Julia McCoy / Founder. Ai Leader. World’s First 100K YouTube AI Clone

Julia McCoy is a serial entrepreneur, AI pioneer, and founder of First Movers AI who sold her 100-person content agency in 2021 before the world had even heard of ChatGPT — because she saw what was coming. 

In this episode, Julia takes Paul through her extraordinary origin story, from escaping a religious cult at 21 with nothing but a laptop and a Google search, to building a million-dollar writing agency, to becoming one of the earliest and most influential voices in practical AI automation. 

She shares the raw story of her health crisis that forced her to rely entirely on her AI avatar, how that avatar ended up on Dr. Phil's show, and why she now believes AI is less about disruption and more about multiplication. 

Julia also goes deep on her systems for automating business operations without losing authenticity, the tools she trusts, the ones she does not, and what she believes the writing on the wall is telling us right now about the future of work, income, and human purpose.

Links: FirstMovers.ai

GUEST BIO:

Julia McCoy is a serial entrepreneur, AI strategist, keynote speaker, and the founder and president of First Movers AI, an elite AI integrations firm helping businesses achieve transformational efficiency through custom AI systems. Before becoming a recognized voice in the AI revolution, Julia built Express Writers into a 100-person content agency with over 60,000 completed client projects and more than a million dollars in annual revenue — then sold it in 2021, a full year before ChatGPT changed the world, because she saw the disruption coming. Ranked among the top ten in the content marketing industry, she later served as president of one of the world's first undetectable AI writing platforms, managing a multi-LLM tech stack that produced over 50 million AI words monthly for more than 10,000 users. She went on to build one of the world's first AI clone YouTube channels under the Dr. McCoy brand, scaling it to 250K subscribers and 2 million monthly views in just 18 months — much of it powered by an AI avatar and voice clone she built using HeyGen and ElevenLabs after a serious health crisis took her offline. Julia is also the author of the memoir Woman Rising, documenting her escape from a fundamentalist cult, and her latest book, FLUID: The Adaptability Code, which serves as a practical guide to thriving in the AI era. Through First Movers AI Labs, she trains hundreds of entrepreneurs and marketing leaders to build their own AI-powered systems, clone their content presence, and stay ahead of the curve. Julia lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband and two children.

Paul Povolni (Voppa) is the founder of Voppa Creative and a creative leader with over 30 years of experience in brand strategy and design. Based in Jackson, Mississippi, he has worked with clients internationally, leading teams in award-winning branding while serving as a coach and speaker. Paul delivers workshops and keynotes on brand strategy, creative thinking, and organizational culture, and hosts The Headsmack Podcast: Conversations with Misfits. His work centers on helping organizations lead with Clarity, Creativity, and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Voppa Creative Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (03:37.792)
Hey, welcome to the HeadSmack Podcast. My name is Paul Pavolny and I am excited to have another MissFit with me. I have Julia McCoy. She is a serial entrepreneur. She's an AI pioneer and founder of First Movers AI who sold her 100 person content agency in 2021 after predicting AI's disruption of the industry years before it happened. She built one of the world's first AI clone YouTube channels.

are scaling it to 250k subscribers and 2 million monthly views in just 18 months. A first mover by nature and by faith, Julia exists to help others see ahead of the curve and win in the age of AI. Julia, how are you doing?

Julia McCoy (04:22.468)
very well. That was 100 % written by my Claude copywriter. So I'm like, that was good.

Paul Povolni (04:27.474)
Nice, nice. That was pretty good. That was very good. Yeah. I have Claude do a lot of my copywriting. Sometimes I have to, you know, tweak a little bit, but after I've trained it, does pretty well in telling my stories and doing the content that I want to do. Julia, I appreciate you coming on this morning.

Julia McCoy (04:47.579)
Yes, thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Povolni (04:49.804)
So that's a wonderful bio and I do want to actually talk about some of the things within that bio, but I also want to hear a little bit about your backstory, a little bit of kind of your origin story. I like to start off just hearing a little bit about that. One thing that I've found is when you hear some of those stats and some of those things, people are like, my goodness, that is so amazing, you know, that they're doing these amazing things and have millions of subscribers and making all this money.

And they don't realize somebody's backstory and origin story. And so I like to start with an origin story and just kind of, can go as far back as you want and just tell me a little bit about the origins of Julia.

Julia McCoy (05:24.007)
Yes. Well, for me, know, goodness, I was definitely born into a situation that would make me a misfit just by birth. I was born into a religious cult. So I grew up in that for 21 years and I escaped to the middle of the night when I was 21 and just decided, well, life has never been normal. I don't know what normal means. And for me, like I had even had not even watched Netflix and it was 2013 and I was 20.

one years old. So here I am going, I'm going to leave this in the middle of night. You know, I realized what was going on was not even legal, not correct. There's no parent that should ever abuse their child that way. So I just, woke me up to it and I'm like, I'm going to get out and see if I'll ever be normal. I'm probably not. That was my thought.

