Personal branding, building trust, and why most creators fail | Influence Anyone

**Jay Clouse** (0:14)
Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. Before I went on my current podcast guesting hiatus, I sat down with a man named Howie Chan. I met Howie in person earlier this year at Matt McGarry's Newsletter Marketing Summit. I thought he was fun, friendly, thoughtful, just like he is on his podcast, Influence Anyone. This podcast is all about applied influence psychology. Each episode, Howie sits down with experts and practitioners to uncover the hidden psychology that helps you influence yourself by mastering your habits, mindset and decisions, and get buy-in from others, whether that's your team, clients or audiences. In this episode with Howie, we talk about my recent topic of study, trust. We break down what I'm learning about how trust works, what it looks like to build a trust-first creator business, and why some creators frankly don't care about that. We also talk about personal branding, Howie dug up this cringe TEDx video I did in 2012, and then we talk about what I would do if I was starting over in 2026 I thought Howie did a great job pulling this together, so I wanted to share it with you here on the feed. If you enjoy it, you can find a link to subscribe to Influence Anyone in the show notes. We'll get to that full episode right after this. Have you ever had one of those conversations that feels like it completely changes your perspective? Maybe even your whole life trajectory? Those are the types of interactions you'll have in the lab, our membership for creators like you. I know you are a good fit for the lab just because you listen to this show. If you're drawn to the people and the ideas we showcase here, many of whom are members of the lab by the way, you would love the conversations we have inside the community. Inside the lab, we all share the results of the experiments we're running, the good and the bad. By learning from the successes and failures of others, you will grow much faster. I'm running my own experiment. For new members of the lab, I'm offering $200 off your first year using the promo code POD. $200 is 29% off the basic tier, by the way, so take me up on this. That's $200 off using promo code POD at checkout. Just go to creatorscience.com/lab. There's also a link in the show notes.
Trust is what gives you influence. I'm not saying attention isn't important. It's necessary, but it's insufficient.

**Howie Chan** (2:41)
Are there systems to build trust?

**Jay Clouse** (2:43)
There are, and the interesting thing is...

**Howie Chan** (2:47)
Today on the Influence Anyone podcast, I'm joined by Jay Clouse. He's the founder of Creator Science. He has a podcast, a newsletter, a community, and he's helped creators like Pat Flynn and Ali Abdaal build their communities as well. He's taught over 10,000 students how to be creators. But really, the key skill and expertise that Jay has is about building trust. Think about this. If you're a leader, if you're a business owner, it really doesn't matter. You are trying to have people trust you. Trust in your idea. Trust in your startup. Trust in your vision. And there is no better teacher than Jay.
So, if you want to have trust be the engine of your influence, stay tuned. I'm Howie Chan. I'm an Influence Strategist and Founder of the Behaviour & Company. Let's get into it.

**Jay Clouse** (3:39)
There are basically four major traits to a person that contribute to whether we perceive them as trustworthy. Their competency, their reliability, their level of empathy, and...

**Howie Chan** (3:51)
You've helped a lot of creators, Jay. What typically are the trap? What do they do wrong?

**Jay Clouse** (3:56)
Well, I think most creators fail because they...

**Howie Chan** (4:06)
Jay, I want to start off with this. Let's hope you can hear this.

**Jay Clouse** (4:09)
What are you like? I want you to think about that for a moment. A lot of you are thinking about things that you identify yourself as, things that you want to be. Some of you may be thinking about things that you think other people think you're like. My goal is to have those two views be one. And that is called your personal brand.

**Howie Chan** (4:29)
Jay, that was almost 12 years ago now.

**Jay Clouse** (4:32)
Yeah, a long time ago, early. Gosh, that video is hard for me to watch now. And I don't talk about it, because I don't want people to find it.
Good on you for finding that. Yeah, 12 years ago, talking about personal branding. I was in college.