Creator Science with Jay Clouse

My guest is George Blackman, a YouTube scriptwriter who got his start writing full-time for Ali Abdaal and has since written scripts for creators from 30,000 to over 10 million subscribers.

This is George's second time on the show. Three years ago, we talked about scriptwriting fundamentals. Since then, George has started writing his own videos with AI, and he's spent most of this year building PlayWriteAI, an AI scriptwriting app with more than 700 people on the waitlist. Building it taught him something most creators haven't noticed yet: AI will tell you, very confidently, that it did ten things it never actually did.

This episode is his full process, from voice memo to a script that's ready to record.

In this episode, we talk about:

The framework behind every educational hook George writes

Why the setups and payoffs inside each segment matter more than the hook

The ending George puts on every single video, and a twist I want to try on mine

Where a human still has to make the call, and why AI will keep "improving" your script forever if you let it

By the end of this episode, you will have a repeatable system for writing scripts with AI, and a clearer sense of which parts of the work you should keep for yourself.

Free download: YouTube Script Partner skill + George’s Claude project files

PlayWriteAI

Claude Scriptwriting Project Setup

The Exact Claude Project Setup for YouTube Script Writing

Free YouTube Script Template

Free Audience Avatar Template

The YouTube Scriptwriting Playbook

AutoCut by 1of10

George's Website / YouTube / X⁠ / ⁠LinkedIn⁠ / Newsletter / Community

Full transcript and show notes

***

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction

(02:32) George's process today

(05:10) Easy mode vs. advanced mode

(09:53) The 3 blocks of a YouTube script

(11:04) Target, transformation, stakes

(18:06) Why setups matter most

(19:52) Inside George's scriptwriting app

(22:34) Rethinking the payoff

(28:16) How many segments a video needs

(33:00) How George ends every video

(35:14) Ending on a sales video

(38:34) Where humans still matter

(43:50) How George really feels about AI

***

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE

162. George Blackman: How to script your videos like Ali Abdaal and Ed from Film Booth

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ASK CREATOR SCIENCE

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WHEN YOU'RE READY

📬 Creator Science Newsletter

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🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community)

🧞‍♂️ Get a Personalized Offer

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My guest is Jessica Lackey, founder of Deeper Foundations and author of Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business That Works. She helps coaches, consultants, and service providers build expert-led businesses on strong foundations.

Jessica tried the social media game. She hired a social media team for two years, ran Ship 30 for 30 on Twitter, tested Instagram. She never cracked 1,700 followers. So she built her business a different way: 50 guest podcast appearances, 50 guest teaching spots in other communities, 20 to 30 programs joined and participated in over four years. Every visibility opportunity landed 10 to 20 new people on her email list. It was slow, linear, and intentional. Today she has 2,000 people on her email list and 200 paying members in her membership. That's a 10% conversion rate on her list, against the creator industry standard of 1 to 3%.

Her business has earned over $300,000 for three consecutive years. Almost nothing she sells is one and done. The whole thing is built on renewals and retention, not growth and virality.

In this episode, we talk about:

How she built from 200 to 2,000 email subscribers through relationships and guest appearances, not social media

Her 3-offer stack (1:1 consulting, 6-month cohort, and membership) and how each piece supports the others

Why she does a 30-minute welcome call with every new member at $50 per month — and how she thinks about the economics

The KPIs she tracks with clients instead of followers and views: outreach count, visibility opportunities, and what she calls seeds, sprouts, and fruits

The trade-offs she's made by choosing this model and why she's made peace with them

By the end of this episode, you will have a clear picture of how a small, deliberate audience can support a thriving six-figure business — and what it actually costs to build one that way.

Deeper Foundations

Leaving the Casino

Deeper Foundations Membership

Aggressively Human

Community as a deliberate Business Model

“For You” or “By You”: The K-Shaped Content Era

The Zone of Enoughness

Sacred Sales Hour

LinkedIn

Full transcript and show notes

***

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Cold open: the trade-off Jessica has chosen

(00:19) Introducing Jessica Lackey

(02:34) Why the social media game didn't work for her

(04:05) The relationship-first growth strategy

(06:53) Her offer stack: 1:1, cohort, and membership

(09:39) Revenue breakdown and pricing

(10:52) How the membership grew from 30 members to 200

(12:52) The 30-minute welcome call that doesn't make economic sense

(18:29) Free monthly workshops for 4 years: the Deeper Business Dialogues

(20:21) The KPIs that actually matter for an expertise business

(22:26) Is there a ceiling on this approach?

(26:45) Why Jessica has chosen her ceiling on purpose

(43:53) How to follow people around the internet like a puppy, not a stalker

***

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE

#319: How Tamara Grominsky Predictably Grows Her Membership Each Month

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WHEN YOU'RE READY

📬 Creator Science Newsletter

🚀 Get CreatorHQ (creator operating system)

🧪 Join The Lab (private membership community)

🧞 Get a Personalized Offer

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David Altizer is the co-creator of Thumbnail Academy and has quickly become one of the most sought-after thumbnail designers around. David’s clients include Kurtis Connor, Jolly, Max Fosh, Hayden Hillier Smith, and now me.