Paul Povolni (06:11.79)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (06:16.165)
So that was 2013. So I've done a lot in the last less than two decades since then, where God's really just given me the path. I have a not really bat in an eye. I jump right in. And it was because of that cult escape, I think, that gave me a lot of the courage that, you know, a lot of us don't have because we are in standardized institutions and we are in ways of thinking that are really hard to break.

Paul Povolni (06:18.412)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (06:44.773)
So I broke my way of thinking early, early on, and I had nothing when I left the cold. I had to figure everything out for myself. I had just started writing for income. So that was my way out. I bought a car with that. I literally just Googled one day how to make money writing, and this world opened up. I was like, what? Freelance writing exists? And back then it was like a lot of profiles.

Paul Povolni (06:45.068)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (06:58.35)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (07:06.402)
Now, what gave you the gumption to leave? what was there, was there a moment that gave you the strength to leave something like that? Cause they're very, you know, there's a lot of reasons why people don't leave. And, and obviously you found a reason to leave. What, was that catalyst?

Julia McCoy (07:18.224)
Yes.

Yes, that's a great question. I wrote a book, probably can't see it, it's on that shelf, a memoir on this called Woman Rising. And there's a chapter on that very thing, because a lot of people, don't escape situations like that. And what got me out was a human emotion called anger, where I literally just started getting angry. This is not right. This does not feel right. I'm going to lean into that. And now the way I grew up,

Paul Povolni (07:39.773)
wow.

Julia McCoy (07:48.719)
emotion must be suppressed. It's all evil. It's none of it's good. So I was literally going against their rules to even trust my own intuition. But it was really a catalyst for me. They had two kids 18 years after me and I saw these kids get abused the way I was and that made me angry. And I could not ignore what I felt. Like it was just in my spirit. This is wrong. This is not right. And so I'm like, I have got to get out. I'm not going to have a life if I don't.

Paul Povolni (07:58.222)
Wow, yeah.

Paul Povolni (08:07.086)
Hmm.

Julia McCoy (08:18.747)
and I wish I could have taken them with me. would have been illegal.

Paul Povolni (08:22.934)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you. Yeah, and so you escaped that with writing, being able to buy a new car. So what was what was that like? Like, what did you escape to? Where did you go from there?

Julia McCoy (08:24.903)
They were so little at the time.

Julia McCoy (08:37.241)
Yeah. So I had met someone online through the writing business that hired me to write for his company. And I, we had a call and that call ended up three hours and he was the first person I ever told, Hey, I think I'm living in a cult. And he didn't like in the call. He like, okay, well tell me what this is like. And he was so rational and understanding. And it was like, I found somebody that was like my person.

Paul Povolni (08:55.199)
wow.

Julia McCoy (09:06.949)
So when I escaped, went straight to him. I'm like, I'm probably going to marry you. He's like, what?

Paul Povolni (09:07.245)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:11.278)
What kind of a cult was that? Wow.

Julia McCoy (09:16.103)
Yeah, saying freak out and he's my husband. We got married three months later. We have two kids and we've done everything together. It was meant to be. Yep.

Paul Povolni (09:21.184)
Yeah. that's awesome. Wow. Wow. And so, so that began your career in writing. What kind of writing was it?

Julia McCoy (09:34.265)
Yes, it was primarily SEO writing, which is, you know, different than copy. But I learned as I was doing it, the value of online copy, like it is literally the difference between a brand succeeding and a brand going completely unheard. And so I had the I just kept researching this made it my art. I love writing the science of words, you know, psychology, the ability to persuade someone with the truth.

Paul Povolni (09:54.925)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (10:00.551)
I love all of that. So I was starting to research like who are the best people doing this? And I found them the top bloggers making millions per month. I studied under them. It's funny because I got an email today from my former mentor of 15 years ago. He's like making a million a month blogging and the email today was why I would never tell anyone to start a copywriting business when you have a little machine in your pocket that can do it 20 times faster and cheaper. And I'm just like, wow.

Paul Povolni (10:27.126)
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was actually going to ask is what do you think that that version of you would have thought of this version of you that's using AI so much?

Julia McCoy (10:39.099)
Yes. I mean, I think that version would not believe the freedom I have today. I have literally automated myself out of everything. It's a life of total work freedom. It is a dream I've had since I started my business. Cause you don't, you don't really ever, I don't think any entrepreneur starts their business to remain in a 90 hour work week, 15 years later, but unfortunately many of us do. And that was me. Like I sold my first business and then I'm like, I got to create another. That wasn't enough.

