The Lab is a peer-to-peer community run by Jay Clouse, known for Creator Science [1]. He helps people at all stages become professional creators but The Lab focuses squarely on creator pros - helping them reach and stay at the top of their game [2].
“When you have an issue related to your creator business, this should be the place where you get the best feedback, the fastest,” says Jay [3].
In this deep dive, we uncover how Jay grew The Lab into a $400k a year revenue stream with just 200 members.
We cover how the community got started, how it grows, functions, and makes money.
Jay Clouse is an OG community builder. He has been bringing people together in different forms since 2012 and a full-time creator since 2017. His goal was to become “the best, most reputable, most helpful media company to help people become professional creators” [7]. Yet “It felt like I was walking through the mud for 5 years,” says Jay [2].
It had been slow, incremental growth until around two years ago when Jay launched his community, The Lab, in March 2022, and shortly after brought all his disparate content efforts under the Creator Science brand [2].
Over the years he had tried multiple different ways to help teach and guide people but “What I realized,” says Jay, “There’s just no way that I can teach you in a prerecorded course or even a single cohort-based course how to go from making stuff… to earning a living.” The Creator Economy is just moving too quickly for that. “The landscape changes, the tools change, the tactics change,” [4] which is what led him back to his roots: Community.
In 2017, Jay quit his full-time job and began running a 12-week facilitated Mastermind called Unreal Collective. Members were mostly creatives and entrepreneurs [9]. Sessions ran on Zoom with participants being added to a Slack instance [7]. Each cohort added another 15 to 20 people to Slack and it slowly built up to around 120 people over three years, but “it was incredibly active,” notes Jay. “Everybody got to know everybody really, really well” [10]. It “wasn't very intentionally done at first… but it really taught me a lot about how to do community online” [8] - including how to integrate people into an existing group and how to foster real relationships [13].
Word got out locally about Jay’s community-building skills, which saw him join Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income (SPI) in 2020 as a part-time contractor to help them design and launch their membership community, SPI Pro. That gained 600 members on launch day and it went on to become one of the largest communities on Circle at the time [7]. It did so well that in 2021 SPI ended up acquiring Unreal Collective so that Jay would join them and lead their community experience team [8]. Jay was working 30 hours a week for SPI while continuing to do content on the side [7]. That lasted for around a year, but by Jan 2022 he was back out on his own [12].
Ahead of Jay leaving SPI, around November 2021 [11], he began researching and designing what would become The Lab. He even spun up a little Discord server and invited around 40 or so followers to watch as he thought things through, sharing weekly updates along the way. “So it was a community that was watching me design my actual community,” remarks Jay. “It took me three months, though, because I couldn't figure out how to make it work” [8].
He got stuck on two main things: “What stage do I want to help people and what's the price point that makes sense for this,” says Jay [8]. This was critical because he needed the pay-off to be worth his time - community building can be “a lot of work,” notes Jay. “If you feel like all of this work isn't worth it, you start to resent this thing” [13].
He also didn’t want something that would be too big and need all of his time because community is just one aspect of his business - he still wanted to be able to work on other things, too [14]:
“My goal as a business owner is to decouple my time from my revenue entirely… I would rather use the membership model as this interstitial phase, which will probably be several years, to transform the business into something that is much more digitally product and maybe sponsorship oriented.”
After much scenario planning in a spreadsheet - plugging in different price points and sizes - he finally settled on a setup he was happy with that served full-time creators [6] and it launched publicly in March 2022 [8].
Ahead of that public launch was a private opening around a month before [16]. Jay had been mentioning an upcoming community on social media and in his newsletter, so the first people who joined were followers of his writing and podcast. They were people who already trusted him, so although he didn’t have anything to show them, they were keen to join anyway. Plus, he incentivized them to take action with a founding member's rate [8]: 50% off for life [16]. That led to around 30 people joining [17].
He then dove straight into running what he calls a Focus Sprint - a cohort-based learning experience with a specific goal. “No one likes to show up to an empty room,” says Jay. “So have a few people in there that you trust that can help kick the tires and check things out” [18].
What this meant, though was when it came time to launch, not only had he seeded the community with some initial discussions, but members had already shared an experience. Jay recommends running “live sessions where they get to meet each other… and build real strong relationships” [16]. That’s good for members, but also meant Jay could build out the sales page and show what the experience would be like [16].
The Lab is for creator pros. “It's not a space for beginners,” remarks Jay. Members aren’t there for basic blocking and tackling, they’re “answering questions and solving problems that you can't just Google - it truly is an advanced space.” This is how The Lab differentiates itself from the many other communities for creators. “I couldn't find a space like this,” says Jay [1]:
“A place for professional creators… to really experiment, share the results of their experiments, and learn from each other quickly.”
He needed to communicate this positioning clearly. At launch, though, the community wasn’t known as The Lab, it was called The Creative Companion Club [15]. At the time, Jay’s business was called Creative Companion and his podcast was Creative Elements, so it made sense. But a survey of his followers found that ‘creators’ wasn’t a term that they associated with his business [19].
That was a problem, so he decided to rebrand and put ‘creator’ right in the name, becoming Creator Science. The name of the community was then changed to match the science motif [15]. He leveraged the community to help with the rebranding process, including members and seeking feedback every step of the way [16].
He also used pricing to reinforce the positioning, setting pricing at a level that made it clear that this is only for those taking things seriously [13]. He zoned in on a particular area of transformation - taking them from everyday creators to professional creators, with a business that supports them. That’s what people are willing to pay money for. As Jay says, “It's honestly not enough to say this is a place for like-minded individuals to come and connect… I really think it comes down to transformation” [16]. Let’s take a look at how Jay and The Lab enable that transformation to happen.
The value offered to members of The Lab is huge. At launch, the core offer was [6]:
Digital Community
The core of the community is the Circle-based platform. Having access to a network of peers doing the same thing as you is valuable, especially given the quality of members that are in The Lab [20]. The community is split up into a few sections, which Circle calls space groups: Lobby, Lounge, Platforms, and Study, and houses a mixture of discussion spaces and content [3].
Focus Sprints
An aspect of the community worth digging into further is Focus Sprints. These are 2-4 week group learning experiences. They’re like a cohort-based course - they have a goal, which everyone tries to achieve. There’s a live session every week, the first is for ideation, the next couple are for feedback, and then there’s a showcase session.
Goals that they’ve tackled include how to create a high-converting landing page and creating a signature lead magnet [16]. Sessions get recorded and they’re added to the video vault for future members [20].
Hot Seats
Hot Seats are 30-minute, 1:1 coaching calls between Jay and a member. They’re offered on a first come first served basis and other members can attend live to ask questions, too. They’re also recorded for the rest of the community to learn from.
Initially offered monthly, they now do 4-6 a month [16]. The frequency was bumped up because Jay found them to be more popular than the weekly Office Hours he used to offer. Each Hot Seat has a clearly defined problem they’ll be solving, whereas Office Hours were open-ended. This meant people didn’t know what they would be getting from the session, so would often skip them [4].
Community Swipe File
This is a growing repository of the best examples, templates, and ideas [6].
Monthly Retros
Every month Jay spends an hour preparing and then 30 minutes recording a breakdown of his business [17]. He transparently shares all of the stats and figures about its performance [3]. These get a lot of positive feedback from members. Jay explains how they work [17]:
“I go into Quickbooks, literally show, here's all the money I made this month, where it came from. Here are the things that I tried that worked well. Here are the decisions I'm making because of it.”
Workshops
At launch, members got access to workshops from invited guests. For example, Gifted to Paid is a course created by Justin Moore, who is a sponsorship expert and a Labs community member [3]. They’ve since added to this with the likes of Kieran Drew, Paddy Galloway, and Bonnie Christine teaching specific skills, too [21].
The current workshops together have a value of $297 and include Creator Catalyst, Invisible Selling, Email, Web3 crash course, Pricing, Annual Planning, and the Indie Podcaster Crash Course [6].
Other
Since its launch, the offering has become even more extensive. Additions include:
As you can see, the offering is broad. At launch, it was offered in two tiers: Standard and VIP. The cost was $999 and $1999 per year respectively. The latter included full access to courses and also included a quarterly 1:1 call with Jay. Founding members who joined pre-launch were able to get the standard membership for 50% off, so $500 per year [16].
Around September 2023, Jay put the price up to $1499 for standard and $2499 for VIP. By that point, all courses were available for standard members, too. But “that created a moment of urgency again for people,” says Jay. “I gave them a week and I said, I'm going to raise the prices… this would be a good time to join. And a lot of people did” [17]. It also serves to “reward your biggest fans for taking a leap of faith with you,” and buying in early [13].
