Interfacing with the most epic guests
Fifteen years of marketing and comms across a 30M+ audience. I’ve managed press, celebrity engagement, and creative teams at PETA — high-stakes, high-profile, no dropped balls.
Transmission for Jesse Michels — American Alchemy
Sean August
Horvath
Producer & Operator
“I make the trains run so the host can go deep.”
Fifteen years turning chaotic creative operations into well-oiled machines. I built this page specifically for American Alchemy — not a generic application.
And I was a viewer first. I already swim in this water: the compartmentalization through-line, the missing physicists, Levin’s Platonic space, the Telepathy Tapes. I’m not learning the show on the job — I’m learning the operation.
01
The role, mirrored
Four things the posting asks for. Four proof points — no fluff.
Helping shape the editorial schedule
Set and enforced the editorial standard across a 30M+ audience at PETA. Owned brand voice and editorial systems for 39 months at Silent Labs — sustaining narrative continuity through two full market cycles.
Working on a bunch of YouTube stuff
I’ve worked with YouTube since 2011 — the same year the American Alchemy channel was created. At PETA I drove 9× year-over-year video views and +900% brand video views with a short-form-first editorial calendar.
Turning this into a well-oiled machine
I build AI-augmented production pipelines: 80+ weekly posts run by a single operator, 70% less podcast production time across a 16-category content network, and near-zero-infrastructure builds — a $0/month payment platform, e-commerce at ~$15–75/year versus the typical $40–150/month.
02
Track record
The receipts, briefly.
2→13
In-house digital team scaled at PETA
3.2B
Facebook impressions in 2016
$0.002
Cost-per-acquisition via rigorous A/B testing
9×
Year-over-year video view growth
70%
Reduction in podcast production time
80+
AI-augmented posts shipped weekly, one operator
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Scaled the operation
Grew the in-house digital team from 2 to 13. 3.2 billion Facebook impressions in 2016. Drove acquisition cost to $0.002 through disciplined A/B testing, and 9× year-over-year video views. Trained global teams in the Philippines, India, and the U.K. on a single reproducible playbook.
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Art Director
Built the editorial and brand system from the ground up. Produced a 3,000-copy printed comic that translated a genuinely complex topic for a non-technical audience — narrative made legible.
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Custom AI pipelines & agentic content systems
80+ AI-augmented posts a week. 70% less podcast production time. A live, shipped product on every single client engagement — not slideware.
“He’s making history.”
Also: a Top-20 Brand Tweet at the 2014 Academy Awards, and a single organic post that drove an unsolicited six-figure donation.
03
I already started
Before I sent this, I did the work. Here’s a free audit of American Alchemy’s setup — yours regardless of what happens next.
~$2,300–$2,500/yr in cuttable cost
Two near-duplicate Wix sites, a dead applyjessemedia.com domain,
and Substack’s 10% revenue cut versus flat-fee alternatives. Quiet drag,
easy to remove.
The clips channel is underbuilt
@jessemichelsclips looks to be under 10K subscribers against a
621K main channel. That’s a major — and very fixable — distribution gap.
Consider it a gift. The findings stand whether or not we ever work together.
04
On Austin
In 2025 you publicly asked for “epic Austin-based YouTube/Podcast producers.” I’m relocating to Austin from Massachusetts — by choice, not coincidence. By the time this matters, I’ll already be local.