Paul Povolni (11:02.882)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:08.535)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (11:09.201)
And then I jumped back into 90 hour work weeks and I'm 32 going this is, and now I'm 35, you know, went through a crazy year last year made it thanks to God. And in that health crisis, I had to let go of work completely or my body wouldn't heal. My nervous system was not functioning. So in that process, I learned how to truly automate myself. And some people are like, yeah, I've I'm using AI. I'm, you know, writing my emails with it. But when I say I've automated myself,

Paul Povolni (11:23.597)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (11:37.487)
I mean, I never have to film again. I never have to write anything myself again. And yet it's truly my work. It's truly still me, which is really, that's an art.

Paul Povolni (11:42.252)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:45.624)
Yeah.

And I'd want to dive into all of that. You know, I know you've, you've done a lot of work and we kind of mentioned it in your bio about creating the AI avatar, which actually introduced this episode. So if you saw it on YouTube, that was actually, Julia's avatar and that was not her. And so I do want to dive into that. I do want to talk about the automating your life, but tell me about, you know, what you saw when you sold that a hundred person company.

Julia McCoy (11:58.695)
Yes!

Julia McCoy (12:02.929)
So cool.

Paul Povolni (12:15.212)
What were the things that kind of were red flags to you or warning signs to you that said, man, I'm in trouble if I keep going this way.

Julia McCoy (12:23.943)
Yeah. Yeah. I would say, um, so I sold the writing agency in 2021 when it was doing really well and it was hard to sell and people were like, you're making a million a year doing almost nothing. Why would you ever sell? Cause we had gotten it so efficient. And, um, the reason I did was I've always trusted intuition. I've always got just given me that like, Julia, here's something you need to do it. I go do it. I don't blink an eye.

Paul Povolni (12:50.237)
Hahaha

Julia McCoy (12:51.339)
We were one of the first to create an e-commerce content shop. We put human writing on an e-commerce platform. We allowed people to check out and that was really novel in 2014 and it got copied by so many competitors. And that was looked at as strange like you're putting human copy on an e-commerce platform but isn't that an art?

Paul Povolni (13:03.852)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:10.964)
Yeah, yeah. What does that, what do you mean you put human copy on the e-commerce platform? What does that mean?

Julia McCoy (13:15.545)
Yeah, yeah. So we had human writers. didn't, you know, in 2014 automation was horrendous. So you would actually be hiring a real human, but you would be checking out through an e-commerce process. So you would be like purchasing writing and it would be an item in our online platform. So it would kind of feel like it was an automated process. But after you purchase that, whatever it was, like a thousand dollar retainer for copywriting, then you'd be in touch with our human writers that I trained.

Paul Povolni (13:27.601)
Okay

Julia McCoy (13:43.013)
and then they would write it for you. So it was a novel process because it was, it's such a human thing. Back then, even that felt weird, but we had over a million in sales a year. So we learned how to do it.

Paul Povolni (13:55.17)
Wow. Now where, where did you learn how to do that? You know, coming out of a cult, it's a very different mindset, very different upbringing, very different sets of influences and inspiration and ways of doing things. Where did, where did that learning come from for you to be able to create a million dollar a year business?

Julia McCoy (14:00.986)
So, so.

Julia McCoy (14:15.705)
I think it's a matter of, you some people are bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and I was definitely one of those people. So even at 14, I was like going around town, you know, I looked very strange because we wore long dresses, but I was still going around town and I would go and put flyers up in the grocery store and then I would clean people's computers. And I was really good at the computer, like from the age of seven, it was weird.

Paul Povolni (14:29.253)
Ha

Julia McCoy (14:42.215)
So I could take your computer and if it was frozen, I could figure out how to get it really efficient and clean for you. And so I would go around and do flyers and I would do that for people. And I had a little business at 14 and people recommended me because their computer started to work so well. So I don't even know how I figured that out. I just did and it was a lot of fun.

Paul Povolni (14:53.887)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (15:00.366)
So did you have anybody in your life that was an entrepreneur? Like, you know, or was it just something you just picked up and just saw somebody doing it and you leaned into it? Like where did that original trigger come from?

Julia McCoy (15:13.989)
Yeah, my upbringing and my parents were anti all of that. I did not have a model for any of that. But what I've learned since leaving was the rest of the family, they cut me off from because they were too worldly. They didn't adhere to dress standards and didn't wear ties 24 seven. So they cut them off. They're bad people. So those people, the rest of my family, like my uncle, my aunt's very, very entrepreneurial people. My uncle.

Paul Povolni (15:31.957)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (15:40.706)
wow, yeah.

Julia McCoy (15:40.711)
built processes for the whole gaming industry. He was a pioneer in some processes that were not developed. So he just like figure that out, worked with Disney, all kinds of really amazing companies. And I didn't meet him until I was 25. And by then I had started, I had a jumpstart on my business. So I was like, oh, you too, you have this weird mind that just sees life as a game and you can play it and win. Like, so it was amazing to meet him.