In March 2023 a third tier, Starter, was added and priced at $699 per year. This was a content-only plan [23] so didn’t include community access, but gave access to courses, workshops, and retro recordings. They also raised the price again for the Standard and VIP tiers to $1999 and $3999 per year, where it is now.
The trigger for introducing the Starter plan and for raising prices in March 2023, was hitting its 200-member cap. Shortly after the initial launch, Jay decided to limit the number of members who could join The Lab [12]:
“I was at about 50 members when I asked myself, okay, how big do I really want this to be?”
The 200 number was based on Jay’s experience and intuition - it’s the number of members he thought he could sustain himself without the need for a dedicated community manager [20]. From the initial traction, he could tell he had a hit on his hands and needed to be proactive in maintaining the quality of the offering. “You actually have to fight against the success of the product,” cautions Jay. “Huge numbers change the experience for members” [20].
He could have made more money sooner without it, but knew that prioritizing the member experience would keep churn low and make for a more sustainable business long-term [12]. “Small by design” was a selling point for the community. It was a commitment to maintaining the tight-knit feel of the community and to have enough time to invest in members [2].
And it has worked well - the community hit the cap 11 months from launch [12]. Retention has been 90%+ [20] and at times he has had a waiting list of up to 80 people [23].
Plus, introducing a cap adds some interesting dynamics to the business. Announcing the cap created a sense of urgency in becoming a member. As they were closing in on the cap, he was including how many spots were left on socials and in his newsletter [17]. February 2023, the month before they hit the cap, was his biggest revenue month for the community and saw them add 47 members [24] or $74,000 in ARR [17].
Without putting anything in place to encourage renewals, retention was 94% the first month members needed to renew and has been around 90% since [14]. Having a cap means current members know that getting back in might be difficult, so they don’t cancel on a whim [4]. What’s more, since he has been raising prices along the way, he doesn’t need to worry about churn from a financial perspective. He has a waitlist of people and new members pay more than the old ones [2]. When someone didn’t renew, he would offer the spot to those on the Starter tier and then to those on the waitlist [24]. “When I‘ve put those new spots up for sale to my email list, it hasn't lasted more than seven minutes,” says Jay [14].
This meant it even made sense for Jay to get proactive about churn - he could identify folks who weren’t engaged in the community and offer to buy them out of the rest of their membership. He would add a new member at a higher rate and the community overall would benefit from having more engaged people. A win-win [2].
The other thing worth calling out about his pricing is that it’s annual only. This is an intentional choice - there’s no monthly option, just annual [24].
Jay highlights the importance of aligning your pricing with the period in which you can deliver value to members [24]. For example, The Lab is focused on enabling transformation through a peer-based community. That kind of transformation doesn’t happen overnight, within a month, or even a few months. So for Jay, it didn’t make sense to offer a monthly membership. “Whenever you create the opportunity for churn, some churn will happen,” notes Jay. Every time a renewal opportunity comes up, it causes people to consider whether they’re getting value from it. Jay goes as far as saying [20]:
“I think monthly memberships in a peer-to-peer based space is setting yourself up for failure.”
He considered other pricing models, such as an ever-increasing price that rose little by little daily or weekly. But he decided it would be too difficult to communicate how it worked. So he ended up choosing a high price point and only offering full-year plans because that’s what made sense for his target buyer [25].
Having a capped number of members didn’t entirely prevent The Lab from increasing revenue due to the Starter plan. Since it was content-only and didn’t have forum access, people could join that tier without requiring more time to support them [14].
However, Jay recently decided to drop the cap and move to an application-based model.
This meant changing the Starter plan, renaming it to Basic, and adding some limited forum access - you get added to a single space with other Basic plan members. To join either of the higher tiers, Standard or VIP, there are now member requirements: $10,000+/mo in non-service revenue or 10,000+ followers on a single platform [26].
Why the change? 3 reasons [35]:
Plus, Jay acknowledges that most of his audience “are not even qualified to join The Lab.” So a priority for him is adding an “earlier stage membership that instead of being on the… pure connection side of things will be more on the content side” [1] and thus more scalable. Jay says “I'm trying to make the Basic tier a no-brainer,” so he has added features to the plan recently, including his new “Podcast Like A YouTuber” course ($199 value) and CreatorHQ ($297 value), as well as the limited forum access. The aim is to provide the materials people need to become eligible for Standard/VIP down the line and create a clear upsell path where people move from initially buying a course, to a basic and then full membership [26].
