Matt Wolfe: How AI Will Transform Your Workflow!

If you're worried about AI taking your job or making your business or services you offer obsolete. This episode might just change your mind.

I brought back my really good friend brother from another mother, Matt Wolfee, who spins every single day. Holidays weekends. It doesn't matter middle of the night. This guy's always analyzing. Every single AI breakthrough and trend that comes out there. He's made a whole business out of it. Matt used to be the cohost of this podcast and old business partner of mine.

And I'm happy he's doing what he's doing now, because he gets to come back and share what he's been discovering these breakthroughs. But what he's discovered about 2025 is biggest opportunities. Probably isn't what most people are talking about. And Matt. Totally breaks it all down and gives you this on a platter. So you can walk away from this episode and start building with this in mind. It can completely transform and change the way that you think about your career. Your business.

The way that you serve people and just connect with humans in general. So take notes, follow Matt, go to future tools to IO. That's his website, follow him on YouTube and beyond. Enjoy the episode.

You know what, Matt? Cheers. It's great to see you again, Although, you look like you're drinking beer. That could be, that could be beer or coffee. Or a Moscow mule. Yeah, now we're talking. I, I, yeah. Parks, parks and sometimes, you know, one of those, uh, you know, just a little crafted thing in a, in a thermos or something. It might've happened a few times this last, uh, holidays, season. It's good to see you again, Matt.

You too, Joe. I saw you last weekend and the weekend before, but, uh, It's never too Well, I mean, maybe sometimes it's too much, but it hasn't gotten too much yet. Maybe we'll take a week off. You're doing CES, right? So, Yes, I'm going to CES on Monday, and I'll be there till Friday. No, no! Next weekend's open! No, you Yeah, it is, Hang with your fam. Um, yeah, so, for everyone, we are, uh, this is Señor Matthew Wolfee. He is, uh, a return guest of many, many episodes from prior.

We don't need to explain ourselves. He's back. Um But yeah, we're talking about our coffee dates. So we've been doing a little weekly meetups and I think it's been kind of fun for both of us to, I don't know, like chat YouTube. You don't have a lot of people to chat YouTube, obviously AI stuff, life. I did see you posted something about YouTube last night, which I'm going to bring up because I thought it was actually quite interesting.

I have a few threads for, for where I want to take this episode. I told you a couple of them. Well, let's pull on those threads and unravel this sweater. Don't tell me what to Ooh, alright. Whose sweater are we pulling off though? This is getting weird already. I like it! thinking of the Weezer song I know. Aw, the blue album is the best. The best. Uh, well, what, what are you excited about right now, Mr. Matt? This is January Early January, we're going to try to get this episode out ASAP.

yeah, start of 2025, which is wild. Um, I don't know. How are you feeling? Are you feeling? How are you feeling? I'm just gonna leave it there. I'm feeling good. Yeah, I mean everything's been going good in AI land and YouTube land and We mentioned I'm going to CES next week. So I'm really excited about that. CES is like that's like Disneyland for tech nerds, right? Tell me, tell me more. What is, what is CES? Yeah, so CES is the Consumer Electronics Show.

It happens every year in Vegas, and it's where all of the, like, big tech companies come and unveil some of their, like, prototypes that they've been working on. Like, it's stuff you can't even buy yet, but it's, like, the future tech that they're showing off to get feedback on, right?

So, like, last year they had, like, Clear televisions that you could see through, they had flying cars, they had like new 3D printer technology, they had, uh, different types of humanoid robots that were like wandering around the show floor, they had like, you name it, it's like tech and gadget technology. Disneyland heaven for nerds, right? So I just kind of like wander around with my camera, trying to like film as much of it as I can. And just in awe of like, what's coming.

So what is, what's been like, cause you went last year, right? Was that your first year? Or Yeah. Last year was my first year going. Yeah. there anything like, did anything get published or like some published, but like released to the public for what you saw? Or is it like years and years No, no. There's still a lot of stuff that they show off. That's like, like sometimes they announce stuff that's coming live, like right now you can get it.

Then usually it's stuff that's like, here's, there's always a lot of stuff that's like, here's what's coming, but it's going to be available in like three months. And then there's a lot of stuff that's like, Here's a prototype we're working on. We don't know if we're ever going to release it. Right? Like that's some of the like car technology and stuff like that. like last year they showed off like the rabbit R1 was one of the announcements during CES and that came out a few months later.

Um, there was a bunch of like new laptops that were announced from companies like LG that eventually came out. Um, I don't remember it like specifically, but there was like a lot of like.

Little personal consumer electronic stuff that they did show off and then it becomes available like later in the year So it is kind of a mix of like here's what's coming like this year, but also here's what may never come We're just putting out in the world and show you what we're capable of Just to tease you tremendously. Yeah. Is there anything, um, that you're like most excited for when you go to these things? Because I know like you, you see it all, you get some pretty good ins.

The fact that you have a YouTube channel that people want you to talk about their stuff, obviously. So is there anything you're looking out for? I, I always look out for anything with AI in it, but the problem with CES is now everything has AI in it. Right. So it's like last year I was, there was literally AI in everything already last year, they had an AI barbecue, they had an AI toilet, they had AI beds and mattresses, they had like, you name it. They put AI in everything.

Like. The AI toilet, imagine a toilet where you poop in it and then the, it's got sensors that analyze your poop and say like, Hey,

you might want to see a doctor. We noticed this within your poop. biome check is like happening Yes. Like a, like a, like a, a gut health check by looking at your poop, right? Like that kind of stuff exists and they show it off at CES. Now the demos, they're not pretty. I was going to say, did you demo it? it. That would be pretty epic marketing though. You're like, you know what? We brought a port a potty to CES. Anyone? It's Everybody come watch me take a shit. Oh, it's great.

Okay. So AI toilets. What's the, like, I was going to, because one of the questions is like, what's the weirdest thing that, but AI toilets. That's a pretty weird one. see it pretty useful, but it's like, how often do you really need to be analyzing your, uh, any other ones that, that kind of stand out? Um, We're talking old technologies last year.

Obviously you got yeah, I mean, some of this stuff they showed off last year and we still haven't gotten access, but I'm trying to think, um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like they, they put AI in everything and some stuff like doesn't need AI, like. I saw like AI e bikes, right? Which like, what's the point, right? Like really, they were like e bikes that had like chat GPT built into it. So you can have conversations with your e bike, right?

Um, I was telling you about like, uh, a Qualcomm car that had the ability to use stable diffusion inside of the car. So you can be driving down the road and say, Hey, make me a cat on Mars eating unicorn poop or whatever. Right. Like, and it would generate that image and put it on your display inside of your car, like Why do we need that? Cause that's not distracting at all it exists. That's a thing that exists. All right.

So yeah, the AI vacation of everything is basically was the theme last year. We'll see what this Yeah, that's going to be the theme this year too. Um, last year it was like AI for everyone was I think the, uh, the sort of slogan of the year and this year I think it's something very similar, like. AI, Even more for everyone. AI, even more for everyone. Yeah. It's something like that. AI for everyone or Alright, there it is. Yeah. I don't know. It's like Funner, Funner, California.

Where our buddy dubbed that, you know, and Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bunner AI for there you go. Oh, I like it. Gotta give credit to Burma though. All right. But all right. So CES, that's, that's going to be rad. One of these days or years, I got to get out there. Um, cause I heard it just like what takes over the whole strip. So Pretty much. Yeah. A hundred and I think 140, 000 people last year.

Um, it's, it, it's in the Mandalay Bay. It's in the Venetian. It's in the entire Las Vegas convention center. It's in the Fontaine blue. Um, hotel as well. It's in, uh, there's stuff going on at the Aria.

It's like literally spread across and that's actually sort of one of the frustrating things about CES is like, I mean, the strip isn't that big, but when you put 140, 000 people out there and they're all trying to get Ubers or lifts at the same time, and they're all trying to get from like one hotel to the convention center at the same time, it's a cluster, like. You're trying to go two miles, but it takes you an hour to go two miles, you know?

So it's, it's kind of frustrating because you kind of have to like go spend one whole day at like one venue and not really move around because just trying to move from venue to venue takes up hours, you Oh, yeah, have you been on the uh, this like the the Tesla loop that's I haven't yet. No, I haven't tried that yet, but last, the Tesla loop only goes between the convention center and like one of the hotels. a resort world.

Yeah, I stayed there and then I took it just to the convention center Took all the kids and family and then just took it right back Yeah, yeah, yeah. to try that's the only loop it does. It doesn't like stop at other hotels or anything like that. So it's like, unless where you're trying to get to is like really close to that like resort world place. It's not super helpful.