David’s thumbnails have earned nearly 350 million views—and in this video, he’ll show you why creating thumbnails is actually easier than you think.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Full transcript and show notes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠Hire David⁠

⁠Join Thumbnail Academy⁠

David's ⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ / ⁠Twitter⁠ / ⁠YouTube⁠

***

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Intro to David Altizer

(05:20) Rule of Thirds Explained

(06:26) The Key to Composition

(11:07) Special Offer on 1of10

(15:02) Different Styles of Thumbnails

(19:39) Clickbait is Good, Actually

(22:05) The Key to More Clicks

(24:27) Thumbnail Text Strategy

(29:44) Learning from Far Side Comics

(32:57) Mastering Thumbnails and Outliers

(35:41) Working With Thumbnail Designers

(45:46) AI's Role in Thumbnail

***

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE

→ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠#280: How to LEGALLY Protect Your Channel (YouTube Lawyer Tyler Chou Explains)⁠

***

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

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***

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My guest is Tamara Grominsky, founder of PMM Camp — a private, application-only membership for senior product marketing leaders with 280+ members.

Tamara spent 15 years in product marketing, eventually landing at Kajabi as VP of Product Marketing. She went there with a specific agenda: study how the best creators build their businesses, then reverse engineer it for herself. She started a newsletter, surveyed her audience, learned the thing they needed most was connection, and launched a membership in March 2023. Six months later, she left Kajabi. Her model isn't always-open or quarterly-launch. It's application-gated, opens for exactly five days on the first of every month, and runs on Kit workflows and Circle. She's been on this monthly cadence for nine months and now forecasts her revenue 12 months in advance. She's hit every number this year.

Tamara is also in our Lab mastermind, which means I've watched this system get built in real time. This conversation is nine months of mastermind updates compressed into a podcast episode.

In this episode, we talk about:

How she went from VP of Product Marketing at Kajabi to building her own membership — and why leaving a job she loved was still the right call

The monthly open cart model: application-gated, waitlist-driven, four emails, five days, and why it turned a chaotic launch calendar into a predictable business

What a personalized onboarding document looks like, and how she gets 90%+ of new members onto a welcome call

Her hypothesis about why her conversion rate is stuck at 30% — and what she's testing next

By the end of this episode, you will have a complete model for running a membership like a product — with systems, baselines, and experiments that make revenue forecastable.

PMM Camp (Home)

PMM Camp Community (Membership + Pricing)

PMM Leadership Bootcamp (6-Week Cohort)

Newsletter Archive (188 editions, every Sunday)

Tamara's LinkedIn

Tamara's X

Full transcript and show notes

***

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction

(01:26) What product marketing actually is

(04:43) From Kajabi to PMM Camp

(06:49) What she learned studying creators

(11:28) The decision to leave

(13:23) Finding the founding 25

(16:47) Inside PMM Camp today

(18:29) The welcome call and onboarding doc

(25:25) Why evergreen broke her business

(27:52) The monthly open cart model

(33:17) The Kit workflow behind the cart

(36:09) The conversion rate problem

(44:54) The visibility hypothesis

***

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE

#313: How Tom Ross Doubled His Community Engagement and Retention With Training Pathways

#318: The $9/month membership earning more than $500k/year AND buying Smart Passive Income — Pt. 2 featuring Liz Wilcox

***

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

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CONNECT

🐦 Connect on Twitter

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💼 Connect on LinkedIn

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My guest is Liz Wilcox, the creator behind Email Marketing Membership — a $9/month newsletter template subscription she’s kept at the same price for six years, that now generates close to half a million dollars a year.

Liz built the whole thing as a single parent with no support system and no reliable internet, working from library parking lots and Lowe’s lots during nap times. She launched in February 2021, kept the price at $9, maintained a 5% churn rate, and grew to over 4,400 paying members. She and her sister run the operation — no upsells, no masterminds, no group coaching. Just the membership. Then in April 2026, she quietly closed a deal to buy Smart Passive Income — the 18-year-old creator education brand Pat Flynn built from scratch. She spent five months operating as SPI’s director of community before anyone outside the deal knew it had happened.

This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. Last week, Pat and Matt told the seller’s story. This week, Liz tells the buyer’s.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why the $9 price point has worked for six years — and why she’ll never raise it

How she grew a half-million-dollar membership without social media, using podcasts and a 50% affiliate program

What had to be true before she’d pull the trigger on buying SPI

How she’s thinking about merging EMM with the SPI community — and why she doesn’t have the answer yet

By the end of this episode, you will understand how a $9 offer can compound into a half-million-dollar business — and what it actually looks like when someone buys a legacy brand and tries to honor it.

Liz Wilcox

Email Marketing Membership

Smart Passive Income

Episode 317: Pat Flynn & Matt Gartland — Part 1

Superfans by Pat Flynn

Full transcript and show notes

***

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction

(01:14) The $9 membership

(03:48) The retention rate

(07:54) Low stakes for both sides

(11:06) The four thousand member math

(12:39) AI and the membership

(14:55) Who this model isn’t for

(16:38) Growing without social media

(20:23) Single parent, no backup plan

(31:41) Buying Smart Passive Income

(34:51) What made the deal happen

(43:49) Why she hasn’t cross-promoted yet

(48:34) Merging the two memberships

***

RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODE

#317: Selling Smart Passive Income (And What We Can Learn From It) — Pt. 1 featuring Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland

***

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

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices