I think about podcasting and creative work.

In this episode, Jay and I discuss the value of consistency. He's interviewed several top performers, like Seth Godin, and turning up and doing consistent work is often the key to their success.

Jay also says that it's not too late to start a podcast, write a book, or whatever your creative goals are. Jay has talked to podcasters who started their shows as late as 2007, proving that if you're passionate about a topic and understand your niche, you can connect with an audience.

I also asked Jay how he's promoted and built his podcast over the years, and he offers some actionable tips.  We finish the interview talking about NFTs or non-fungible tokens. So if that's something you're interested in, stay tuned until the end of the podcast.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • The techniques he's used for getting high profile guests on his podcast
  • How long it takes Jay to edit a podcast episode
  • How Jay balances all of his work projects
  • Why it's not too late to start a podcast
  • How to monetize your podcast
  • Why all creatives should consider NFTs

Resources:

Support the show

If you enjoyed the show please leave a review on Apple. And if you have any questions you can find me on Twitter @BryanJCollins

Thanks for listening!

Jay: Basically, what I wanna do with the show is I want it to be this look into what is working for creators today who are looking to become full time, because I think that’s ultimately what’s most helpful for people. I don’t want it to be just an autobiographical show where you get a deeper look into the people you already know. I would actually it rather be a little bit more instructive in that it’s helping people learn what is actually working for creators today. And to do that, you need to speak with more up and coming creators who may not have the same name recognition but have more relevant experience right now, in my opinion.

Introduction: Welcome to the Become a Writer Today Podcast with Bryan Collins. Here, you’ll find practical advice and interviews for all kinds of writers.

Bryan: What does creative independence look like and how can you find it? Hi, there. My name is Bryan Collins and welcome to the Become a Writer Today Podcast.

Creative independence, that’s the topic of this week’s episode. I caught up with Jay Clouse, the host of the popular podcast, Creative Elements, and I’ve also taken one of Jay’s podcasting courses a couple of months ago and it’s changed how I think about podcasting. It’s also changed a little bit how I think about creative work. 

A few years ago, I worked as a copywriter for the British software company Sage. Creative work for me at the time meant working for an hour on the morning on short stories and then later transitioning into articles and then later to my site. These days, I’m working full time on my own site and creative projects so I try to spend most of the morning doing creative work, it could be podcasting, it could be writing articles, or even recording videos. 

Then, in the afternoon, I’ll try and do more kind of business-related tasks like paying freelance writers or planning out content for the coming month or reviewing the stats for the site to see what I need to work on next. 

My working theory is that if you work on your craft and on creative work in the morning and if you focus on business-related tasks in the afternoon, you can find a nice balance between the two and avoid going broke. I’m not the only person who’s wondered what creative independence looks like. It’s a theme for Jay’s podcast episode. 

My takeaways from talking to Jay this week are the value of consistency. So Jay’s interviewed a number of top performers, like Seth Godin, and he describes how turning up and doing consistent work is often the key to their success. Although what you may see is the tip of the iceberg, they put in the reps consistently over the years and that’s how they can achieve what they’ve achieved. 

The second takeaway from talking to Jay is that you’re not too late to start a podcast, write a book, or whatever your creative goals are. Jay describes how he’s talked to podcasters who started their shows in 2014 or even 2007 and said at the time, “Is it too late? Have I missed the boat?” The thing is, it’s not too late to start a creative project because more and more people are spending time online today. If you’re passionate about the topic, if you understand your niche or niche, you can connect with an audience. 

So find what drives you creatively and then consider creating some sort of content about it. It could be articles, it could be a book, it could be a course, it could be a YouTube channel, or it could be a podcast. 

I also asked Jay a little bit about how he’s promoted and built his podcast over the years and if you’re thinking of starting one, he’s got some actionable tips. 

Finally, in the end of the interview, we talk about NFTs or non-fungible tokens. I firmly believe NFTs are going to radically change how creators approach their work today, or tomorrow, how they sell their work and connect with audiences. 

