Creator Science

#298: 9 Things I'm Doing Differently in My Business

Nearing the end of Q1, I've been doing a lot of reflection on where the creator economy is heading, and where I want to take Creator Science. There's something interesting happening on the ground: the same energy that used to funnel beginners into content creation has largely shifted to AI and vibe coding. And honestly? I think that's a good thing. The people still showing up for this work seem to have their heads and hearts in the right place. In this episode, I walk you through 9 priorities on my mind right now — some tactical, some strategic, some still just ideas. From returning to the 1,000 True Fans model and posting more educational content about trust, to building internal AI tools for Creator Science, redesigning member onboarding, and taking November and December completely off. If you're a creator thinking about where to focus your energy in the back half of 2026, I think there's something here for you. Join The Lab 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly Subscribe to the Creator Science Newsletter → Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) The shifting energy in the creator space (05:01) Overview of 9 priorities for 2026 (05:38) Priority 1: Return to 1,000 True Fans (12:44) Priority 2: Being more outspoken (14:53) Priority 3: Increasing the rate of experiments in business and The Lab (17:45) Priority 4: Updating member and subscriber onboarding (23:52) Priority 5: In-person events and experiences for the broader audience (27:57) Priority 6: Getting more time back — taking November and December off (31:58) Priority 7: Building internal tools for Creator Science (42:59) Priority 8: Fewer, longer-term sponsorship partnerships (44:33) Priority 9: Making contact without expectation (46:52) Full recap of all 9 priorities *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → 48 Hours with Clawdbot (Episode 291) *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE → Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#297: Joy Sullivan — How She Built A Living As A Writer On Instagram and Substack

Joy Sullivan is a Portland-based poet who quit her corporate job mid-pandemic and built a thriving creative business through writing carousels on Instagram (115K followers), her Substack "Necessary Salt" (23K subscribers), and a 250-member paid writing community called Sustenance on Circle. She's a former Lab member, and in 2024, she published her first book, Instructions for Traveling West, with Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. What makes her path genuinely unusual: she grew her Instagram predominantly through writing, not video, and she's proof that you can build a real creative business around poetry, which almost nobody does. In this conversation, we get into the tension between craft and platform—her two mantras ("be a poet, not a preacher" and "my vulnerability is not social currency"), her exact Instagram carousel workflow using Canva and ManyChat, why she deliberately walked away from $60K/year in Substack revenue to protect her second book, her controversial take on growing slowly, and what she'd do differently with her first published collection. Plus my own honest reflection on the creative reset I've been living through since my daughter was born. Joy Sullivan Poet Necessary Salt on Substack Sustenance Writing Community Instructions for Traveling West Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Opening quote: “There is no amount of followers worth the sacrifice” (02:08) How Jay describes Joy’s unique approach to building a creative business (02:49) The landscape for writers today — platform pressure meets craft demands (05:19) Why Instagram, not X or LinkedIn, is actually the friendliest platform for writers (08:21) Joy’s two mantras: “Be a poet, not a preacher” + “My vulnerability is not social currency” (11:38) Memorable vs. marketable — and why slow growth protects your art (12:25) Is creating art divorced from performance a privilege or a strategy for newcomers? (14:06) Jay’s biological hard reset after having a daughter — and cosplaying an old self (17:10) The Medusa metaphor: artists weren’t built to withstand this level of visibility (20:30) Reconciling “be a poet” with running a teaching business (22:53) Why certainty is a red flag in 2026 (24:52) Defining “poet” — a container to hold the unsayable (26:00) Instagram vs. Substack: which one she’d keep if forced to choose (27:22) The $60K Substack year — and why she deliberately walked away from it (29:34) How full-time writers actually pay their bills (hint: not book sales) (32:00) Why you should NOT turn on paid Substack subscriptions immediately (34:56) The Instagram carousel workflow: Substack → test → pull excerpts → Canva → ManyChat (39:48) The cat synchronicity moment — and the “scars not scabs” philosophy (44:50) What she’d do differently about her first book (47:31) What she’d change about Substack if she could (48:32) Final advice: fall in love with your craft before chasing an audience Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#296: Meet The Man Who Solved YouTube (With Data)—Richard from 1of10

