Creative Elements: One Year Later

Hello! I hit an exciting podcasting milestone this week...Creative Elements has crossed the 500,000 download mark! ??

In case you missed it, Creative Elements is a narrative interview show talking to high-profile creators. Instead of talking about their body of work itself, we talk about their journey to becoming a full-time creator.

I launched the show with the Podglomerate on March 24, 2020. Almost exactly one year ago! And to hit half a million downloads in one year is pretty surreal.

So I wanted to highlight a few memorable episodes and ideas discussed. If you haven't listened yet, I'd love for you to give it a shot.

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Let's dig in to just a few of my favorite episodes in the last year...

Episode #1: Seth Godin

Seth is a legend in the world of marketing. My favorite part of this episode was his strong take on personal brands – the fact that they exist (whether you want one or not!) and that "authentic" isn't an idea he believes in.

"Well, so let's start with this. A brand is not a logo. A brand is something else. A brand is a set of promises and expectations that people have about something they're about to engage with, that they wouldn't have had if you were generic. So I would argue every human on Earth is either a brand to someone or invisible. Those are the only two choices. So if you every day on your way to work in Mumbai pass a tea vendor on the corner, he or she has a brand, because they're going to act the same way every time you meet them. That's what you expect. Otherwise, we'd never be able to process all the incoming in our life."

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Episode #2: James Clear

James is one of the most brilliant and articulate guests I've had on the show. He talked a lot about the quality of your work.

"Can you create something that is so good that they--the reader, the consumer, the user of your product--could actually have a before and after moment with it, right? Like before and after I read this book, or before and after I read this blog post, before and after I read this tweet even, before and after I use this product, my life, I can actually delineate and say it's different now because that experience was so good."

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Episode #10: Amy Landino

Amy is an incredibly consistent YouTuber who really leveled with me about what it takes to create consistent content for an audience that you really understand.

"I published three days a week for three years, with only one family emergency, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, two to five minute social media tips for three years. You've got to be all in for the conversation, forever. Like forever is a long time, but like pretty much forever if this is a reverse engineering of a business plan, and you need people to be buying your product or thinking about your brand, you need to be there for the conversation indefinitely."

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#37: Ali Abdaal

Ali is another remarkable YouTuber, and this was one of my favorite episodes to put together because I pulled in so much other audio from YouTube. He talks a lot about consistency as well.

"Basically, you just need three things to change your life. Number one, create useful content. Number two, post it once a week. And number three, do that for two years. And if you do that I can 100% guarantee that your life will change in ways that you can't imagine. Maybe you won't be at a billion subscribers, maybe you won't be at six figures a month or whatever revenue right but your life will change in ways that you can't imagine."

Listen to the episode

It's been such an unbelievable year. If you're already a listener, thank you, thank you, thank you. Please join our Listener Group on Facebook!

If you haven't tuned it, I invite you to give it a shot! I bet you'll like it.

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And if you're an aspiring podcaster yourself, I spill all my secrets here.

Cheers,

Jay

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Hey, I'm Jay! Thanks for reading. I'm the creator of Freelancing School, which provides the training and community to help people make a living freelancing.

I also host Creative Elements, which interviews high-profile creators who have made their own independent living.

You can connect with me on Twitter @jayclouse or sign up for my Sunday newsletter for creatives here.

And if you REALLY want to say 'thank you,' you can buy me a coffee.