Even if you’re not quite ready for NFTs, bear in mind, it’s still something worth learning about. In fact, NFTs was the Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2021. So now would be a good time to read up on this rapidly emerging technology. And then when 2032 rolls around, you can say you got into NFTs first while other people feel like it’s just too late. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this interview with Jay. If you do, do check out his podcast. I’ve learned a lot from some of his guests. You can also reach out to me on Twitter. I’m @bryanjcollins, and let me know if you have suggestions for future guests. 

Now let’s go to this week’s interview with Jay Clouse and I started by asking him about his background and how he came to set up Creative Elements.

Bryan: So, Jay, perhaps we could start by maybe you introducing yourself and telling listeners a little bit about your show? 

Jay: Yeah, totally. My name is Jay Clouse. I host a podcast called Creative Elements where I interview pretty high-profile creators about how they make a living from their art and creativity. People like Seth Godin, James Clear, Vanessa Van Edwards. 

We talk to authors but we also talk to people who are really big on like TikTok or podcasting or things like that. A lot of these people that I have on the show, they do a lot of interviews but they often talk about their work. You know, James Clear will talk about habits, Seth Godin will talk about marketing or branding. 

I wanted to talk to these people about how did you actually make a living as an independent creator, because that is the aspiration of so many people, all of my listeners, obviously, and we look up to these creators but there’s this gap between where we see them operating and where we are and how do we close that. That’s the goal of Creative Elements.

Bryan: Did it take you long to come up with that theme or controlling idea for your podcast or was it something kind of evolved naturally? 

Jay: I think it kind of evolved naturally. I’ve been thinking lately, I don’t remember the origin all that well other than I knew that I wanted to create another podcast and I wanted it to be more aligned with my writing and my interests and I wanted to talk to people in this realm.
 
And, I don’t know, all the stars just kind of aligned and I realized, well, I don’t see any shows like really interviewing these people about how they made this all work from a business perspective and I’m one of those guys that’s just really, really curious about, I wanna get into the weeds. How did this actually happen? Were there any crucible moments or decisions that you made that helped make that easier? 

Because when you start getting into your journey as a creator, it’s really challenging, like there are just challenges after challenges and you have like some success and things are starting to look like they’re going well and you hit this plateau of nothing really changing and you’re wondering like, “What do I change to get to the next kind of growth curve?” And I thought we could pull a lot of that out from the stories of these creators. 

Bryan: You mentioned some high-profile names, Seth Godin, James Clear. Have you noticed any key themes in the way they approach their work? Is there anything that they’re doing consistently that maybe people who are at the start of a creative project should do or could learn from? 

Jay: Yeah, doing consistently is pretty much the theme in most of their stories. And it doesn’t necessarily mean consistency with like, “I rigorously uphold a weekly schedule and I did that for years,” it’s more about like, “I was working at this for years,” like they all have a longer time horizon than you may expect. 

Oftentimes, these people are known for some project or some small part of their body of work that is actually just like the most recent part of a 10-year exploration, you know? So what I’m finding more and more is these people have just been like wildly focused on making this work for many more years than is obvious when you think of them and think of their work.

Bryan: Do you find it’s easy to approach these guests? I mean, some of them are quite well known, I can only imagine the amount of requests and pitches they get on Twitter and email. 

Jay: Yeah. I mean, it’s getting easier because I can point to some of the other guests I’ve had on the show and that’s pretty good social proof. I have good download numbers. I’ve grown my own creative platform a little bit so it’s definitely getting easier, but it was hard in the beginning, for sure. It was not hard mechanically but hard like psychologically and emotionally to put out these asks and know that, well, I’ll probably be told no, or, oftentimes, more often than being told no, I’m just flat out ignored. 

So, that can be challenging psychologically. But, you know, I tell people, we were talking before this a little bit about the podcast course that I have, I tell people in my podcast course, you should reach high from the beginning and do whatever you can to call in a favor or position yourself to get really impressive guests from the beginning because future guests are going to look at your guest list and say, “Is this a show that people like me go on?” And you want that to be an easy choice for them.