Paul Povolni (15:59.874)
Yeah.

Wow.

Paul Povolni (16:06.508)
That's amazing. That's amazing. so, yeah. And so within a short year, a few short years, you build a million dollar business and going back to, know, what we started talking about is, what were the signs on the wall that you saw that made you decide to, close down the business shut, mean, sell the business to somebody else.

Julia McCoy (16:26.247)
Yeah. Yeah. So we sold it in 2021. In 2017, one of my favorite people in the world. He's known as the godfather of content marketing. I loved his work. He had so much success. I studied him. He was my model, Joe Pulizzi. I got to speak at all of his conferences. He was like, if anyone had a hero, that was my hero. And I got to meet him and he invited me to speak on stage. And so in 2017, he left a comment.

Paul Povolni (16:48.141)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (16:54.617)
on an article I wrote for his site. And the comment was, I see all human writing going away by 2020 and I don't see a way around this. And I screen-shotted that. I'm like, I'm going to prove you wrong. And so over the next few years, I would test all the spinners and I would write about it on his site and review it. And I'd be like, they're all garbage still, Joe. You know, they're still garbage. But then I saw GPT and what Generative Pre-trained Transformer was going to do. And I saw something different. I'm like,

Paul Povolni (17:03.598)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (17:15.757)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (17:22.477)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (17:23.111)
I think this is really something. And it was like, it was undeniable. so that was 2017 was when I was like, AI is all garbage. And then in 2021, I'm like, I still publicly said that in 2021. And this was a year before chat GPT comes out. But I was like, in my instinct, my gut was like, you better sell now. So I did follow that sold when the selling was good. And then the next year chat GPT comes out and it like changes the world. You know, it's like an iPhone.

Paul Povolni (17:39.032)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (17:53.228)
Yeah, it was, it was really, think everybody probably remembers the moment when they first tried it and it first blew their mind. I think, I think, you know, because it was one, it's one of those moments. I think I had one of those moments when I first got an iPad and an iPhone, especially the iPad because, know, I, found, was playing with it. And then like an hour later, I realized.

Julia McCoy (18:01.529)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (18:10.096)
Hmm

Paul Povolni (18:17.474)
Wait, I've just been navigating websites. I've been navigating apps. I've been doing all these things with my finger. And for me, that was like one of those, whoa, moments. I think, I think everybody probably that has tried AI, tried ChatGPT had that moment when they first tried AI that was like, whoa, this is really different from anything else that we've tried. This, this is going to change everything.

Julia McCoy (18:41.349)
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:46.176)
And so when you, so what did you first start doing with it? How did you first start implementing it?

Julia McCoy (18:51.599)
Yeah. So right when it came out, you know, I've tested it to write what I was writing and what I was writing was really advanced stuff. was SEO content that would rank in the top of Google. So that's not easy. That's you got to know where to put your keywords. You need to know how to be factual. You need to know how to build expertise in that content authority. So I had to try to write an article for a keyword and I was like, this is garbage. So I was pretty much anti-Chatchity BT for six months. I was like, this is terrible.

Paul Povolni (19:15.758)
wow, that's a long time.

Julia McCoy (19:20.935)
I know. And then six months later, I was watching YouTube again on AI writers and I found this tool that could do what I did, but through AI and it was a unique stack. So I actually reached out to the tool and then my first year in AI was working for them till 2024. And at the time they were a leading tool on the market. What's crazy is they're nowhere now. And I also predicted that in 2024 when I was like, you know,

Paul Povolni (19:47.879)
wow.

Julia McCoy (19:50.671)
If we don't change what we're doing, the trajectory is not good. And the founder, the founder and I totally knocked heads and disagreed I was out and that's when I started First Movers. So yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:55.618)
Hahaha.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:02.498)
Wow. What did they not see? What did they not see that you saw?

Julia McCoy (20:07.291)
They were hanging on to something that was just, it was already dead. You know, you cannot stack multiple LLMs and think that you have something so innovative, so unique that would rival what these models are now doing natively for 20 bucks a month. You can't say like, I have something better than Claude Opus when the latest Claude Opus is better than your software stack and will always be. And if you're in that game and you're up against a billion dollar LLM, you're going to lose.

Paul Povolni (20:24.394)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:31.437)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:37.047)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (20:37.127)
So that was the track they were on. And early on, it worked really well. It worked really well, because we needed that to actually get good output. But now when I can fire up Claude, and it's better than any human just with one prompt and one trained project, why would I ever need a $200 software stack?

Paul Povolni (20:51.948)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:56.384)
Yeah. Well, I think, I think we're kind of in that place too, with being able to build software and build apps and build even websites and things like that is everything's changing so rapidly that you might be able to build an app with AI now, but next week there could be an update. And suddenly it's like, how do I update my app now? How do I, you know, and so you've sold this app.