Richard is the co-founder of 1of10, a research platform built by YouTube strategists, and his team has quietly been behind the scenes for some of the biggest channels on the platform—helping creators accumulate over 2 billion views through a repeatable, data-backed system. In this episode, Richard walks through his complete four-phase ideation system—audience identification, outlier research (using five distinct methods), idea remixing, and validation—and backs every step with real examples. We talk about what happens when the wrong audience floods your channel, why creators should double and triple down on formats that work, and how a single title change took one creator's video from 10,000 views to 150,000. He also shares data from 300,000+ YouTube outliers on the ideal title length (hint: shorter than you think) and where the sweet spots are for video duration across different niches. Save 20% on 1of10 using code JAY20 Schedule a 1of10 Strategy Call Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (01:12) Where 80-85% of YouTube success comes from (01:50) Phase 1: Audience (03:19) When should you start a fresh channel instead of pivoting? (04:09) The danger of going viral with the wrong audience (05:40) Phase 2: Research (07:37) Format vs. Interest Topic (08:00) Method 1: Inside your own channel (10:52) Tripling and quadrupling down (12:33) Method 2: Inside your niche (13:45) Method 3: Adjacent niches (16:00) Method 4: Outside your niche (17:37) The "Japanese Rule" format (20:56) Method 5: External inspiration (22:07) Phase 3: Remixing (23:00) Escalation, inversion, and interest topic replacement (24:10) Viral vectors: concepts that work across all niches (25:28) Phase 4: Validation (27:00) Optimal video duration by niche (30:45) Why long videos are making a comeback (31:39) Total Addressable Viewership (34:36) Titles: Fear, Curiosity, and Desire as the three core drivers (37:17) Data: Title Length (37:51) Three methods for generating title angles (42:11) Thumbnails: Composition and Elements (45:11) It's never too late: title/thumbnail changes (46:10) Live demo: 1of10 thumbnail generator (48:10) The full 1of10 workflow *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → #282: David Altizer — How to Make Great Thumbnails (For Non-Designers) *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#295: Community Building Trends for 2026 with Becky Pierson Davidson

I brought back Becky Pierson Davidson to compare notes on where community is headed — and we found a few areas of disagreement. Becky works with 6, 7, and 8-figure businesses helping them build memberships and courses through design thinking and customer research, and she's seeing a major shift right now: course businesses are slowing down, and the smart ones are pivoting to membership models. The difference? Shared learning experiences are replacing self-paced education. Community is what people stay for. We dig into the real mechanics: how to set expectations that don't feel like a bait-and-switch, why meaningful engagement isn't what most people think it is, the mastermind paradox (increases retention, decreases forum activity), and why in-person events might be the most important retention lever you're not using. Becky's hot take for 2026: content drops are dying. People don't need more stuff — they need connection and programming that moves them forward. Affinity Collective Build with Becky podcast Episode 197: Building Raving Fans (with Becky & Chanel) Circle (community platform) TightKnit (Slack archive plugin) Dreamers and Doers Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (02:35) Defining community as a product, not a growth engine (04:09) Why community is rising as a business model in 2026 (06:02) The reality of transitioning from courses to memberships (08:01) Finding the right community design for your appetite (10:02) How to avoid the bait-and-switch with member expectations (13:06) Value perception vs. value experience (13:57) The smallest viable promise for your sales page (16:44) Where we disagree: transformation vs. community of practice (21:14) Forum design: why fewer spaces wins (23:17) Solving the engagement problem (what meaningful engagement actually is) (25:50) How the best members actually use your community (29:46) The mastermind paradox: retention up, forum participation down (32:09) In-person experiences and the graduation weekend model (36:39) The economics of offline events (39:35) 2026 Hot Take: Content drops are dying (43:07) Retention rethink: Did I get my money's worth vs. Will I next year? (46:04) Why connection drives retention more than results (48:23) Tool stack: Circle 9 times out of 10 (51:14) The future: personalization in community software *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → Episode 197: Building Raving Fans *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE → Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#294: Rob Walling — SaaS godfather turned creator talks team building and vibe coding