And last year when, um, at the end of one of the days when I was at the convention center, the line to get on the Tesla loop was like a two hour line. I was just gonna say I'm like it's not the quickest process because you're literally funneling everyone into a single car every time and Yeah, we found it on an off day. It was like a tuesday. So it was Yeah, I found the real cheat code during CES is the monorail.

You get one of the hop on hop off monorail passes that last like five days or whatever, and at the very end of the convention, like, like, um, like at 6 p. m. or whatever, whenever, when all the expo halls are shutting down for the night, The monorail is a cluster, right? Everybody's trying to funnel onto the monorail at the same time.

But if you're kind of going back and forth during the day and you're not trying to get on it right as the expo is closing and stuff, it's actually pretty easy to hop on and off the monorail. So that's like, that's like the life hack. If you're going to see, yes, let's get that monorail pass. Maybe vegas as a whole too. I don't know Yeah, probably. definitely see yes. Yeah, but cool. Well, one of these one of these years we'll share some time there Yeah.

Cause the monorail does go to the convention center also. Right, see, so you can just do it to the Tesla loop, hop up, you know, just Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, well, so that's exciting, that's happening soon, because you traveled a shit ton, a metric shit ton, uh, that's an accurate, uh, you know, depiction of your life last year. Uh, which was crazy, um, yeah, and is this year going to be a lot of travel like that for you? I'm trying to cut back this year.

Um, there's a lot of events that it's kind of like. It's cool that I experienced them once. Do I really care to go back to them again? Probably not. I mean, there's a handful. The thing about going to events is it's really fun. I love connecting with the other people. Most of the, like, CES is an exception because it's like, it's like visual wonderland, right? Like everywhere you look, you're just like, Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's really cool. Right.

But most of the events I go to are like keynote presentations where you're basically sitting there watching a glorified, like slideshow presentation, right? By, uh, Yes, it might be a Jensen Huang or a Mark Zuckerberg or, you know, some big name giving the presentation, but it's still like a glorified keynote presentation throughout the whole thing, right?

So, some of that kind of stuff, it's like, that's cool, it's, it's fun to be there, it's fun to like sort of connect with people at Facebook or Meta, like I actually know people at Meta now that I can call on if I need to. Um, you know, there's other influencer creator types that are out there that I met that maybe we can do collabs now.

So for me, like the real appeal of those events is actually making those connections, meeting those people and like having sort of ends at some of those companies, but I don't really care about sitting through a lot of the presentations anymore. It's more like, I love CES cause it's like that visual stuff. You can get hands on with a lot of the tech. I love augmented world expo because that's like all VR and augmented reality stuff. And it's all demos.

You just walk around from boot to boot the booth and try this stuff on and demo various like AI or AR and XR tech. Right. So like, I love the like hands on experience stuff and I would like to do more of that. I don't know about the like keynote presentation type stuff. We went to a lot of conferences back in the day in the marketing sphere. And like, yeah, I think in the early days we went to some keynotes or whatever presentations that were going on.

And then we quickly realized we're like, you know, the fun is actually at the bar. It's connecting with people. It's getting to know the hallways. Yeah. are the halls. Yeah. Wherever that, but people, right. It's. Because you never know what collabs and obviously it goes transfers to what you're doing now with all sorts of different fun collabs that you do. So, Yeah. I mean, like when we used to go to a lot of like digital marketing related events, right?

Like we did used to sit in on the keynotes. Right. But we quickly learned, I mean, it was event dependent, but in the marketing world, like half the keynotes are pitches, right? Like they, they teach you something, but leave out an element and at the end, try to sell you their software or their course or whatever to get the rest of it. Right. So we kind of learned like, oh, they're just going to like not give us the full picture and then pitch us something at the end.

Yeah. Or, you know, there was some good events like a trafficking conversion summit. They sort of had like a no pitch policy. So people get up on stage and try to like give their coolest stuff. But I mean, how many of those events did we go to where the coolest stuff that we learned came from like sitting at a bar with somebody at 1230 AM and they were breaking down one of their processes or, you know, hanging out at Denny's at 2 AM while somebody tells us about this.

Crazy cryptocurrency thing that's about to bubble up and we totally ignore them. Like, how much of that kind of stuff is really where the value is at those events? You're twisting the knife! I knew you were going to bring it up, too. Uh, we won't go into details, but I think you've heard of this cryptocurrency. It was roughly, I don't know, 15 years ago at this point. It was something like that. It was 2010. It was 2010.

You know told us about, um, I won't name the cryptocurrency by name, but it's like initials are BTC. And, uh, at the time it was a couple bucks. And now it's a little bit more than that. Yeah. told all about how to mine it, how it works, and all, and Matt and I, mind you, it was, I think it was even later than 1230, it was like 1 or 2 in the morning, it was just like, over our heads. And the story continues, and yeah, we'll, we'll leave it there. But um, early days for that old BTC.

We should be retired millionaires on a beach right now. yes, sucking down. With, with, uh, I'll call inside of it, maybe. I don't know. Um, all right. Maybe not. All right. Moving on. Let's see. I, I you're, you're a man of the trends and of the times. And when it comes to 2025, I feel like, well, I'm curious, what are you thinking about in terms of like, what's exciting, what's developing, like maybe What you're obsessed with right now.

I have a list of different tools and things that you, there's a million tools, obviously, future tools.io. If you don't even know what that site is, just go there. Matt runs it, him and his team, and AI bots Yep. like, I guess let's start off like what's the trend of 2025 in your I when it comes to ai, just tech. That's like that us common folk can use and actually implement in our businesses and our life and all that. yeah, I think 2025 is going to really be the year of AI agents.

Um, if you're paying attention to like the AI world at all, you're probably hearing the talk of AI agents bubble up quite a bit. Um, so basically an AI agent is like AI that can use tools on your behalf. So right now, like imagine you're writing a blog post for WordPress. Well, if you're going to use AI, you might go to chat GPT and say, Hey, write me a blog post about X. It writes you the blog post. And then hopefully you double check it to make sure it actually reads well.

And you don't leave in like as a large language model in the actual text. Right? Which a lot of people seem tend to do. Um, but it will write you an article, you copy paste it, put it into like WordPress. Then maybe you're going to create a thumbnail for it. So you go to mid journey or stable diffusion or Leonardo or whatever. And you create a thumbnail for that. And then you upload it.

Well, if you were going to use an AI agent, it would be more like you pull open your phone and say, make me a blog post about the coolest drones of 2025. And all you do is you give it that prompt and what it will do will, it will go to chat GPT. It will go and do the research for you. It will write the article in chat GPT. It will copy it. It will paste it into WordPress. It will open up your image generator of choice and then generate an image for you that goes along with it.

It will take that image, put it into WordPress for you and then press publish. Right. All you did was tell it, make me a blog post about X and it literally did everything else. You go to your WordPress website, it's live, right? That's kind of like an agentic framework workflow of like writing a blog post. Or let's say you need to go on a trip and you want to go with your family to Hawaii in April, right? You can say, Hey, I want to do a trip for four in April to Hawaii.

Uh, look at my calendar, pick the best dates and book the trip, right? It will go look at your calendar, find out what dates you have available. Go look at the airlines, look at what flights are available. Uh, Price, you know, price, check the flights, find the cheapest flights, find the best time to fly out, book your hotel for you, and then send you an email saying you're all booked. Here's your itinerary, right? That's sort of an agentic process.

I think we're going to see a lot of that kind of stuff in AI in 2025, where you give it one thing you want to accomplish. That might be like a multi step process that uses multiple websites, multiple tools, and from your one prompt, it's going to go do all of those things. And then come back to you and say, I'm done. Here's the result. Man, And that's, so it's essentially it's workflows, right? Like if, to, to kind of dumb it down for anybody to understand.

It's like, Hey, okay, you can string things along almost like a Zapier or, uh, make. com workflow, right? Where there's like a series of steps and it essentially accomplishes those based off of some preset, Yes. But the difference between like a make.

com or Zapier or, um, you know, the mind studio or one of those kinds of tools is that those ones you sort of pre build a flow, you tell it like, Hey, go, you know, Like you can, what I just explained, you can do with those tools today, right? You make a workflow where you can, uh, tell it, you know, give it a prompt of what you want it to create, and then using make.

com, you can create this visual workflow where it will write the blog post, do the research, you know, write, make the image, publish it to WordPress for you. You can build that kind of stuff right now with those tools. What an agent would do is you wouldn't even pre build the workflow. The agent would just know what tools it needs to go use, right? So you don't even get into make. com or Zapier or any of those tools and build out the steps.

