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It's an amazing time to be a creator. It's never been easier to be paid for the things that you make!
And I love the term "creator" because of its inclusiveness. If you self-identify as a creator, you are a creator. If you're making things, you're a creator.
But being a professional creator is a little bit of a different story.
Professional creators are financially rewarded by their work. Professional creators approach their work more methodically and with rigor.
Professional creators are dedicated to making their creative work what they spend their days working on.
Professional creators are scientists as much as they are artists. They're continuously experimenting and taking action based on results.
In my experience, there's no better life than that of a professional creator.
That's why I built The Lab (formerly the Creative Companion Club).
Inside The Lab, we're a bunch of creators running experiments in tandem. Not only does The Lab encourage you to move faster, but you also get the benefit of learning from the results of others.
If you're a serious creator, The Lab was made for you.
The core of any creative platform is the audience you serve – the individual people you are reaching with your creative work.
You won't find much in the way of growth-hacky funnel speak here in The Lab, but one of the biggest ways we help you build your creative platform is through expanding your reach.
We aren't afraid to talk about money inside The Lab. Money isn't the only goal, but it's a big part of your business that we want to help you grow.
Money is a tool. And by increasing revenue, you can better improve your product, be more thoughtful with your choices and commitments, and support your ideal lifestyle.
One of the best ways to expand your reach or increase revenue is by creating deeper resonance within your audience.
When the people you serve look to you as a trusted guide, mentor, coach, or friend, they are more likely to share your work and buy from you.
h/t Jay Acunzo for this focus!
No one succeeds alone. You will go a lot farther and move a lot faster when you work with others.
This is one of the biggest benefits of a community – we can all lift each other up. And as we each succeed, we each become an even more powerful force for one another.
We help members of The Lab expand their reach and increase revenue by developing deep resonance with your audience and building strong relationships.
We work together to explore new strategies, tactics, and collaborations to help you do just that.
Hey, Jay here. The Lab is where I'm investing the majority of my time and attention outside of creating new content.
I want to help as many people as possible become professional creators. And I believe the best way for me to be successful is to ensure that the people I serve are successful.
So I created The Lab so that I could invest more time and effort into the creators who invest their time with me and my work.
But I can't help you become a professional creator with a pre-recorded course. I can't help you become a professional creator with a single cohort-based course, either.
Becoming a professional creator requires a lot of skills, mini-projects, and above all – time.
The best way for me to support you on that journey is through an ongoing relationship.
A place where I can share what I'm learning (including the changing landscape) for months if not years.
That means that inside The Lab, I'm extremely active in the forum and in direct messages. I host weekly live sessions each week including open Office Hours and 1:1 member Hot Seats.
I also create and curate the best training resources I can to help you build your creative platform.
The Lab is where I'm able to personalize my experience and insight to you and your specific situation and I love it.
And even better – it's a space for us all to learn together in real time.
Do you remember high school sports? I ran track in high school and played football – there was a LOT of training involved in both.
The great thing about organized sports is that you have a coach. You have teammates. And your coach and your teammates all not only hold you accountable, but push you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach your potential.
Working alone, we often lack the discipline to push ourselves.
Whether you want to publish more frequently, improve the quality of your work, or both – The Lab provides the accountability and push you need to achieve your potential and leverage the best of your abilities.
I'm obsessed with peer groups of historical figures. Did you know that the founders of Apple, Google, and Oracle were all friends?
Even a lot of the creators you look up to today have their own small groups of peers who all push one another.
Not only to achieve their best, but they even amplify the work of their friends!
Basically, creators without a community are playing on Hard mode.
This community works together to not only push each other to grow and improve, but we amplify each others work as well.
There's also a mathematical advantage to working within a group. MrBeast explains it well...
Think of The Lab as a shared knowledge hub.
Every move we make for our businesses is motivated by a hypothesis and a desired outcome – imagine if we all shared those assumptions and goals with each other!
That's the goal of the Experiments space.