Bryan: So your first interview was with Seth Godin, did you have other interviews that you were able to point to and say, “Seth, I’ve interviewed X, Y, and Zed,” and then you were able to pitch him? 

Jay: Well, with Seth, in particular, he has a program called The Podcasting Fellowship that in 2018 he launched and I took part in that with my first podcast called Upside and that podcast did okay but it got picked up in a couple of media outlets by chance. And so, at one point, I emailed Seth to say, “Hey, because of The Podcast Fellowship, we have this podcast and it was just featured in Fortune magazine, just wanted to say thank you.” And he used that story as part of like The Podcasting Fellowship sales page at one point and I didn’t ask him anything when I sent him that thank you, I just said thank you. And when it came time to start interviewing people for Creative Elements, I reached out to him on the same email thread and said, “I’m starting another show and I think you’d be a great guest,” and I think that like history is what pushed him over the edge. 

Bryan: That’s a good way to do it. For your other guests, I mean, I can’t imagine you know all — I think you maybe have two shows published at the time of recording this interview, can’t imagine you know them all so do you connect with them on Twitter first or do you take their courses or do you have some other approach?

Jay: All of the above. It can happen in a lot of ways. But, generally, the people I have on the show, like I have some preexisting knowledge and interest in their work so I can very genuinely send a very personalized message and say, “Hey, this is why I’m reaching out to you. Here’s the show that I’m doing. I think you’d be a great guest. Here’s what you need to know. Are you interested in coming on the show?” 

I do often also ask listeners for recommendations of guests and so I can reach out to that person and say, “Hey, you’ve come up and been requested by my listeners. It’d be really great to have you on the show.” But, sometimes it’s over Twitter. I don’t think I’ve booked anyone over Instagram. Most times just email. Usually I find their email and just reach out.

Bryan: Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I’ve tried a couple of different approaches. So, your show is quite well scripted, that’s probably what sets it apart from other podcasts. Sometimes you’ll splice in audio from different episodes and then you have an intro where you talk about what’s coming up and some of your takeaways. 

I used to work as a radio producer and it reminded me of some of the magazine shows that we published during the weekends. Did you have a background in radio? Because you did take your production to another level. 

Jay: No, this is something that the podcast network, I’m a part of the Podglomerate, and the CEO there, Jeff, when I was putting the show together, initially, he kind of pushed me on this point. Because the first like — the first version of Creative Elements that I sent him was just a raw interview, wasn’t edited at all. It was just me talking to a guy from beginning to end. 

The intro was kind of like a 5- to 10-minute meandering, Marc Maron-style rant, because I had this thought of like, I want people listening to the show to get to know me and to, you know, feel connected to me in some way and I thought the best way to do that was just to do kind of like a monologue talking about my life and Jeff listened to that and he’s like, “Well, this is definitely a show but I don’t think it’s that good or that differentiated and you kinda have to earn the right for people to care about you beyond your guest.” 

So, he encouraged me to listen to a show called — it’s a Gimlet Media show, Without Fail. Encouraged me to listen to Without Fail from Gimlet which no longer exists and I’d also been a longtime fan of a podcast called Tropical MBA and between listening to those two shows and their format, I kind of took inspiration from them and kind of came up with this format, where the intro was going to be really scripted. I like pulling in clips from the interview itself into the intro, sometimes even some third-party audio to help tell the story into the intro. 

And because we have two mid-roll ad spots, I wanted that to be a comfortable transition from interview to ad back to interview and then back to ad and then back to interview again. And the best way to do that that I found was to do some voiceover, to say, “After a quick break, we’ll talk about this, this, and this so stick around, we’ll be right back,” then the ad spot and come in and say, “Hey, welcome back to my conversation with Bryan Collins,” and that introduced the ability then to use voiceover just generally in the podcast, which is helpful actually. 