You just tell it, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. And it knows what tools to use and it will go and do all those things. I think a lot of like make. com and Zapier, I think right now those are like a middleman for like an agentic kind of workflow. I think those middlemen are going to get cut out. I think you're going to see Claude and chat, GPT and Gemini and all these various AI models that are out there, be able to just do that stuff.

You tell it what you want it to do, and it knows what tools are available, or it will do the research to figure out what tools are available. Go use those tools on your behalf. I think it's going to be more like that where you're not pre building anything. You're just. Going to a AI tool, giving it a prompt and it does it all. hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

So it sounds like the LLMs, like OpenAI and Anthropic and Gemini, like I said, I would imagine that's probably where they're building things internally, right? So it'll just kind of happen based off, and I'm sure you'd have to integrate, you know, Various things like I know Google, Google drive is now integrated with like chat GPT and in, you know, Claude. Um, and obviously Gemini has all too. So it's like, it's already starting to like Gemini feels like it's maybe the closest to that.

Because it's like looping in all their apps and everything. what do you yeah. So Claude already philanthropic, already released a feature for Claude called Tool Use, That's right. and it's sort of a pain in the ass to set up right now. You actually have to install some stuff locally. You have to use like a, a Docker container that runs like Python script inside of it. And it's, it's, it's, you know. Not for like tech noobs to set up and use right now.

Eventually it will just be built into Claude where you can tell Claude to use tools and it will do it right now. There's like this whole setup process, but I've used it before and right now it can open up, like I did an example on one of my videos with it where I had it go to my YouTube channel, sort it by most popular videos, copy the titles and the view numbers of all my most popular videos, and then pull them into a spreadsheet. Right?

And so I just gave it that one example, and it literally navigated to YouTube, went to my videos page, sorted it by popular, and copied and pasted titles and download numbers, opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and pasted titles and numbers into the Excel spreadsheet, and it did all of that autonomously. Now, I ran out of, like, OpenAI, or, uh, Clod credits. Right.

Like it, it, it hit like, like Claude has rate limits, which is one of the biggest, um, downsides of Claude right now is it's pretty easy to hit the rate limits while I was hitting the rate limits on using the tool features, so I couldn't actually get it to accomplish fully what I wanted to without it hitting the rate limits. But we got a glimpse of like, I just told it to do this thing. And it went and used all of these tools for me and gave me the result that I wanted.

So we've seen that with Claude. Open AI, uh, said.

Towards like, I don't remember if they said it November or December of 2024, but they said we're looking at probably January to release the tool use for chat GPT, which is the same kind of idea we recently saw chat GPT roll out a windows app and a Mac app that can actually look at your desktop and look at what you're doing and give you feedback based on what you're doing and some tools, not all tools, but some tools that can actually interact with on your behalf.

most tools that still can't yet, but eventually it's going to have access to be able to like move your mouse around, type stuff on your keyboard for you and actually take actions on your computer for you. A lot can do that right now, but it's very, very archaic. Um, and we know Google's working on that as well, because they want to integrate with Gmail and calendar and drive and all of their suite of tools to sort of tie them all together using AI.

Okay. So yeah, we're already seeing that kind of stuff happen. It's just going to get more and more sophisticated and more and more brain dead simple for anybody to be able to use it. That's what it seems like. It's like the, all the LLMs have, it's the engine behind everything essentially, right? Like, it's like, that's where all the money's getting invested. It's the foundational layer. You have all these other startups that are plugging into them for, you know, obviously the data and power.

So there's. My, my brain goes to, you're probably going to get a base level of, of agents in all the LLMs of some flavor, right? Like a basic. And then, and then you'll probably see startups start to pop up for any kind of vertical or like specialized kind of use, I don't think we're going to see a ton of new large language model companies pop up. Right. I think the companies that are already doing it are already too far ahead, right? You've got open AI, who's probably the leader.

You've got, uh, Gemini, who's not too far behind. I would say Anthropix probably like in third place right now, as far as like the most capable models. Gemini and OpenAI's O3 are pretty close to each other, but O3, nobody has access to outside of open AI. Um, so the best model. Right now for consumers to use is actually Gemini. Google doesn't get enough credit. Gemini is like the best model as voted on by users and by capabilities and all that kind of stuff.

Um, so you've got, uh, you've got open AI, you've got Google, you've got anthropic, and then you've got a few companies building, um, Open source models. You've got Mistral, you've got, uh, Lama, uh, Meta basically building Lama. There's a handful of, uh, Chinese companies like Quinn, um, is one of them. And then there's, uh, DeepSeek is the other one. That's like a large it's a. An open source model. That's like as good as GPT 4. 0 now.

So you've got a handful of companies that are building these large language models, but they're so far ahead now that it would be really, really tough for new companies to come in and build another large language model, like the level of these large language models. So I think what you're going to see is any company trying to get into AI. Now they're just going to go leverage one of these models and build on top of it. I don't know if you heard about like.

Um, inflection AI that was, was it Reed Hoffman's company? Ooh, Uh, I think Reed Hoffman was like one of the big investors in that one. Um, but basically inflection AI built a chat bot called pie, which was like a conversational chat bot that you can have discussions with. And then, uh, basically I think, was it Microsoft? Microsoft Aqua hired them basically. Um, and, and took all of their employees and inflection kept on going.

And then when inflection kept on going, they basically said, we're not going to try to build new large language models. We're just going to leverage existing ones. Character AI, same thing. Character AI was a company that was building its own large language models underneath. But Google, OpenAI, um, and Thropic were all so far ahead of them, they basically said, We're throwing up our hands. We're not going to keep on pursuing building large language models.

We'll just start leveraging what exists. So I don't think you're going to see many more new companies build large language models. I think all companies now are going to just plug into one of the existing ones. Makes sense. Because I, I think, I don't, I don't think I share this with you actually, but there was a report I need to, uh, that kind of broke that down is like, here's the landscape of how things are. It's like you have the LLM.

That's where they're, they're raising billions of dollars. And I mean, you would know the, the amounts even more, I think in thropic, maybe it's like a month or so ago, got like what, 4 billion or maybe it was 6 billion from Amazon. Yeah. 6 billion. Yeah. Six. Okay. Yeah, so I was off a couple but it's like they keep like to compete against It's gonna be tough. In the words of one of our friends, every couple billion counts. It was a different letter I thought But he's right. He's right.

So Yeah, good reference and but it's it's absolutely true So that's where the startups is like the layer of you like you have the now with the LLM's which will keep evolving But it's like, you're not going to compete against them.

So if you're thinking of like a vertical or something to, you know, I don't know, maybe there's like an agent and I'd get your, I'm curious of your thoughts on this because with all the shifts that are happening, people, I think with agents think of like, Oh my God, it's going to replace so many jobs or processes. I'm like, I know marketing is probably one of the, probably one of the fastest or easiest things to, um, automate or, Agentify because there's just like, it's a sequence of steps.

It's kind of like data analysis. It's like, okay, so based off of this data input, this give me this result, you know, and like, how should we craft new copy or whatever it might be. Um, I guess like opportunities and threats. I'm curious of, of your mind, like what, what pops up. When it comes to the marketing thing, right. And doesn't have to be marketing Yeah, no, no. But I, I want to talk about this. I, you know, this is obviously all in the theoretical right now. Right.

We're just sort of speculating what could happen, you know, when it comes to marketing, if everybody has the same capabilities and everybody is able to be a world class copywriter, everybody's able to be world class at SEO world class at building funnels world class at Email marketing, right? Like you name a marketing sub niche. If everybody in the world has tools that makes them as good as everybody else. Well, that sort of devalues all of it across the board.

So I still think marketing is going to be important because the best marketers are going to be the marketers that figure out how to like move above what everybody is capable of doing. And so I think you're going to see like, okay, copy has gotten really, really good and page building has gotten really good. And. Um, I think, you know, looking at threats, that's going to make it harder to determine what is a legit product versus not legit product.

If everybody can make a professional looking website with really solid copy, it's really compelling. How easy does that make it for scammers to also create crap like that, that people are going to fall for? So I really, really think that, uh, in marketing specifically, if everybody can do it, it's of very little benefit to pretty much like everybody as well. So you're going to still have to figure out how to stand out.

And I still think humans in the loop are going to be what makes a lot of this stuff stand out. Like humans that understand human psychology, understand what makes people want to buy versus not want to buy. And yes, AI is going to get better and better at that. But again, you've got to stand above the rest. Marketing is all about standing out above what everybody else is doing. And if everybody can do all this shit really, really, really good, what makes you stand out above that?

And I think there's always going to be that game in marketing of like. Okay, now everybody can do this. How do I do it slightly better? Um, and so I, I don't really see it taking a ton of marketers jobs. I think it's going to make marketers jobs and lives a lot easier. Um, I think it's going to, uh, democratize marketing. Right. But I think the best marketers are going to figure out how to even stand above what AI is able to create. And pause really fast on that note, because I absolutely agree.

Because I feel like this pulls out the need to have a, like, the touch of a human. It has touched this thing, because you're right. Everyone, democratize marketing. Everyone's going to be a world class, uh, marketer. To however that's graded because that will change with technology as well, but it reminded me of uh, Greg eisenberg on twitter. I saw our ex I saw him pose. He's a great follow obviously, He's a good buddy of mine. Yeah. Oh, is he okay?

Cool. I love his stuff and um, Something he said he's like, I feel like a trend is going to be one of these like You know writing that isn't perfect websites. Maybe that look kind of like shit or like, you know, it's it's going to go back to the days where all the websites are built on like, they look like they were built on GeoCities and have like little flaming skulls next to the title and everything's animated gifs with smiley faces that spin on the, on a black background with green text.

I can literally visualize, I had one of those Everybody did. it was a green one though, and it was Road I was on tripod, not uh, what was it? Angel, fire, all Angel Flyer, GeoCities, Tripod, um, Those were the top three I think back in the day. Right. Yeah, there was one more that I'm drawing a blank on, but yeah, those were the, I think those were the biggies. heh heh heh heh. I was a tripod guy. I bet you were. Heh heh heh heh heh heh. You wouldn't know. Oh, I mean, uh, heh heh heh.

Oh, man, oh. at this point, Joe. Well, it's funny because we would go places. This is a little side note. Like we go places and like people would say, you guys look the same. I'm like, well, literally today we both fired on the mic, uh, you know, the Riverside that we're recording. I'm like, we're wearing the same damn shirt. Like, come on, we haven't seen each other. It's been a week, but still some things don't change. Uh, All right. What other, what other things popped in mind?

I brought up marketing. I'm happy you made that note because I think that's a pretty common, I think it's a good frame to have. And also on that note too, you and I talked about it. I'm starting to put out some videos on this. Like I feel that with AI, the need for human connection and not even the need, I feel like having that human element is going to get more important than we all realize.

And, you know, through technology, connecting us in different ways, talked about Delphi and the way that like, I feel like you can connect with anyone on their personalized level now to like crazy extent, but it goes with like any other thing like agents. Okay, cool. I want something done for me, you know, with my liking and this robot or whatever will do it for me. Maybe it's to connect with someone else.

I feel like that human intervention connection is going to be more important than we all think. Mm Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think humans being involved in the whole thing is going to be a marketing tactic, right? Like one of the things that I've been kind of shouting from the rooftops on my channel for like a couple of years now. Is that when it comes to like video on YouTube specifically,

we're seeing this huge trend of faceless videos, right? Where people are using AI tools to just quickly generate videos and put them on YouTube. Right. And there, you know, you can spot them from a mile away. If you are, you know, you know, AI, right? Like I can spot like, Oh, this was all 11 labs. You can sort of tell in the pacing of the voice and. Like, okay, it might sound like a real person, but they're speaking very robotically, right?

You can sort of pick that kind of stuff up and we're seeing a lot more of these YouTube channels, just like AB Chat, GPT create a script, have 11 labs, create the audio for the script, and then they're either using AI or like a story blocks type site to go and overlay the whole thing with B-roll, never putting their face on camera. And I think that's a very sort of transient trend. I think we're gonna see that happen for.

A small window of time, people are going to get sick of that kind of stuff. And they're going to want to connect with real humans again. That's why I think like, if you look on YouTube, there's a lot of AI channels now. Right. Um, when I really started to focus on AI a few years ago, there was a handful, but there wasn't many now there's like thousands of them.

The ones that tend to be popular, they get the most views are the ones where there's an actual real human being showing their face and sharing their ideas. And, you know, talking about their opinions and stuff. The ones that are like these faceless channels, you're seeing not always do quite as well. There's a few exceptions. There's a couple channels out there that are doing really, really well with it.

But I think they were the ones that got in sort of the earliest and managed to hop on the trend with the right timing and everything. But the new channels that are popping up that are these faceless channels, they, they're just not really getting as much traction, at least in the AI sort of tech space. Um, so I really, really think that the human element of being a real person, that if we're walking around at CES, you can potentially bump into me. We can get a selfie together.

We can, you know, nerd out for 10 minutes or whatever, like that kind of interaction I think is really valuable. It's also the reason I've started doing weekly live streams. Right. You know, like I want to interact with the community. I want people that are interested in AI to jump on and ask me questions and hear me actually say their name and respond to the questions and show I am not an AI. I just love talking about this stuff. I'm a huge nerd that loves nerding out.

That's why I'm doing these live streams so we can just nerd out together. And I think those sort of like human connections are going to be super valuable and like, that's the next marketing strategy is like, be a real person and don't be a dick. That's pretty much it. I think that comes up pretty often, like, when we hang out, too. Like, they at least, like, be cool to people, you know?

With the, I know we experience in Padre games, and yeah, yeah, Like, it's something we bring up, because I feel like, Yeah, I don't know, for whatever reason, A lot of people, at least online, can be straight up dicks, obviously, If you're in the comments of YouTube. I mean, you've experienced that a lot. Twitter's probably not. It's better, but still, you know, um, but yeah, the whole thing around human connection, it just rings more and more.

I'm just like, this is so much more important than I think most of us realize. And, uh, hopefully, AI helps bring us a lot more together yeah, yeah, definitely, you know, internet connected, the world AI usage, what adoption is like, I don't know how many times quicker than the internet was and phones. So it's like you have AI adoption is just through the roof all throughout the world. Yeah, back to the topic of like AI sort of taking jobs from people, um, I welcome it.

I I. here's the thing, like, There's this like double sort of thing that's happening with people where they come home at the end of a long day and complain about how much they hate their job, but then at the same time they jump on Twitter and talk about how scared they are that AI is going to take their job. Right. I think the jobs that people don't enjoy doing, the ones where you're coming home and you're complaining at the end of the day about how much you hate your job.

Those are likely the ones that AI is going to take first, right? And like, why are you freaking out about that? I like, I don't want to be like unsympathetic. I am very, very sympathetic. I am very empathetic. Whenever people talk about like their fears with AI, I like to listen. I like to address them. I like to talk about them. I like to understand where all these, like all sides of things are coming from. And so I know saying that sounds very unempathetic of like, Through your job.

You hate it anyway. Why do you care about it? Like, why do you care if you lose it? Well, also, jobs create income and you need that income to survive. And I, I understand that part of it. But could we also possibly see this as like a blessing in disguise? If AI takes that job, maybe it means you're going to move on to something that you actually want to be doing. Maybe it's something you actually enjoy doing.

Maybe it's something that You're not coming home at the end of the day going, I hate my job, right? Like maybe that's what it's going to create for you. Maybe we can look at that glass half full verse glass, half empty side of things. And look at this as like, if AI ends up taking your job, well, then a, it probably wasn't the most skilled job in the world. B it probably wasn't the most fulfilling job in the world. Maybe this is that blessing that you need to go and find something that.

Is what you really want to be doing saying that, you know, I'll step off my soapbox here in a second, but saying that there is no better time in the history of humanity to go and create your own career, to go and build your own thing. To go and create your own software product and try to sell it, to create your own YouTube channel, your own podcast, your own blog, your own sort of content business, your own agency to help other people. It has never been fricking easier to do any of that.

You've got chat GPT. You've got perplexity. You've got tools to make graphics for you. You've got AI tools to do SEO and copywriting for you. You've got tools where you can give it a prompt and it will build software for you. Like there has never been a better time. To start building some little side hustles. So when your job goes away, the one that you hate, the one that you say at the end of the day, I, I hate my job, but also complain that AI might take it away. Well, guess what?

Start building something else with everything at your disposal. Because if you build something else with everything at your disposal, you won't give a shit when it goes away.

In fact, you'll probably be cheering that now I get to focus my time on the thing that I want to be doing. All right. So box off. And you're damn right. And yes, yes. And if you are offended by anything Matthew Wolfe just told you, uh, you should start listening to Matt Wolfe's videos more. Uh, you know, mine too, but start building this stuff. Like literally, if it's pissing you off, it probably means there's some truth behind it.

But I feel like a lot of the world, you're absolutely, there's, I think there's just a misunderstanding of what. Is happening right now. You know, any new technology, especially something like this that comes on so fast because literally the rapid adoption, it's faster than anything else as a whole globally. And it's something like two X times faster than just mobile phones or smartphones. I think it was.

And Now, at least like this was December, it's like 55 percent of the world has used AI in some way. That's the entire planet. It's like, holy shit, that's a lot. That means everyone's starting to start waking up, you know, just by just using chat GBT. First time you use that, you're like, Whoa, I can do that now. But think about all the other things you haven't even experienced yet.

You know, there's a list of tools I just posted on my Twitter, uh, from a 16 Z. They basically, you know, it was like their apps unwrapped and it has, I don't know, like 20 apps on here.

And I reposted that I'm like, start testing this because you know, once you understand how this stuff works, I mean, we talked about agents, Matt and I want to go down this again, but it's like there's so many opportunities to build out these agents or show other companies that might really benefit from having them in the, in their companies. And you could be the one that stewards that or advises them or whatever the hell, like.

These are just some ideas I have immediate like if shit hit the fan right now for whatever reason I would do that Because everyone hears the trend. It's like well great fulfill it, you know get really good at a part of that Yeah. I mean, newsletters, right. And newsletters like on beehive or convert kit, or I guess it's just called kit now.

Um, but like, it's so easy to build a newsletter, pick a niche that you're excited about, have AI sort of help you round up the news, have AI help you like organize it into a newsletter that reads nicely. And then go in and spend 10 minutes putting your own voice, your own input into it, your own opinions into it.

You've got a newsletter business right there in whatever niche you wanna build it in that takes you, let's say it's a, a weekly newsletter. It takes you probably a half hour a week to run this newsletter, right? Like there are so many opportunities, like you can use Cursor or Bolt or uh, windsurf or Devon, or one of these AI software tools that are out there. And create like a simple software that solves a problem for people and go and sell it for 10 bucks a month to use it, right?

You get, you get a thousand people to use it. You're now making 10 grand a month, which is probably more than you're making in that dead end job that you complain about at the end of the day And you can hang out at home with your family or wherever the hell you want to live and Do your thing and I would say Matt surprise you miss this But it's like go make some YouTube videos based off the newsletter.

You just constructed or the other way around, make YouTube videos and then have them use AI to convert them into a newsletter.

Bingo it doesn't matter But you're absolutely right. I mean like, you know content outlines or brainstorming a lot of that you know, you're not gonna get all the creativity from AI, but at least like Yes. Spark it. It will spark back with some more ideas and then it's up to you to do something with it. Yeah, for sure. yeah, I like that. Um, that was a good suit box. Where would you, all right.

So you mentioned, so let's say like if you were to go and build some agents right now or something that, uh, you know, maybe it's not a full blown agent, like, you know, Anthropic has done or, or, um, you know, open AI is coming out with Gemini. Like, where would you point people to start? You already mentioned Cursor, Bolt, uh, there's a couple other ones you Uh, windsurf and Devin, those are all software tools. So those are all coding tools.

Those are tools where you tell it what you want it to. I mean, Devin's a little bit different. Devin is like you hire a Devin. I don't know. It's very weird. It's, it's like 500 bucks a month and cursors 20 bucks a month. And for me, it works just as good.

Our, our buddy, uh, Brad pool, uh, he's literally building out a software for his company right now in cursor because I pointed him to Rowan's masterclass, your buddy, um, and he literally, you spent about 40 and has built a complete app front end login back end to manage like a whole financial all with cursor and he's like, holy shit. Yeah, we did a podcast episode over on the next wave. Me and Nathan, we brought on one of our friends, Riley Brown.

And on that episode, it was like an hour long episode. We built an app in real time on that episode. It was like a, a sort of like Evernote style app that was like a web clipper where you share notes and stuff. And we built that whole thing in the course of that episode. And by the end of the episode, we had a working app and we just did it live on a podcast. Right. So it is, it is freaking wild.

I did that two years ago on my YouTube channel where I built a little basic side scroller video game on a, on my YouTube channel, that one took me a good, like 10 hours to build. Then I edited the video down to like 30 minutes, but it, um, it's gotten way, way better. You can code up anything. And one of the things I've sort of been obsessed with lately is trying to solve little problems in my own business and write little scripts in like Python or whatever, to solve those problems. Right?

Like, for example, and a lot of this stuff I build already exists, but I wanted just like a simpler tool that's specifically tailored to my needs. I try to download a lot of images from the internet so that I can use them as like, you know, memes or whatever to put on my videos or, or things like that. And a lot of times they'll download in that web P format and everybody fricking hates web P format. Cause you can't pull them into like video editing software.

And there's a lot of tools that don't accept web P and it's just annoying. Right. So I created a little Python script that opens up a box on my computer. I drag a web P file onto it. It converts it to a JPEG and then deletes the original web P and all I do is drag and drop it. And it's the simplest app in the world. I built it in like 20 minutes with cursor, but it solves a problem for me. And then I, and then I started running into like these AVI F files or whatever they're called. Same thing.

They don't really run in a lot of apps. Um, I couldn't pull them into my videos. So I added to that app. All right. Also accept AVIF files and it accepted that. Right. And then I ran into this issue where on YouTube, right. If, if you try to upload a PNG as your thumbnail and the file size

is too big, like it doesn't let you upload a file that's bigger than two megabytes on YouTube. So I went and added to this, um, this software tool. If I drop in a PNG file, I want you to convert it to a JPEG and make sure it's under two megabytes. Right? So now I have this file, this, this, it's just a little box that opens up on my, my PC. Any image file, I drop into it. It deletes the original file.

It makes a JPEG of the same existing image under two megabytes so that I can use it on a YouTube thumbnail. And I like pretty much have that app open on my computer all day every day. And as I'm downloading images, boom, toss it into there and

it just replaces the image. I don't have to open up an image editor and save it as a new file. I don't have to open up any sort of browser tool to do it like literally drag drop done. Um, so that's one of the files that I built. Was that and you said that's that was using cursor? That was using cursor. Another one that I built is a, is a transcriber. So like I was using descript, right? I don't really edit with the script.

I don't really do the whole thing where I go and delete sentences and edit with descript. What I was using descript for was like a really quick translation, a transcription service. So I would make a video, I would pull it into Descript, get the transcription of that video, and then I would get, take that

transcription, I would open up Clod, I would plop that whole transcription into Clod, and say, help me come up with titles and thumbnails for this video, and I'm paying, I don't know, 30 bucks a month or something like that to use Descript, and all I was using it for was a transcription tool, that's it, that was the only feature I was using it for. So OpenAI has an API called Whisper, the Whisper API, which does the same thing.

It takes an audio file, converts it to text and gives you a transcription of it. So I use cursor to build a little app where when I'm done with a video, I literally drag and drop the video file into this same thing. It's just like a little box that opens up on my computer. I drag and drop the video file into it. It uses Whisper, transcribes the whole thing. And then once the transcription is done, it then says.

It has another prompt in it that says, all right, read this transcription and give me ideas for titles and thumbnails. And then it automatically creates a little text file, uh, in a, in a folder on my computer and in that text file, it's got the full transcription along with potential titles and thumbnails for that video, right? So I was able to cancel my descript membership because all I was using it was with a transcription service. And I don't need to go to multiple places.

I just throw in a video file. It makes the transcription and then spits out a like title and a bunch of title and thumbnail ideas for it. So I don't have to go to the script. I don't have to copy and paste my transcription into Claude and then get the output. It's just drag drop done. It takes, you know, five minutes or something to transcribe it. But once it's done, I have everything I need. And I was able to cancel a couple of tools to do it. dude.

Well, and speaking of that, you're even telling me what the other week you took all of your financial statements recently from like credit cards and whatever at your bank and you threw them into Claude, right? And then you basically had to analyze to find all the recurring subscriptions you have. So, and obviously we don't need to go into detail, but the point is we all have a shit ton of recurring subscriptions. AI tools are not that are 20 a pop, 30 a pop to add up.

Um, that's probably a really good way to find ideas of what to make. Like you're probably just using a, uh, maybe a feature tool per tool or per thing. Like, and I don't know if this exists, Matt, but like with open AI, the API, like whisper is one of the features or the tools you have access to there. Like, is there an easy way to see like what's possible and what you can API into to basically do some kind of action? Yeah. documentation there's like, uh, all the various APIs that are available.

