Navigating CEO Challenges and Creative Journeys

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This chapter explores the emotional complexities faced by CEOs, including the duality of confidence and self-doubt amid entrepreneurial pressures. It emphasizes the importance of candid dialogue among entrepreneurs to combat isolation and highlights the significance of humility and authenticity in leadership. The narrative weaves personal anecdotes from the speaker's creative journey in music production, illustrating the intersection of intuition, technological innovation, and the pursuit of shared values.

Guest: Jack Conte, CEO & co-founder of Patreon

For many YouTube video creators, getting millions of views on your videos may seem like the goal. But when Jack Conte and his wife Nataly Dawn became YouTube stars through their band Pomplamoose, they didn’t automatically find gold at the end of the rainbow.

“You check your ad revenue and you make 48 bucks in ad revenue and you're like, ‘Oh my God, I'm worthless,’” Jack recalls. “And you check that dashboard every day ... and eventually you start to believe that you're worth $48 a month. That's a bad f**king feeling.”

That’s why in 2013, he co-founded the artist-funding platform Patreon, and discovered that there were a lot more creators like him out there. As of 2022, those creators have earned more than $3.5 billion from Patreon.

Chapters:

(01:06) - Barriers to entry
(03:04) - The creator economy
(08:36) - Patreon’s mission
(11:22) - Its name
(13:12) - Talking to artists
(17:26) - Detail obsession
(24:07) - “Nobody has an answer”
(27:17) - Playing empty rooms
(31:09) - Success feels like failure
(33:37) - “I’ll be happy when...”
(39:26) - Type one vs type two joy
(45:32) - Self-confidence
(48:30) - Obsession, humility, and kindness
(53:51) - Figuring out your sound
(56:18) - “I’m f**king terrified”
(01:00:33) - Pedals
(01:04:04) - Starting Patreon
(01:07:04) - Who Patreon is hiring

Mentioned in this episode: Jason Kilar, Spotify, YouTube, Pomplamoose, Google Docs, GoDaddy, LaCroix, James Freeman and Blue Bottle Coffee, Woody Allen, Medium, YCombinator, Apple and the App Store, MySpace, Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman, AdSense, Home Depot, Skrillex and Fred Again, Matt Bunting, and Sam Yam.

Links:

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm