A mastermind focused on helping you stand out easier + resonate deeper by creating higher-impact content. Get ongoing coaching, connection, and collaboration from our founders and a community of creative pros.
On-demand live coaching, 1:few and 1:1
Community of creative, experienced pros
Daily access to the Kitchen’s founders
Masterclasses, worksheets, templates & more
Some groups emphasize their curated community. Others prioritize courses and classes. While the Kitchen offers both, our main value according to members is the live and asynchronous coaching and collaboration with the Kitchen’s cofounders and other experienced, creative peers to ensure you produce stronger work.
Members are coaches, consultants, and content marketers who write, speak, podcast, and teach.
Two-thirds of members have 20+ years of experience.
85% explore work-related topics in their content, helping others grow their companies or careers.
(Fall 2023 member survey)
This is about your skills, not any one channel or technology. We focus on helping you acquire and deploy the personal, transferable creative skills which make you a stronger communicator and storyteller everywhere you show up — things like premise development and differentiation, personal storytelling, branding & modeling your ideas, public speaking, and more.
The value comes from doing the work, together. Through our live and asynchronous support, we help pull out and sharpen your ideas, hold you accountable, and ensure you feel regularly inspired and full of momentum.
🎓 Masterclasses from Jay and Melanie
🎤 Elite guest interviews/AMAs
📁 Access to back catalog of all classes and interviews
⚙️ Library of templates, prompts, and resources
🎥 Jay’s personal process/behind-the-scenes videos
💙 Weekly roundtables with Jay (Wed 12 ET)
🚪 Weekly office hours with Melanie (Fri 12 ET)
💬 Slack community access (lightweight by design)
👋 Quarterly coaching calls with Jay (VIP members only)
🎁 Exclusive invites to other collaborative projects (VIPs)
Alli Torban is a podcast host, author, data literacy advocate, and information designer.
We’re honored Alli is one of our Chefs (members) in the Kitchen!
— Dozie Anyaegbunam (Calgary)
Host, The Newcomers Podcast; Sr. Content and SEO Manager
No cheap tricks needed. (The band is fine. The marketing gimmicks aren’t.)
As an expert, what you know matters — but what you say and how you say it must make that clear.
This is the learned skill of resonating with others. When you resonate, you ensure they care. When they care, they act.
No action, no results. We’re all in the business of resonating.
“I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the most valuable personal development resource I've ever had. For the first time in my career, people are reaching out to me because of my ideas, not work I've done on someone else's ideas.
—Meg Johnson (Portland)
Writer; podcaster; B2B video producer
Two of the world’s most creative and accomplished business storytellers & content creators, with 40+ years combined experience as authors, keynote speakers, podcasters, and facilitators, including in-house creative and marketing roles at brands like these.
In 2016, Jay received the highest audience rating out of the 150 speakers at Content Marketing World, which earned him the coveted opening keynote to the entire audience of 4,000 marketers the next year. In 2019, Melanie did the exact same thing, earning the opening keynote by receiving the highest audience rating. They were the two youngest speakers in the 14-year history of the event to achieve this.
💸 Will your employer cover your learning & development? Here’s a template to help you make the case.
(For our refund policy: see FAQs below pricing)
WHAT YOU GET:
Weekly small group roundtables hosted by Jay
Weekly office hours hosted by Mel
Slack community access
All recordings of past masterclasses + guest interviews
Library of Jay’s tutorials and personal process videos
Library of templates and prompts
Quarterly coaching calls with Jay ($2,000 value)
WHAT YOU GET:
Weekly small group roundtables hosted by Jay
Weekly office hours hosted by Mel
Slack community access
All recordings of past masterclasses + guest interviews
Library of Jay’s tutorials and personal process videos
Library of templates and prompts
Quarterly coaching calls with Jay ($2,000 value)
You’re busy. We get it. Us too.
The Kitchen is designed to fit into your ongoing content creation, not create more work on top of it.
It’s not a creativity course, so there’s no homework and no obligations. All content is recorded and available for replay on-demand, whenever suits your schedule.
We make it easy by delivering the materials to you via email, so you don’t have to remember to log into the member portal—although you should check it out, because there’s lots of tasty goodies in there.
But if you REALLY want a number: our most successful members report spending 30-60 minutes per week engaging with the membership. This includes time spent joining optional live sessions, watching asynchronous content, and applying what they learned in the Kitchen to their own creative projects.
We deliver value to members in a variety of ways, all of which are optional so you can pick and choose what best suit you:
💛 Live Masterclass where you’re taught by Mel or Jay
💛 Behind-the-scenes videos from Jay
💛 Office Hours you can drop into for personalized feedback
💛 Creator Round Table Group Calls for peer feedback and discussion
💛 Virtual Co-Working Sessions
💛 Presentations from and AMAs with industry experts and respected creators
💛 Resources like templates, prompts, guides and more.
Everything useful is recorded and stored for you to access, and you’ll have access to the entire backlog of previous content too.
Our members include both independent and in-house creators.
Creatively, we’re all driven by the written or spoken/recorded word (rather than design and illustration): newsletters, books, speeches, poems, articles and essays, podcasts, videos, and similar — plus various sales and marketing assets surrounding these things.
Additionally, you’re a good fit if:
You’re an experienced* professional (even if your creative practice is newer)
You want to push yourself creatively and improve your storytelling skills.
You want to be inspired and challenged to enhance your creativity.
You want to improve the work you’re already doing.
You want to create better and more impactful work, more consistently and confidently.
* 100% of current members have 5+ years professional experience and two-thirds have 10+ years as working professionals.
We push you in areas that are both personal (they come from you, enabling you to do more original, identifiable work) and transferrable (they serve you anywhere you show up, not just in one project or medium).
Here are some example themes:
❤️ Personal storytelling
📅 Playing with cadence
😨 The tactful use of tension
💡 Idea development and pitching
🗣️ Conducting better interviews
🔍 Hone your story sourcing system
🚀 Building audience & momentum
😜 Letting your quirks out
♻️ Moving between content formats
…and more.
Everything is designed to be customizable to YOUR needs and schedule.
If you aren’t yet a member when we launch a given menu, you can watch the masterclass on-demand.
If you ARE a member but prefer to focus on something other than our next theme, that’s great too. You can work through older menus OR simply do your work as usual, supported by our office hours, co-working sessions, and creator roundtables — even if you discuss a theme that’s different from your peers.
Again, this membership is designed for busy professionals. It’s meant to feel on-demand, not demanding.
The short answer: YES.
The medium answer: Y E S.
The long answer. Yes, please email jay@unthinkablemedia.com or use our Contact page to inquire about current group rates. Please include the number of subscriptions you need. Thanks!
All members will get plenty of access to Jay and Melanie directly, with one difference between member tiers:
VIP members receive quarterly 1:1 coaching and consulting calls, as well as everything Standard Members access.
Standard Members will interact with Jay and Melanie through other member benefits, like office hours, roundtables, co-working sessions, and live masterclasses/guest interviews.
Members can cancel at any time. Here is our refund policy:
For quarterly plans: If you opt to cancel, you will retain access to the Kitchen until the end of that quarter. No refund will be issued, but you will not be renewed for the next quarter.
For annual plans: To prevent any bad actors from subscribing, downloading all our material, then canceling all within the first month, here is our policy for annual plans:
Annual members who cancel within the first 3 months of membership receive 9 months equivalent fee as a refund. (Note: we have never had this happen.)
Annual members who cancel after the first 3 months of their membership receive however many months’ equivalent fee remained for that year.
EXPECT MORE.
That’s why I founded the Creator Kitchen: to help others create more meaningful things. To resonate more deeply and, in doing so, better serve your career, company, and community.
After starting in sports journalism and shifting quickly to marketing, I worked in roles at ESPN, Google, two startups (including HubSpot, where I was head of content), and the VC firm NextView.
Since becoming an independent creator in 2016, I’m grateful to have worked on projects like these:
My award-winning podast Unthinkable — a narrative-style exploration of how and why some creative people trust themselves more than “best practices.”
My books, Break the Wheel and The Creator’s Compass — fun, funny, but challenging journeys to understand ourselves and our roles in shaping more powerful creative work.
The docuseries Against the Grain — a travel-based docuseries about values-based businesses, which I wrote, co-directed, and hosted.
Consulting and/or developing shows for brands like Salesforce, Drift, GoDaddy, Wistia, Help Scout, Podia, and more.
Years on the road as a professional keynote speaker, delivering talks to everyone from 4,000 marketers to 400 people ops professionals to 40 small business owners.
But few things have been as rewarding and as transformative to me than my writing practice, established in 2005, which I do on the side of everything else.
It’s there that I found myself and learned to trust myself — and to imbue the work with the kind of personality, personal stories, and problem-solving vision that makes me and my work identifiable and unique.
I want this same outcome for every member of the Kitchen: more personal, more powerful work, executed more consistently. This is what makes you irreplaceable in the face of endless competition and increasing pressures from algorithms and AI.
That’s why I’m so excited about launching the Creator Kitchen: to help all of you access your most creative selves, organize your creative processes, and produce the kind of work you’ve always dreamed about creating.
After studying investigative journalism and arts journalism, I worked on the branded content team at Huffington Post, was the first-ever editor of branded content at the New York Times, and served as Director of Creative Strategy of Time Inc’s 35 US media properties.
Since setting out on my own in 2016, here’s what I’ve been up to:
As a professional speaker, I’ve spoken on stages around the world, giving keynote speeches and breakout workshops to audiences ranging from 10 engineers to 2000+ real estate advisors.
As an author, I’ve written two books for creators and marketers: The Content Fuel Framework and Prove It
As a consultant and corporate trainer, I’ve been honored to with 30+ Fortune 100 companies, advising on content strategies, content creation, and content operations.
I’ve worked with several universities to develop Master’s-level courses for degrees in communications, advertising, and journalism, and taught several of them myself.
Regardless of the form it takes, all my work is focused on educating and empowering creators to feel more creative and produce better work.