'cause OpenAI has a lot of APIs, right? People think of opi, uh, OpenAI, and they think of Chat GPT. But we also forget that OpenAI also owns Dolly three. OpenAI also owns Whisper, which is a, you know, a video or audio to text, uh, feature. Um, open AI own, they also have Sora, right?

Sora! Not So like, like, but Sora, I don't know if it has an API yet or not. Yeah. That might be too early for that. but there's now the, Oh, one open it. Um, there's another Oh, one API as well, which does a whole bunch of like logic and reasoning and essentially doubled and triple checks its work before it gives you its output to make sure it's giving you the best possible output. Oh, one has an API.

Now advanced voice mode has an API now where you can create apps where you talk to the app, just like you do with advanced voice mode on chat GPT. That has an API now, so you can build that into apps. Um, you jump over to Claude. Claude has a lot of, uh, APIs like that, those types of things as well. You jump over to Google. Google has APIs for all that kind of stuff. Google has. APIs where you can upload image files, video files, text files, and have it do stuff with them.

Um, I don't think VO2 has an API yet, because it's not really publicly available yet. Um, but like, Google also has, um, Imogen, or Imagine, I don't know how it's pronounced. They've got their own image generator. All of these things have APIs that you can plug into and build tools on the back of, and right now when it comes to APIs, most companies are just like shopping on price. They're like, which API can I use for the cheapest to build this thing?

Yeah, I mean, this is again why it's so damn cool of a time, like back to your soapbox of like, find a problem that a lot of people have, or maybe some archaic thing that hasn't been a ified yet or some something that you know, that is just going to be obsolete because of what's happening out there. And yeah, start by building for yourself. I think it's always the best way. It's like build a tool that you know you need to maybe save some money, save some time, your team time, whatever it is.

Do something better but then like shit that could be a product go put it out There's uh, you know, it could be maybe a google or a chrome extension or some standalone Yeah. Well, I mean, all these apps, all these little apps that I make for myself just to solve my own small problems, I take them and toss them up on GitHub is open source. So any of these apps that I build for myself, I throw them on GitHub and then anybody can go and download and build off of them and make them better.

Like, I, I mentioned I put out that game a couple years ago that was like, just a run and jump game where there's like little platforms,

there's coins on the platform, and you just, it's like an infinite scroller, you go and you just try to collect coins, and then eventually you fall into the lava, and then you try to beat your score on the next I've played it. I remember that one like, I put that up on get hub and then I saw a whole bunch of people start to fork it and make better games out of it. And they put like more intense backgrounds onto it. And they put like the ability for like the little character to shoot guns.

And they put like little aliens on the platforms that try to attack you so that you can shoot them off the platforms. And I saw, I saw like a whole, uh, group of people start to build off that stupid little platform game that I made and actually turned it into something quite a bit cooler than what I started with. And I'm like, That's so cool to see. It's like I put this seed out into the world and watched it grow.

Now I'm watching other people sort of harvest that plant and build cool shit with it. You know, I gotta find you a get hub for whatever reason. You're not coming up. I think it's just Mr. Eflow. It's the same username pretty much everywhere. Uh, I forgot the Mr. Yeah. I'm like someone else has had, has your EFLO here. There he is. Okay, cool. Um, yeah, everybody go follow Matt and see what he's talking about because he's awesome.

I think, I think a lot of these things like me has never been, call myself a coder, but even though I built that tripod site back in the day, I know basic HTML and some of the, but like, it doesn't, it's not complicated because like with cursor or bolt, it's all a prompt.

Like you can one, one shot, you know, I've heard the term like Rowan Chang talk about like, Oh, you can one shot this app and like you can make some cool shit with just like one prompt, but obviously you could break it down into little steps like you would with Any chat GPT prompting you yeah. I would say like, typically you can get like the bones of something decent with one prompt.

Um, most often, more often than not, you're going to go in there and give it more prompts and, you know, improve it. Um, Oh, I wish it had this feature and add stuff to it and things like that. But yeah, you're going to get, you're going to get like a pretty good, like rough draft of whatever your product is with a single prompt these days. And dude, yeah, I just, I just found your, uh, AI jump game and it has 13 forks. Nice. That's pretty cool, man.

Yeah. I actually, that's something I want to do a followup video on where I take my existing game, pull it back into Claude or, uh, sorry, not Claude cursor, pull it into cursor and then actually build off of it and improve it and make it even cooler myself and then show off that process on a video. I think you should, man. That would be freaking cool. I think this would be a cool little callback.

But what I was saying, it was like with GitHub, for instance, like just understanding, okay, the, uh, this whole flow of, Hey, you can make something with just some prompting. You don't need to be a dev, you know, it probably helps if you knew the language and all that, but watch some YouTube videos. Watch, watch your video. But it's like, if you start to just kind of see the process and this is how I've learned and got more comfortable. Yeah. Oh, it ain't that bad.

And you're not going to break anything. It's super cheap or try it for free. Or you can just copy something that you made already mad or someone else on get hub, create an account over there, start following people and just Fafo.

yeah. Well, I think, I think with GitHub too, like, I think GitHub has like direct integrations into like cursor and tools like that now where you can find a repository where something's already pretty well built for you, pull it into cursor and just start building off of it. Just fork what's already out there. it's, I don't want to say it's so easy, but it's the, the time that we're in right now. It's like, man, you got an idea, you want to solve something and you know, solve it for yourself.

But again, thinking of the opportunities you about to, you know, lose your job or your industry is becoming more obsolete or you see opportunities. Maybe it's more that you're seeing like, oh, shoot, there's a gap here that I can automate with this AI mindset. Yeah. And just start like, start searching around, see what people have already built. When it really blows me away, because I don't think most people think this way, right?

Like I, you know, talking to a lot of people, like they don't think in the way of like, Oh, AI can build me tools. AI can make my life more productive. AI can actually help me create a business so I can get out of the job. I don't like doing, I don't really think people think of it like that. I think people see AI and they think, okay, they're talking about AI. AI is obviously chat GPT, which is what people use to cheat on their homework. Right?

Like that's what people think of when they think of AI. That's what they still think of. It's actually a very small group of people who look at AI in this way and go, holy crap, this can actually change my life if I'm using it the right way. And it's, you know, clearly changed my life, clearly changed your life.

Um, like we both built entire careers off of what AI is capable of now, but the majority of the world is still thinking of it as like a, Uh, a machine that cheats on homework for you and is one day going to have robots that rise up and kill us all. Right? Like that's what the majority of the world thinks of when they think of AI, they think of cheating on homework and Terminator like scenarios. And like, I think if I'm like, you know what, is that possible? Bring it on. I think this is fun.

You know, it's like a, it's a crazy time. And I was going to make a note to that. The fact that you have built something the last, what is it, two and a half years? I think it is. Um, and, and, you know, that's been about roughly how long we've been working kind of independently. I guess we'll say, you know, you're on the podcast here. We had business for a lot of years before that. Um, the cool thing, something that we've both done independently is build something.

I wouldn't say from scratch because it's all leveraging the foundation we built for so many years. And every single person listening and watching has that same opportunity. It's like, where are you currently at? What are the relationships, knowledge, whatever it is, industry ends. And like, build from there. Like, don't, don't feel like you got to start something from total scratch.

Like you jumping into AI, doing videos and future tools might seem like it's like, whoa, Matt just went totally, like, no, I don't, I know that's not true. Sure. Was it fresh? Yes. In a lot of ways, but yeah. So I just. I guess caution to like, don't just start something from scratch where you're like burning the ships or burning the boats necessarily. Yeah, no, I, I always suggest like, if you're going to start building stuff with AI, build it as like a side hustle.

First, if you've got a job that's paying your income, like. Don't give that up yet. Like start building something, see if it can make income. And if it surpasses your current job income, then cool. Now start looking at like what your next move is. But it's so easy to just do as a side hustle right now is like a side bonus income on top of your regular job.

But yeah, I mean, going back to like your, your last point too, is like, I don't know how often I hear people go, like I sprouted out of nowhere or like I was an overnight success or I've seen a lot of these comments. I'm like, I just chuckle. Yeah. And I'm like, I put my first YouTube video up in 2009.

I've been actually doing content marketing, you know, either by myself or with a partner like Joe or Bradley or Josh Bartlett, or like I've had partners over the year, but it's always been in this like content. Base where I've been trying to put out content and build a business around content. I mean that's been the game I've been playing for almost 16 years now, you know, absolutely. I mean, that's how you and I started.

