← Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
How AI is Changing the Game for Entrepreneurs and Content Creators | Artificial Intelligence | YAPCreator Replay | E6
00:47:26
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- [00:03]
A
Hey Young and Profits. When I think back to the early days of YAP media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public WI FI networks and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT&T business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their Internet to work without second guessing it. And once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show up fully, close deals, serve your clients, and focus on growing your business without any of the stress. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are. Like AT&T business built to work. Get AT&T business@business.att.com that's business att. Com Today's episode is sponsored in part by Huel Intuit, Blinkist Fabric and Zocdoc. Huel makes nutritionally complete meals that you can drink. Get 15% off with my code yap15@hewl.com yap15 intuit quickbooks bill pay lets you manage and pay your business bills directly inside QuickBooks. Learn more at QuickBooks.com BillPay Blinkist turns the world's best nonfiction into 15 minute reads or listens. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount@blinkist.com Profiting Protect your family with term life insurance from Fabric by Gerber Life. Apply today in just minutes@meetfabric.com Profiting ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network Doctors. Go to Zocdoc.com profiting to book a doctor today. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes@younginprofiting.com deals. What's Up Gap Gang? By now, we all know AI is reshaping everything. How we create content, how we build businesses. How we take an idea and turn it into something real faster than ever before. And in this final episode of the YAP Creator series Replay, we're getting into the strategies you can actually start using right now to unlock your creativity and stay competitive in the age of AI. You'll hear from some of the sharpest minds in the game. Dean Graziosi, Reid Hoffman, Tom Bilyeu, and more. As they break down how AI is redefining entrepreneurship and what the future of content creation really looks like. If you want to stay ahead instead of playing catch up with AI, then this is an episode you're going to want to pay attention to. All right, let's jump right in. If you want to be an entrepreneur and a content creator, you have to learn how to use AI tools. It's no longer an optional feature or nice to have capability. You need to know how to use AI and how to figure out how it can best help your business. AI has already transformed entrepreneurship in recent years. Technology. Today, AI and other online technologies have made it possible for people to start a business in a matter of hours with minimal upfront costs. Dean Graziosi, the iconic entrepreneur, business expert and co founder of Mastermind, reminded me recently of how far we've come as entrepreneurs over just this current century.
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B
When I started 27 years ago, I had to produce an infomercial because there was no Internet. People are like, why did you do infomercials? Like some old. Like, there was no Internet. So I had to produce an infomercial which was $150,000, and I used credit cards to get half that done. I had to get product built. This was when there was DVDs and cassette tapes and booklets. I had to get product printed and I had to put it in the warehouse. And tapes and DVDs, I had to hire a company to ship it. Then I had to pay $50,000 in TV media just to get a test. So I was in over $200,000 and I was selling a $37 course. My family's like, you're an idiot. Like, how many of those $37 courses do you have to sell just to get your money back? All of that had to happen fast forward.
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C
Today.
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B
You could literally use AI to help you unlock your life experience, to turn it into a coaching program or a course or a workshop or a monthly membership. You literally could do that in hours. You could get the framework of what you do. I would love to know your entrepreneurial journey. When I met you, you wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now you got 60 or 80 employees and a thriving business. I would pay anything. I want to know your story. If you were 27 years ago, you'd have to do all things I did. Right now. You literally could go to AI for a day, lay it out, film on your phone, and plug into a system where by the end of the week, for the cost of like five cups of coffee, you could be online Targeting your ideal client and making sales. So if you look at why it's been easier, things are getting exponentially easier. Every single day, people say to me, is AI going to take my job? I'm like, no. People who use AI the right way will take your job or take your career. That's all it is. It's not stealing your job and everything new. Maybe not for a younger generation, but everything new for a little bit older generation thinks it's the end of the world.
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A
Like Dean said, AI is making some things exponentially easier. And if you aren't going to take advantage of that in your business, then you can bet that other entrepreneurs out there will be using it in theirs. But, and because AI, along with the Internet, cloud computing and access to data, have made it easier than ever for people to start businesses, you can expect a jump in the number of solopreneurs and entrepreneurs in the years ahead as well. Peter Norvig, the former head of search at Google and an AI expert, told me about some of the advantages that he thinks AI savvy entrepreneurs will have in the years ahead, including an unprecedented opportunity to challenge much larger competitors and established brands. So this conversation made me realize that there really is no better time to be an entrepreneur, because as we were talking about, a lot of jobs might get replaced by AI. And when you're an entrepreneur, when you own the business, you're sort of in control of all those decisions and you're the one who might end up benefiting from the cost savings of replacing a human with AI. So do you feel like AI is going to generate a lot more entrepreneurs and solopreneurs in the future?
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D
Absolutely. And I think it's a combination. So I think AI is a big part of it. I think the Internet and access to data was part of it. The cloud computing was a big part of it. Right. So it used to be, you know, if you were a software engineer, the hardest part was raising money because you had to buy a lot of computers just to get started. Now all you need is a laptop and a Starbucks card and you can sit there and start going and then rent out the cloud computing resources as you need them and pay as you go. And so I think AI will have a similar type of effect. You can now start doing things much more quickly. You can prototype something and go to a release product much faster, and it'll also make it more widely available. So I live in Silicon Valley, so I see all these notices going around of saying, looking for a technical co founder. So there's Lots of people that say, well, I have an idea, but I'm not enough of a programmer to do it, so I need somebody else to help me do it. I think in the future a lot of those people will be able to do it themselves. So I had a great example of a friend who's a biologist and he said, I'm not a programmer. I can pull some data out of a spreadsheet and make a chart, but I can't do much more than that. But I study bird migrations and I always wanted to have like this interactive map of where the birds are going and play with that. And he said, and I knew a real programmer could do it, but it was way beyond me. But then I heard about this copilot and I start playing around with it and I built the app by myself. And so I think we'll see a lot more of that. People that are non technical or semi technical who previously thought, here's something that's way beyond what I could ever do, I need to find somebody else to do it. Now I can do it myself.
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A
I totally agree. And we're, we're seeing it first with like the arts, for example, now you can use Dolly and be a graphic designer, you can use ChatGPT and be a writer. So so many of the, the marketing things are already being outsourced by AI. It's only a matter of time where some of these more difficult things like creating an app like you were saying, is going to be able to be done with AI. So what are the ways that you advise that entrepreneurs use AI in the workplace right now?
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D
You know, you could help build prototype systems like that. You can do research, you can ask. Give me a summary of this topic. What are the important things? What do I need to know? As you said, creating artwork and so on. If that's not a skill you have, they can definitely help you do that. Looking for things that you don't know is useful. And so I think just, just being aware of, of what the possibilities are and, and having that as, as one of the, the things that you can call upon, it's, it's not going to solve everything for you, but it just makes everything go a little bit faster.
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A
Do you think that AI is going to help accelerate income inequality?
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D
I think it's kind of mixed. You know, any kind of software, any kind of goods with zero marginal cost tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. And so that's definitely something to be worried about with AI. We also have this aspect that the very Largest models are big and expensive. They require big capital investments. And if you'd asked me two years ago, I would have said, oh, all the AI is going to migrate to the big cloud providers because they're going to be the only ones that can build these large state of the art models. But I think we're already going past that, Right? So we're now seeing these much smaller open source models that are almost as good and that don't impose a barrier of huge upfront costs. Yes, the big companies are going to get bigger because of this, but I think there's also this opportunity for the small opportunistic entrepreneur to say, here's an opening and I can move much faster than I could before and I can build something and get it done and then have that available.
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A
As AI continues to advance, those who fail to adopt risk will fall behind their more tech savvy competitors. But those who can figure out how to leverage AI effectively will have a major competitive advantage. Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, who's working with OpenAI to develop AI tools for teaching students, told me that AI is going to fundamentally change the nature of work. And he believes that those who can level up their skills to keep up with that pace of change will rise to the top. A lot of the times when we're thinking about AI, we're thinking about how it replaces something, but this is really all about how it's supporting students. How do you think that this could also translate in the workplace or in the private sector?
- [11:32]
E
It is a big interesting question on what AI is going to do to, to the labor force broadly. The meme that has been going around over the last year, year and a half has been you won't get replaced by an AI, you're going to get replaced by a human using an AI. And so I think the imperative is that almost in any industry, if you learn to leverage these tools to be more productive, you're going to be in a good place and maybe be more productive in more domains as well. I think that's where the education system needs to make sure that students can leverage these tools. One to enhance their own learning. People say how AI can do writing well, how it can do software engineering well. The reality is you're still going to need people to be able to put those pieces together. So instead of being the person writing the basic code, you're going to be more of the software architect or the project manager, instead of being the entry level writer. The world is going to need more editors, more people who can put things together, but no one wants an editor or a software architect who can't write or code as well as the junior writers or the junior software engineers. So I think it's still an imperative for people to learn their traditional academic skills. It's, in fact, maybe better than in the past. And maybe the AI can help there and then be able to, you know, leverage these tools in whatever they're actually doing.
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A
So let's dig more into how AI tools can help you raise your content creation game or. Or just get it started. Content creation can be a demanding process, and one of the biggest challenges that new creators face is coming up with fresh, engaging ideas. This is where AI can become your brainstorming buddy and your new best friend. AI can help content creators generate ideas from podcast topics and episode names to social media posts and catchy opening lines. Jen Gottlieb, who's helped countless of entrepreneurs get their message out, told me how she envisions AI as every entrepreneur's personal assistant when it comes to content creating creation. When I went on your website, I noticed, like, your big message point right now is AI. We help you leverage AI to grow your brand, to build communities. Can you give us some examples of how you guys are actually leveraging AI to do that?
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F
Yeah, it's so cool. So, Hala, have you started playing with
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A
it at all yet? Of course. I'm like, I'm like, I'm doing all these different things. I'm trying to like, regenerate my voice so I don't have to record commercials and doing all this kind of.
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F
Yes, we've been doing that too. So there's so much. It's a little overwhelming at how much and how fast it's happening, but there is so many amazing tools out there right now. Even just using ChatGPT, forget all the hundreds, thousands of tools that there are to generate voice, generate images, repurpose content, generate video, there's so many tools, but really, ChatGPT alone can help you create so much content at. At scale. And the biggest excuse that I hear that people give me on a regular basis as to why they're not posting and why they're not sharing is because they don't know what to say. They don't have any ideas, they don't know what to talk about. I'm like, you no longer have that issue. You no longer have that issue because you have ChatGPT4 and you can literally just go in there and have it act as your personal content creator assistant. And it doesn't mean that it needs to write all of your stuff for you, but you can have it as your assistant, help you come up with ideas, help you come up with podcast ideas, names of episodes, different posts that you can do. We use all kinds of different apps to crop our videos and make our reels and give us Scripts for YouTube videos and YouTube ads and Facebook ads. The opportunities are endless. So we're doing actually monthly challenges where we're teaching just beginner beginners how to understand these technologies so they can slowly start to implement them into our business. Because we're still early. The most of the world still doesn't understand this or know how to use it. And so if you could just get on board early, your business is going to skyrocket way faster than all the other ones that are going to eventually have to get on board because it's not going anywhere. In fact, the CEO of Google, did you hear this? Said that AI is more profound than fire and electricity?
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A
Wow.
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F
So it's pretty awesome. I get that it's scary for some people, but also what's really important to remember is that AI is not necessarily going to take your job. However, maybe somebody that understands and knows how to use AI might. So it's important for everyone to start just learning, just playing. All you got to do is start playing with it. You don't have to become an expert right away, but just familiarize yourself with it. And if it can help you create content and take that fear out of the way of not knowing what to say and not knowing what to write, it can really be an amazing sidekick for you.
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A
I love how Jen describes AI as an amazing sidekick. The key then is not to view AI as a replacement for human creativity, but as a collaborative partner that can spark your inspiration and unleash your own imaginative potential. Sal Khan also believes that AI will enhance creativity, not destroy it. And he imagines a future in which more people will be able to generate and test ideas than ever before. So I know one thing that you talked about in your book is how AI can potentially supercharge human creativity. Can you talk to us about some of the ways that you imagine it can do that?
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E
I mean, this is the other fear that folks have is that, I mean, I could go on to any of these generative AI and say, hey, write a screenplay for me, or create an art piece in the style of whatever, and it'll bam. It's just there. And so everyone's afraid, like, oh, my God, this is the end of creativity. I'll say a couple of Things one, this isn't the first time in history something like this has happened. And I write about this in my book. Brave New Words is in the 19th century when the camera came out, I am sure a lot of portrait artists said, oh my God, this is cheating. This thing. You just press a button and it does essentially a real life picture of it. But all of the artistry is gone. Now we know on one level that didn't happen. Maybe the, you know, people hiring a portrait artist to paint a portrait of them, maybe that market has declined a little bit because of the camera, but it didn't get rid of creativity. In fact, a whole new field, a new creative field not only existed, but it democratized art in some ways where more people could do artistic things. I think you're going to see something very similar happening with AI and the other thing I emphasize is, you know, creativity isn't a zero sum game. It's not that like, let's say you and I, let's consider ourselves creative people. Each of us by ourselves can be reasonably creative. But if you and I are able to chat about things and brainstorm together and riff together, I think we're each going to become more creative, not less. I'm not just going to say, oh, Hala has got good ideas. I'm just going to check out. I'm going to say, oh, I love Hala's idea. Then, well, what if we did this too? I think any of us who consider ourselves reasonably creative recognize that our most creative times in our life were when we were around other creative people. And so I think AI is going to democratize that. Where there could be a young girl in Afghanistan someplace and she's not even allowed to go to school, but if she has access to this, she could brainstorm, she could riff ideas, she could test ideas. Now it'll be even better if it could be with the AI and other other people around, but you might not have that. And so I think AI is going to actually be an enhancer for creativity. I didn't even allow myself to think that I might be able to become a filmmaker one day. I was like, who gets to make a film? They cost tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. You got to know the right people, etc. Etc. But now AI is going to make that much more accessible where you can start to do movie quality production for, you know, a hundredth or a thousandth of the cost that you might have before. Now, once again, I don't think it's going to put creatives out of work, it's going to allow more people to have creative expression and that the good stuff is going to surface. In fact, it's a lot like podcasts or YouTube. These were both democratizing and yeah, they have in some ways threatened the traditional media establishment, but they've been good overall because there's a lot of creative people who couldn't break into the traditional media establishment before, but now they can self publish on a podcast or self publish on YouTube and the world discovers them.
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A
Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young Improfetters Raise your hand if you've ever googled one tiny symptom and then five minutes later you're convinced that you're dying. I know I have been there, done that way too many times. But instead of guessing and spiraling, I use ZocDoc. In fact, I've been using Doc Doc for like 10 years. I literally don't know how to book doctor's appointments any other way. It's a free app and a website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors based on your needs. You can search by symptom or specialty, read verified patient reviews, and see doctors with available appointments right away. If you're a busy entrepreneur and you need to squeeze in a doctor appointment on a random time, you can find the doctors that have availability. When you have availability. Want an in person or video visit? It's no problem with Zocdoc. There are over 150,000 providers across all 50 states and over 200 specialties. Any doctor you could imagine, any visit that you need, Zocdoc will have you covered and most appointments happen within 24 to 72 hours. So next time you start doom scrolling your symptoms, skip the stress and book a real appointment with a real doctor on Zocdoc. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com profiting to find and instantly book a doctor that you love today. That's Z O c d o c.com profiting zocdoc.com profiting and thanks to Zocdoc for sponsoring this message. Yap gang, Here's a reality about scaling a business that nobody's talking about. More vendors, more invoices, more payments flying around. And if you don't have a clean system for managing bills, things can get messy really quickly. And that's where Intuit QuickBooks bill pay comes in. It helps you manage and pay your business bills directly inside QuickBooks so everything stays organized in one place you can see what's due, control approvals and understand how payments affect your cash flow. Vendors can also add their payment details, which saves you from having to chase them down for info. Instead of spending hours managing payments, wouldn't you rather be focused on building and scaling your business? Start paying bills the smart way, not the hard way. Learn more@quickbooks.com BillPay Again, that's QuickBooks.com BillPay terms apply money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated License as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Hey App Fam, if something unexpected happened to you tomorrow, would the people who depend on you be financially okay? I asked myself that question and honestly I didn't love my answer. I and that's what pushed me to get covered with Fabric by Gerber Life Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. Made for busy parents and entrepreneurs like you all online on your schedule, right from your couch. If you wanted to, you could be covered in 10 minutes with no health exam required and the cost is way lower than you'd expect. Up to a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. There's also a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can cancel at any time. So really, what are you waiting for? When my dad passed away in 2020, he had life insurance and that was a big help for my mom. I honestly don't know what would have happened if that wasn't the case. So thankfully he was smart enough to get life insurance. Are you smart enough to do the same? Join the thousands of parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes@meetfabric.com Profiting that's meetfabric.com Profiting me eetfabric.com Profiting policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states Prices subject to underwriting and health questions AI is not just helpful for generating ideas, it can do so much more. As I discussed with the video marketing expert Ken Okazaki, AI can also generate multiple title and hook options for improved content performance. So for hooks lately I've been using ChatGPT for anything that I have to come up with some sort of title. I'm like say this in 10 different ways, right? Have you been using ChatGPT for that kind of thing?
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G
We have this one on one coaching with our clients because a lot of agencies, they actually provide all the tools. They say just send us the video and we'll do everything else for you. Send us the podcast, we'll do everything or we'll give you all the gear. And the gap in the market is actually someone to show up and live direct and coach people. A lot of people, they don't create it because they don't have the time, their schedule's too full or they get set up and then, you know, their hour turns into 15 minutes because of all the other stuff they have to take care of, but the accountability. So our coaches actually now, using some AI, using their own experience as marketers, will create all of the content plans. And that's the hook. Whether it's a question. Yes. And that they can answer, whether it's finish the sentence, whether it's a framework. I have a few frameworks like what I just showed you. The, you know, the number and the emotional word. There's, there's a hundred others, but we'll get them all planned out and then we'll have a conversation for an hour and shoot anywhere from 10 to 30 videos within that hour. And that's the short form content. So the hooks nowadays using ChatGPT does help us get there faster. So we're no longer starting from zero, we're starting from maybe 60 or 70 and then our coaches will finish the rest.
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A
Yeah, I love that. AI can also help you repurpose your content across different platforms, maximizing its reach and impact. For example, AI can help you take an audio podcast content and create text based content, social media clips, videos and more. And according to the online marketing guru Neil Patel, this kind of content repurposing can be a game changer for marketing purposes. What are the biggest trends that you see this year in marketing?
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H
The biggest trend that we're seeing this year right now in marketing is podcasting. So people look at podcasting. We surveyed over 8,000 companies and we found that the two big trends were podcasting and AI. And here's what I mean by that. When we look at the total number of blogs out there, it's over a billion. When you look at the total number of podcasts out there, it's less than 10 million. It's a wide open ocean. And then people are starting to repurpose that content and use it all over the place. Because you can use a podcast content, turn into text based content, you can use it to turn it into social media clips, whether shorts or long form video. And what's really cool is when you do podcasts, a lot of times people are doing them with other people like you and ir, and we're both going to push this on all our social profiles and we're both going to get at play from this. So it's actually a really amazing win win strategy for both of us. Right, so companies are really pushing hard on podcasting and they're pushing really hard on AI. What can they automate? And most people look at AI like, oh, I can use open AI to help write content and I can use them to figure out how to create images. But there's much more to AI from when we interviewed companies. A big portion of what they're looking to use AI from in a marketing standpoint is analytics. How can you have AI analyze your analytics on a daily basis and tell you where the wastage is within your marketing campaigns and where you can cut costs and reallocate money? Because if you look at the biggest expense in marketing, it's not services, it's not writing a piece of content, it's actually spending money on paid advertising. Look at the revenue that Google is generating and Facebook is generating. I think Google still is like a trillion dollar company or somewhere around there, depending on the month you're in. And Facebook still a massive company. We spend so much money on ad dollars. Imagine if analytics were analyzed by AI and it told us quicker when to cut our losses.
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A
Another area where AI can help you magnify your reach is in public relations. Here's Jen Gottlieb again talking about paid versus earned PR and the difference that AI can make.
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F
Let's talk about paid. Paid versus earned. Earned is always the best. Always the best because it's earned. Media, right? They chose you to be on their platform. They chose you to. So it's always gonna be the most organic, it's always gonna feel the best. It's always going to actually elevate your brand. Some forms of paid media, you can actually tell it was paid and so that it can actually kind of make your brand look a little shitty. Excuse my language. It can do that. But here's the thing. Sometimes, sometimes I have seen clients that have maybe done a paid sponsorship on a big show or strategically did some paid media where they were prepared to amplify it in a way that was going to create more credibility, influence and authority in a big way. So as long as you know that you're gonna like, let's say you do a paid sponsorship, you've got a product. Let's say it's a food product. And I know that the Today Show, Good Morning America, sometimes they'll have sponsors. I know, I think some of the other daytime shows, like Drew Barrymore like, you can pay to get your product on that show. So if you go into it, not like, okay, all the people on the show are gonna watch and see it. That's amazing. But how am I gonna take this actual segment, this clip that I have, or this photo of me and my brand on this show, and amplify it, send it out in emails, put it on my website, make 85,000 reels out of it, make an entire podcast out of it, use AI to take the actual content, repurpose the transcript of the entire interview, and make so many posts and tweets and threads, you could take one segment and you could make a year's worth of content out of that one segment. If you do it that way, I don't care what you do, if you pay or if it's earned, Obviously, it's always better earned, but it's what you do with it that counts.
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A
AI can make content generation and deployment so easy at times that you can lose sight of your own role in the finished product. The networking expert Michelle Tillis Lederman cautions that while AI can automate some tasks for us, it's important to maintain a human touch and authenticity in your content. I think AI is really going to help people with technical skills and these hard skills that we once used to need to go to school for and train for and memorize, we no longer are going to need to do that, because AI is to handle the hard skills for us, but what it can't do is the soft skills. And that's what makes connectors so special. Right. And so I think being a connector is going to be actually more valuable and a skill that more hiring managers and people are going to desire. As time goes on and as AI starts to take more precedent in the workplace, I think being a connector is going to even be more valuable.
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F
I do worry about AI kind of removing the authenticity from our communications, because one of the things AI does for us is it helps us draft communications really quickly. And then we might edit, but we might be sending things without really putting ourselves into them. And that's where that authenticity and that connection can get lost. So use it for what it does, which is speed us up, but make sure that you kind of bookend it with the essence of you.
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A
Finally, I wanted to take a step back and sketch out a future where AI is at the core of content creation and what it means to be an online entrepreneur. First, I want you to hear from Tom Bilyeu, who told me that the world as we know it as a Content creator will end in the next two years. Here's his thoughts about increased competition as a creator with AI and how he thinks we should try to manage all this change.
- [30:39]
I
AI tools will make it such that all of the things that we use as a moat are going to go away. So it takes a while to master all the tools. It takes a while to get all the different people on your podcast, all that stuff. What's going to end up happening is all of this information is going to fracture, like, hyper fracture, and somebody will be able to have an idea for a video with or without a guest. I mean, you could post videos of like, here's my conversation, my imagined conversation with Elon Musk, stuff like that. And instead of actually needing to get that person on your podcast, you just have the AI spin up his personality, you ask a bunch of questions, and if you do it in a way that the audience finds more interesting than the next person, then that's going to be what it's going to be. So what's going to end up happening is right now, it's already changed so much. You're so young, you probably don't have a sense of just how much it's already changed. But, like, when I was growing up, there was, you know, whatever, five channels, and that was it. And they controlled the narrative, and we didn't even realize the narrative was being controlled. And then as things have gone to social now, you start seeing things break apart. Now, when I started podcasting, people literally like, Tom, why are you doing this? It's already played out. All the players that are there, that are going to be there, it's already decided, man. It's too late. When I started, there were 400,000 podcasts. There's now 6 million podcasts. So the world has just changed absolutely dramatically. And that's going to keep happening where the format of a podcast itself is going to get disrupted by, you know, somebody alone with an AI doing things that nobody's ever thought of before. And the difficulty of production, the friction of going from idea to execution is the current moat that's going to go away, which means this will be more like TikTok. So instead of there being a person that has a podcast, take a Rogan or something like that, instead of that person dominating the landscape, you're going to have like, oh, hit. One of his episodes might pop off, but somebody else is going to release something else that's a totally unique format that nobody saw coming. And it'll just be like that, and people will just be Scrolling onto the next, onto the next, onto the next. And that's going to happen across everything. It's going to happen across video game production, which I, trust me, I have just as much anxiety as you. But the key is to adopt AI faster than the competition. And then just remember that one, we're moving towards an abundance reality where if AI does all of the wildly disruptive stuff that people think it's going to do over the next, say, 10 years, it's also going to be dropping the cost of virtually everything. So everything is just getting cheaper. Now, this takes you into a post capitalistic society and there are big questions around what that looks like. But people will have access to the things that they want for far, far, far cheaper. Now, that doesn't mean people won't find a way to peacock through other means, because we will. But especially when you throw in the mix brain computer interfaces, this is all going to get real weird. There are already people that can play video games, like proper video games, using just their brain computer interface.
- [33:47]
A
Oh, my God, it's nuts. That is so nuts. And you were just saying when you first started 400,000 podcasts and everyone was telling you, you know, there's no chance it's already saturated, AI is going to make things even more saturated. So what is your perspective about the increased competition? And you know, if there's even a point to participate, if there's going to be that much competition.
- [34:12]
I
So I think people make a mistake when they do preemptive quitting or preemptive strikes. The reality is you want to pay attention, you want to be at the cutting edge, you want to be integrating AI. Right now, AI is a phenomenal tool and it is a terrible master. So it's not going to be able to do things without humans yet. So people should be excited right now for this phase. It's going to allow you to do more with less. And so if you're somebody like you that's paying attention, you've got a whole thesis, you know what you're moving towards, AI is going to help you keep costs down, help you stay really nimble. Now, if AI starts changing the landscape, then just pay attention, like, okay, what do we need to do to stand out? How do we add value? And yes, it's going to change things, and yes, some people are going to get smashed into little pieces, but if you're really paying attention and if you continue to look at where is the puck going to go, then you'll be in better shape. Now, I've often made the quip that yes, you should always skate to where the puck is going to go, but it's getting a little hard now because the puck is teleporting. But it's still, it's the right idea you want to pay attention to. Okay, predictive engine. Where is this going? What does this mean for content creation? I think there is going to be that hyper fragmentation. I think this is really going to be about deep communities. So part of the reason that I'm on Twitch now doing my video game streaming is that, yes, I'm building a video game, so I need to build community around that. But also historically I've built audiences, not communities. And so this is a chance for me to really build a deep community where the interactions are very different. And that's going to be something that AI will have a hard time with just because people know on the other side of this is not a person, it's AI. And so I think there will be some things that people just have a weird resonance when it's AI versus when it's a real person. So I'll be looking for opportunities like that. I'll be looking for places where I want to lean into the humanity of it all, and I'll be looking for places where I want to lean into the AI of it all. But because I don't push back on the way the world actually is, AI is here. AI will keep getting better. AI may slow down, but I don't think it's going to stop. So I'm just paying attention to where it's at and how I can leverage it.
- [36:21]
A
For now, let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. What's up young and profiters? When I started building YAP media, I had to figure out everything on my own. Branding, operations, finance, marketing. Some days it felt like I had five different jobs and a never ending to do list. Now, as the founder and CEO of an almost eight figure company, I can tell you that running a business can be extremely overwhelming. What makes the biggest difference though is having the right platform from day one. And for millions of entrepreneurs, that platform is Shopify. Shopify is the all in one commerce platform that helps you build, run and grow your business. You can design a beautiful online store with ready to use templates, use AI tools to write product descriptions and marketing copy. You can use it to run email campaigns, manage inventory, handle shipping and returns, and so much more. Shopify lets you handle it all. Everything lives in one dashboard and that means less chaos and more time actually growing your Business Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify. Shopify.com profiting go to shopify.com profiting that's shopify.com profiting. Yap Gang One of the biggest challenges of building a business is staying responsive. Because the best opportunities don't always show up during perfect working hours. A lead calls at night. A customer texts while you're in a meeting and if nobody responds, that opportunity can disappear. That's why itrust Quo, spelled Q u o Quo is a business phone system that lets your team handle calls, texts and customer conversations from one shared number. On any device, everything lives in one clean view. Voicemails, contact details, full history. Your team always has the context that they need to get the job done. And I just love how Quo's AI logs the calls and then summarizes conversations automatically so that nothing falls through the cracks. That means your business stays responsive even when you're offline. And now we use Quo very creatively at Yap Media. On the social and production side of our agency, we have really busy, super high profile clients that don't want to log into Slack. Their team communicates with my team in Slack, but if the high profile client wants to message our team directly, they can use Quo. And my team can monitor that inbox together so they can text at any time. It's basically like a high profile client hotline. And that's just one idea. You can use Quo in really creative ways to level up your business. No matter what type of business you have. Make the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.comprofiting that's Q U O.com profiting quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. What's up Yap fam? So spring is here and let's be real. Most people fell off their healthy eating habits. Not me. And it's all because of Huel. That's H u e L. My entrepreneur friends put me onto Huel. Fast, inexpensive, healthy, one complete meal a day. Handled. They're black edition. Ready to drink. 27 vitamins and minerals, 35 grams of protein. 5 bucks and it actually tastes great. No mental energy wasted on figuring out what to eat. Huel is our secret weapon. I was always skeptical about ready to drink meals, but after trying Huel, I'm hooked. Chocolate is my go to and Huel is more than just ready to drinks. I had my entrepreneurship peer group over and everybody was like kids in a candy store trying out everything daily Greens, a light sparkling green drink with 42 vitamins and superfoods energy plus their caffeinated drink and the complete nutrition bar. All five products come in the Huel Discovery Bundle, heavily discounted, plus a free T shirt and shaker. It's the best way to try everything and see what works for you. Join me today with this limited time offer and get $50 in savings with the Discovery Bundle from Heal Today with my exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code yap15@heal.com yap15 that's h u e-l.com yap15 huell.com yap15 new customers only thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. While it's scary to think that AI is going to change everything, we can't just be scared. We've got to do something about it and nobody's going to be more equipped to take on these challenges than entrepreneurs. We're creative, we're innovative, we're flexible, and we know how to manage people and eventually manage AI agents. In fact, Reid Hoffman told me, in the near future we're going to have AI agents on our phones, devices that become our personal assistants, tutors, drivers, advisors, and things that we can't even imagine yet. For the creative and innovative minds, AI won't be a threat. It's going to be a powerful amplifier. It will dramatically enhance our abilities, expanding the scope and impact of their ideas. In essence, AI will become a force multiplier for human ingenuity. Here's a clip from my conversation with Reid Hoffman, the co founder of LinkedIn and an early investor in OpenAI on AI agents, content creation and the wild feature that he predicts for us.
- [41:40]
C
Part of what freaks people out a little bit is like, you know, we are going to this agentic universe where all of a sudden, as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we will still have, we'll have agents. And by the way, we'll have more than one. We may have one that we're, you know, particularly the Hollow or Reed, you know, ongoing companion, always, you know, always around us and helping us with things. But there's going to be a suite of them, you know, with kind of different specialties and different engagements. And by the way, you're, you know, your office is going to have one, your working group is going to have one, and you know, probably your podcast is going to have one, you know, et cetera. And we Hear fairly soon. And people say, well, if they're agentic, does that take my agency away? And the answer is no. The same way that when you work with colleagues and you work with employees and everything else that expands your agency, that doesn't take it away. And by the way, you know, these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which is a lot more than any of us have, about what things would be really good for us.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, thinking about agents is so mind blowing. And when I think about AI and all the talks that I've had, a lot of people talk about it as being like a great equalizer. And we were just talking about how humans are not going to work and everything like that. But I'm competitive, right? So, like, as I've been going through these conversations, I've been thinking about like, well, how am I going to be like the best version of me? How am I going to be like a better entrepreneur and compete? But now as I've thought about it more, I realize that it's like you have to be the best trainer of the AI. Like, I kind of imagine everybody being an entrepreneur having agents that work at their personal company, basically. And you're, you basically have to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring out how to like mobilize all that AI and all your AI support. And so smart people are going to be smarter at that. Right. And creative and innovative people are going to be more creative and innovative when it comes to their own agents. And so I just feel like a lot of people are probably worried that, like, you know, there's not going to be any room for them, to your point, as humans. But I really think it's going to be how you manage your AI.
- [43:44]
C
In addition to training, it's also deploying, organizing, executing, you know, strategizing, all of the above. And that's part of the reason why, you know, kind of with super agency and the other kind of content that I've been trying to get out there in people's hands, like, start playing with it, start exploring, because you want to start building the muscles and getting engaged with it is really important. And that's the most central thing. And again, part of the reason I called it agency, because it's like, you know, own your agency and go do it. And part of the super agency is when millions of us all start doing that, it benefits all of us much more than just even the technology benefits each of us individually by ourselves.
- [44:23]
A
So one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was trust when it comes to AI? Because I feel like a lot of people are worried about misinformation. There's so many deep fakes out there and people are just worried about trust when it comes to AI. So what are your thoughts around that?
- [44:39]
C
So look, trust is in an unfortunately short supply these days generally not just with AI. Trust in institutions, trust in democracies, voting systems, other people's intent, you know, other kinds of things. So trust is challenging. Now the way that you, that I think is going to be very important to build and maintain trust with AI is for the people who are building it to be very clear about like what their goals are, what they're doing, what they're doing to try to build and maintain trust. You know, part of the reason why, of course, you know, my encouragement with super agency is for people go try it. Because as they begin to try it and learn what kinds of good things they can do, what kind of things can be empowered, that will be the kind of thing that builds the kind of positive trust in these kinds of circumstances. And my advice to individuals, you know, encountering these things, like, you know, a classic suspicion is say, well, big tech companies who are trying to make a lot of money are building these things and they're trying to make money from you. I was like, well, by the way, trying to make money from you is usually offering you a product and service you really like. That really is something that you come back for, that you keep using, that's good for you, that's the goodness of modern business. So you go, okay, so which things should I trust these AIs on and which things should I not? And the answer is, well, if you generally shouldn't, you should understand that company is trying to have you as a lifelong loyal customer. That generally speaking, most of them are smart about doing that. So they're going to try to make it good. If it's something that's particularly important to you, cross checking it's important. Like, you know, when I go to GBD4 and get a prompt and I go, you know, huh, that doesn't really make full sense to me. I'm going to go look at this a little bit more because it's like, okay, you know, if it said something about like, yeah, your lab, your black lab can eat that mushroom, it's like, nah, I really want to know.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, then double check that.
- [46:33]
C
You know, by the way, over time, time these will get better and better for kind of how it operates. And so I think that's the Kind of thing. But I think that's the only by engaging and using, having that dialogue match our experience over time, being accountable as creators and companies for here are the things that we warrant in the use, and here are the things that are still under development and being clear about that so that people have a sense of, okay, I understand it's not perfect, but it could be really good for me.
- [47:05]
A
We were talking about deepfakes before, and I came across this interview of you interviewing your own AI on your YouTube. You call it Read AI and it's an AI video avatar of you. Talk to us about how you felt in that interview. Did you learn anything from it? Did you help you realize anything about AI in the future?
- [47:25]
C
Well, so it came about primarily because I was like, look, here's a technology that everyone's so skeptical about. Our name for it is Deep Fakes. It's kind of like if your name was Disaster, okay, but actually was more interesting as kind of a palette and exploration. Like, if you said, well, would I only want to talk to Read AI? Absolutely not. But would I want to talk to read AI Sometimes in doing these things and have that as a way of kind of having a dialogue with myself and also showing kind of what's good at. Because once I did that, one of the things I realized is I was. After I'd made that, I was off to go give a speech at the University of Perugia in kind of defense of an honorary doctorate. And I sort of wrote out the speech and then I went, you know, I could actually have read AI, give this speech. I'm only really fluent in English in all of these other languages, you know, ranging from Hindi to Chinese to Arabic to all these things. And to give the speech in those languages where people are much like, it was bizarre listening to me, my voice speaking Hindi or Chinese fluently. It's like, what would I sound like if I were speaking Chinese? Anyway, so. But it was like, it was humanizing, was the thing I said. I thought I would really dislike it, and it was humanizing. And it started making me realize, just like any. Just as I say to other people, hey, you should use the technology to get a sense of it and to reinforce your own agency with the technology. It was like, that was me doing that with that. And, you know, we continue to do new things with Read AI.
- [49:02]
A
Yeah, it's so cool. I feel like in terms of content creation, I've got a lot of creator entrepreneurs that listen to the show. I feel like AI is totally going to change the game like, even with me, I have my AI voice. If I'm sick or if I'm like, if I miss a commercial, we can use my AI voice as like an intermediate step. Like I'll always rerecord it, usually make sure that it's me, but it's really close to my voice. Like people really can't tell. And we're working on my AI video. And to your point, like, people probably think I'm crazy creating my own deep fake, but I want to be able to scale myself. And this is the future. And you just gave me such a great idea in terms of the translations. You know, people love to watch content all over the world and not everybody speaks English. One last question for you on the future of AI. So you're obviously at the forefront of this. You've thought a lot about it, you've written books on AI. So I just want you. And you can take your time with us because I think it's very interesting. How do you imagine our world to be 5, 10, 20 years in the future with AI? What do you imagine the world to be like?
- [50:04]
C
Well, one of the things that's a great way to look foolish in the future is to make overly specific predictions, partially because, you know, the usual principle I used to say in this is the future is sooner and stranger than you think. People thought in the 80s, we're going to get AI, but we didn't get AI. We got the Internet, we got mobile phone. Well, maybe now we're going to get AI. I mean, you know, we're going to get what shape of AI is the interesting question. What I think is kind of the minimum guarantee is there's going to be like, as opposed to like computer interfaces or phone interfaces. We're going to have agents, and agents are going to be the primary mode of kind of navigation. What we describe in Super Agency is an informational gps. So in this entire informational digital world, we'll do that and there will be more agents than there are people. Especially when you consider the. Even though there might be just one agent PI, that's kind of then instantiated with what it remembers out of its conversations and interactions. Holla. What it understands, remembers and it's conversation, interactions with Reid, et cetera, et cetera, there's kind of this, this flow of agents. Now one of the things that I think people haven't really fully tracked yet, but I think will be very interesting is how agents end up talking to each other. Because when we have that many agents, you know, part of how you And I are going to coordinate. Like we say, hey, what should we talk about in the podcast? Well, one of our preps will be your agent will talk to my agent. Oh, my gosh. And they'll kind of go, well, you know, these topics will be really good. And you know, hey, when you ask a question this way, it'll be great. And when you answer it this way, it'll be great, you know, and da, da, da. And, you know, that kind of thing. Or this could be a really new, interesting thing to try, and that will be part of the world we will be in. Part of that will then make the premium on thinking creatively, thinking differently, you know, as you mentioned, will be much higher. The notion that, for example, if you go back 30 years and you told someone there were going to be these jobs called web designer, data scientist, other things, they go, what are you talking about? You know, crazy person from the future. And I think that's another thing that we're going to see even more of, which is like, oh, didn't realize that was going to be the job, huh? And that's cool. Those are some of the things. But I try not to make overly specific predictions because usually they're. Maybe I'll put it this way. William Gibson, science fiction author, has a really good quote, which is, the future is already here. It's unevenly distributed. And he's been a great neuromancer with the Internet, everything else. Now he was being asked in an interview, how did you see the future? And he's like, look, thank you for the compliment, but by the way, if you read Neuromancer, sure, I got AI right, I got the Internet right. I missed the mobile phone. And so that's the kind of thing that we are always looking for, is that surprise and delight moment.
- [53:03]
A
Well, YAP fam, that's it for episode six, the final episode of the YAF Creator series. As we've heard it, in this series, creating content isn't just about algorithms and views. It's about connection, storytelling, and sharing your unique voice with the world. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode and to the entire YAP Creator series. I hope you're now equipped with the tools and knowledge to thrive in your creator journey. This is your host, Hala Taha, signing off and wishing you the best. From one creator to another, Sam.