Rob Walling is a godfather of the bootstrapped SaaS movement — he's started 6 companies (5 bootstrapped), built and sold Drip for 8 figures, and created the infrastructure behind MicroConf, TinySeed (which has raised nearly $60 million and invested in over 210 SaaS companies), and Startups for the Rest of Us (820+ episodes over 15 years). But here's what surprised me: Rob told me he's more of a creator these days than a software founder. The guy who built and sold an email marketing platform now gets his dopamine from podcasting, writing books, and making YouTube videos. And his experience on both sides gives him a perspective on the vibe coding trend that I think every creator needs to hear. In this episode, we get into the actual mechanics of how Rob runs his business — the team of 11 people, the $100,000-$120,000 monthly payroll, the four brands he wishes were two. We talk about how he eliminated stress from his life through therapy, hiring owner-level thinkers, and handing the project management to someone else entirely. And we have a real conversation about why vibe coding a SaaS product is probably not the opportunity you think it is — even if you have a big audience. This is part 1 of a 2-part episode; part 2 lives on Rob's podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us. → Listen to Part 2 on Startups for the Rest Of Us → Rob Walling on Twitter/X → Rob Walling's YouTube Channel → MicroConf → TinySeed → Drip (Rob's 8-figure exit) → SavvyCal (co-founded by Derek Reimer) Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:24) Introduction — why Rob Walling is a unicorn in the bootstrapped SaaS world (02:40) Mapping the full Rob Walling business ecosystem: podcast, MicroConf, TinySeed, books, YouTube (05:15) How Producer Ron keeps the trains running on time across four brands (06:44) Inside the team of 11: roles, full-time commitment, and why Rob stopped hiring part-time (07:53) The psychology of making your first full-time hire (and Rob's 8-year wait for MicroConf) (09:33) Moving from task-level to project-level to owner-level thinkers (10:27) Four brands, two LLCs — the insurance story behind the split and why Rob wants to consolidate (12:18) Why Rob doesn't want his name on everything (and the legacy question) (14:41) Identity shifts: from SaaS founder to serial entrepreneur to content creator (16:31) The vibe coding reality check: why building SaaS is 10x harder than creating content (19:09) Why SaaS churn makes recurring revenue harder than it looks for creators (21:04) The construction analogy: tool sheds vs. skyscrapers and where vibe coding breaks down (24:53) Data from 234 investments: only 10-15% of successful SaaS companies lack a technical founder (27:00) The bigger opportunity for creators: equity partnerships instead of vibe coding (29:00) 'Build your network, not your audience' — why audiences plateau for SaaS growth (31:53) A week in Rob's life: deep work Mondays, advising Wednesdays, and the 329 TinySeed founders (34:00) How Rob eliminated stress: therapy, delegation, and giving up project management (38:46) Hiring for high-functioning: screening for 'Producer Ron'-level operators (41:21) The positive tension of deadline stress and why containers make you ship (43:09) Post-exit motivation: 6 months of comic books, guitar, and getting bored into purpose *** RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE → ⁠#291: 48 Hours With Clawdbot: How I’m Using It and Initial Reactions *** ASK CREATOR SCIENCE → Submit your question here *** WHEN YOU'RE READY 📬 Creator Science Newsletter 🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system) 🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community) 🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer *** CONNECT 🐦 Connect on Twitter 📸 Connect on Instagram 💼 Connect on LinkedIn 📹 Subscribe on YouTube *** SPONSORS 💼 View all sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices