Command Your Brand with Jeremy Ryan Slate

We sit down with Jeremy Ryan Slate, co-founder of Command Your Brand, to connect the lessons of Roman history to modern branding, PR, and podcast growth in 2026.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why video and targeted YouTube SEO are now mandatory for discovery.
• Building a catalog that compounds vs. chasing short-lived virality.
• What Roman emperors can teach us about narrative marketing and building trust.
• How to maintain strict brand consistency and voice when using AI tools.

If you want practical strategies for personal branding, trust-building in an AI world, and a video podcast growth plan that actually fits a small business, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s building a brand, and leave a review with the biggest idea you’re taking from the conversation.

DO THE WORK • STAY THE COURSE • NO SHORTCUTS™️
Podcast for people who are serious about building something real.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real people, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealPeopleRealLife 

Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller. 

Transcript

Cold Open And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:31

This is gonna be a good one, Hugo. The Brad Wiseman Show. Real people, real life, and everything in between. So, what do your kids think of this?

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Oh, they are so embarrassed.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I'm not here for the money, but I'll still take it. I'll still take it.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Unfiltered conversations with the people shaping our world. Because you're judging yourself by your intentions, they're judging you by your actions. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

You know, my wife said to me, you go to work and you give everyone the Mitchell buffet, and you come home and you give me the scraps. And now your host, Brad Wiseman. All right. I didn't think I'd be making it today, Hugo. I did not think I'd be making it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yet here you are. Yet here I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So this show is brought to you by Ricola. Because I woke up this morning at 5 a.m. and I was like, I don't have a voice. And I thought, I don't know how I'm gonna get through this day without a voice. How am I gonna make this happen? So I panicked. I have to say I panicked, that's which is what I do. And I called the guest and said, Hey, dude, I can't make this happen. And he said, You're a jerk. No, he didn't say that. No, we went back and forth. And you know what? It was cool. We worked it out. And you know, this guy's a great guy. We wanted to get him in here for a long time. I mean, he's been doing podcasts forever. And we had him on the podcast. It was, I'm gonna say, year ago, year and a half ago, Hugo. It's been a while, but he was here through streaming. So this time, we've got him in the studio. His name is Jeremy Ryan Slate. And I'm gonna read his bio just so that you know the all the stuff that he's doing. It's because it's the easiest way to do it. So Jeremy Ryan Slate is the host of the Jeremy Ryan Slate Show, which studies the highest performers in the world. He studied literature at Oxford University, as well as holding a master's in early Roman Empire propaganda, which is the one that blows my mind, from Seton Hall University. His podcast was named the number one podcast to listen to by Inc. Magazine, as well as top 40 under 40 by Podcast Magazine. Jeremy and his wife, Brielle, co-founded Command Your Brand, a new media public relations agency designed to help entrepreneurs share their message by appearing as guests on podcasts. He resides in Stillwater, New Jersey, where he raises his children and chickens. And he's a former competitive power lifter, too. I mean, come on. Let's bring Jeremy on. Jeremy, how are you doing, buddy?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Hey, I'm doing great, man. And uh I definitely appreciate you making this go. Cause I know we talked a few hours ago early this morning. You were not feeling like a good thing. It was not good. You sound good now, man. It's there. You got the great radio voice happening right now, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But yeah, I'm so glad you're here. Hey, thanks for having me, man. Yeah, you know, you're all over the place. You really are. You're and you're doing the thing that blew my mind is I think the first time I talked to you was on the podcast that we did streaming. We didn't talk anything about Roman Empire at all. Nobody talked about it though.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

So I I'll be 40 in a year. So this is what I did my master's in like almost 20 years ago. That's amazing. Nobody cared. And then there was a meme that popped up, I think like three or four years ago. Do you probably remember this about Men Think About the Roman Empire? Do you remember this or no?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I don't.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

So Saturday Night Live had a song. You gotta look it up. It's gonna look it up. Jason Momoa actually sings the song. So they have they have this Men Think About the Roman Empire became like a real meme. And I did a podcast with Cal Fussman about three years ago. And it was just like a minor point in the bio, like you read there, and he goes, Tell me about the Roman Empire. So we ended up doing like two hours on the Roman Empire. Next thing I know, like I was getting, you know, James Aldinger wanted to do something. And then in the last couple of years, we've we've done some incredible shows talking about it. Initially started about, you know, the Roman Empire, why do people care about it? And I've really started talking about in the last couple of years civilizational collapse because there's some patterns and things that are the same that people look at. Money's a really big one, and what's happening with it. And it's been kind of incredible

Roman Empire Meme To Real Lessons

SPEAKER_03 4:10

because to me, as an agency owner, it's allowed me to take the knowledge I have and actually build something that works like it did for our clients, but we'd never really done for me, which is kind of right.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

And that's what's cool because I remember when you started doing getting into this, the whole doing those talks and the podcasts and things about the Roman Empire. And and I remember looking at the similarities, which is scary as hell. But then I was and I remember you saying, you know, we've done this for everybody, and I've always been doing this, but here's something that I have a passion for. And you know what's funny? Isn't it funny how life, the things you have passion for, will find its way through? Yeah. It will find its way through and you will do it. And and it's it's weird how things like work like that in life.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Well, it's also like the thing that I like talk my family members' ears off.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Roman Empire? You must be really fun to be at uh Diddy.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

I am so boring to be around, man. I am not an interesting. Do you bring out the coins and stuff? I bring out the coins, yeah. Those are actually shout out, shout out to my good friend Dean Kinzer from Kinzer Coins. He sends me all these coins, so I brought a couple for Brad. You're these are for me to keep. Those are for you to keep. Those are third century coins. If you notice by the color of them, uh Rome had hit 15,000 percent inflation by the late third century. Yes. So those are supposed to be silver denarius, but they're actually almost 100% bronze. These silver has totally come off because it had become a coating at that point. But those are your third century coins that I think they're they're worth maybe about 50 bucks, but they're a very cool thing to have.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So kind of well, they're gonna be in the studio here. That's a story right there. So 2,000 years old. 2,000 years old right there on your desk. Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna make it 2,000 years, just so you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

I'm I'm pretty much sure you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Have a Alexander the Great type of sarcastic.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, maybe I'll be stuck in that radio. They'll put me in the radio and I'll age in there very well. That's 1942, by the way. You'll be you'll be kit. Kit, exactly. Oh god, great show. That was a good show. So, yeah, let's get so let's go in. What we're gonna do, this is gonna be interesting. I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks of how am I going to or how we going to interweave, command your brand. So we want to we want to give the value to the audience of the branding because you guys are super good at that. Okay. And then we also want to I want to weave in the Roman history and the and the stuff that you're doing there. So it might be a little bit back and forth. I'm just telling the audience, this might get a little back and forth between Rome and branding. But what I wrote was command your brand the way the Romans did. You know, that's kind of that's kind of what so let's go into the command your brand. Let's talk about that because that's really what kind of got you started in this whole podcast, Romans, what we talked about last time you were on. Tell

Why Video Now Runs Podcast Growth

SPEAKER_00 6:41

me where that is, and and tell me if there's any updates on branding and podcasting and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Well, the and you've been in podcasting a while too. So you've this space has changed a lot, right? You know, I've been in this space since 2014. And I think the thing that's interesting is you've seen the space kind of started with a lot of individual creators, and a lot of the big companies weren't really succeeding.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

And now you're seeing, and we're seeing this especially in the agency world, a lot of the big companies are actually starting to come in and buy the small agencies. Oh, so it's changing the space a lot, but I think there's still an ability for individual creators to do well. Now, the thing that I am seeing is back in 2014, this is like 80, 80 to 90 percent audio only. Yeah, and the thing that we're seeing now is video is becoming such a big component of it. I know even for myself, yeah. Same here. About four years ago, we kind of went all in on video and we we've really started to focus on YouTube as our number one thing. And I think for individual creators and and companies, that's a really good way to get found because it's the number two search engine out there.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Now it's number two next to what, Google? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

And I think the thing that's interesting, I think people stress out because they see the studio you have, and everybody thinks they have to have something like this. And for me, I'm just shooting monologues that I read off a teleprompter and I use an iPhone. But you do have good quality though, but it's just an iPhone on continuity camera with one umbrella light. So it's like if you kind of learn a good setup, you can do a really great job, have a nice shot, and those things do matter because you need to get you need the aesthetic quality to get picked up. So I think in 2026, if you're going to succeed, you do have to care quite a bit about the production quality, but that doesn't mean having a studio. It does mean having a nice aesthetic shot looking good and sounding good, but you can do really well with having tools like vidIQ to get the right titles, the right thumbnails, and things like that. So if you're if you're gonna do well now, I think it really does come down to having a video show, not having an audio only show in 2026. You're not gonna get found, you're gonna be stuck at you know, less than a hundred listens an episode and things like that. But it does give you the ability, especially as a brand, to really get found and really start to create a narrative.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. What's funny too is you look at Spotify, they're doing video now with with the audio. Apple is too. They just announced that a month ago or something. Yeah, yeah. So they're all doing that. The only thing I notice about those two platforms, which is interesting, is it's it they're not user-friendly yet with uploading the video. It's kind of cumbersome a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

I still don't put it on either of those, so I don't have to. I do it once in a while.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

I probably will for ours. Yeah, certain ones I do. Yeah. Because it's almost like a kind of like a tease for the audience. Maybe, you know, you're like, oh, this one has a video. Let me check this out, you know?

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Because like on our production, and I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing, I've kind of made YouTube the primary. And now what we're recording for YouTube, we're actually just taking that audio and putting it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, whereas it was the reverse before. It's not fun. We were producing for audio and taking that audio and try to make it fit for video. But we've really made video, especially for YouTube, our primary way to get found. And for most brands, if you position things the right way, it can really get found. But I think the thing people struggle with is they try to go for big keywords and big topics and things like that. And as a small brand, you really should be optimizing for search, right? You should be really trying to get found in a smaller way. And you're gonna find And what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

What just explain if you want to kind of break that down a little bit? When when you say keywords and things like so for your industry, let's just say, I mean, this my show is not about real estate anymore, but at the at one time it was. And you know, so does that mean you're putting real estate in everything as far as keywords? Is that is that what that means?

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Or so it would depend, right? Because okay, so are you corporate real estate? Are you residential real estate? Right, got it. Are you regional real estate, right? Are you just servicing a single town? Right, right. So like that's part of it, but now you get into the video topics. So like we'll use vidIQ, and what we'll typically do is give it a transcript.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

We'll say, from this transcript, help us figure out what the we actually have connected vidIQ to Claude Co work so we can get more data out of it. Oh, I didn't know about that. There's a connector now that the two actually Is an API or something that does that? It's a direct connector. So you can actually pull that vidIQ's data directly into Claude Co work. Oh, I like that. And what you can take a look at then is what keywords should we be ranking for? Because it might be, you know, how do you get a title in, you know, let's say Reading, Pennsylvania, or something like that. Like so it's it's really, really, really specific. It's not just real estate because you have to think about how many millions of people are on YouTube talking about real estate.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Exactly. So you make it look, you gotta make it local.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

It's more, it's not even just local, it's more topical because like it gets down to I'm talking about the Roman Empire, right? Okay, I'm doing lots of videos. We just did one about the fall of Roman Britain.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

So we're gonna look at very specific things happening to do with who was emperor at that time, what things are happening in Britain. So there are gonna be certain keywords we're trying to have in the title, the description, and then having a good thumbnail so people get that. Those things really do matter because for a lot of people they're looking at, okay, what's somebody like Jay Shetty doing? And the problem is, is Jay Shetty is a lot bigger than you, me, or anybody else out there. So the way he optimizes is going to be different because he already has a big brand, right? So he has millions of subscribers that his stuff is going out to. YouTube's gonna test it against those subscribers and it's gonna get visibility. For a smaller brand, you don't have that large subscriber base to test against. So what you're testing against is search. So you have to give YouTube something to find. So right now for a brand, if you're going to win, it's gonna be slow. But if you have, let's say if you have a hundred videos and each one of those videos is pulling in initially a couple hundred views, and then over the next year, 25 views a day.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

Well, let's put that across a hundred videos. Yeah, it's good. So your channel starts to grow, you start to bring in people, and you're starting to find people that are interested in those topics. Like maybe they want to learn more about titles, maybe they want to learn more about mortgages, maybe they want to learn more about these different things. So it sets you up in a position where people are searching for something, and because you're optimizing for search, you are the result, and especially in your local local area.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Awesome. So, you know, and and it kind of inner we it's one of the things that I brought down. You had written down in one of your notes was you know, the the difference between going viral and consistency.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

You know, and but it's not just consistency, right? You can consistently create the wrong thing every day.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Oh, it's so true. So true, so true. Yeah. There's people in business that do that a lot, you know. Yeah, so doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different different results. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Something a lot of people do. So, yeah, so let's get it. Like some of the notes that I have here is you had one of the things you said, most successful companies don't just sell products, they build narratives people want to belong to. Give me an example of that. Or what is what does that mean to the narrative around the product?

SPEAKER_03 13:03

So I think Apple is a really great example of that. And maybe some people out there don't like the brand, some do, but they've done a great job with if you're an Apple user, you have everything Apple in your life because they've kind of created a brand feel and a brand aesthetic that attracts a certain type of individual. Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, they're not considering that. And when I look at that in history, I think the first Roman emperor, Augustus, is a really great example of this. Because Rome is really three eras in time. It's a kingdom first, then it's a republic, and then it's an empire. Augustus is the first emperor. He's not the it's never Julius Caesar, though people like to say that. But the thing that Augustus has to do is he has to convince people that they still live in a republic while he's actually, in a lot of ways, their king. Oh wow. So what does he do? He uh issues creating new stories. He pays for people like Livy to write his Roman history.

Winning Search With Narrow Keywords

SPEAKER_03 13:51

The Aeneid is written during this time of Virgil. So he's actually taking a look at what are the stories people are going to buy into that are going to make them feel more included in this. Wow, interesting. And if you look at the brands that are doing well, they're telling a story people don't just buy into, but they want to be a part of. So when you look at your brand story, how can you make somebody feel like this is, you know, your real company narrative that they're a part of? You're not just telling them a story, how can you involve them in it? And I think honestly, if you look at what you're doing here with the way you do a show, with the way you engage with your audience, you're creating a story people want to be a part of. And that's why I think having a brand that creates content in this way is really vital. So when you're looking at that in your brand, how can you do that? How can you create something people want to be a part of? And sometimes it's looking at what's happening in media at that time, what's happening in your local community, whatever it might be, but you have to find a story you can pull people into and start to build the narrative because one of the biggest problems I get I see with brands is people say, Well, I'm just gonna wait till the media finds me. And Rad, you know when they're gonna find you? Yeah, never mind. When you steal something from a store or you get a parking ticket or you get in track, they'll find you and you'll be on the, you know, these stories and more at six o'clock. You'll you'll be part of that. Yes. When you're seeking getting out there, you actually have to be the one to tell your story and fill that void. And I think for a lot of people, if they don't get that, you're not gonna get to that next level of growth. So you have to figure out what is your brand story and how are you gonna tell it. So when you're looking at your individual brand, we have a brand standards manual. It's almost a hundred pages. It covers how does the brand communicate, how does the brand feel, what does it stand for, what fonts do we use, what color schemes do we use, how are the different ways our logo is used. So when people on our team are actually communicating, it feels like the same brand narrative that's coming out in all those places. So when you're looking at your brand, these are things you have to have to really create a cohesive story that feels like something people want to be a part of and that always communicates consistently.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, and it seems like, and and there's a couple things in there that I think.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Sorry, I I say a lot when I talk. No, no, you're good. You're very North Jersey thing, man. It's it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

No, but what's interesting is you know we talk about this all the time in an art industry and any industry. If you don't tell your story, somebody else will.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

And it probably won't be the story that you want to hear. So you have to create that story. That that story is you have to fill the void. Exactly. Because if you don't, it somebody will fill that void. Yeah, it's interesting with the branding part and going back to the Roman Empire part. That's just an interesting tie. But there's so many similarities like that that I've seen on your podcast. I actually know on your when I was looking at your Instagram and looking at different stories, and actually your Facebook was a good place too. I was looking in there and it was interesting some of the stories and some of the things. Actually, one of the quotes that I had from there, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. That was a that was a quote. I don't know, no, if it was yours or whatever, but it was on your on your Facebook.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

It's been often attributed to Mark Twain, but then there's other people that said he didn't say it, but maybe Mark Twain.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Dig into that. And I mean it history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. So I get the rhyme part, but but I guess it's so it's not the same exact thing.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

Well, because people often say, you know, history repeats, and you know, that's kind of a glib way of looking at it, and it's not really true. I it's you know, you and I are in a in a similar age. Remember, we used to go to the go to the mall, and there'd be that sign. Not that people go to the mall anymore, but there was that sign that said you are here and you gotta figure out where it is. Yep. People tend to think history's like that, you know, like, oh, this is exactly what happened, and now we're 50 years from this or a hundred years from this, and it's just not like that. History is patterns. You can see things that repeat, but just because it repeated didn't mean you're going to actually have that same result, whether it's good or bad or whatever it might be, because it you can see a pattern, and based on a pattern, you can react, right? Right. One of the biggest things I talk about is monetary debasement. Our national debt, what is it like? 36 trillion? Is it 30 trillion? Thank you. I thought it was close to 40 trillion. I follow like that. I follow it, yeah. So it's a big number, right? And if you look at the way our inflation number is given, they don't give you kind of inflation over time. They give you year over year. And it doesn't include being in real estate, you would you would know there's certain things it doesn't include. Yep. And I think building materials is one of those. So you look at that and you're like, well, building materials have gone up a lot, a lot which is cause home prices to change a lot. But those things aren't included in inflation. So you're saying, oh, inflation went up two percent from last year. It's like, oh, well, that's not that bad. If you actually include a lot of those things and you look at kind of the early 19th century to now, we're actually somewhere around 3,000 to 3,500 percent inflation. And that means every dollar in your pocket is worth less. Now, as I mentioned, Rome by the late third century as at 15,000 percent inflation, which means that they're the coins I showed you, they were bronze now. They had a silver coating over top of them. So people thought they were silver back in the day. So they would flake off in their hand.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

So they basically

Narratives That Make People Belong

SPEAKER_00 18:46

well, we did that too with our coins. They used to be.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

We don't make the penny anymore either. But exactly the the reason I I say that is because okay, that's a problem. Yeah, it's not 15,000 percent yet, but it doesn't mean there's things we can do about it. I don't have those solutions. I don't know if it's, you know, changing the way our money is done or changing what it's based on, whatever it might be. But when you look at history repeating, it gives you a warning sign. And a warning sign means that people that are aware can do something. And, you know, maybe the individual person can't do something about our money supply, but you can do something about where your money's going. And right now, a lot of smart people are investing in real estate, they're investing in land. They're not investing in currencies and things like that because they're not really stable. So as a business person, it tells you to take a look at where your investments are going, but also the type of businesses you're running. Because if you're running a business that, you know, let's say the power grid goes down, well, maybe being an AI isn't a great place to be. Right. But if you own the land, that's a really great place to be. Because now they can build a exactly. So you so it's just it just means that you know, you don't have to go crazy. You don't have to have a a bunker where you have all your stuff. You know, growing up, my mom had a had a bunker, it was a little weird. But she was one of those. She was she was one of those. You went in our our basement, it kind of looked like Costco. Oh my god. But um it doesn't mean you have to have that, right? It just means that you you're aware of how patterns are happening, and because of that, you as an individual can react in a certain way that if things don't go well, hey, you're in good shape. And if they go great, you're in better shape.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