I mean, you were doing some of that prior to and we worked together at your parents shutter company, you know, and it was all content, but I was going to say it's like, if you look hard enough, we might've already taken these offline, but the good old samurai videos, like we did some YouTube stuff that was going back to like oh seven.

I think Yeah, it might've been, I think it might've been a different channel Yeah, it was we had a we had like it It wasn't our personal channels yet so I don't know if that'll see the light of day ever again, but I don't know if I wanted to. Me with, me with my like cut off sleeves and we're sitting around drinking Coronas in front of a 1983 or 89 Suzuki Samurai. And On like a Friday night where we're just, you calling people aliens randomly because we've, we've got a buzz.

Corona buzz Yeah. Skunk beer. Yeah those but yeah, there's that was early days man. Yeah, that was this for a long time. And I think a lot of people, um, I know at least, you know, speaking for myself, I know like a lot of people just saw me sort of come up over the last two and a half years because of the AI stuff. But it's like, we've been playing this game for a long time. And, you know, going back to what you're saying is like, I think everybody has to look at it like a Venn diagram.

Right. So for me, I've studied digital marketing for, Almost 20 years now, right? Like it's, I feel so old saying that, but it's true, right? We were doing it to the artisan days. Right. Um, so like I've been studying digital marketing, things like copywriting and, um, you know, funnel building and list building and email marketing and you name it, all of the stuff under that umbrella of digital marketing, we've been studying for like 20 years now.

when it comes to video production, probably didn't get as into it until about, I don't know. I think I really got into video production around 2020, right? It was like around COVID you and I went and got that studio in, in, uh, El Cajon and I, and when we got that studio, I remember you were on vacation or something and like, I went and ordered a shit ton of camera equipment and lighting equipment and sound equipment. And when you came back, I had built like a recording studio for us.

was pretty cool. Yeah. And so it was around 2020 that I really got into video production. And then in 2021, we started working with Randy, who's like a video producer by trade. He actually films like Mariners games and Seahawks and, and stuff like that. Everything Seattle. everything's Seattle. And then we started working with him. He taught us how to be much better video producers, how to get higher quality content, how to cut out the fluff of our videos, all of that kind of stuff.

run of show where you have everything kind of organized and, He, he taught us how to use, like, I didn't really get into editing with DaVinci resolve until we started working with Randy and. And all that kind of stuff. Right. So if you look at my Venn diagram, I already had two circles of it, digital marketing and video production. I just added AI as like a third circle to that Venn diagram. And then I found that sweet spot in the middle of AI marketing and video production.

Right. And I just put all three of those together and these other two, I'd spent 20 years on one of them, five or six years on the other, and now adding AI into the mix. It was like, all right, we found that. Perfect blend of, uh, sort of skill sets that all work as something that, that works together. absolutely. And that's where, well, and to give you credit and I mean both of us, but like talk about you really fast here because have something I want to pull up also on screen.

you had the WordPress Classroom, so, like, you're recording tutorial videos for ages. I wouldn't call it really video pro I mean, it was using online video. But, like, you, I think, have always been, like, the best trainer, someone that can walk through step by step, like, Big picture, but also like, here's how to actually get something done. And obviously it comes out in YouTube, your videos now. So you've been practicing that muscle for nearly 20 years Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it is, I have been trying to make videos since oh nine. I mean like the YouTube channel has been around since oh nine. I actually left my very first YouTube video up just because I knew people would go in, like, look at what the first one was and I think it was like. A video about how to hide affiliate links or something like that. Okay. I'm sure I've seen, you know, I got to look back at it now and see what's all about.

yeah, I mean, all of the recent comments are like, Oh, I just came here to see what Matt's first video was, you know, stuff like that now, but like, I've been putting videos online since 2009, the WordPress classroom, like looking back to that, that launched in 2009 as well. And I remember I, I made the videos. Um, I think I was using Camtasia back then to record the videos. you were, cause you were on PC or no, Yeah, I would, it would have been a PC back in 09.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I was using Camtasia to record and I was using Sony Vegas to Yeah, I remember that, Uh, that was, that was my editor of choice, but then I could not for the life of me, figure out how to put them online. Right. I knew I can upload them to YouTube, but if I put them on YouTube, then people would be able to find them and then they wouldn't pay for my course about WordPress. So I didn't want to put them on YouTube. Um, and then like, I don't think Vimeo existed yet.

Um, there wasn't really much out there. And then that's when we came across our buddy, Josh Bartlett. Josh Bartlett was like, you know, you can use Amazon S3 to publish videos. He showed me how to use that to publish videos on my website. And then after that, he went and built the program called easy video suite, which turned into like a multi million dollar company for him.

But back at the time like I had no idea like how to go from I have this video made How do I get it on the internet so people can see but not publicly available like on youtube? And I remember that was like a month's long struggle to figure that out Man, we are dinosaurs. But it's so true, I remember exactly those days. It's funny, I remember like, nope, those were the PC days. Remember that, that happened. Cause it's, it's accurate.

And the flip cams, can't forget the we had flip cams or, Kodak or ZI8, ZI8 we call it. Yeah, we, we go back y'all. Green screens in the living room. Yeah, we've Even before that I was using a Sony digital elf camera, like one of the little small, like rectangle cameras that. Like I love that little camera. Cause it was like, we could fit in your pocket, but also shot videos. Um, I use that before I got my, my flip cam and then eventually got my Zed. I ate.

I had all the HD capabilities that the Zed did. And then, yeah. Oh, those were the Yeah. No, these were the days, dammit. Alright, so, uh, what I want to end on is another thing I'm going to pull on the screen. Matt, so be prepared. Uh, you'll be familiar because you just posted this like last night or something and I thought it was very timely.

So here it is speaking of youtube basically matt and i'll point you guys to this because I think it was a freaking awesome case study You know, you're like literally breaking down what's working for you the most right now in on your youtube channel And you know, I know from our private conversations when we're having coffee without the recording happening Uh, other than iPhone spying on us.

That, uh, you know, you tell me all these little experiments you're doing, and I think that's where it's like a nice outlet for you. It's great for me, because I'm learning as well. So, thank you. But, like, you put it on blast on Twitter, and you, like, broke it all down. You know, everything from long form videos, which are like, what, your news videos. They're like 20 ish minutes, somewhere around there. And then you have, um, you're doing shorts.

So YouTube shorts, TikTok, you're on Instagram, basically anywhere a short can be. And then now live streams, you know, and you're doing those basically all, I mean, every day there's something coming out, it seems like, Yeah. I know I have a piece of content coming out seven days a week, so. My, my you? strategy is like every Monday I do a live stream. Every Wednesday I put a random video on YouTube. It might be a tutorial. It might be, uh, some big news announcement.

It might be like top 15 tools to accomplish X or whatever. Right. And then every Friday I do a news breakdown of here's all the news that happened throughout the week. And then seven days a week, every single day, I drip out a new short, which some of my shorts are actually purposefully designed to be shorts. Like I script them, I record them and I make a short. Most of my shorts now are actually clips from either my long form videos or my live streams though.

And so But, but this is pretty intri this is pretty intriguing though, like, you think shorts are a waste of time, because what this post that, uh, if you're watching, that is, you're basically, you're breaking down your views to earnings, in a nutshell, based off of these different formats, the long form, short, and then live streams. And it's fascinating. We're not going to break down all the stuff, but I mean, you got screenshots here.

I'm assuming you did not Photoshop these or I did not Photoshop them. it's Gemini them now, I think is the new term, but yeah, I mean like, but you can see the breakdown of what, this was a short 3 million views. You got what? 12, 000 subscribers made, uh, about a little over 400. And then you go over here to your, I'm assuming there's a long, long form. Long form 1. 2 million. Views, 19, 000 subscribers, 13, 500 bucks. I'm assuming that was on, that's almost a year long.

Yeah, that was, yeah, it was 10 or 11 months ago. Yeah. yeah. And this guy, what? A couple months. So a little over two months for the short. Okay. Yep. And then about a year for the long. I mean, it makes sense. These things are evergreen and it's obviously still climbing. Yeah. The point that I was trying to make on that though, was like a short that gets 3 million views makes 400. A long form that gets less than half of that. 1. 2 million views made over 13, 000.

Like what percentage of like higher is that it was just kind of showing that like shorts can't really do it for the money. Yeah. And I know, and obviously this is what ad revenue through Google, That's ad revenue through Google. Yeah. So like, of course you can have sponsorships for shorts to bump that up, but yeah, point taken. Um, it's interesting.

