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Minimum Viable Promise

In All Posts, Community by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

In 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about community. When Unreal Collective was acquired and I was brought in to help build the Community Experience team at SPI, my life became community building. As a result, my community building palette has been refined. I’ve separated the ideas of “community” …

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Upgrade your heros

In All Posts, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

As a 20-something, I was constantly looking up to other exceptional 20-somethings. Tech guys like Mark Zuckerberg (yikes), musicians, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list… It gave me a lot of drive! It fueled my ambition. If these people can do this at my age…why …

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Addition over Invention

In All Posts, Art and Creativity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

I love creating a first draft. There is an irresistible, magical feeling that comes with making something for the first time…so much potential and possibility… Maybe this thing is what creates my luck and really takes off! And of course, there are major benefits to going from …

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Time is your friend

In All Posts, Art and Creativity, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

The story of my creative journey begins with startups. And in the startup and tech world, speed is really important. If your company doesn’t show rapid growth and improvement from day one, you’re not interesting to investors. If you aren’t interesting to investors, you’re not interesting to …

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Aspirational decision-making

In All Posts, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Last week, I interviewed Dan Runcie for an upcoming episode of Creative Elements. Dan is the creator of Trapital where he writes and hosts a podcast about the business of hip hop. He writes essays about how the biggest stars on the planet like Will …

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Addition over Invention

In All Posts, Art and Creativity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

I love creating a first draft. There is an irresistible, magical feeling that comes with making something for the first time…so much potential and possibility… Maybe this thing is what creates my luck and really takes off! And of course, there are major benefits to going from …

View Post

Time is your friend

In All Posts, Art and Creativity, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

The story of my creative journey begins with startups. And in the startup and tech world, speed is really important. If your company doesn’t show rapid growth and improvement from day one, you’re not interesting to investors. If you aren’t interesting to investors, you’re not interesting to …

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Lessons Learned in 2019

In Behind the Scenes by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

For the past couple of years, I’ve published an annual “year in review” looking back on accomplishments of the year and goals for the next. To be honest, it’s a really great exercise to reflect on the past year – accomplishments, successful goals, failed goals, …

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Minimum Viable Promise

In All Posts, Community by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

In 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about community. When Unreal Collective was acquired and I was brought in to help build the Community Experience team at SPI, my life became community building. As a result, my community building palette has been refined. I’ve separated the ideas of “community” …

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What is community?

In Community, All Posts by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Community means a lot to me. It started as a volunteer interest while running student organizations in college and organizing startup weekend events. Then it became my business while building the Unreal Collective accelerator. And now, since Unreal was acquired by Smart Passive Income, it’s …

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Don’t be a hero, be the guide

In Marketing, All Posts by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

You know those moments where you finally actually listen to something that you’ve heard a thousand times, and thought you already knew? It happened to me twice this last week. First of all, my girlfriend was right and we should’ve started watching Ozark sooner. Second …

line of sight

In Marketing, Art and Creativity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

When I think about marketing (whether it’s Unreal, upside, or myself) I think a lot about awareness. The idea I wrote about a couple weeks ago — do you even exist to the person you want to the attention of? When we become aware of …

do you even exist?

In Mindset, Marketing by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Over the last couple of months, my messaging and inbox traffic has exploded. It’s still manageable; I’m an inbox zero person and have curated my “Primary” tab in Gmail to be very effective in filtering out the stuff I actually need to see/action. And some …

simplicity is not simple

In Behind the Scenes, Marketing by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

As I study more about marketing, persuasion, and communication, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that simplicity wins out. The more simple you can make something, the easier it is to understand, talk about, remember, refer, and generally attract others. Great — so make …

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Upgrade your heros

In All Posts, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

As a 20-something, I was constantly looking up to other exceptional 20-somethings. Tech guys like Mark Zuckerberg (yikes), musicians, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list… It gave me a lot of drive! It fueled my ambition. If these people can do this at my age…why …

View Post

Time is your friend

In All Posts, Art and Creativity, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

