Stop Being Invisible: AI, Short-Form Video, and the New Rules of Getting Found

**[00:00:00]** Hello, everyone. My name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to The Web Talk Show. Today with us is Jenna Nelson from Her AI Agency. Welcome, Jenna. How are you? Good. Thank you for having me. I'll try to, I don't know, I'll let you explain, but I think this is gonna be a very good conversation for our listeners from a non, perhaps non-technical point of view, but we'll see where it takes us. So how did you get started in all this, Jenna? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. If you'd asked me five years ago if I was going to run an AI agency, I would've looked at you like you were crazy. My background comes from digital marketing, and particularly on kind of the brand strategy side. So, I've worked in that space for a ton of years now and really wasn't trying specifically to move into the AI space, but I remember specifically three years ago Googling, like, what is ChatGPT and just kind of figuring it out on my own. And as I started experimenting with it and playing with it myself and finding ways to to use it for my own business and my own kind of personal use in my business, I was like, wow, there is so much potential here. And that was three years ago, we were in a very different AI world three years ago. And so I just started kind of working with the clients that I already had at the time to implement some AI strategies and just kind of start using it. And I was able to really quickly see the benefit, and so were they, that, you know, hey, this is the amount of content we could put out last month. **[00:02:00]** This is the amount of content we can put out now by using AI and how that helps grow their business. So really just it was kind of a natural progression. And then about two years ago, just really kind of doubled down and went all in on the AI, you know, concept because there really aren't a lot of people kind of standing up, you know, saying like, I'm going to figure this out for everybody. And there's a lot of both strategy and implementation that has to happen. I think sometimes people try to jump straight to the implementation phase of it without the strategic implement aspect on the front end. And so that's where I really come in is to kind of like, OK, we're going to do this, let's do it in a smart, approachable way that actually is going to to do something for your business. So we're not just playing with AI, essentially. Right. That makes a lot of sense. One of the places where I see AI being used a lot and then very well, not a lot in the sense that everyone is using it, but that some people are using it a lot. Sure. Is precisely go to market and other even cold calling, cold outreach, that sort of thing, Because it sort of brings it, brings possibilities to an individual who perhaps could have never gotten that level of scale. Right? Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Particularly for, you know, individual, you know, solo proprietor type of businesses or really small businesses, this is maybe the biggest leg up for them because it gives you the opportunity to kind of compete with businesses that are already at scale that have investor funding that have big teams, all of a sudden, you as one person or maybe as two or three people can kind of play in the same field as these bigger businesses, and that's a really cool kind of leveling of the playing field, if you will. **[00:04:00]** Yes. Even tools like OpusClip or Descript, people can't imagine, many people I guess, and I couldn't imagine before I used them, the cheat code that they give you from perhaps being able to push out one video a week or something, because maybe that's not what you do, but then, but you're still trying, you want to get content out there cause that's what they've said and actually it is true, it is good, but you put one video and maybe five people see it, 10 people, 100, I don't know, depending on your channel size, right? But then you go into something like Opus Clip, which uses AI to generate 30 clips from that video, and then you can publish them all. Once you do it and see those views rack up, because the shorts are like much more suited for discoverability. Sure. Amazing. Yeah. The compound effect of content is really important, and I talk a lot about that to businesses, is, you know, as much as we want that high-impact authority content, those long webinars, those long-form blog posts, and those are great and we want those, like you said, you know, the discoverability factor of reels, of shorts on YouTube, things like that, that is how you get the eyes these days and it does, you know, YouTube favors you by posting more often. The more you post, kind of the better and so not that I want to put a ton of like slop content out there, but being able to kind of expand your content base with AI is really a big leg up right now. Let's drill this a little bit more because I know many people, especially in a certain demographic, have no idea what shorts are. Sure. Don't use TikTok. Sure. And we're talking in gibberish. So can you explain a little bit, I know you have marketing backgrounds, this is great. **[00:06:00]** So if you can talk to a person who maybe has owned a business for a long time, but they're, they're definitely not the tech talk demographic, right? Let's put it that way. What is a difference between a regular video and a short, and why are they so powerful? Yeah, so shorts and every platform's a little different on length. And honestly, it, it keeps changing. I think right now, like the max is about two and a half minutes on YouTube and maybe like three minutes on, on Instagram and Facebook. But essentially, shorts are exactly that. They're short-form videos that are anywhere between 15 seconds and maybe three minutes in length, depending on your platform. And what they're meant to do is they're meant to be something that somebody is finding when they're just kind of scrolling, you