Jay describes The Lab as being life-changing. He started his own business on April 20, 2017. In that first year, he earned $29,468. Since then he earned, 2018: $72,713, 2019: $54,547, 2020: $103,007, 2021: $149,953, 2022: $336,809, 2023: $609,256 [27].
You can see the profound impact launching the community has had on his business - managing to double revenue for two years running [2]. If we break down his earnings in 2023, you can see how the community contributed to that $600K revenue, which came from 6 revenue streams altogether [28]:
So the community contributed over two-thirds of his income. He estimates that by plan type it breaks down as 80% Standard, 15% VIP, and 5% Starter (although that’s as of Feb 2024, so before the recent Basic plan changes) [2]. With the application-based sign-up that’s now in place, Jay says “Qualified applications have been 40% to 60%” of requests, with around 12-24 requests coming in each month [31].
13 months in, it hit $254,000 ARR and that’s now at $361,872 ARR as of September 2024 [22]. Total earnings from the community surpassed $600,000 in March 2024 [21]. This was achieved through pretty steady member growth throughout the first year until it hit the 200-member cap [5]. While membership has since stayed around that 200-member figure, ARR increased as less profitable members have been replaced by new, higher-earning ones.
While the revenue itself is nice, what’s been most impactful is that this is stable income, which doesn’t take up all of his time. As Jay says [23]:
“I could stop posting on Twitter, I could stop posting on LinkedIn, I could stop posting on YouTube. If I continue to make that membership great for the members, then I will continue to generate enough of an income to support the business and support my life.”
That’s huge. Most Creators get stuck on the treadmill of churning out content to keep money coming in. Community has enabled Jay to move beyond that.
Another big benefit of stable income - he could now hire people [9]. He now works with several contractors who help out with other areas of the business. “I would not have the time and space to be doing YouTube, to do the podcast, to be writing the newsletter twice per week” without them, says Jay [14]. This is another big pain point for Creators - everything is on them. The business can’t move forward without you making it happen. Now Jay had some room to breathe. He in turn used that time to invest in other areas of the business.
Going into 2024, for instance, Jay wanted to diversify revenue away from a reliance on community income without reducing membership revenue itself. Comparing the first half financials of 2023 to 2024, Jay has been able to increase digital product sales by 236% and increase sponsorship revenue by 100%, leading to a 44% increase in overall revenue while making his business more resilient [29].
So how has Jay been able to build this thriving community so quickly? Well, there haven’t been any shortcuts - Jay has been growing his social following for 7 years. Here’s how Jay thinks about acquisition [30]:
Jay uses social media to attract an audience - he shares free content on all the major platforms: YouTube (110K subscribers), X (50K followers), LinkedIn (48K followers), Instagram (8.5K followers), as well as Threads and TikTok. He directs that audience to channels that he owns, namely his newsletter (60K subscribers [7]) and podcast (around 50K downloads per month [24]). He regards these as his relationship-building platforms - sharing more free content, designed to build trust and make you aware of his paid offerings.
Finally, you’re then encouraged to transact - that is buy one of his offerings that cover a range of price points, from $50 courses through to his $3999 VIP community membership [30].
Promotions
Despite Jay’s success, people don’t often just buy - “There's still a lot of direct sales, honestly” says Jay [8]. To encourage people to buy into the community, he uses a few mechanisms. A big one is promotions. By “buying my… course, I'm actually going to give you a coupon,” says Jay. You can apply that coupon towards purchasing bigger ticket items like the community. “That promotion did really well,” remarks Jay. “I did the same thing with my workshops… it turned a $200 purchase into a $1,000 purchase” [9].
Lifecycle Marketing
Within the content of his newsletter, podcast, and website, Jay has implemented several nurture flows using a mixture of Kit and RightMessage. He uses RightMessage to encourage website visitors and email subscribers to complete a short survey. At the end of the survey, he provides a tailored offer based on your responses [29]. Similarly, Kit is used to send email subscribers relevant nurture sequences that promote different products based on purchases and the content you consume. “I am implementing or editing 17 different email sequences,” said Jay in his August retro [31]. Those include 3 welcome sequences and 6 post-purchase sequences.