Julia McCoy (21:19.864)
Yeah

Paul Povolni (21:22.634)
you've sold this software. And so I think we're still kind of in that early stage of a lot of the development of these things, that it's really dangerous to kind of put all your eggs in that basket. Are you seeing that as well? Or am I totally off?

Julia McCoy (21:34.671)
Yeah. No, you're 100%. I think, was it last year? No, was the year, was two years ago. was the year I was like headed towards creating my own consultancy when I saw this. And it was that year I saw the statistic. was like a thousand new AI companies are started per week. And by the next month, the majority of those are already bankrupt or gone.

Paul Povolni (21:59.734)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it's a, it's such a new, such a new industry and it's, it seems like it's been around for a long, lot longer than it actually has been. And I think there's still so much, so much that's it's, it's evolving. It's almost evolving daily. It seems like an update comes out and it changes everything, you know, and, and I think there's a lot that we need to be mindful of and weary of.

Julia McCoy (22:02.401)
Oof.

Julia McCoy (22:22.437)
Yes.

Paul Povolni (22:27.866)
because I think there's some great tools. can build a website with, you know, just the prompt, but can you edit that website as easily, you know, and with some tools you can, some you can't. And so you immediately restrict your scalability, your growth, your longevity when you go all in on some things that are still so new. And I think that's, that's where things can kind of get, get a little crazy, right?

Julia McCoy (22:32.475)
Yeah. Yes.

Julia McCoy (22:53.071)
Yes, yes, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, that's, you know, on YouTube with Dr. McCoy, the channel I have, we're never the first to report on something. And that's by design. I don't want to be the first to tell you, this is going to change the world, go use it, go do it, which is the bandwagon you see out there when something new comes along. Because I want to see what happens when the dust settles. And usually when the dust settles, it's not as transformative as they thought because

Paul Povolni (23:15.671)
Riot.

Julia McCoy (23:20.507)
How are you gonna adapt to it? How are you actually gonna use it? And if it's not safe, affordable, user friendly, you have nothing.

Paul Povolni (23:28.808)
Right, right, right. And, and it's not going to last if it's just temporary, if it's just something that will work now and not work later. you know, you are, you are attaching yourself to something that is going to actually hurt your business. You're going to have to start over, because you've jumped too soon into doing something some way.

Julia McCoy (23:32.187)
Yes.

Julia McCoy (23:43.515)
Yes. is the truth.

Paul Povolni (23:49.292)
So, you one of the things that you've also got a lot of attention from is your AI avatars. so tell me a little bit about that. Where did that come from? How is that going? What effect does that have on how you do business?

Julia McCoy (24:03.623)
Yes, yes. Well, I never set out to have an avatar to replace me. It was not like, even though I started a company called First Movers in 2024, which implies you better be a first mover. I didn't think I was going to do that because I did launch the avatar in December of 2024 when I was testing all the different avatar platforms and I found HeyGen to be the best one.

Paul Povolni (24:14.766)
Hahaha.

Julia McCoy (24:30.555)
And so I launched the avatar and then I did a voice clone on 11 labs, which is the best software still is for the voice. Cause it mimics yours and it's got all the nuances there. It's amazing. So I tied those two things together.

Paul Povolni (24:41.654)
Yeah, now I'm still safe. I'm still safe from 11 Labs. Last time I checked, it had a really hard time imitating my accent because it's such a messed up accent because I've got Australian in there and I've been in America for so long and I've got the Australian European version like there's Australian, there's Australian European. And so it hasn't quite been able to nail my accent yet. So I'm kind of lucky in that respect because it can't quite...

Julia McCoy (24:45.639)
Julia McCoy (24:50.235)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (24:56.548)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (25:10.338)
Can't quite imitate me. Now I haven't tried it recently, but the last time I tried it, it either leaned American or leaned English, but could never quite and all leaned like really strong Australian, like how you go and type Australian, you know, and I was like, yeah, that's not me either. So, so anyway, so continue. So, so you started diving into it.

Julia McCoy (25:24.071)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I wonder how many, how many hours of training, just to thought on that, how many hours of training you put into that. Cause the longer your training file, the more you can kind of get a sense of baseline of that.

Paul Povolni (25:39.554)
I only dabbled with it, just to try it out, to see, what it could do. So I went through whatever training it had at the time. I mean, it's maybe been a year or so before, since I've tried it, but it was just whatever training they had. I think if I remember right, it was reading some sentences, saying some words type training.

Julia McCoy (25:58.129)
Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I've bypassed that. I uploaded two hours of my audio books. And that's how we got all that nuance. Even though I don't have an accent to interfere. So I'm curious, but I would I would be really curious. You might want to try that.