A lot of people listen and they think, “Wow, you’re doing this voiceover, this narration cutting in, that must be a lot of work,” but actually, it kinda covers for when I ask stupid questions or ask questions in a stupid way because I can cut out my own voice and record narration that makes it sound more efficient and well thought out and it makes the whole production better. So, it’s really not that challenging. It was a bit of invention in the beginning and took some practice but now it just really helps make the whole story flow. 

Bryan: How long does it take you to edit an episode after you’ve recorded one?

Jay: After I record the episode, I use Squadcast, just like we are here, I send the separate files to my audio engineer, he mixes together one single interview file that he cuts out like the ums, ahs, the filler words, then I take that audio file and it takes me about four to five hours in total to take that from raw file to now I have my voiceover scripted, I’ve read my voiceover, I’ve moved things around, and I might even have pulled some external audio, about four to five hours. 

Bryan: That’s a lot of work for a show. It sounds like it forms a good chunk of your working week. 

Jay: Yeah, unfortunately, it forms a good chunk of my non-working weekend. But I’ve gotten better at kinda breaking it into pieces because after I have the interview file, there’s actually three discrete steps that are not that similar and it takes a different headspace and I was — before, I was trying to do it in like just one big 4- to 5-hour chunk and that is listening through the interview, cutting stuff that I don’t want, moving stuff around, moving stuff into the intro, and just labeling the bits. That’s one piece. 

Then I have scripting of the narration and the voiceover. And then I have recording. So what I do now is I will find time to do that initial like cut of the interview and that usually takes two-ish hours and then I’ll sit with it and overnight or over a period of a couple of days, it helps me think about like what is the story I wanna tell in my narration and then that takes, you know, maybe close to an hour and then reading doesn’t take a whole lot after that. 

Bryan: It’s almost like writing a long-form article. You write the article in one go but you can’t really edit the article immediately afterwards. 

Jay: The intros for my episodes are typically more than 500 words so it is like I’m writing a blog post for the intro of every podcast episode. Not to mention, you know, any of the narration which usually there’s at least four bits of narration: intro, outro, and the two ad spots. And I’ll usually throw in one or two more that are necessary. So, yeah, I’m writing probably 1,000 words plus per episode. 

Bryan: That’s a lot. That’s a lot. So I’m looking at your podcast page at the moment. Your latest episode is by, well, actually, maybe an older episode, it was by Erik Jorgensen and it’s on the topic of curation. It’s actually one from last year. So does that theme emerge organically and then you come up with it after the interview? Or do you come up with the theme of curation and figure out questions to ask your guests beforehand? 

Jay: At this point, we start with the theme, because I tell them, like the show’s called Creative Elements, I like to orient each episode around a thematic element of your style or approach or personality that’s been helpful to you and your career. Some guests have talked about revision or brand or consistency. 

Does anything come to mind off the top of your head? And I also have that prompt when they book their interview so, hopefully, they’ve read the email and they’re thinking about it. But I ask that before we start recording and so, typically, I’ll do that at the beginning of the episode and they’ve thought about it and they’ll give me a response and I’ll try to guide the conversation there. But, yeah, that’s usually before the interview itself. 

Bryan: Okay. And you also create custom artwork for each one of your episodes. Do you do that with a designer?

Jay: It’s actually my sister. My sister is a comedian and a writer herself but she’s picked up the illustration as kind of a hobby. So it’s kind of a fun way and fun excuse to collaborate with my sister on something and I pay her but she enjoys doing it and, basically, I give her like a very, very brief description of who the guest is and what their element is and just let her connect those ideas in her mind and draw something that she thinks is fun. 

Bryan: Over the years, I’ve tried to make some improvements to my podcasts. I use Squadcast, which I find is quite helpful for interview quality. I upgraded the mic to a Shure M7, which I really like, it’s a nice purchase, and a couple of other changes as well. But when you think of your podcast, is there any direction that you’d like to take it in in the future? 