So it just really shows us, based on what has happened, what could happen or what couldn't happen. And we can just prepare based on that.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah. And it it's and yeah, and that's where there's some people are just doom and gloom about all this stuff. It just drives you crazy.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Well, I think there's also hope too, because if you look at the the Roman Empire, it had initially that it's one part, but as over time it gets so big it eventually becomes two. It becomes an Eastern Empire and a Western Empire. Yeah. And the Eastern Empire survives for two different reasons. But one of the key ones is that Constantine, who's kind of the first emperor to really move a lot of the power east, gets his currency on a gold standard. So it goes for a thousand years without inflation. Yeah. Or almost or 700 years without inflation. So that's a a a big deal, right? So I think it just shows us that there are always solutions. If you want to find doom, you can look throughout history, man. You'll find it. You'll find lots of doom. But there's also a lot of good things that can be found if you know what can be happened and react the right way.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah. And and and one of the things of recently I've I've heard somewhere in a podcast or interviewed somebody, and it was awareness gives you choices. Choices give you freedom. So I thought that was a really it's a cool way of looking at it. We're aware. If you I think the reason we look at history is to just be aware of the possibility. Correct. The possibility of what could happen. It might not happen, it might not be anything close to that. Yes. But it gives you the awareness of it goes, okay, this could happen. And then we can we can then make choices, and then that gives you freedom along with that. You know, so I think that's good.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

I think I think also, like, you know, as a business person as well, you start to look at you need to scale faster. You need to build systems that are harder to break, right? It's not a bad idea to have physical systems and have a physical office, right? Because you're actually in better condition than a lot of people that are that are based on certain things that could see disruptions, if there is any power grid disruptions or things like that. Doesn't mean we'll have them, but it does mean that you look at scaling faster, you look at getting better systems, and and I think it just motivates you for what you can do.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

And also getting more involved in local. It's it's kind of interesting. I feel like right now, being more involved in local is more important than ever.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Absolutely. You know? Because that's where everything really happens. Yeah, happens on a local level. It's totally where it happens. But yeah, so let's go into some of this other though. How the strongest brands create uh legitimacy and trust before they try to sell anything. And I think this was something about when we were in into the the Apple thing. So what I thought was interesting is, and you're right about Apple, you're right about Coca-Cola, we're right about Kellogg's, we're right about cultural brands. Yeah, and and what happens is if they come out, if Kellogg's comes out with a new cereal, I'm gonna try it. You know why? Because I like their other I like their other stuff. Yeah. And I trust that they're gonna come out with something good. Yeah. You know, so I think a lot of times when you trust that brand, and that's the hard thing to get. I mean, it's really hard to get. Look how cars are. Well, it's just I mean, there's people that won't buy anything but afford. Yeah. And that's just the way it is. They will not buy anything but afford. And that's that's what I call amazing branding, amazing trust building. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

But even like it's simple things like as stupid as it is, jingles work. Oh, everybody knows the cars for kids song. Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

If I hear that one more time, I swear I'm gonna go. I'm gonna run off the road. But there's two different cars for kids now. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_03 23:05

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

That's why they do K-A-R. They do that. There's two different cars for kids. One spelled with a K and one spelled with a C.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And I was like, holy crap. So somebody must have come out with another cars for kids and the other company got pissed off. Oh my god. And they're like, oh, we'll show them. But the one that we hear is that K-A-R-K-Rs for kids. Yeah, that's the that's the one that everybody hears.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

But I but I think though it's interesting because a lot of businesses won't spend money on things like that anymore. Right. But if you look at that, once you get in somebody's head in that way, that value is enormous, right? Like it's incredible. Or is something as simple as Capital One's our business bank? You know, my I pull up my Capital One card and my kids always go, What's in your wallet? And I'm like, okay, the seven-year-old knows it. And I think, but I think those things are for some reason, those branding and those imagery and those like slogans are actually vital. Yeah. And a lot of people won't invest in those things. They take a look at what's gonna get me more leads, what's gonna get me more business. And here's the problem. Do you remember the game Hungry Hungry Hippos? Of course. I love that game.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

I think we have it for our kids. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. It's plastic now, though. Is it plastic? It used to be metal. Yeah, we could beat the crap out of it. I was born in the early 80s, man.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

So it was metal.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Seriously, it was it was metal back then. The one now, if you hit it too hard, I think I broke my kids. But if you hit it too hard, the whole hippo flies off. Oh my god. Yeah. But go ahead and tell you what you should say.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

But the reason I say that is because a lot of brands that are like, I just need leads, I just need leads, I just need leads. Now listen, you do need them because if you don't have leads, you don't have money, you don't have a bottom line, right? But if you look at it, there's really three parts to doing well. There's your public relations, your marketing, and your sales. If you don't have all three, you will be playing Hungry Hunger Hippos forever.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Because if you're not closing sales, then that means your marketing's not good enough. But if your marketing's not converting, it likely means people don't trust you enough. And I think for some reason, people won't really spend money, and I see this in the conversations I have, in the things that will actually change hearts and minds, right? If you're looking at public relations, public relations is the sale of an idea. And if you get

The Roman Pattern And Money Warnings

SPEAKER_03 25:36

someone to buy an idea, they're gonna buy into your marketing, it's gonna convert better and you're gonna sell better. But if you're just looking at, I just need leads, need leads, need leads, which to a certain extent is true, you're playing hungry, hungry hippos forever because you're never going to change the scene or change the situation. If you change

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SPEAKER_03 25:53

the way you're perceived, well, then when somebody sees you against a competitor, well, yeah, I remember that guy. He was he paid for our softball team or he did something at our school, or I saw him on that show. So it starts to create trust. And, you know, at a certain point, everybody's good at what they do. Yep. Right. But so it becomes, well, I trust that guy, I know that guy, and I believe that guy, I'm gonna buy with him. And that that becomes the real difference, and that's something you can't quantify in a KPI. But it's actually incredibly vital because you've changed somebody's mind. But a lot of businesses for some reason will not invest in that.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

It's amazing. And you know it's it's interesting, is I'm writing a book right now. It should be out at the end of this year or beginning next year. It's called The Human Advantage. And it's all about building trust in an AI world. Yeah. And being human in an AI world. I love AI. I'm not negative about AI.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

No, I the way I

(Cont.) The Roman Pattern And Money Warnings

SPEAKER_03 26:39

use it in my processes, I use it so much. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah, it's great. But but I also think that we as humans are gonna desire we're gonna crave human connection, and we still need to trust somebody. We still need to build that trust. Because one of the questions I ask our agents here, uh, to do some training. And I say, what's more important? Experience or trust? And I I too totally believe trust is more important. I guess I agree with that. And the reason being, and this is and that's my quote is my experience is only as good as your trust in it. And the reason being is that you could have the you could be a doctorate in your in your field, but if people don't believe you, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Right? I mean, it doesn't matter at all. So trust, building relationships and building trust to me is the number one key in brand in branding. To me, it's like very important.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Well, and one of the things I talk about, we might have talked about this last time, but it's something about, you know, and I think local businesses initially have they have a real big advantage a lot of them don't say. Yeah. And that's that you have local newspapers that are really easy to get in if you write a press release. So it really gets back to taking a look at you are a big fish in a small pond somewhere, where can you take advantage of that? You know, like is there a university publication you can be a part of? Is there a local part of your community you can get involved in? And that's what PR can be on a small scale. Like, you know, we used to do work for a PDA, a podiatrist, and that podiatrist had a run he would sponsor every year because feet and running, right? So you're you're actually getting in front of your public. So it doesn't have to be, you know, I was on Business Insider or I was an entrepreneur. I think for a lot of people, they want those things. I think it's a little bit of vanity that gets into it. But you look at what's actually going to be effective to people knowing me. And if you start locally, you can actually make money for the PR you're doing right off the ground. And that starts to create the trust. So it becomes easier to get a lot of the PR things you want to get.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah. That's so true, so true. And it kind of was with the podcast here. I mean, I wasn't able to get people to come to the studio for the longest time, right? Right, Hugo? I mean, it took us some time to get people to come in here. Hugo's here. Hugo's here. Hugo's always here. He's always here. He's my buddy. But you know, it took us a while for him and I to get people to come in here. And what happened is we started, we got one, Sylvie DeGiusto is probably the one that kind of put us on the map. Is she came here from wherever, was traveling to Philly, we got her to come into the studio. And getting that one person that was notable and was good and was really good at what she does really started to put us on the map for getting people here. And and I appreciate you being here today. But like Sam Dema, I know you I know you probably know who I don't know if you know who Sam Dem is one of my favorites. He was just here from Canada, and uh, he was just here in the studio, just an amazing person. You need to follow him. You'll love him. Young, 26 years old, and he's lighting the world on fire. Wow. He's just incredible.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

So uh yes, but I think even in the media world, I think that's that's an important point to make as well, because you could have a great story, you could have a great framework, you could be telling it in the right way, but until you get something that really legitimizes you in a lot of ways, it becomes harder to get other things. I was on the Sean Ryan show in February, which was incre one of my favorite conversations. I followed that on the side. Oh, did you? It was one of one of my favorite conversations. And you actually sent me a DM, you're like, hey, you're supposed to come see me. What the heck's happening, man? And then I'm then I asked to see you, but you won't come to Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

And then I asked him to come here, and then I see I'm sick. Yeah, you know, so then I can understand why.

SPEAKER_03 29:47

But but here's the thing like Sean having that conversation with me, like I haven't changed as a guest. Yeah. But the fact that he was willing to do that now had other creators start to look at me, right? And I think you have to understand, once again, it goes back to trust. He trusted you.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

He trusted you big time. And that and that you're bringing content that he thinks his audience is gonna love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

And they had told me no a year and a half ago. And then I ended up writing a thread on X from one of his posts that basically took what he said and explained how everything fit into Rome. And he sent me a DM. He's like, Can you be a Nashville in two weeks? I'm like, Absolutely, of course I can be a Nashville in two weeks.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

I'll go to Nashville anytime.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

But but I think the the the thing about that is is when you're you're telling a story, it's about continually to get more credibility. And as you get better platforms, you can get better platforms. I think a lot of people have this idea, and we run into this with clients sometimes. They they come to you and they think they've arrived at Golden Corral, and they kind of like, yeah, I'll take the uh one of those, one of those, one of those, one of those. And it's like you have to kind of earn your way there, right? And and that really is how media works is continually getting more credibility. Even if you're well known in your space, you might not be well known in kind of the media space. You have to gradually build up to get where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. No, that's good stuff. So this was something I saw on your how to identify a big idea that makes you memorable instead of just another expert in your industry. Like the big idea thing is huge, but it, you know, it that's such a how do you find it?

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

You know, it is it right in front of you? Is it something that makes that's just unique about you? That's the big idea. It's because we're all unique in our own way.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Well, I think part of it is being willing to have conversations because this goes the I'll I'll give you the Rome example again, just because for me, this is the most real one. As I said initially, I was talking about anything people wanted to ask me about Rome. Yeah. And I treated it in some ways as a survey and in some ways a way to, you know, I hadn't done long-form interviews about this stuff. This is just what I did in school. So I had to also get better as a guest. So you start to realize one part is a survey. What do people keep asking about? Yeah. You know, what things should I learn more about? What things should I read more about? So you start to develop those things people are always asking for. And for me, that started to develop a framework, you know, and that's what what later became not till January this year, I started calling the Roman pattern. You know, what are the three things that cause civilizational collapse? You know, money, the way you're handling borders, the way you're handling your politicians, those three things very often lead to a problem. And those are things that I came to the conclusion by people continually asking me about it. Yeah. Day one, I didn't have it. It was just having conversations, having conversations, listening, listening, listening. And you start to see what is it people are looking for? How can I actually tie this into the history and how can I really develop this into a framework? Because when you look at bigger shows and bigger platforms, they think in big ideas. Yeah. You know, it's not just, you know, another sales tactic or another marketing tactic. They think about what are kind of these society pushing or civilizational shifting ideas. And I think initially that can be really discouraging to somebody because they might see, well, you know, I don't have a societal shifting idea or whatever it might be. But let's say here's an example. We're always watching the news cycle. Let's say you're in Florida, hurricane rips through. Yeah. You are a roofing guy. You get out there and you start talking about roofing and you talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. You're going to find that there's certain things people are asking about. You might find a new way to communicate about what you're doing that can take you higher than your space. Maybe you develop a new way to communicate about hurricanes that hasn't been looked at before. Next thing you know, you're having big conversations, you're writing a book, you're doing different things. But you wouldn't have known that had you not stepped out of your comfort zone and figured out how do I tie what I'm doing in either to the news cycle or what's happening in media or where people are. So you have to look at that in your industry. And we saw a lot of people do this during the pandemic as they figured out how to tie what they're doing into how society's changing. You know, whether it's restaurants that got really good at doing the takeout way you could pull into their parking lot and you could have your food order ready, and they if you're gonna have a change in that. So it's the ones that look at that news cycle and figure out, I'm not just gonna be a fact of this, I'm gonna be effective with it.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

And it doesn't mean day one, you have to have the big idea, but you continue to have conversations, you continue

Trust Building Through PR And Local Presence

SPEAKER_03 33:52

to enhance what you're talking about, and you're gonna find you get closer to a big idea through experience and really through the survey of learning from what people are saying.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah, that's it's a good point. The whole COVID thing is just crazy. Because I, when you said that about the restaurant, we have a restaurant here locally, which I think every community had this. There was one restaurant.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

The negative side is my grocery store closes at nine still, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

So does ours. So does ours. Ours is open until midnight or or sometimes 24 hours. But there's a local restaurant called Austin's. They they stepped up like I've never seen. Yeah. And you know what's amazing? They still use the same takeout systems that's a big idea that were developed during COVID.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

And that's a big idea.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah, it's a huge idea. And they're they're so good at it.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

It doesn't mean that it's an earth-chattering big idea, but it's a big idea that's different to how that industry. Well, it was a necessity.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

It was a it was a survival at first.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

And then it became hey, this is gonna be a margin, a profit margin here that we we've just now created. Because now when the restaurant opens, we've got this going like crazy.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Well, and you had other restaurants that said, okay, well, we're just gonna wait this out. Yeah, bad idea. And it kind of sucks because some of those aren't around. But they innovated, they found a way to do it, and now they've actually changed their systems. So that is a big idea. They figured out how to do something different that wasn't initially formed out. I think a lot of people have this idea. I need to sit and think, and I'm gonna come up with this really big idea, and it's gonna be earth-shattering. Yeah, you're gonna find the big idea comes through work and testing, right? That's what it really comes from. Action comes from action. Yeah, it's a I'm sure you've seen that in your world. Like you probably look at things day one that are you think dramatically differently. They actually had a huge part of what you do now.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Yeah. Oh, it's it's it's completely. I'm in the business 34 years. July 12th will be in 34. What is today? I don't even know what today is, but July, July 12th will be in 34 years. And the amount of changes that I've seen from July of 1992 to now is just incredible in our business. But the thing is, is I I never fought it. Yeah. And I think that's something that people in any business uh need to be aware of. Don't you can't fight change. You have to you have to figure out how am I going to to use this change to maybe come up with the big the big idea or to correct to to become keep becoming more successful. And that's one thing everybody, after 34 years, I still I'm on, I'm doing AI now. I'm fifth, gonna be 56 years old. I'm doing AI, I'm doing all the things that some of these younger people in this business don't even do. So you just gotta stay on it. You know, you gotta keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

Well, and I think once again it comes back to not thinking you have to have that big idea day one. Right, iterations and iterations and iterations. And you even look at the iPhone you have now versus the first iPhone that came out that was kind of worthless, right? Yeah, but it it does so many things, and it took them what, 15 years to get the product they have. That doesn't mean day one you're gonna have it, doesn't mean it has to take 15 years either. You know, it took me four to kind of figure out how to make this to work in a way that people understand it, communicate it, and are interested in it. But it it really is that willingness to kind of shift in the right way and shift in a way at the same time that also doesn't take away from your brand, right? Like I think there's a lot of people that shift with wind. And that's why it's really important. You know, the biggest piece of advice I can give to people out there is take time, sit down and do a brand standards. And people might hear that and be like, oh my gosh, what do I do? Well, here's the thing: take out your Chat GPT and say, This is what my company is, this is my what my website is, I want to do a brand standards. Give me the list of questions I should answer in order to answer a brand standards. It gives you a list of questions, you answer them, and starts to help you write it. Yes. Now you can take that later on and have somebody on your team do copywriting for it, but it doesn't mean that it's undoable. Yeah. I I find that I use AI a lot, but I use it like an idiot. Yeah. You know, people come up with these great prompts and everything else. I just keep asking questions so I get the results I want.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 37:34

Never say make it better. That that is not the thing you can. What does it say? So the most prompt on Chat GPT is people say make it better, but it doesn't give it any feedback on what you actually want or what you want to improve. Like, hey, you know, change the pacing or change the tone that's being written in or whatever it might be. Never say make it better. But I the the point I'm saying is you can do these things with some of the tools out there easier than ever before. And the number one thing I would say is take a weekend, do a brand standards, and you're going to find that actually having that is gonna get everybody on your team the same place because I guarantee you there's somebody on your team that was like, hey, I'm gonna use AI and I'm gonna make a flyer. And you see that flyer and has doesn't look like your company, it has nothing to do with it, and it's terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

It makes up a logo. Oh, yeah, it does. And it's terrifying.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

And that's something that can not only be prevented, it can actually take that person and make them an asset because now they can do what you want exactly. And if they're gonna use AI, fine, they can give AI your brand standards. Right. So the result they're getting is actually gonna be on brand for you. So I think really figuring out how to use these things in the right way and make sure that your brand is being represented in the right way is vital. It really is for recognition.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

And as agents on an individual level, I mean, we see agents, uh real estate agents that are putting their picture into AI and and you don't even recognize Is it as bad as the realtor that uses the picture from four years ago? Four years ago, how was that? Four years ago. Forty years ago, yeah. Uh or the picture of me on the Apple.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

You remember him and you're like, he doesn't look like that at all. And what is that? Who's that guy?

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Isn't your brother's funny to me? That destroys trust right there. Exactly. If I show up and you can't be honest with yourself on how you look today, yeah, at this time in your life, that to me, you're you're lying to yourself. Yeah. So what will you do to me? Yeah. Right? If you're lying to yourself, you're gonna lie to me too.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

I was listening to my wife this morning. It's like my last headshots were like six years ago, and like I didn't have a mustache, and like, you know, I'm almost 40 now compared to my early 30s, and I'm like, we kind of need some new ones soon. But that trust point is very, very important. That's why I think once again, use AI, but don't let it make you look 30 years younger. And we've I've seen people do that.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

And it's oh, it's terrible, terrible, terrible. Let me see here. This is a this is one of the fun other things that you had said here was how business leaders can build a personal brand that outlives individual products, companies, or market cycles. I think we kind of touched on that.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

We did, because it really comes back to the what is your unique framework and and what is the the thing people can really associate with you. And I think that comes back to you know, your social content being done tied in with that, what you're talking about being tied in with that. And it really comes down to what is the unique framework I'm known for? And a lot of people don't want to spend the time to do those iterations we were talking about to come up with that. So I I think that really kind of covers that.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Let's go, let's go back into podcasts. When I first talked to you, we talked about podcasts and we were talking. I know that was a for a thing that you guys were really pushing on is starting podcasts and creating. Do you couple questions? Do you do you think that we still have the voice that we had six years ago as a podcast host or podcast guest? Okay. One of the things I get concerned about is are the ABCs, NBCs, Foxes, are they going to start purchasing the bigger podcast people and then have control of what the content is? That scares the shit out of me.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Because the great thing about podcasting is that I can say whatever the hell I want and I have nobody controls me. Are you seeing any change over that? And also, do you think it's still a good idea for an individual or a business or somebody that has something they want to say to start a podcast?

SPEAKER_03 40:55

I do, but once again, it gets back to unique perspective. You know, if you're going to figure out a way to, you know, tie it into unique perspective, and that could

Finding Your Big Idea By Listening

SPEAKER_03 41:01

even be there's actually a huge gap with local businesses using podcasts that aren't. You know, let's once again, real estate. You could work with the title guy, you could work with the home inspection guy, you could work with the mortgage guy. And you could be interviewing those people locally. It doesn't ever have to go out to a lot of people, but it starts to have an impact with number one, your networking, because you're meeting people that you either are working with or could be working with, but you're also getting known locally. So I think that's that's a huge gap people are missing. So that's one thing I think that people are totally missing that if they get into that, it's not really going to go away because it is hyper-local. Yeah. The other part I would say is we are starting to see more of this buy-in. And I actually I host another podcast for a book club called the Athenian Book Club. Okay. And we actually interview professors and people about some of the best well-known books in history. So we just did Hemingway's Old Man in the Sea. We did Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and we bring in these professors and have conversations about these books.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Those are probably deep conversations.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

Oh, let me tell you, man. They are some. We did the the brothers Karamatsoff recently, and the professor corrected me because I totally butchered the name. I was like, Karamatsada. And I've read the book, but like I it doesn't mean I can pronounce the word.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Right. And he wouldn't tear you apart.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

She she was really nice about it. She was like, you know, first of all, it's Karamatsoff, so we're going to say that correctly. But anyway, one of the guys that I do the show with sent me a link to another podcast. And he's like, oh, can we learn anything from this one? They've only bought since February, and they're, you know, getting 50,000 views an episode and everything else. I did a little research and I'm like, well, yeah, they're owned by the BBC. So of course they're going to be doing, you know, they're probably tied into YouTube. They're probably getting YouTube's probably prioritizing them for other channels. Yep. So the thing I would say is there definitely is that, but there's always been that, right? I think still you have the ability to get out there because there's hosting platforms available, because you could do the things at home. But it gets back to what we were talking about in the beginning. Really having a unique idea, really caring about your aesthetic. And honestly, you're you're gonna have to handle your overhead, right? Because in order to do what these channels are doing, you're you're gonna have to bring in things like AI to actually lower your overhead. So even for me, I have two different channels, one called the Roman Pattern, where we talk about civilizational collapse. And for the last year, we've been going through, you know, the third century into the fourth century, and now we're handling like the fifth century, which is the fall of Roman Britain, and then we're gonna go back around and go to the Republic at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

My other channel is called the Roman the uh Hidden Forces in History. We take a look at kind of the power structures behind documented history. So I just said a really funny.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

So where can we find all these channels? Because I'm sure there's people listening that that are definitely gonna be interested in and and I think that the main reason that people be interested, and we go back to where you were, but I think the reason that I I liked watching it, I had no interest in Roman Empire stuff at all until I saw your stuff. Because you start reading it and you're sitting there going, Whoa, that's similar. That's that's kind of what we're going through right now, you know? And you're like, okay, so the free food thing, you know, we're gonna get free food out now. So, okay, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

The grain dull, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Yeah, that that's pretty interesting. So I I you know that's stuff that where can they find you to hear that stuff? How did the where were these channels?

SPEAKER_03 43:57

I have two two channels on YouTube. We're also on Rumble, though it was just we don't really, I think Rumble's kind of harder to grow on. But we have uh the Roman pattern, then hidden forces in history. We look at kind of the power structures behind documented history. We just we have a really fun episode coming out next week about the Habsburg Jaw. Are you familiar with the Habsburg Jaw? No. So the Habsburgs were a family that was one of the biggest like royal families in European history. Oh wow. And the way they held power is they continued to marry their cousins. Um when you have family members that jaw. Is that what it is? So it's actually a genetic deformity because they were so closely related that when they would marry, they would get these genetic deformities. And the last Habsburg dynasty was in Spain, and the final Habsburg king was Charles II, and by the time he dies, he's gone bald in his like early twenties. They the autopsy they did said he had the heart the size of a peppercorn, and he had this jaw and this upper lip protrusion that was so far he couldn't even chew his food, so he's on a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Because he was so so incestral.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

And he was and he was impotent, so he couldn't have any anyway. That's probably a good idea. That might be a good thing. But like those are the kind of things we look at is like how do those things in history look like and what can we learn from that, right? And that you can kind of take that and apply it to it's really a system. And how can you apply that to other systems, whether it's banking, whatever it might be? Yeah. So that's what we look at in hidden forces in history. And sometimes we have a little fun with it looking at things like the Habsburg jaw. That's interesting. But the the reason I'm giving that example is what we've actually done with those channels is I lean pretty heavily on it's myself and one video editor. And then we're able to put out Two high quality videos a week in addition to the company videos we do, the client videos we do, and everything else, because we lean pretty heavily on Claude and VidIK. You know, initially we have a running content calendar that I know what's happening for the rest of the year, but that might change based on, you know, maybe an interview comes up with we just had one of the top English scholars do the Wars of the Roses. So that might happen once in a while. But we kind of know what the rest of the year looks like. And then we'll take a look at actually using Claude as then part of our content strategy, right? So like obviously I've researched a lot of these things, I've read a lot of these things. So initially I'll write a basic script and then I have a Claude prompt that's six pages long that then runs through that and does a fact check and tells me, did I make a mistake? Is there another source I should read? What should I do? And then we take that end product and we actually run that through another Claude prompt that then helps to format it properly for a teleprompter.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Very cool.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

And then it takes it and puts it on my Q prompter, which is the app we use, puts it up on screen, and I do I can do a reading.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

I can see you reading. Yeah, I mean not that I see it, but you can see that just like I'm not gonna remember all that. No, no, no way.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

Holy shit, that stuff's like But like that's kind of like the script writing process. We'll take that from there. And here's another thing is we use AI a lot for images because as a small brand, number one thing you're gonna run into is you don't have enough time to go out and find imagery that's not gonna get you in trouble for copyright.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

So we use B-roll as part of these because you don't want to just sit looking at my mug talking the whole time. Yeah, you want to be able to kind of see the things. So then we use hyper cinematic, hyper-realistic B-roll. We actually just use Chat GPT for that. You use chat GPT for the B-roll too? We do. So what we'll do is we'll get it to we'll give it the script the fully written script and we'll actually have it outline what pieces of B-roll we should use, what they should look like. And the key thing we're using is hyper-realistic

Using AI To Scale Quality Content

SPEAKER_03 47:12

and hyper-cinematic, something that really creates that cinematic feel, like that real brand feel we're looking for. Very cool. So then we'll use it to create that, and then the editor will actually edit the video with jump cuts because those long gaps of me talking might not be interesting, and then put in those, put in the B-roll. So we figured out how to take a process and really streamline that, and it doesn't take a lot of money and it doesn't take a lot of people. So as a brand, you need to take a look at your processes and say, well, how can I get at the highest level of quality possible at the lowest cost in a way that's really gonna get my brand out there because that's right now the only way you're gonna outcreate these big brands because they are buying in, but I think there is still space if you're able to create incredibly good content. Like, do not create slop, it's not gonna do well. Create good content that has value to people, and you can start to outcreate some of these big brands. You know, there's still an opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

There's also places like reels. Like we were like Hugo and I are always looking for like our reels are awesome. Opus, we use Opus.

SPEAKER_03 48:09

I don't know who you use, but we so we we actually have somebody in our team that she actually does everything still freehand. You know, she goes out and finds the right B-roll, adds the right sound effects and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Like we we don't have that ability at this point, but what we do is we do we do the the Opus and it does a great job, and it actually does AI B roll. So it you have to go through it though, because sometimes I had tried that a couple years ago and it was like giving me a I was like doing history and it was giving me pictures of pizza or something. Pizza Planet, maybe I don't know, but no, but it's funny, you have to be careful, you have to go through it to look at the B-roll to see if it is correct. Because I've had that too, where it picks out something, you're like, nah, that has nothing to do with this. But but it does work for somebody I would say for somebody that doesn't have the funds, because it's not that expensive, you can use Opus and it works. I mean, it works really well.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

But even like for B-roll, you can use the $20 a month Chat GPT uh membership.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

And you just put the the video in there and it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

No, I don't put the video, I put the script, I put the actual transcript with the timestamps. That's really important. You want to have the version of the trans, so it's it's actually already after we've recorded. Gotcha. So you put the version of the transcript in there with the timestamps, and then it can pace it out. Basically, like you know, every 45 seconds you're gonna have a PCB roll. Yeah, and then we use the same thread over for that. And the reason we do is because it gets clearer and clearer and clearer on the aesthetic we're looking for. Yeah, that's awesome. And then what we'll do is you get to a certain point where the thread gets really slow. So you'll say to it, summarize the thread so I can start a new thread, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:32

So it's that's cool, very cool.

SPEAKER_03 49:34

See how you can really keep the brand aesthetic, keep the quality high, but then also keep it in a way that you can start to outcreate some of these bigger brands because there is still an opportunity, but you have to be better. Yeah, really good. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Got a fun things. Well, before we end this show here, you gotta show me the coins. Yeah, we got to talk about these the coins that you have there. These are print pretty serious coins. So why don't you show us what you have?

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Yeah, so this is shout out to my friend Dean Kinzer from Kinzer Coins, Kinzercoins.com. So he sends me a lot of cool stuff. So this is Emperor Trajan Decius from 250. This is a silver denarius. Silver denarius. And what exactly? Denarius was like the main coin that they used. By this point, the purity is it 4% by the 270s? So we're probably somewhere around like 30 to 30 percent around pure silver. Most of it's bronze at that point in time. This is probus as you get to the 270s, you could see it is like bronze. Oh, yeah, very much so. But what it would have had is it would have had basically like a silver coating, it would have looked like aluminum foil. And it starts to flake off in people's hands, so they start to trust the money a little bit less.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely more bronze.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

This is how old are these again? So that's 270 AD. So, you know, that's almost two A.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Do you have any of these coins in your pocket, Hugo? No, you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

I don't know if anybody would accept it.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

I know some really true, cheap, frugal people that probably have.

SPEAKER_03 50:47

This is my my one of my favorite Roman emperors. His name is Aurelian. His nickname

Ancient Coins And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 50:52

is the Restutor Orbis, or the restorer of the world. In the late third century, the Roman Empire had fallen into three pieces because basically they couldn't control it anymore. And he actually reunites the West, which is the Gallic Empire, and the East. In a five-year period, he reconquers everything. Brings it all back together, starts to issue new coins, and then he's killed by a secretary. So that's his that's his reward. It's a really, really great place to be.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

He doesn't get killed by his producer, does he?

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Okay, the producer was safe.

SPEAKER_03 51:18

And then actually, this guy here, this is Valerian in 260. He's actually not the guy that causes, but the event that happens to him is one of the key things that causes that Rome to break into those three pieces. He's uh goes into battle against Shapur I, who is the king of the Sassanid Persians, and Rome and Persia is kind of always fighting each other for like hundreds of years, but he's the first Roman emperor to fall in battle to an enemy of Rome. And he's actually captured by Shapur I and used as a footstool the rest of his life. There's actually a statue that was made in the last two years in Tehran of Shapur the first using Valerian as a footstool. So he's never recovered, he's never brought back, and it shows how weak is Rome at that point, is at that point. It can't go get his emperor back. And that's one of the key things that leads to it breaking the three pieces that Valerian has to restore, but then doesn't live to see anyway.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Unbelievable. So those coins, they're so cool, man. I I love that. And I love the the way the Roman stuff just blows my mind. And also the amount of knowledge that you have and how you can just like I'm like rain, man. It's it's it's really crazy, man. 242 230. Yeah, right, that's right, right. No, it's it's phenomenal. And I'm so glad we did the show today. I I'm sorry. Sorry, I really, really appreciate you making it go right. I was pussing out this morning. But no, I didn't, but I'm good now. So uh no, we're good. Thank you for being here, Jeremy. How do we find you? Give us your socials, give us all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

So our company is Command Your Brand, and you know, we definitely help with some podcast production, but the main thing that we do is we actually help our clients appear on other podcasts as guests, get their messages out there.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Um I've had your people on my on my show.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

And I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 52:53

Um and um I actually see behind us you have uh Shadung Coffee, which is uh Frank's.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

I love that ours. Oh that's that's how I found him, I guess. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:01

Yeah, yeah, he's got he's got great stuff. Great coffee, too. It's really good. And uh he sends me the the cans that my my kids try to steal from me. Yep, yep. Um and then um I'm at Jeremy Ryan Slate Everywhere. I use my middle name only because my parents named me after a cowboy actor with the same name. So I couldn't get found on the internet for years. So whenever I heard Jeremy Ryan Slate, it meant I was in trouble. Um and I guess I've kind of reclaimed my name in a way. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Now that it's now you're in trouble again. Now I'm in trouble again.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Uh so I'm at Jeremy Ryan Slate Everywhere. And then as I mentioned, um, my two channels are Hidden Forces in History and the Roman Pattern, which, if you want to hear those in the audio format, it's the Jeremy Ryan Slate Show everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Awesome, man. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, man. And I hope you guys have a great weekend with the kids. It's gonna be a good time. Yeah, we're gonna go to Dutch Wonderland, it's gonna be a good time, man. Awesome, that's awesome. All right, there you have it, Jeremy Ryan Slate. We got to make sure we get the Ryan in there. He'll think his mom is yelling at him. But uh no, command your brand. He's he knows all the stuff about the Roman uh pattern campaign. Uh, it's just amazing. So you want to check him out. I've been following him for a while, and he's just a great guy to talk to, also. So we'll see you every Thursday at 7 p.m. All right, that's about it.