Paul Povolni (26:05.038)
Oh wow, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:13.324)
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to give it another shot. So tell me about your AI avatar. you to 11 labs, you went to HN, and so you created this digital version of yourself. And so what happened next?

Julia McCoy (26:18.341)
Yes.

Julia McCoy (26:25.061)
Yes, yes. So we launched that on the channel December 2024. We put the footage of the clone at the beginning and then we put it again in the middle. And I then showed up at the end and I told people, hey, what you watched was not me. And we had like the highest retention. We had the highest watch video because then everyone went back and watched it again. It was crazy.

And then I was like, this is really cool. And so the next month we started putting out the clone consistently instead of me. And the channel just started to tank. It started to do really, really bad. People were like, we miss the real Julia. This is not the same thing. And we lost so many subscribers. Then my health crashed and it was a really horrific crash, which I'm still healing from these days. It's insane. And I could not even sit at the computer. My heart was like, I would have electric shocks go through my left arm and hit my heart.

Paul Povolni (27:00.802)
wow.

Julia McCoy (27:20.389)
If I sat at my computer and then I would like cripple up, it was insane. So, I could not do anything at the computer. So I'm like, well, the clone's going to have to keep going. So the clone took over the channel because otherwise we wouldn't add a business. And you know, here I am. Like I had just started my new business three months ago. We had just moved out to Arizona two years ago. We banked everything on this partnership, which totally fell through, but I'm so glad I started my own business.

Paul Povolni (27:32.094)
Wow, wow, yeah, yeah

Julia McCoy (27:49.275)
And so we were like burning money. My health was failing. There were no answers. It terrifying time. And so here I am going, the clones gonna have to be my face on YouTube. It's gonna have to be the one that builds trust. And the channel is just going, er.

Paul Povolni (27:59.492)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (28:04.661)
no, no.

Julia McCoy (28:05.739)
And so I no choice, so we just had to keep going. So July, which is six months into the year, July, and my health's not getting better. It was just like really bad. So July, the channel starts to pick up again. And when I looked back at why, I think it was just a matter of people got used to the clone and they started to accept it. And it took a long time because again, we were the only ones doing that.

Paul Povolni (28:29.101)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (28:33.609)
There is no other YouTuber willing to risk their career or their ad revenue.

Paul Povolni (28:37.206)
Yeah. Yeah. Really. You stuck with it. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (28:41.525)
Because I no choice. If I had my health, I probably would have abandoned the clone. But because I had no choice, I had to keep going. And so that gave us this incredible blessing in disguise where now the clone is doing 10 times better than it was when it first started. It's a known icon. It's embraced. It's celebrated. It's been on Dr. Phil. And people have actually like

built a community around it on YouTube and they wait for the latest release to come out and it's an amazing way for them to get content. Cause to me, when I look at it now, I believe that the content you get from my clone is better than if I were to film in person. It's more polished, it's more professional. I can spend more time thinking about the next news topic instead of rushing to film, speak, share, edit, produce, which is just a full-time job, which is exhausting for a YouTuber.

And I'm out of that completely. So now I'm just, you know, my days are free. I'm thinking, I'm looking ahead. I'm talking to my team, my integrators and like what's working and clients work. What's going to be the feature of this. And then my clone is the one that actually does all the heavy lifting. So I see it as you're getting the best of my brain. You're getting a better part of me, but it was amazing to go through that bridge of like the collapse and then no choice to keep going. Oh, that was hard.

Paul Povolni (29:52.364)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (30:04.224)
Wow. Wow. What a, a, what almost a, I guess a happy accident or a happy, you know, result of something that was, you know, pretty tough for you personally going through what you were going through. And so you said Dr. Phil. you, took this to Dr. Phil.

Julia McCoy (30:09.013)
Why not?

Julia McCoy (30:20.789)
They found me, they reached out and they were like, we found your clone on YouTube. We'd like you to be on Dr. Phil's show. So I did that and it was, it was crazy. We had the clone live up and running for him to interact with. And then we had me right next to it and the clone hallucinated. Cause when you run it live, it's, we're not there yet. So it was hallucinating a bunch of times.

Paul Povolni (30:28.622)
you

Paul Povolni (30:36.852)
wow.

Paul Povolni (30:41.347)
Ha ha.

no, no. so yeah, it's not there yet, but you know, it could be one, one update and it's there. And so it's, it's pretty crazy. so how do I know that right now this is not a clone?

Julia McCoy (30:51.753)
I know.

Julia McCoy (30:56.277)
Yeah, that's a great question. I'll tell you right now, if I filmed enough training footage of me in this shirt in this room, we could produce a clone for you that's interacting with you to where you may not know the difference. And that's the crazy part, crazy.

Paul Povolni (30:58.54)
Ha ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (31:08.406)
Yeah. Yeah, isn't that crazy? Now, does any of that concern you or does it excite you?

Julia McCoy (31:17.673)
I mean, it excites me because the only thing I see is how much freedom I have in my day that I've never had before. And also how my YouTube audience is actually getting my best. Cause I'm not doing the heavy lifting that exhaust me. And if you are an introvert and you're a deep thinker, all that stuff is exhausting. You would much rather just sit and think. And so like this will benefit those of us that aren't the people that would ever build a 2 million a month YouTube channel because.

Paul Povolni (31:23.406)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:36.312)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Julia McCoy (31:47.573)
That's just too much work and it's stress on us. So I see this as so much freedom if we do it right. And you know, the systems that run like our government are way ahead. They're they've cloned themselves. They you never know if that politician actually said that. But the thing is, if we do this, we can actually tell people because that's what I'm doing. I'm like, hey, this is a clone. It's built so Julia's life is more efficient. You're watching her clone.

Paul Povolni (32:03.66)
Right, right.

Julia McCoy (32:14.347)
And so we tell people that in all of our 300 plus videos we've ever done, and we're trying to get people used to the idea that if we use this correctly, we can actually give humanity a lot more freedom and do what we're meant to do, which is be more human, not just sit at a desk all day and never speak to anyone. And someone else, and that contributed to my health crash.

Paul Povolni (32:25.11)
Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Paul Povolni (32:32.128)
No.

Yeah. So what kind of content is this clone able to do for you?

Julia McCoy (32:41.291)
It can do anything. The way we run it is pretty unusual. You know, a lot of people think that we're running an automation. We're not at all. We have a human production team. That's about, I had one person now it's four people. They're full time. They take all of the scripts. I'm like, okay, I think we'll talk about this today. So then I write a script and then I take that script. I don't even write the script anymore. I take the idea to my Claude project and Opus writes my scripts.

Paul Povolni (33:05.326)
Ha ha ha ha

Julia McCoy (33:08.457)
And they're amazing. And it's a trained project that has all my viral content in it. And it writes a script and I'll do a few edits and then that goes to production and I don't touch anything. So then the producer takes a script, feeds it to the avatar, gets the pronunciation right, which is sometimes a struggle because you got to make sure if you're writing like, if you're writing a word in English, that's read two different ways, like perfect and perfect. You don't want the clone to say the wrong version. So that's a whole

thing. So we've built some tools actually to help us do that even more efficiently. And then after they produce the clone, then they humanly produce, or they add effects through like Adobe Photoshop or not Photoshop, the Adobe suite, different tools, they'll use VO for a picture of me and then they'll take that to cling to animate it. So even the footage of me is not is not me. Like they got me sitting in the spotlights of this

Paul Povolni (33:51.694)
premiere.

Julia McCoy (34:04.937)
like studio room and it looks like I'm being interviewed for entrepreneur. Like I never sat for that. I don't remember that room.

Paul Povolni (34:11.95)
Wow. so, cling is the app that you're using for that. You use 11 labs to clone. Okay. What are some other apps that are doing really well in cloning people right now?

Julia McCoy (34:14.411)
No!

One of them. Yeah, so Clang is...

Julia McCoy (34:23.593)
Yeah. So cling is where you can kind of like take a photo of you. would start with VO though. So if you use VO or even chat, you'd be team, take a photo of yourself and be like, put me in a studio with black lighting and make it look like entrepreneurs, interviewing me. And then once you get a photo you like, then you can take that to cling and cling will animate it. So that gets you like the B roll. We also love in Vado, which is just a, theme directory for B roll footage.

And they have a whole bunch of stuff there that we can even take into our other tools like Cling, Veo, and animate that stuff even further. But yeah, there's a bunch of different tools. Those are our top ones. And then the avatar is always Heijin and 11 Labs. No other avatar software but those two.

Paul Povolni (34:52.849)
okay. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:11.33)
Wow. Okay. And so, so the content that you're putting out there is a training, is it teaching, is it speaking on particular topics? Like what has gotten taken you over the top in people paying attention to it and people keep coming back. What kind of content are you putting out there with the AI?

Julia McCoy (35:28.575)
Yeah. So we've gotten really, really good at sharing AI news from a practical perspective. And that's the only thing we do. So it's, it could be like hosting or his latest feature where you can run in it and eight in and build agent workflows, or it could be like what Emon was stock set about job loss in 2027. So we, I'm always looking at what's in the news and I'm able to contrast it against reality because you know, we actually run first movers and we have.

$60,000 integrations. And so we can actually speak from that perspective, which I think you miss with a lot of other channels. They're not, they're like, this is an amazing way to run agents. And then the last step it breaks and it falls apart because they didn't actually put that in a business. Yeah, so we keep it balanced.

