Joining me this week is Jay Clouse.
Jay helps creators earn a living. I met Jay on Twitter, where the creator economy really took off in 2020 and throughout the pandemic. Jay has impressed me with his ability to build community and most importantly, to talk about community, ever since I met him.
Jay is the mind responsible for Creative Science, a phenomenal newsletter for entrepreneurs in the creative space, and he’s the host of Creative Elements and Narrative Interview Podcast, exploring how today’s top creators make a living with their art and creativity.
He previously led the community experience team for Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income, a multimillion-dollar online course and community. He designed their paid membership community and cohort-based programs and has gone on to have much success with his own versions of those.
I first sat down with Jay early last year to talk about community building for a private community I was running at that time. This conversation, just over a year later, is a chance to revisit some of those ideas and unpack the new insights that Jay has to share.
But if you are thinking of building a community now, this could be a learning community, it could be a cohort-based program within your company, or it could be a gathering of professionals that you’re trying to bring together. Any of those things are potentially community.
We start this episode by unpacking whether or not you should actually be building a community. You will learn about:
- Uncovering the job to be done for your community.
- Why making it peer-to-peer instead of one way is so critical.
- Why making the implicit explicit is going to help you define the rules of engagement for your community.
- How to increase the surface area of one-on-one connections at a human level with members.
- What to do with rockstars and lurkers in your community.
- How to create spaces for people and set milestones for members.
- How to know when your community is coming to an end and what to do about it.
I consider Jay one of the foremost experts on building communities. I think this is an incredibly important topic and a growing one in the space of corporate learning, enablement, and education. And I think you’re going to learn a lot from his experiences in the creator economy.
So, without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Jay Clouse.
Full Episode
Guest Links
Show Notes
- How and why Jay started building communities. (00:04:14-00:07:08)
- The first important steps in building a community. (00:07:09-00:08:54)
- The value of making it peer-to-peer rather than one way. (00:08:55-00:10:38)
- Defining the ground rules for your community by making the implicit explicit. (00:10:39-00:13:05)
- Jay’s community experience then and now, how the space evolves, and the lessons he learned along the way. (00:13:06-00:17:59)
- What do people really look for in a community? (00:18:00-00:22:42)
- Increasing the surface area of one-on-one human connections with members. (00:22:43-00:25:35)
- Jay’s thoughts and experiences on keeping a community member’s engagement going. (00:26:13-00:34:29)
- How to deal with rockstars and lurkers in your community. (00:34:30-00:41:58)
- Creating spaces for people and establishing milestones for members. (00:41:59-00:47:53)
- Recognizing when your community is coming to an end and what to do about it. (00:47:54-00:50:41)
- Best community resources recommendations from Jay and where you can find him on social media. (00:50:42-00:51:44)
Selected Links from the Episode
👉 Continue the conversation with me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
~ This episode is brought to you by The Learning Culture Experience~