Jay Clouse
@jay YouTube
A newsletter writer put his podcast on YouTube: a year of business interviews at 5K views, then he started interviewing the people behind big YouTube channels and reached 100K in about two years
Jay Clouse did not start from zero. By mid-2022 he had written a newsletter since 2017, hosted a podcast since 2020 and run a paid community; by the end of that year, on his own monthly figures, he had about 16K email subscribers, 24K followers on X and a business doing over $300K a year. In July 2022 he and his editor began filming the podcast. A year of business interviews sat at a 5.4K median. From June 2023 he interviewed the strategists and writers behind big YouTube channels instead; an October interview with Shorts creator Jenny Hoyos reached 5M views, and the channel passed 100K in August 2024. Since 2025 it has added a few thousand subscribers a month, and almost none in 2026.
- Report
- v1
- Data as of
- 2026-11-09
- Sample
- 193 videos
At a glance
- What it is
- Long interviews with the people behind successful creators.
- Who watches
- People building a business on YouTube, newsletters and podcasts (our reading of the topics).
- How it earns
- Mostly his paid community; also sponsors, courses and ads. The channel itself loses money, by his account.
- How it broke out
- A switch to YouTube-strategy guests in June 2023, then a 5.02M Shorts interview in October.
Subscribers Fact
145K
+0–2K a month in 2026
After the guest switch Derived
26×
138.6K median vs 5.4K before
To 100K Self-reported
~2 years
“a little over 2 years”, Jul 2022 → Aug 2024
The Lab, 2025 Self-reported
$500K/yr
recurring revenue, his own figure
Summary
The play
Film the podcast you already make, then pick guests and topics for the YouTube audience rather than for your existing listeners: he switched to the people behind big YouTube channels, packaged each one as “Meet the…”, and planned the title before the interview.
Can you copy it? Our read
A useful case for anyone who already has an audience elsewhere. His podcast filmed as-is did little on YouTube; picking guests and topics for YouTube viewers is what moved it. It took about two years to 100K with an editor and a business behind him, and the channel still runs at a loss.
- What it takes
- Access to guests your target viewers want to hear, and the habit of writing the title before you record.
- Startup cost
- An editor from the start, two cameras, and money to spare: he says the channel has lost money most years.
- Time to a verdict
- About one long interview a week at first, then two a month.
- Window
- Interviews about growing on YouTube are crowded now. The method (guests chosen for the platform’s audience, packaged first) carries over to other niches.
Key findings
The podcast, filmed, didn’t travel
42 long interviews from July 2022 to May 2023 had a median of 5,351 views. He had about 3,000 subscribers in January 2023, six months in, despite a newsletter of roughly 16K. See play 3.1 (subscribers)
Guests for the YouTube audience
From June 2023 he interviewed the strategists, writers and creators behind big YouTube channels. Those six videos had a median of 138.6K; the next, with Jenny Hoyos, reached 5.02M. He went from 20K to 53.7K subscribers in about five weeks. See play 2.1 (subscribers)
100K, then a plateau
He passed 100K at the end of August 2024. In 2025 he posted fewer videos, the median fell to 7.9K, and growth slowed to 0–4K a month. See play 2.3 (subscribers)
What this channel is
- Platform
- YouTube long videos (Shorts in 2022)
- Format
- Interview podcast, filmed
- On camera
- Jay and his guest
- Team
- An editor from the first video, later a producer and thumbnail designer
- Starting point
- Newsletter since 2017, podcast since 2020, about 16K email subscribers at the end of 2022
- First full video
- Jul 12, 2022
Every number is tagged
- Fact straight from public data
- Derived calculated from facts
- Estimate from published pay ranges
- Self-reported what the creator says
- Our read our judgement
01How it happened
How the subscriber count grew
- YouTube 145K
- Fact
- Self-reported
YouTube subscribers. Hollow dots are his own numbers: the December 2022 gains in his monthly review (the two December points are derived from them), “only 3,000 subscribers” in a January 2023 video title and “just crossed 20,000” on a podcast in October 2023. Solid dots from November 2023 are measured month ends, rounded to the nearest thousand.
- under 1×
- 1–3×
- 3–10×
- 10× and up
Each bar is one video in the order posted. Gaps are breaks in posting.
| Phase | Dates | Long videos | Format | Median views |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2017 – mid-2022 | – | Before YouTube: a newsletter (from 2017), a weekly podcast (from 2020), a paid community (The Lab); two businesses sold earlier | – |
| 1 | Jul 12, 2022 – May 29, 2023 | 42 | The weekly podcast, filmed: creators on brand deals, LinkedIn, courses, newsletters; 79 Shorts cut from it in 2022 (median 650) | 5,351 |
| 2 | Jun 12 – Sep 12, 2023 | 6 | Interviews with the people behind big YouTube channels: a strategist, a scriptwriter, an ex-YouTube employee (“Meet the…”) | 138,575 |
| 3 | Oct 9, 2023 – Dec 2024 | 21 | Jenny Hoyos, 5.02M; then about two a month; 100K at the end of August 2024 | 22,814 |
| 4 | Jan 2025 – Oct 2026 | 21 | Fewer videos (9 long ones in 2025 to October); +0–4K subscribers a month | 8,227 |
Hottest and coldest
Top 5 by views
- Shorts Genius Shares Everything She Knows (Jenny Hoyos Interview)2023-10-095.02M
- Meet the Man Who Solved YouTube (Paddy Galloway Interview)2024-08-31399K
- Meet The Godfather of YouTube Strategy (Paddy Galloway Interview)2023-06-12261K
- Meet the Secret Scriptwriter Getting YouTubers Millions of Views2023-08-28224K
- Meet the Man Changing YouTube Education (Film Booth Interview)2023-07-03163K
Bottom 5 by views
- Creators have a BIG blindspot. Here's what it is... #shorts2022-06-0848
- You can achieve anything on the internet #shorts2022-06-0254
- Get more responses with this email trick #shorts2022-05-2875
- The truth about subscriber counts (Tiago Forte) #shorts2022-06-0986
- This is how you get successful people's attention #shorts2022-05-2793
The five most-viewed long videos are all interviews about YouTube: Jenny Hoyos (5.02M), Paddy Galloway in 2024 (399K), Paddy Galloway in 2023 (261K), the secret scriptwriter (224K) and Film Booth (163K). The coldest are general business and productivity episodes from 2022, several under 1,000 views: Thomas Frank on free content (859), Sara Dietschy’s growth (855), Miss Excel on energy (729). Our read
Reading the numbers
Derived
5,351
median views, his first 42 long videos
Business interviews, July 2022 to May 2023.
Derived
62%
of all channel views come from one video
Jenny Hoyos, 5.02M of 8.13M.
Self-reported
~30K
subscribers from the Jenny Hoyos video, by his count
Said in March 2024, when the channel had 77K.
In the creator’s words Self-reported
We hit 100,000 subscribers in just a little over 2 years, but here’s the thing — we could have done it faster.
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