know. It's meant for that social media, YouTube included, kind of discovery, whereas, you your long form content, that might be something where you're specifically trying to get registrations for a webinar or you're directing people to these longer form training videos and things like that. And again, there's certainly a place for that. But shorts are meant to essentially reach an audience that doesn't already know you. That's the big difference. That's how you get found. That's where you kind of pique people's interest. So we call, you know, the way reels are kind of formatted, we call it, you know, the hook on the front end. It's that first three seconds that stops somebody from flipping to that next video, right? We want to grab them in that first three seconds. And that's different than longer form video, right? With longer form video, they know they're committed to 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, whatever. But with shorts, you know, you're wanting to grab that attention. So that hook is really important. And then you're getting them to maybe stay on your video for that full duration. And maybe that's only 15 seconds, **[00:08:00]** maybe that's two minutes, but hooking them at the very beginning is really important. So these reels, these short form videos, they are super important for just grabbing the attention of an audience that doesn't know you yet. That's really the best use case for it. And then once you've gotten them to watch your short, they're like, oh, that's interesting, I liked that, let me look for more. That's how you get them into your longer form authority content, but it really is just about grabbing that attention really quickly and getting eyes on content that might not have otherwise found you. That makes a lot of sense. I found that my channel viewing is determined now a lot by what I've discovered through shorts, especially on YouTube. I'll go through because long-form, I think you just said it very nicely, a long-form video you sort of expect, but you have to really want to get into it, and you have to decide among nine thumbnails that you're you're looking at. And so here's the, the who gets the best thumbnail, the best title, right? And you have to sort of fight against all these other people. Yeah. If you made the video. And, and be a good at thumbnails, good at titles, et cetera, which we could talk about too, but you have just that for them to decide, whereas shorts and reels and TikTok videos, people are scrolling and they're seeing it's moving. So you're already talking immediately. The moment they swipe, you're in action. And so whether you have fast graphics or a good visual hook or an audio hook, that can stop them in their tracks and stay. And then maybe they watch another one and another one. And so I found that that's how I'm discovering **[00:10:00]** a lot of people. They might not even be huge accounts. It's just like, oh, wow, this person has something to say. Maybe I'll look into their other content. Yeah. And that's kind of the difference too. It's like long-form video tends to prefer that format, highly produced, you want really strong editing on that, you want really clean graphics and visuals and things like that. Short-form video, honestly, the algorithm really favors native first, honestly like phone in hand talking to your phone. It doesn't need to be really polished. It doesn't need to be filmed in a studio. You don't need heavy editing. In fact, it almost works against you to put that out there in the short format. So those are easy to produce, easy to get out there, and once it's out there and once you start getting those views and getting people's attention, then, you know, invest in that long form of content and things like that, but don't overcomplicate, you know, your shorts. You really can just kind of grab your phone and hold it if you need to with your face on it. know, I always tell people, a human on the screen in the first, like, three seconds is the most powerful hook there is, really. They want to see a face quickly. Especially now. Yes, especially now, right? Particularly in the AI-driven world, right? They want to see some real human, you know, kind of element really quickly. What do you say to a client when they come in and they say, well, yes, you say it's easy to create shorts, but I record myself and I hate it. I don't sound good. Do I need to get a better microphone? I don't want to do it. How, how someone gets started without, without over complicating it? Yeah. So, you know, there's actually there's two pathways there. So I'll kind of talk about both of **[00:12:00]** them. So the first one is, you know, honestly, just do it as uncomfortable as it may be, as much as you may not like watching yourself on camera. I don't you kind of just have to get over it and just get it out there. We're far more critical of ourselves than anyone else is in the general public. And honestly, people aren't paying as much attention as you think they are. right? Like, they're scrolling, they're watching these on social media, they are not like eyeballing hair and noticing every hair that's out of place or how tired you look. Honestly, like you are over complicating that on your own. So that's kind of what I always tell people is like, I get it. I know it's uncomfortable. I don't like doing it either. But just get it done. The biggest place you're shooting yourself in your foot is by being invisible. It's not nobody's looking at your content going, ooh, she shouldn't have put that out there. She looks terrible. They're more likely to never find you because you're not putting it out there to begin with. That's always kind of my first coaching moment is like, just do it. And honestly, if you need to, I send my stuff to my VA. She does the editing, particularly in OpusClip or Descript or Riverside. I don't even watch it back most of the time, right? Because that's where I kind of put the brakes on. like, oh, I don't like the way I said that or the way I look, whatever. So if you can't watch it back yourself, don't put it out there. You know the take was good, you know what you said was good. Get it out there. Just don't second guess it. So I think that's one path, right, is like just do it. And when you start seeing the results of it, I think that helps kind of get you over that. It's like, oh, people are watching it and they're liking it and they're commenting on it. So I guess it's not as bad as I thought. So I think that's one path. The other second path, too, is there are AI avatars, and you can create video. **[00:14:00]** It takes about two minutes of really good solid video of yourself to create these AI avatars, and they've gotten really good. It takes some training. It takes some tweaking, but if you truly are really uncomfortable filming yourself, or Or if you're like, I don't know what to say, I get stuck, I don't like the way I look on camera, that kind of stuff, you can overcome some of that with an AI avatar now. And I don't necessarily advise anybody to make all of their content with an AI avatar. But truly, when we're talking about getting, you know, this long form kind of clipped up into, you know, smaller sections and reels and stuff like that, if that's a better pathway for you, then do it. Ultimately, if your message is good, if what you're putting out, if the content is good, then use the AI Avatar if you need to. If you don't have time to record, if you've got kids running around in the background all the time, or there's just not a good space to record, that can be a really great option too. So I use this strategically with clients where it's just like, or too busy. I have a lot of attorney clients, right? And like, it is not a good use of their time to sit and film all of these shorts for the most part, right? So I get them to film some high impact clips and then, you know, we use AI avatars from then on out and that can be really effective as well. Oh, that's a good tip. And then also I've seen, there are some really big channels that don't even have someone speaking. Like what's, Navel is it, because you're going to be ignorant in this one, but I've, it's just text on the screen. Yeah. It's like a back screen and then just, they just talk, but they're tremendously powerful because of what they say. Yes. And people resonate with what they've said. **[00:16:00]** Yes. So yeah, AI Avatar, have text on the screen, just narrate it. Yeah. You can even call your voice like to the point of the AI Avatar, you could, if you're good, like you could, you could do a few and then use your voice for the rest. if it's what you're writing the content, but then you're just not good at recording it, that's okay too. It's totally fine. Yeah, I agree. To me, and this is kind of the broader AI use topic, but to me it's like if you are giving value to your audience, if the content is good, if there's something to learn it, if it's entertaining even, I don't know that that many people mind when you use AI for stuff like that, right? Like, ultimately, if I'm getting what I need out of it, which is the information or the education, the entertainment, then I personally don't care. I know there's people that do and that's, you know, a part of the argument, but particularly for businesses, I think your bigger risk is staying invisible as opposed to putting some of this content out there that might be AI generated. That makes a lot of sense. And I've seen all sorts of channels. business owners sometimes think, well, what can I talk about? Right. It's, uh, I have an auto shop, right? But there's a huge channel on TikTok of a guy that has an auto shop. I mean, there's many, but Dave's Auto Shop or something like that. And he goes in the shop and it's like, they bring in a new car and they look at it and they pull out the engine. And then they, now they make like a whole story, right? Yeah. They're good at the story arc. But regardless, they have millions and millions of views, because people are generally interested in that. They are absolutely Yeah, I use the example all the time. My daughter is seven and she loves Barbies, but she watches the heck out of these like YouTube videos of other kids playing with Barbies. And it's it's the same thing, right? It's like, they want to see the behind the **[00:18:00]** scenes. They want to see that kind of content. So yeah, if you've got an auto shop show some of your case studies, some of your interesting snippets. For our attorney clients, we talk a lot about like case, we anonymize stuff, we're not giving specific legal details, but we talk a lot about like how this case moved through and the outcomes and that can be really important for somebody who's kind of going through that process themselves. Maybe it's bankruptcy or divorce or something like that. how that process is gonna play out is really valuable too. So there is valuable content that can be made for every business, you know, house cleaners, right? Like I see it all the time, right? Like before and afters, right? Like show, and then show the sped up clean, right? Like there is stuff you can put out there even if you feel like, hey, I've got a boring business, it's obvious what I do, I clean houses. There's still content you can put out there. Yeah, that's a great example. there's one that has popped up in my feed every so often that is this guy that's steam cleaning. So they go in a house and they steam clean everything, but the before and after like you just said, it's amazing, so you're like, wow, I want that. That would get me every time, right? Yeah. Yeah, so there's all sorts of stuff you can put out there. Again, the case studies, the before and afters, the behind the scenes. People like to see kind of like how you do it, how you, what your personality is like behind the business. So don't be afraid to show like this is, you know, what it looks like on the back end. Here's a video of me filming a short, right? Like that kind of stuff is interesting to people. So I think we tend to overcomplicate