And then the live stream, like talk about that because I thought this whole strategy of like, you know, you can gather attention through these other ways, but then the live stream itself. You know, and I know it's a newer thing. Well, actually this, this live stream you show, I'm still getting a screenshot here. Everyone a Yeah. That one's actually over a year old. little over a I just picked the one that had the most views.

but still it's a good, it's, it's worthy, you know, but like not nearly as many subscribers nowhere near, but the views are lower, higher revenue than the shorts, of course, 1900 bucks. But what you made a point is like, this is where you bond with your community, right? Like this is where you really the glue of everything. the end of the day. So like YouTube really has like three main types of content.

You've got your long form videos, which are just like pre recorded normal videos you publish on YouTube. You have shorts, which historically have been one minute vertical videos. Now you can go up to three minutes, but historically they've been one minute. I still publish one minute. Cause I like that constraint of figuring out how to get it into a minute or less. Um, and then you have live streams. You can argue they now have a fourth with, um, podcasts. Right.

But, uh, How about community posts? Would you put that in there? community posts don't really do much for your channel. Like you can't make revenue off community posts. There's like zero, like they don't put ads on community posts. Right. Um, and community posts only get shown to your subscribers. So you're not going to grow subscribers. It's just like a, Quick way to communicate with your audience, right?

I'll use community posts from time to time, but it's usually like, Hey guys, I know I post news videos on Fridays. It's coming out tomorrow instead. Cause I'm traveling today or whatever, right? It's just like a way to make quick announcements to the audience on there. Um, so I, I do use those sometime, but not very often, but like the short form is really actually pretty good at growing new subscribers for your channel and getting discovery.

The problem is a lot of people who only watch short forms are never going to watch your long form. So you'll grow subscribers, but you're not really going to convert a lot of them to long form viewers. But if you keep posting short forms, a lot of those people will keep watching your short forms. Right. So you still have that engagement with those people. Uh, they're just going to stick with short forms. Um, the live streams, they don't grow subscribers at all. Right?

Like if people don't know who you are, they're not already subscribed. They're probably not going to be alerted of your live stream. And they're probably not going to show up. Um, but it's like the best way to build that engagement. It's the best way to build a bond with your audience. Like I mentioned earlier in this call, like I love getting on and just for the most part, I do like three hour AMAs, right?

I might have a couple of little bullets of like, If nobody's asking any questions, here's some areas I'll take the conversation, but I almost never even need to look at my notes. Cause it's like from moment one, people are asking me questions and it's just off to the races. I'm just interacting. I'm just going, all right, somebody asked this. Let me show you a tool that can do that. Oh, somebody asked this. Let me actually break down my workflow of how I do that. Oh, somebody asked this.

All right, here's, here's how I do that. And it's just like. It turns into this three hour, like AMA where I'm just breaking down my workflows, sharing what I'm doing, answering questions. Um, it's just, yeah, it's just like a three hour AMA. And that really, really builds like a good bond with people because they're like, Oh, you know, he's actually interacting with me. Like I can actually feel like there's two way communication. I ask him something, he responds, he actually shows me stuff.

And that also turns into what's called super chats where people can essentially tip you if they like what you said. Um, or they're paying like 20 or whatever. And if they pay that money, it makes their comment more prominent in the chat so that it's more likely it'll get read. Um, and so what ends up happening is you'll do these live streams. You're bonding with people. People love it.

They start like tipping you, they start super chatting you next thing, you know, like people are super chatting you to like, um, to, to basically get you to respond specifically to their question. So the live streams can add up to pretty decent revenue without actually having like sponsors and all sorts of other stuff so, so people are interacting with you.

And if they're like really appreciating what you're talking about, they'll basically be like tipping you and throwing money at you like as a thank you. Um, on this live stream that you're showing, I think later on in the live stream, somebody actually gave me just 200 and like, Hey, love what you do. Here's 200 bucks. And I'm like, Oh damn. Yeah, that's rad.

I mean that's it's a side benefit I don't think I ever think about most people probably No, no, I'm definitely not doing the live streams for that. It's just kind of like, Oh, that's cool. Like when I started doing live streams, that was not even on my radar. I didn't even, I literally didn't think I would make a cent off of live streams. I was just like, I'm going to do them because I want to interact with people.

But then those like super chats and stuff start coming in and then, you know, one or two people do it. Other people see that, Oh, he's actually responding quicker to the stuff that has like a super chat attached to it. I'm going to ask my question with, you know, a couple of bucks attached to it. It's like when we used to go to the dueling piano bars, right?

You can go and ask for a specific song for the dueling piano people, but the people that stick their song with a 20 are much more likely to get that song played. You get their attention Yeah. And I'm, again, I'm not doing it for that. Like that is not my motive of the live streams. But it is really, really cool to see. I mean it's it's attention that's all that's all you're going for and it makes perfect And it's someone that wants to give back to you, which is rad man.

So yeah, go check out the live streams That's kind of why I'm showing this on screen here, too. And obviously follow. Mr. Matt Wolfe over there. Well, it's mr. Eflow, but not Wolfe here and you just published this video literally seconds before hopping on this call. So I'll have to watch that later Matt we have gone You Longer than I budgeted for but uh, that's okay. Is there any Before you go get that hair did like what other anything that That you want to share before hopping off anything.

You're excited. Uh frightened about maybe anything that uh to Close this one up and I think we'll do another coffee date podcast shortly Yeah. I don't, nothing that I'm really like worried about. I do think we are going to see a lot of like AI generated junk, right? I've always kind of worried about that, but I think that's already here. I think like there's so much junk on the internet that. You know, that's one of the big complaints people have is like, it's going to generate so much slop.

We're going to have so many crappy articles and crappy memes all over like social media. I'm like, have you been on the internet recently? 90 percent of it's already crap. Like, what are you talking about? Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, we already went through the election cycle, you know, at least this last time. We're all still living.

Most of all, yeah, I mean like most search results when you Google something, these days are like somebody who optimized to get like an affiliate click or something that, you know, is getting stolen by honey apparently, but, uh, I don't know if you heard that whole story. know that. No, no fun. Yeah, there's a whole big old controversy there. But anyway, we won't get into that. Um, you know, I, I, I do worry about more and more like AI slop.

I do think that AI video in 2025 is going to get even better than what we're seeing right now. I think 2025 is going to be the year where we get AI video that people really go. I can't even tell this is AI. I mean, we've already seen some videos that. You have to look really close, but you're like, damn, that is good. I think 2025, we're going to hit that moment where like, somebody's like, people are going to get fooled by an AI video and think it's real.

And it's going to go viral and it's going to spread. And then everybody's going to find out later that that was AI, What you said, Sora, was, is, you know, is ChatGBT, or OpenAI's video, but you have Veo, yeah, VO two is even better, but it's not publicly accessible yet. It's like only some beta testers have access.

Yeah, but what you showed me, because what you made like a rhino, I think it was, right, that was with Veo 2, That was Veo, yeah, Veo, whatever it is, and yeah, I was like, this is crazy, and it just looks like you're right there in the Serengeti, yeah, yeah. I still don't know if it's supposed to be Veo or Veo. I keep on hearing people pronounce it Veo, but then also Veo is look in Spanish, right?

Um, or then you have video I don't yeah, so I don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but like, on my YouTube channel, I always get people in the comments correcting my pronunciation, but I'm like, I think they're both right. Who knows yeah Cool. So yeah, I agree the video thing is going to be it's going to be wild and whenever that's released by google What deep mind right Yeah. Yeah. I think that's going to be wild.

Um, you know, we have Sora turbo, which isn't even the full model of Sora. I think we're going to see a much better version of Sora coming out. Um, so that's coming, uh, that'll be out sometime in 2025 is like the much more improved version of Sora. I think, um, Yeah. So like if my big predictions are better, better video, better and better 3d object generation from AI, like creating game assets and stuff like that with AI.

And then all the agent stuff that we talked about earlier, I think that's going to be a big thing in 2025 as well. Um, other than that, I don't really have many. Ending remarks. I think we covered a lot of ground and, uh, we've covered a lot of ground in previous episodes that we've done together.

So, uh, you know, we we've covered marathons worth of AI and YouTube discussion over time between our, our episodes, but, uh, you know, check out the next wave podcast, check out future tools and check out my YouTube channel. there you go, subscribe everywhere, go Like subscribe, hit that bell notification. Ding! There you go, no sound Also subscribe to the Hustle and Float Shared podcast and, uh, yeah, and Joe's going to be, uh, cameoing on some of my live streams in the future.

you go, keep a lookout. Alright y'all, Matt, appreciate you brother. Yeah, you too, man. Good talking. yeah.