Jay: Basically, what I wanna do with the show is I want it to be this look into what is working for creators today who are looking to become full time, because I think that’s ultimately what’s most helpful for people. I don’t want it to be just an autobiographical show where you get a deeper look into the people you already know. I would actually it rather be a little bit more instructive in that it’s helping people learn what is actually working for creators today.
 
And to do that, you need to speak with more up and coming creators who may not have the same name recognition but have more relevant experience right now, in my opinion. Like Tim Urban’s an incredible writer and he’s built this incredible business and I talked to a ton of writers who just like really aspire to have Tim Urban’s life because he writes giant pieces very infrequently on waitbutwhy.com and a lot of people are like, “How do I just become Tim Urban?” And I talked to Tim Urban and he will tell you flat out and he did in the episode that, well, he got lucky in that he started sharing his articles on Facebook when Facebook was organically trying to show publishers how much reach they could give articles. So like his story is one of, yes, good writing, but also incredible timing that we can’t replicate right now. So, is it really that useful to hear about how Tim Urban made his business go? 

Not really. It’s just not because you can write something incredibly high quality, just like Tim, but if you don’t have a distribution mechanism, you don’t have an opportunity like Facebook trying to push something for the first time, it’s just not going to work for you today. 

Bryan: Also, the world already has a Tim Urban. I mean, he’s very specific content format. 

Jay: Yes, yes. So, yeah, I would like to take the show in a direction of talking to more up and coming creators who are doing new and interesting things that are working today. But the challenge is my episodes are titled with the name of the person and if you don’t recognize the name of the person, you’re less likely to click Play. So I really have to build a lot of trust and credibility with my audience so that they’ll play episodes where they may not recognize the person I’m interviewing.

Bryan: On clicking Play, you’ve described in your course about joining a podcast conglomerate or a podcast network. Wasn’t really something I’d heard about, to be honest, until I took your course. Should podcasters consider joining one? Is it something they need to do if they want to increase their downloads?

Jay: I won’t say it’s something that you need to do to increase your downloads but it will certainly give you a better chance if you don’t already have a built-in distribution system for yourself. And not to say that it was just like so easy plug and play that I tell the Podglomerate, “Hey, I have a new episode,” and somehow they’re beaming that out to more listeners. 

What they did is they have a lot of relationships to the existing shows in the network, for sure, but also to some of the listening apps so what they were able to help me do was when we launched the show, they were able to get the show a little bit of press, a little bit of attention, a little bit of featured time in those different listening apps, which really helped build an initial audience and the easiest way or like the best way to grow any type of content business is through your existing audience. 

But if you don’t have one, like that spread’s not going to be very fast so they helped me kind of kick start things in the beginning. Is it necessary? No. Is it even likely that the majority of shows will be able to find a network that is credible and can help with that type of thing and is willing to take on your show? I think there’s more demand than there is supply so you have to like stand out and build relationships with some sort of network to pull that off. 

And also, it seems like most credible networks either want to bring you on before the show launches so they can help build that initial audience or they wanna bring you on once you’ve already built an audience. They don’t wanna take on a show that is already publishing but doesn’t have much of an audience. So that’s tough for a lot of podcasters. 

Bryan: Makes sense. Makes sense. So do you think podcasting has a long tail? The reason I ask I’ve noticed with some articles that I’d write, it might not perform, you know, on day one or week one, but then when you look back in six months’ time, it slowly starts to rise organically in search results. 

Jay: No, I don’t. Because like there aren’t really search results in the same way. The discovery and organic search of podcast just isn’t there to the same degree that writing is or even video. YouTube is an incredible search engine. Google is an incredible search engine. There’s not a great podcast search engine that people are using, like people aren’t typically going to some sort of search engine to specifically say I have a question I want the answer but I want the answer in podcast form. It’s just not user behavior yet. 