The best way we can help each other grow faster is by running hundreds of simultaneous experiments and sharing the results.
Inside The Lab, we're constantly running what we call Shared Focus Sprints. Think of these as lightweight cohort-based courses that are only available to members of The Lab.
These Sprints vary in length from 2-6 weeks, but they all focus on elements of building your creative platform.
Our first Shared Focus Sprint helped members build a high-performing landing page or sales page. Future Sprints will be voted on by the community itself.
You can participate to whatever degree you'd like – you can watch my instructional videos on your own time, join our live sessions, or both. You can not participate live at all or learn from past sprints – whatever you want, when you want it.
Current: Initial Offer (paid product)
Upcoming: TBA
At the start of each month, I record and share an in-depth video with a transparent look at my own business performance.
This videos are not meant to brag – but to model what it looks like to set goals, measure progress, and make difficult decisions based on the numbers.
You'll see my Revenue, Expenses, Goal Successes (and failures), lessons learned, and the decisions I'm making because of them.
And if you have questions based on the video, we can discuss them right inside the forum!
Feedback is a gift. Especially when it comes from mentors and peers who truly understand what you're trying to achieve.
The feedback you receive inside The Lab is high-quality, honest, and empathetic. It's important that we are real and direct with one another, but we also deliver tough feedback with kindness.
Each week, I host an open Office Hours session for you to receive feedback from me directly. And several times per month, I also open up my calendar to Hot Seats, which are recorded 1:1 coaching conversations right inside the community.
Over the last couple of years, I've created several paid workshops. These workshops are very popular and have gotten great reviews – earning me tens of thousands of dollars.
These workshops are all available inside:
• Community Building Crash Course
• Memberships & Advanced Community Building
• Email Newsletter Workshop
• Annual Planning Workshop
• Web3 Crash Course
• ...and more!
Access to our community forum and our real-time chat app (beta)
Between weekly Office Hours and monthly Hot Seats, you can receive 1:1 coaching from me
Dedicated space and process for sparking new collaborations
A growing repository of the best examples, templates, and ideas
Monthly look-over-my-shoulder videos looking into my business
Immediate, full access to all past (and future) workshops & courses
The Lab is designed to be small (and stay small).
I've been a part of large communities. I've even run large communities! And there are a lot of great things about them.
But it's very easy to lose closeness to the community as it grows. So I've designed The Lab to stay small. That allows me to invest more of MY time in fewer people and gives me the time and space to continue building my own creator business.
At this time, The Lab is at full capacity. New spots will only be available once a member decides they do not wish to renew.
New spots will be made available first to our Starter members, followed by our Waitlist.
To be the first to know when spots open up, become a Starter member or join our Waitlist!
My community-building journey began in 2012 when I organized my first Startup Weekend event. I organized about a dozen IRL Startup Weekend events before I began building my first online community, Unreal Collective.
Unreal Collective grew to 110+ members across the world before it was acquired by Pat Flynn and SPI in 2020.
For the following year, I led the Community Experience team at SPI – developing our membership community, course community, and cohort-based courses.
I bring all that experience and more to the Creator Science Lab, which I'm determined to make one of the best communities on the internet. And if you're building your own membership community, I'll share all my secrets!
Creative Elements has generated more than 1million downloads in two years
Between LinkedIn Learning and Creator Science, I've developed 11 online courses
I've generated over $100K in digital product sales in two years
Every member of The Lab is busy. Every single one of us.
The Lab is designed to be a resource, not a task.
Of course, if you spend time leveraging the resources (Workshops, Hot Seats, Sprints, etc.) you will get the most out of it. But if you simply use The Lab as a place to get inspiration, bust through roadblocks, or solicit feedback on sales copy, you're going to get a lot out of it.
Most members tell me within weeks of joining that they've already gotten their money's worth.
You don't have to dedicate hours per week to The Lab.
...but I bet you'll choose to spend more time inside than you think.