it. And truly, you know, these short video formats, they are meant for scrolling and for people **[00:20:00]** just kind of looking. It doesn't have to, every piece of short form content does not need to be like hitting it out of the ballpark, frankly. Yes, that's a good point. They're for discovery, and then they might lead you to something else. To something else, yes. leads me to another topic that we've seen, where earlier you said sometimes it might even affect you if you have everything overproduced, right? And I mean, if you have a big channel, it probably won't, but sometimes what we've seen is the algorithm, specifically TikTok, if everything looks sort of the same, sometimes it can demote it a little bit, but if it's all different, that because it feels more genuine, more like organic, that you're outside, that you're here, that you're there, et cetera, then it might do better regardless of the production value. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that's kind of changed over the last maybe five years or so. Years ago, it was like everything looked very organic, like the video quality was bad. And so what stopped the scroll then was high-produced, really cool-looking videos and effects and things like that. Well, now, we've moved into an era where everything looks like that, right? Like, we're seeing all the cool effects, we're seeing the AI videos, we're seeing… So now we're moving into a phase where what's stopping the scroll is really basic human on-screen content. That's what stops the scroll now. So you just kind of have to almost, I kind of say like, look at what you see a lot of and do kind of the opposite. And I know that sounds counterproductive, but that's what stops the scroll is that, you know, kind of like it interrupts their pattern, right? Like they're seeing the same thing, they're seeing the same thing, ooh, that looks different. **[00:22:00]** That grabs people's attention. So interrupting patterns is a really valuable tool to use with short form content. Now, let me ask you something, and I might be completely off here, but you're in this space. I've been feeling something odd, which is, there's this guy on YouTube, Callaway, I think is his name. He does really, very nice videos, like highly polished, really good, which I would think, from a production perspective, oh, I would love my videos to look like that, right? Yeah. But at the same time, because he shows you all the story arc and how you do like all that, and all that makes sense. And I know it works and I know people sort of are driven to it. But at the same time, I feel in just my experience, I don't know if anyone else feels this, but now when I'm watching videos, if they do the same hook that we've seen in TV and everything for such a long time, where it's like, they give you a little teaser and then they stop it because it's part of what the rest of it, right? So just so you keep watching, and then they stop it, and then they start from the beginning, and then eventually you get to that. Like now, all of a sudden, now I'm starting to feel like anxious. Like I see that and I'm like, like, why didn't you just, if that was a good part, just show me that good part. Just tell me, yeah. Like, I don't need the whole thing. I'm already here for the video, right? So I don't know, it makes sense, people use it. It's a way to get traffic, of course, but it's starting to get into that that territory of clickbait, right? It's not clickbait, but I think you know where I'm going with this. It's like, I'm starting to relate more to videos that just get to the point really, instead of like faking me into it so that then I last longer in the video. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, and honestly, what you're experiencing is really the change in kind of content **[00:24:00]** and also search dynamics as a result of AI, and search has changed a lot. Nobody is going, and this piggybacks off of your video point, like nobody's going to Google and going 10 links down to get all the information that they want anymore, right? Like we're relying on those answer snippets at the top. We're going to chat GPT and asking a question and expecting an answer. Everything, search has really shifted to more query-based And I want an answer and I want a succinct answer. I don't want to read a 2000 post blog feature about it. I don't want to watch a 45 minute video about it. I want the information fast and I want it, you know, succinct. And that's honestly changing everything from, you know, the way website content is structured. Our click through rates are going down on websites. We're just not getting the website traffic we used to have because frankly, everybody's the information, you know, from those snippets or community forums, things that are succinct and short, and they don't want to go dig through 50 pages of your website anymore. And same thing with videos, right? Like what is getting the attention right now and the way that consumers are driven is I want to ask a question and I want to get an answer and then I want to ask follow-up questions and get those answers. So I think that's part of the kind of changing search dynamics. And that's really led by AI, right? Like we are we are asking questions of Siri, of Alexa, of Claude, of perplexity. And and we're not just going it's not keyword based anymore. It used to be very keyword based and now it's more query based. And that's truly that changing dynamic is really important for everybody to kind of understand both how you search and how you view content, but also for businesses what **[00:26:00]** you're putting out there because that kind of short form, quick answers, FAQs are like one of the highest performing pages right now. Everybody needs a really robust FAQ page on their website. That's what's surfacing in answers like that, and that's really important. So same thing with video. right on the money with that. Like nobody wants to have to watch 15 videos to get the answer. They want to watch one quick 30-second reel and get what it is that they want. And funnily enough, like if you get the answer, then maybe you really want to view the long videos from someone. And then it's like coming back to your point earlier that it's swinging the other way, I'm starting to like more the non-produced, just regular video. I mean, good sound and everything, but that it's the guy or the girl or woman or man or whatever, just looking at the camera and explaining it, even like with a whiteboard or something, like just more organic, because what I'm interested in is in the content and not all the rest of it. And so not for everything, right? There's of course space for graphics and everything, especially if you need to explain a more complex topic. But I don't know, I find myself sort of leading towards liking those more. And I'm looking at the view counts also, I'm seeing that a lot of those are exploding compared to the other ones. Yeah, I think as the shift towards more and more AI happens, right? Like we are looking for those human connectivity, human-led content pieces, and I think those can be very, very powerful, and again, that comes back to, like, don't overcomplicate it, don't, you know, be like, I don't like the way I look on camera, like, I get it, but your audience is not as hypercritical as you are, so just get it out there. If you've got something valuable to teach somebody, get it out there, and don't worry **[00:28:00]** too much about the production value of it all. That makes a lot of sense. And regarding search, you touched on search a little bit, people, especially of our age group and older, are used to search. We started with search, right? And so what is the new version of people finding answers? Yeah, yeah, so it is, it's that query-based kind of format, and then expecting an answer are back and then they want to further engage in a query format, too, like they want to ask follow up questions like they want to and, you know, where people are searching is changing. Google is still the top dog. It probably will remain that way for some time. But ChatGPT is growing at a rapid pace. Gemini obviously is a Google product, but using Gemini to search is really coming along. And I think as you mentioned it kind of a generational aspect, my kids are using Siri and Alexa to get those answers. They are high school students and college students are using the LLMs, ChatGPT, Claw, Gemini, Grok. And so as our age group and above kind of age out a little bit and we bring in the newer generations, we're going to see that switch even more. So it's something you can't, you know, particularly if you're running a business, if you're trying to be visible in the digital space, you can't ignore everywhere that people are searching. They're searching in, you know, we've been talking about YouTube and TikTok. They're searching there for answers. They're going to YouTube first to find out how to do something, not Google. And that's really valuable So you need to think, you know, video first, you need to think answer engine optimization first, **[00:30:00]** because that's, we're going to be in an AI first world in a few more years. You know, we're close right now, but give it a couple more years and that's going to be the expectation. So I think that's, I do a lot of kind of bringing businesses into that modern visibility, you know, being found everywhere your audience is looking, and not just Google anymore. SEO and Google is still important, but you gotta kind of incorporate all those strategies now. What can a business do to get found in these other types of search and queries and prompts? Yeah, so, I mean, that is a very loaded and complex answer. But, you know, the biggest thing, the biggest piece of it is that your content now needs to be readable by humans. You want your content to perform, you know, if a human is landing on your page and reading it, I want it to sound natural, I want it to be what a human's going to want to understand and read, but it also needs to be machine readable. AI does not interpret your website or your content in the same way a human does. It doesn't see brand design, it doesn't see your pretty font and your pretty colors and your logo, that's not what it's looking for. It is taking that information and it is scraping it for the answers it's looking for to serve back to you. So it's really important to structure your content in a way that can be easily understood and digested by these AI tools. That really starts a lot with structured schema and what that is is basically, It's like giving AI a map, essentially. It's like saying, here's all my content, here's how it fits into certain buckets, here's how it answers a question, here's who it helps, here's how it helps. **[00:32:00]** Explaining that for the machines to then spit back out is really, really valuable. So structured schema is really important. How you structure your content on a page is really important now. And then I touched on it already, but those questions and answers. The number one tip I could give anybody right now is start thinking about all of your content in a question and answer format. Like, what is the question my audience asks? How can I answer it? And if you kind of put that forward in every piece of content you put out, it's going to be more likely to be picked up, you know, by the AI tools. So that's really valuable. Another thing, and we've already talked about video, Video is a big component of being found right now, so certainly incorporate those video strategies. But another component to our community forums. One of the things that ChatGBT in particular serves up a lot and also the Google answer snippets are Reddit forums. So making sure you have a brand presence in Reddit on Facebook, on LinkedIn is another really big one that it pulls from, so you want that brand presence so that it finds you. So that's another big tip, but it's a rapidly changing world out there right now, and that's a big question that a lot of people are coming to me and to others in Myspace for right now. It's like, how do we get found by AI? And those are at least some starting points. It's a complex narrative all around. Yes. LinkedIn is a great thing because we used to see it as a, just like a... Stuffy corporate platform. **[00:34:00]** Yes, an HR use platform. But nowadays there's actually good content and there's video and video is being surfaced a lot. But more importantly, to your point is it is crawlable. It is. So if you have, if you actually create posts, and I should do more of that myself, if you create posts on LinkedIn, they surface on search. And so then people and LLMs can find it there and then get that content. And it's a more reputable sometimes in terms of SEO juice, if you will, because of the size and scope of LinkedIn versus maybe your website. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think even, you know, versus something like Reddit, right? Like a lot of people are more likely to maybe trust a LinkedIn article versus a Reddit post, not to say that they necessarily should be. There's a lot of value to be had out there in the community forums. But LinkedIn is a big driver of LLM content. And like you said, it is crawlable. Instagram is not crawled hardly at all. So if that's your focus platform, like it's great for Instagram discoverability. it's not likely to be serviced on Google or in an LLM. So if that's your goal, you know, your priorities are really, you know, maybe LinkedIn and TikTok. YouTube second would be my recommendation, but those video first platforms more so than LinkedIn. Facebook does get surfaced a little, but it's not as well crawled either as LinkedIn. Yes, and YouTube, I find myself searching mostly on YouTube when I want a tutorial for something, especially newer things, something that just released yesterday. I'll look for it on YouTube because it's more likely that someone created a video on it than it being posted on a website and that it has been crawled already. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, same. I'm going to chat GPT or YouTube almost every time. I'm using Google for map-based stuff, like, that's still kind of the winner for local **[00:36:00]** businesses. Like, if I need a bank near me, I'm probably going to Google for that to get, you know, into the Map Pack. But otherwise, yeah, I'm going to other sources and I think a lot of people are, too. Yeah. Now, there's another thing that I found very interesting, said relatively recently a few weeks ago, maybe over a month ago. He was saying that they went to this big event. I don't remember what it was, but influencers came out. I don't know if you saw this clip, but it was very interesting to me because he said that when the shorts people came out first, the crowd were all happy and clapping and they were super nice. But then the long form creators came out and the crowd went wild, right? Because they have more attachment to them because it's longer content. But then the live streamers came out and it's just exploded, people were nuts. And so it's very interesting to see that dynamic where, yes, shorts are amazing, you can build a huge audience with it, but then you get more community, like you're saying, and more engagement with the long form because people get to know you more, right? But then if you can manage doing live streams, and it's not as easy because a lot of times you're gonna be on your own at the beginning, there's nobody there, we still have to do it. But if you do that, that audience, even those 10 people, 200, 1,000, 500,000 people, they will really engage with you because they know you're there. There's not really much faking it there. I mean, yeah, it can, but still, it's you answer their questions, you're creating content based on their interactions, and that really builds a relationship. What do you think about live streaming? Yeah, absolutely. It's very similar to attending a live event, right? Like there's a reason that live events still have so much power. **[00:38:00]** You know, we can get the same amount of content or education from YouTube or from, you know, online courses, but people like to go to conferences. They like to go to, you know, live trainings because you get that live, you know, interaction. And also, it just feels, I think, you know, at least for me, you know, I'm likely to start a video and maybe be like, oh, I'll save that and come back to it and then I might never do it. Right. Live is in your face. It's happening in the moment. And you almost feel like you're missing something if you hop away from it. Like, will it still be there? Will I will I find it again? So I think live does a really great job of just like pulling people in really quickly and engaging them in a very different way. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of power in live streaming, in live content. But, you know, as you mentioned, it can be a bit intimidating. There's no retakes. There's no editing. It's kind of, you know, and it is like you may start a live stream and there might be no one there and you're talking to yourself. But, you know, typically that that algorithm catches up and it's people, you know, find those live streams pretty quickly. So it's definitely a great form of content to incorporate into your strategy if you can manage. Yes. And even myself, I see actors, for example. I'll see an actor for film. And, and it's great. They're very good, and I respect them. But then I see an actor for musical theater. And I just feel it's a little indelible because they have to be able to do it live in front of an audience. Absolutely, yeah. Right. Yeah, I think there's maybe a bit more of a trust feature too. It's like if this person's going live, they know what they're talking about. **[00:40:00]** This isn't like something that's been scripted and, you know, I think there is a little bit of a credibility and trust angle that comes, you know, from that. It's like, oh, this person can really just talk about this, right? And I think that's relevant too. Like you can give anybody a script and they can talk for 15 minutes about a topic, but, you know, toss me an AI question and I can just, off the cuff, talk for hours about it. And I think that's the difference between, you know, scripted content versus somebody who is truly knowledgeable and can just talk, answer questions, whatever it may be. Yeah, we've found that if you have the ability, or just, I mean, just go for it, right? But if you can do some sort of live stream, even if you're doubting yourself about recording video and then submitting it, because you know you're never gonna publish it, I've found that sometimes just going live is easier because you're just, you're there. Right? And then when you're finished with it, yeah, maybe that video, it wasn't all perfect, but then you can use Hopeless Clip or Descript, Riverside, and split it up into little pieces. And now you've got great shorts that actually cover the little snippets. And what did you do? You just went live and every day you do it, you're going to get better. Yeah. And it's capturing those great little sound bites. Like we've all done that where we're like, ooh, I said something really cool there. That was a good like two minutes worth of content. Well that makes a great short, absolutely. And yeah, I like your kind of theory there too that like just going live might get you over that kind of like, I need to rerecord. I could have done that better, I could have, it's similar to my just like, do it and let somebody else edit it and put it out there, don't rewatch it, but same kind of concept there is just, it's already out there, it's already done, **[00:42:00]** so you might as well repurpose it and get what you can out of it, yeah. What else do you tell people, I mean, we're talking a lot about the marketing side because of your background, but then you're also into other, like automation, that sort of stuff, so what else do you typically help when a business comes for help from you, what are the other things that, maybe a local business or an attorney or someone like that, should start thinking about if they wish to incorporate AI into their business practices? Yeah, absolutely. So, I have a specific framework in my business that I walk every new client through called Align, Automate, Appear. And the purpose of that, and I'm really kind of strict with them about moving through in that order is that that alignment phase is really important. I come from a brand strategy background and the number one thing I can tell you about AI in general is that trained AI tools are wildly different than your out of the box chat GPT, right? Like you need, if you're going to use AI in your business, it needs to be a tool that is trained on your business. It needs to know your customers, their pain points, who you help, what you sell, why you offer that, all of your offers. And if AI can't verbalize that really well, the content that comes from it is never going to be on brand and it's not gonna resonate with your audience. But where that starts is I have to have the training material to train the AI tool on in the first place. And what I found in the beginning when I was working with businesses and before I formalized the process was when I would go and ask them questions to train these AI tools, they didn't always have all of the answers. **[00:44:00]** As founders, as entrepreneurs, we kind of dive in with a dream and an idea, but we might never just sit down and map out what are my customers' top five pain points? Who are my ideal customers? What are they? What are they like? Who are they? What do they do? What platforms are they on? And so a big part of my process is taking a business through that alignment phase. It is essentially like a brand strategy boot camp because I can't train the AI tool until we've done that part of it. And so it becomes a really interesting exercise that a lot of businesses have never been through or maybe when they first started working with like a brand consultant, they talked a little bit about their logo colors and what they wanted people to feel and that's all great. But there's a lot more meat and bones there that need to be worked out. So it's fun. I take everybody through kind of like a 90-minute really intensive question and answer session. I ask them a lot of hard-hitting questions and a lot of them are like, oh, I've never been asked that. I've never thought about that. I don't know. Let me think about that. How do you describe your brand in three words? How would a customer object to your offers? Those kinds of things. Once we go through that alignment phase, it A, fills a bunch of holes on their front end that they may not have realized they had. Now I have this really robust set of data and information to go train those AI tools on. So that alignment phase and that clarity on their brand and why AI, what are we using it for is really important. So we go through that before we move to the automate phase. And that's where now that I have all that information, now I'm training these tools **[00:46:00]** to actually take some of the work off. But a lot of times I see businesses or individuals hopping straight to that, let me start automating. I'm gonna automate the way I respond to a new lead. Well, if you haven't aligned that with your brand first, then you're probably not communicating in the way that's going to be effective. So that automate phase is secondary after we've ensured that we've got trained AI tools that can do the job, essentially. So then we automate. And then once I feel like I've got them to a better place where things are running smoother, more things are automated, I've given either the founder or the team a little bit more time back and brain space back. Then we moved into that appear phase, which is more about content visibility and optimizing for answer engines and stuff like that. But no amount of me driving thousands of leads to them, starting straight there, if they don't