So, I don’t see much of an organic long tail. What I have seen though, once somebody does discover your show and they’re interested in it, I’m surprised by how many people still go back to episode 1 to start the show versus like the most recent episode.

Bryan: Interesting, interesting. Because often episode 1 is — I know if I think back to my earlier episodes, they were pretty rough around the edges, whereas I put a bit more time into newer episodes. So I’m also curious, you have a couple of different projects. You’re involved with Pat Flynn on SPI Pro, his community, and Freelancer School, how do you find time to balance all of your projects in a working week? 

Jay: That’s a great question. It’s challenging. It’s like my biggest challenge is I’m over committed, I have too many projects. So I’m in a season right now of trimming down the number of things that I’m involved in so I can focus on fewer of them. 

I had a friend described this as, let’s assume you get to kick a kick ball six times each day. Would you rather kick six balls once or one ball six times? Like which one’s gonna go further? And it’s a lot more obvious than like, oh, yeah, it would really behoove me to kick fewer balls. And so, I mean, at this point, I have a background in product management so I’ve always been good at managing a lot of things at different stages of completion and taking notes of things that need to be done as opposed to trying to remember it. 

I have a really good task management system with deadlines, I’m good at managing that. I’m very like intrinsically motivated by deadlines. But, yeah, I have to be just kind of militant about my time. 

Bryan: It can be difficult to tackle overwhelm all right, especially when there’s so many different opportunities for creators. In terms of starting the podcast, years ago, when you when you looked on the iTunes podcast store, a lot of podcasts were names, you know, like Tim Ferriss, whereas these days a lot of podcasts, although Tim still ranks, tend to be brands or companies. So is it too late to start one? 

Jay: No, I don’t think it’s too late to start one at all. There are more than 30 million YouTube channels and about 2 million podcasts. So that comparison isn’t completely apples to apples and YouTube videos, on average, are a lot shorter than podcast episodes on average, but I don’t think it’s too late at all. It is more challenging. It’s more challenging than it’s ever been. But it will also be even more challenging a year from now. So it’s better to get started now than wait. I don’t think you’re too late. But you should also be really clear about what your goals are as a podcaster. 

Why are you doing the podcast? Is it because you want to earn revenue from it? Or is it because you want to have this asset and this thing to point to say, “Here’s why I’m credible,” or is it a way to attract clients? You need to know what those goals you have yourself are because they will be easier or harder to achieve as an indie podcaster. Like if you’re looking to get clients, you don’t need a ton of listeners. If you’re looking to have something that looks credible and gives you practice and gives you a reason and way to meet people, also a lot easier to achieve. If you’re trying to make serious income from podcasting, that’s more challenging. 

Bryan: I can imagine. What are the best ways for new podcasters to monetize or should they even consider monetizing?

Jay: I think you should absolutely consider monetizing. What you should know though is unless you’re in the tens of thousands of downloads per month, you’re probably not going to work with most advertisers who use like a CPM model where they’re buying based on the number of impressions that your show gets. And that’s what the big players in advertising use. That’s what like Squarespace uses and MeUndies and things like that, they use a CPM model. You’re not gonna get that type of advertiser until you’re in the tens of thousands of listeners per month, and usually like per episode. 

So, if you wanna monetize your show, what you should think about is what type of audience do I have and who is that valuable to at a higher level. And what I mean by that is, if you have a small audience, somebody buying, you know, a $25 widget from an advertiser, you’re gonna have to have a lot of people buy that for an advertiser’s spend to make sense on your show. Whereas if you have an audience that has certain like service provider needs, maybe they need an accountant or a lawyer, those service providers, their contracts with clients are higher value so they don’t need as many conversions to make that sponsorship worth it. 

So, if you have a smaller audience, think about who is that audience and what type of service providers want to work with them to make that spend on their part worthwhile, even if the number of conversions in an absolute sense is not very high.