Referrals
Another great source of new members can be referrals from existing members. Jay set up a referral program, using First Promoter, where a member gets 25% of that person's membership every time they renew [17].
While Jay does employ folks to help him with his business, it’s pretty much just him who runs the community [17]. He says he spends around 8-15 hours per week working on it [5]. But that’s not in big blocks, though - “The community is what I try to fit in around all other things because it's less predictable,” notes Jay. “I try to keep a pretty close eye on the community at all times”. He did initially try bucketing it into two slots during the day [9] but says he wants to be as responsive as possible, so it’s mostly now spread throughout the day in little “10-minute time chunks here and there answering direct messages or answering posts” [8]. That’s both in text but also a lot of video, too: “I can't tell you how many Loom videos I record and post in the community,” says Jay [9].
Mallory Clouse, Jay's wife, now works in the business, too, as General Manager. He has a video editor (Conor Conaboy), an audio engineer (Adam Lockwood), and a research assistant [24]. As well as other folks helping out, like Jonathan Sippel who creates thumbnails for his YouTube videos. Staff costs are his biggest expense, outside of that, it’s mostly just software [29].
In terms of software, Jay uses a bunch of tools to run his business. Hello Audio is used to provide a private podcast feed to members. First Promoter is used for referral payouts [17]. He used to offer 1-1 consultations, for which, he’d use SavvyCal [24]. Email runs on Kit [32], the community is on Circle, while his courses are on Teachable [16]. He uses Senja for collecting and sharing testimonials, the SparkLoop partner network for newsletter recommendations, and Fathom for web analytics. His main website runs on Ghost but he also uses Framer for landing pages, such as The Lab's sales page. Loom is used for video responses in the community, while Notion is used for project managing all his content and his business overall. He actually shares a complete tools list on his site.
The last thing worth diving into is onboarding. It’s a critical thing for any community and it’s something Jay has put a lot of thought into.
Immediately after you sign up, new members get emailed a scheduling link for a 30-minute 1:1 call with Jay [15]. That can be 7-8 hours of new member calls a month, but Jay thinks it's worth it [5]. Jay uses these sessions to get to know people so he can make recommendations of content to check out and introduce relevant people [33].
It may take a week or two to set up that call, so the initial email also includes a link to get into the Circle community and a walkthrough video that goes through the next steps you should take, like creating a profile [15].
There’s a welcome guide, an onboarding course, that uses Circle’s functionality so you’re getting up to speed on the platform while learning about The Lab itself. Progressing that course triggers an email and DM welcoming you into the community. Jay says his goal during onboarding is “every time somebody takes a step in their mind they’re thinking ‘now what?,’ and you just want to answer that question as many times consecutively as you can” [15].
Beyond that, he’s also trying to get you to connect with peers as soon as possible [5]. One way he has encouraged that is by modeling the behavior of new members to make their intro post using video. “I would say more than 90% of introductions that happen in The Lab are done in video,” comments Jay. “They will get a video response back from me that's personal, that's direct to what they said”. He may also tag in other members, but “they'll often get responses from maybe ten or more other members very quickly” either way. So this all makes them feel welcome. There are prompts sent via email over the next several days encouraging them to take other specific actions, which get them involved in the community.
The result is not just a successful community business, he’s also created his go-to place on the Internet. As a creator, “It's really hard to find close friends who understand what you're doing,” says Jay. “So this community honestly is where I spend most of my time online” [8].
And there you have it - that’s how Jay Clouse built the The Lab into a million-dollar community ✌️
Nail your positioning
You need to be crystal clear about who your community is for and how it’s going to impact their lives. This is essential in both differentiating your community from others but also in justifying your fee.
Align pricing and cadence with value
You want to align the value you create with the price you charge and the cadence you charge at. If these aren’t matched, you’re going to see high churn. You also need to charge enough for it to deliver meaningful revenue that justifies your time investment and the opportunity cost of not spending that time on other things. But you don’t need huge numbers of members to make it worthwhile.
Put community at the core of your offering
Some creators think of community as being just another revenue stream. But Jay proves that it can be a core revenue driver and a great source of reliable income. This can then enable you to invest in other areas of your business, too.
Gareth has spent 15 years in founding marketing roles at community-led startups. He shares his learnings through deep dives.
