About Creator Science®

It's never been easier to join the creator economy – and that's a great thing!

But the creator landscape is becoming noisy. There's so much competition for attention that you may be struggling to break through.

Even worse – it may feel like you’re shouting into the void.

Our Mission

Our mission is to help you break through that noise and earn a living as a professional creator. So, every week, we share evidence-backed advice to help you succeed as a creator today.

Look, sometimes you get lucky.

Sometimes things go viral.

But virality and luck are nearly impossible to predict or engineer.

We believe there's only one way to ensure that you earn a living as a professional creator – and it’s not wishing for luck or hoping you go viral.

The only reliable way to find success as a creator is through constant, disciplined experimentation.

We help you develop an experimentality.

An experimentality is an experiment mentality (get it?).

Instead of relying on best practices, stale tactics, or templates, an experimentality pushes you to run small, controlled experiments to find the truth in the data.

Our Beliefs

The word "creator" is broad and inclusive, but it can also be confusing. Some YouTubers see the word "creator" to be synonymous with "YouTuber."

Here's our working definition, first shared in 2019:

My definition has changed slightly over time:

Creators make things with the audience in mind.

As a result, creators create value for the consumer while also capturing value for themselves.

It doesn't matter what platform or medium you create within. If you're building a business predicated on capturing attention and earning an income from that attention, you're a creator.

We also believe creators generally fall into one of two camps:

1. creator-educators
2. creator-entertainers

We spend more time studying creator-educators because I think there's more room for people to enter that space (plus, you don't need to compete with actual celebrities)!

A professional creator is someone who not only creates content for others but is also rewarded financially for their work. More often than not, they're leveraging their earned insight.

We're talking about a real, livable income here – even wealth. You might do that through a YouTube channel, podcast, blog, or something else.

It doesn’t matter what medium you use or what platforms you choose to connect with your audience. If you create consistently, you can become a professional creator.

Our Approach

Through studying hundreds of creators, we noticed a pattern:

Today's top creators aren't just artists. They're scientists.

I know, when you hear the word "science" you start thinking of beakers, test tubes, and lab coats.

But stick with us here.

Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the world through observation and experimentation.

And a scientist is the person conducting that study (hi, it's us). 👋

Remember the scientific method from grade school?

1. Make an observation
2. Ask a question
3. Form a hypothesis or testable explanation
4. Make a prediction based on the hypothesis
5. Test the prediction
6. Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions

That sounds like a pretty useful way to understand and grow your creator business, right?

The creators you look up to don't leave growth to chance. They are constantly forming new hypotheses, testing things, and changing direction based on the results. Not only that, but they share their results with their creator friends!

Creator Science is your new creator friend.

Each week, we share evidence-backed advice to help you succeed as a creator today. And this evidence doesn’t only come from our own experiments – it comes from hundreds of other creators who are running their own experiments too.

Most brands focus on templates and tactics. But we focus on helping you develop your own experimentality.

An experimentality is what makes you a creator scientist.

Because, ultimately, your biggest breakthroughs will come from experimenting, innovating, and discovering your OWN path.

How We Can Help You

There are several different ways and mediums that Creator Science can help you become a professional creator – and most of them are completely free.

Newsletter

We have a weekly newsletter designed to help you become a smarter creator.

Every Sunday you'll receive:

• Evidence-backed growth advice
• Interviews with top creators
• First-hand experiments from my own creator business
• New tools and how I use them
• ...and more.

Subscribe and join 27,000+ creators learning from firsthand experiments, expert interviews, and actionable advice every week.

Subscribe here:

Podcast

Each week, our podcast digs into the details of how creators are finding success today. Not what worked 2, 5, or 10 years ago, but specific strategies and tactics that are working TODAY.

You’ll hear conversations with some of today’s top professional creators including James Clear, Ali Abdaal, Tim Urban, and Codie Sanchez.

You'll also hear firsthand experiments and actionable advice from the host, Jay Clouse. Jay is the founder of Creator Science and he documents how he earns more than $500,000 per year as a professional creator himself.

Creator Science (formerly Creative Elements) is a Signal Award-winning podcast and part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Subscribe here or started with our curated Playlists.

YouTube Channel

On the channel, I share my own experience, behind the scenes of my business, and also interview other top creators.

We explore how creators like Justin Welsh, Hayden-Hillier Smith, Sara Dietschy, and Thomas Frank are building their audiences today. Not what worked 2, 5, or 10 years ago, but specific strategies and tactics that are working for them today.

Courses

We offer a growing catalog of platform-specific courses to help you accelerate your creator journey.

Our most popular courses include:

• Build A Beloved Membership
• Podcast Like The Pros
• Newsletter Masterclass
• Creator Catalyst (we recommend starting here)

Membership

The Lab is a membership community where professional creators experiment and grow – together.

The Lab has a cap on total members (200) and has been at that cap for several months. However, you can typically get into The Lab within a couple of months by purchasing a Basic Membership or joining the Waitlist.

About Jay Clouse

My name is Jay – I'm the founder of Creator Science.

I started my career in startups and had a couple of successful exits, But in 2017, I hit a wall.

I was sick of my job. But I was also afraid to go out on my own.

Working with a coach, I realized that I was holding onto a limiting belief:

I didn’t believe that I was creative or even talented.

Fast forward to today and I earn more than $500K per year as a professional creator. My entire livelihood literally comes from my ideas and creative work.

...and I've never been happier.

Here's a breakdown of my business as a creator:

My success didn’t come from a single breakthrough moment. My success has come from six years of small, controlled experiments that led to small, incremental improvements. Incremental improvements have compounded into big results.

And now, I’m passing those lessons on to you.

TL;DR: Short Bio

Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, a media company supporting professional creators.

With more than 40,000 newsletter subscribers and 2 million podcast downloads, Creator Science has cemented itself as a leading voice in the creator economy.

In 2023, Jay was named “Content Entrepreneur of the Year” by The Tilt and the Creator Science podcast was a 2022 Signal Award winner.

Previously, Jay’s community Unreal Collective was acquired by Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income. There, he went on to design SPI’s paid membership community and cohort-based course programs.

My Creator Stats

• 1,500,000+ podcast downloads
• $1,000,000+ earned as a creator
• $120,000+ earned from podcasting alone
• $100,000+ in digital product sales
• $420,000+ in membership sales
• 39,000+ email subscribers
• 12 published courses (including LinkedIn Learning)
• 7 private investments (including Maven and Gumroad)
• 2 companies started and sold
• Profiled in Business Insider

Get In Touch

Want to talk about some sort of collaboration?

I'm open to opportunities like:

• Speaking
• Podcast/YouTube guesting
• Sponsorship
• Advising

Simply reach out to start the conversation.