Bryan: Yeah, I guess it boils down to your goal for the podcast, because that could take away from the creative side of it if you wanna be that analytical about how to monetize your show. You also spend a lot of time supporting the growth of communities such as SPI Pro. Had you any thoughts on how NFTs or non-fungible tokens could change communities in the future? I know you’ve interviewed a few guests about NFTs.

Jay: We’re really going there? This is like all I’m thinking about right now, to be honest. This is like my biggest — this is where I’m spending a lot of time. And I don’t know that we have enough time to cover it. But what’s really interesting about the promise of Web 3.0 and Community is buying access to a membership is not new behavior, it’s not new capabilities.
 
Let’s take like season tickets for a sports team or let’s say that you joined a country club and you pay your membership dues each year or whatever. Historically, if you wanted to like no longer have that membership, you just don’t renew. In the Web 3.0 world, when membership is equally scarce but it is governed by some sort of digital asset, whether it’s an NFT or a fungible token, you own that and if you don’t want it anymore, you can resell it. 

And not only can you recapture the value on that membership, communities that become even more successful, demand will outpace supply, and the value of that asset may have appreciated quite a bit, like you can actually create wealth for your community members in NFT tokenized world. So that’s really exciting to me and something that I really want to experiment with and play around with and it’s something I’m putting a lot of thought into right now. 

Bryan: Yeah, having spent the past few months reading up on NFTs and buying one or two of them, I feel like the spaces, the communities that I’ve joined are still rife with scammers. Like I joined a few Discord communities and it was not a pleasant experience. 

Jay: Yeah, yeah. It’s tough. And it’s tough for people who aren’t familiar with the space to immerse and integrate themselves because it is like dangerous and intense. So I would like to create a bridge to help people who are interested in this space but can’t fully immerse themselves a safe pathway for them to learn about it and stay connected to it without having to be spending all day in the noise. 

Bryan: Do you think every creator should start considering NFTs or are we still a few years away? 

Jay: No, absolutely you should. We are super, super early. I actually think about this in the context of podcasting sometimes, because on Creative Elements, I’ve spoken to podcasters who started their show in 2014 and thought, “I’m too late.” I’ve talked with podcasters who started their show in 2007. And at 2007, they thought that they were too late to podcasting. So I liken where we are right now in NFTs and the creators’ opportunity there to like the podcaster in 2007 who thought they’re too late. Like actually, you are wildly early, like so early, totally fine, maybe even earlier than 2007, relatively speaking. 

So definitely pay attention to it. Because, you know, if you have the thought of, well, this exists and some people are starting to play around but maybe we’re a few years out, that is when the biggest players 10 years from now are getting started. 

Bryan: Finally, in terms of a creative day for you, I mean it is something I think about sometimes, what would an ideal day for you look like when you’re working on greater projects?

Jay: No meetings on the calendar whatsoever. That’s it. That’s literally it. I just don’t want anything on my calendar all day. I want to wake up when I wake up, I want to make coffee, I wanna go for a walk with my coffee, I wanna come home and I wanna just start making and there’s no notifications, there’s nothing on my calendar. That’s it. 

Bryan: And by making, you mean scripting, podcasting, any type of content?

Jay: Yeah, whatever I make in the day. I mean, sometimes, it’s making a podcast episode. It would not be an interview because there’s like a time-sensitive piece of that and like an interaction. I actually like just not interacting with people for a day of creating.

Bryan: Sounds like the classic introvert creative.

Jay: Yeah. Sometimes I like being around people, like sometimes I go into public places and working there, but I don’t want the expectation of conversation. So it might be working on a podcast, it might be writing, it might be building the frontend of a WordPress site, you know? Whatever it takes, something that I’m excited about, it’s related to a project that I’m excited about, making real, that’s all good.

Bryan: Jay, where can people learn more about you or your show?

Jay: You can find the show by searching Creative Elements in your podcast player. If you like podcasting, I really think you’ll like it. You can find me on Twitter, @jayclouse.

Bryan: Thank you, Jay.

Jay: Hey, thanks, Bryan.

(outro)

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