have those other systems in place, the whole thing breaks. So I feel very strongly about kind of moving people through that phase and making sure that we're implementing AI in a strategic way and not just throwing automation into the mix and hoping it solves the problem. That rarely does solve the problem. Yes, for sure. I've seen a lot of businesses with that precise issue where you ask them, okay, so who's your ideal customer? Like, well, everyone. Yes, but who do you sell to? I mean, we could sell to anyone. And that's the typical thing that happens, right? When you start going through it. And so if you really do that process, which comes from the marketing side, but also from the business strategy side, it comes from a lot of sides, but entrepreneurs, like you very well said, a lot of times just jumped in because that's where they were and they never went through that process. And then that also is why you can't scale sometimes **[00:48:00]** because you don't focus on a very specific niche. And so I think that's great. That's a great practice to follow because yeah, you have an AI and it can give you a fantastic outputs, but if you don't give it good inputs, then it will be generic, it will be aligned. And I've found very funny things where if you actually give it the information and you're used to talking to it, et cetera, then you might ask it something or ask it to do something and it might actually call you out and say, hey, yeah, for sure, but I think this is very far out of what you're typically doing. Is this on purpose? And you'll be like, oh yeah, you're right. Maybe we shouldn't do that. Yeah, that's the other thing I love it for too is like it becomes such a valuable internal tool as well, both for maybe yourself if you are a solo founder, But also your team as you grow, right? An internally well-trained AI tool can be invaluable to hand off to a VA or a new team member and say, here's our brand brain, essentially. Here it is on a platter, and they can use that to make sure that they are staying on brand. We see a lot of that, particularly with early-stage businesses, is like the founder got started, They dived in, and then maybe they added a team member, and they had some ideas, and all of a sudden we've got some scattered pieces, and the voice is all a little different, and nothing's really working together. I would say a trained AI brand manager can be such an invaluable tool because now there is a central source of knowledge, and it doesn't go off script. you're right, it'll bring you back to reality really quick. Okay, but that's not really the right message for who you're speaking to. **[00:50:00]** So it can become kind of a fact-checking, I'm checking tool for your own business, which I think is really valuable as well. Amazing. Many people just hear about AI from the media and they have no idea, they've never used it, never tried it, so I always suggest, I mean, try it with the basic tools, ChatGPT, Cloudera, et cetera, Gemini, and see what it can do for you. But then also, talk to people like Jenna, where they can help you see if it actually makes sense to put it into your business and start exploring how it can help you. Because these tools can be really helpful. They can be a detriment, too, if you don't do it properly, as you've very well explained. Absolutely, yeah. I think, in my opinion, they're great tools, they're going to help us a lot, and they're here to stay. Let's just find the right way to use it for each person. Exactly. Yeah. And it's different for every business. It's different for every stage of business. So really finding that right point of entry and not trying – a lot of times I see people try to adopt too many AI things at once, right? Let's throw every tool in the mix. I've had founders come to me and they're like, I want to AI my entire business. And I'm like, cool. Let's do that. one piece at a time, right? Like baby steps, let's not break the whole system. Let's start slow. Start with the most impactful workflow. What's the one thing we can start with that's going to have a measurable impact? Let's do that and then grow from there because you can have a big failure point if you just try to let AI take over and hope for the best. That's usually not the approach that's going to get you the results you want. I was gonna ask you what was a tip that you would give people to get started with AI, and that's definitely one of the best ones. It is, it is, yes. Start slow and start in a place, I like to start with internal style workflows **[00:52:00]** before we roll it out to client-facing or something that's going to directly interact with your customer. Roll it out internally first. Build those brand managers, build those content engines that have a human in the loop before, you know, we start with voice AI or conversation bots or customer service bots, that's not really the point of entry, I think is the most valuable. The most valuable point of entry is something you can use internally and make sure that it's working right and then we expand outward. Amazing. That's a great tip. Jenna, I really appreciate you coming on the show. where can people find you if they're interested in learning more about this sort of stuff? Yeah, I'm definitely on YouTube. I do a lot on YouTube and I'm a big fan of kind of like short, bite-sized trainings, things you can implement right away. They're not two-hour long videos of like let's deep dive into AI. It's like here's a short, easy workflow you can put in your business today. So definitely check me out on YouTube at herAIgency And that's kind of my core content engine myself. But certainly, you know, the website, I'm on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all of that as well. But I think the most value probably comes from the YouTube channel. Excellent. I'll drop that link in the show notes as well. And thank you everyone for listening into the show. Make sure to like and subscribe. And we'll see you in the next one. Thanks, Jenna. Thank you.