The story of my creative journey begins with startups. And in the startup and tech world, speed is really important. If your company doesn’t show rapid growth and improvement from day one, you’re not interesting to investors. If you aren’t interesting to investors, you’re not interesting to …

View Post

Aspirational decision-making

In All Posts, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Last week, I interviewed Dan Runcie for an upcoming episode of Creative Elements. Dan is the creator of Trapital where he writes and hosts a podcast about the business of hip hop. He writes essays about how the biggest stars on the planet like Will …

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waiting for the inevitable

In Productivity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how lucky I am to spend time around the people I spend time around. A lot of driven, intelligent, and caring people. Most of them are in the often-attacked, “millennial” generation. And we …

doing fewer + doing more

In Behind the Scenes, Productivity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

For a very long time, I said yes to everything that came my way. In fact, I distinctly remember a piece I wrote five years ago about saying “yes” to everything. Opportunities come in all shapes and colors, and rarely do they come when you …

living like a tracker

In Mindset, Productivity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

One of the podcasts I’ve gotten into lately at the recommendation of my upside cohost, Eric, is Invest Like the Best by Patrick O’Shaughnessy. What I like about this podcast is that besides speaking with obviously great investors, the individuals he interviews have very interesting …

good writing is made in the edit

In Mindset, Productivity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

The more that I write, whether for this newsletter, my Linkedin Learning courses, or otherwise, the more I am reminded that good work is made during the editing phase. The problem is that getting started is the hardest, most daunting part. It’s the part that …

pacing // counterpoint

In Behind the Scenes, Productivity by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Yesterday I wrote about my recent focus on pacing and how to best utilize my energy. As with most of my viewpoints, there’s another side to the coin. There are very few things that are truly binary or black and white…and so I wanted to …

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People invest in lines, not dots

In Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

In startup circles, there is a classic blog post by Mark Suster titled, “Invest in Lines, Not Dots.” Mark is a venture capitalist based in Los Angeles. His point is pretty simple to understand: When mapped on a graph measuring your company performance over time, …

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thinking long term

In Selling, Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

You may have heard of the idea of the “10-year overnight success.” It’s nearly cliché at this point, and yet, I don’t think it’s talked about enough. There is a lot of excitement around the beginnings of something. We are enchanted by the potential of …

the case for support

In Art and Creativity, Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Back in 2014-15, I was busy building and running a ticket marketplace called Tixers. A lot of the time, it was really in-the-weeds and miserable work. Not only was it rough work, but there weren’t a lot of people I could talk to and relate …

going first

In Relationships, Mindset by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

I’m really lucky to be in Columbus, Ohio. Having been in one major city for the past nearly 10 years, I’ve been able to dig deeply into different communities here, and create a good name for myself in a handful of circles. Because I pushed …

the hidden risk of taking advice

In Mindset, Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Make no mistake, one of the most important factors in my life has been mentorship. But there’s a surreptitious risk to mentorship — and it’s when “advice” isn’t really advice. Sometimes, “advice” is really a veil over self-validation. Instead of giving thoughtful, calculated, and unbiased …

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thinking long term

In Selling, Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

You may have heard of the idea of the “10-year overnight success.” It’s nearly cliché at this point, and yet, I don’t think it’s talked about enough. There is a lot of excitement around the beginnings of something. We are enchanted by the potential of …

protecting myself from myself

In Mindset, Relationships, Selling by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

You probably know what it’s like to feel like you’re seeing opportunity all the time. Maybe it’s your own idea, or someone else bringing you an opportunity, but it seems like when we’re open to it, opportunity is surrounding us. But every time we say …

don’t sell over email

In Selling, Behind the Scenes, Relationships by Jay ClouseLeave a Comment

Continuing on with yesterday’s theme of conflicting perspectives, I want to talk about selling. Specifically, let’s talk about selling via email. Hey! You sell stuff over email sometimes! You’re right, italicized font. And that’s a distinction I want to draw — I want to speak …

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