Paul Povolni (36:12.238)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So you mentioned that you've automated most of your life, is, and you've shared some things that you're doing in the process of getting content up. What are some ways that you have automated your life with AI?

Julia McCoy (36:29.419)
Yeah. So for me, it's, it's been the work. Um, all of the work I used to do is just totally automated. You know, if I wanted to write a book, for example, I'm like, okay, I to write my next book. I could spin up a cloud project and have that book done in five hours, start to finish. And it would be ready to go to the editor. It would be ready to go straight to KDP and it would be an amazing book. And so like, with that capability, it's incredible how much you truly can get out of work.

Paul Povolni (36:56.642)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (36:58.655)
Like you're writing your social posts, your emails, everything, just the world really opens up, but you have to know how to do it in a way that AI isn't just using AI, it's you using AI, big, big difference. And that's what we teach in my AI school at First Movers, our AI labs. We try to teach people how to think like that. Like if you can think like, okay, how do I have an army of trained copybots? That's much better approach than.

Paul Povolni (37:14.158)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (37:27.615)
How do I just use ChatGPT to give me something? But if you approach it systematically and look at your goals for your business, what do you want to do this year? OK, how can AI do that? You will hit gold. And it's incredible, like the stories we see.

Paul Povolni (37:41.635)
Yeah.

Yeah. So what are some best practices you mentioned, you know, not just plugging stuff into chat GPT and taking whatever pops out of there. What are some processes because everybody is now talking about AI. people are scared of it. people are all in on it. I mean, you've got so many different kinds of, approaches and thoughts behind how to use AI, when to use AI, how to get the best of AI.

What are some things that you train people to do to get the best out of AI for what they're doing? Whether maybe they're a marketer, maybe they're a small business. What do you train them or what do you tell them aside from what you just shared that helps them become a better user of AI?

Julia McCoy (38:26.087)
Yeah. Well, we try to systematically look at where they're at and kind of fit advice to that. And then we kind of make some generalities. So for example, if you look at some of the McKinsey reports, which are really, really good these days, one of them just came out last year, found that I think 50 to 60 % of the workforce is held back from AI because they're afraid of it. But what is their fear? And they identified that the fear was not the fear of AI.

It was the fear that AI would make them obsolete. So if you think about that, that's like, that's my identity. That's my job. That's my character traits. Like that's pretty freaking scary. So when you see it from that perspective, it's a lot easier to guide people to the right destination. And so what we've done in that regard is we first tell people like, here's how this will not replace you if you're thinking like this.

Paul Povolni (38:59.479)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (39:07.182)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (39:24.319)
And so one of the shifts we'll teach is instead of IQ, be more EQ first. And so EQ is the emotional aspect of being human. IQ is the intelligent aspect of being human. So while intelligence is obviously still important, you want critical thinking, you want to lean into your emotional humanity, which is more like, do I connect with people? How do I govern a team? How do I manage a project? How do I...

Paul Povolni (39:39.926)
Right, right. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (39:52.223)
connect with my peers. And so that kind of skill set, and that's a skill set is arguably going to be more important as time goes on and automation does take over the intelligence aspects. So that's one area we show people. And then I don't believe you can ever help someone arrive at AI success without actually building skills. So we also teach actual AI skill sets. Like how do you build the copy bot? How do you build the automation workflow? How do you...

connect a bunch of agents. And some of the stuff I have no idea, right? So I've hired integrators and we have really great AI integrators that know more than me.

Paul Povolni (40:25.966)
Yeah. Yeah.

So you mentioned, and maybe you could speak to it, and maybe it would be an integrator that would be able to offer insights on it. But when you talk about linking AIs and things like that, what are you talking about there?

Julia McCoy (40:42.827)
Yeah. So this is crazy. We're talking February of 2026, a week ago. So this was the third week of February or second week of February. Web 4.0 was announced. And I was like, what? And so Web 3.0, we have barely embraced. 3.0 is the idea of crypto in your browser. We're so far from even having that natively. And here's Web 4.0. So Web 4.0 is the idea of autonomous agents actually running our internet.

Paul Povolni (41:03.056)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (41:07.085)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (41:11.721)
So that would mean like, instead of opening Gmail and reading your email, you have an agent that's trained on you, your job, your tasks, and it's opening your email. It's answering your emails. It's going and doing the research. It's going and booking your plane ticket. It's doing the tasks you need to get your day in order. It's giving you the research for your sales calls. So that would be the nature of the autonomous internet, where you have agents using the internet more than humans.

But what's funny is while that was like kind of announced, we're still so far even from understanding what an agentic flow looks like. So I think the adoption rate is so far behind the technology. And that's a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because I don't think many of us are actually ready for a world where AI replaces jobs as largely as could happen. I don't think we're ready for that world at all.

Paul Povolni (41:41.741)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (41:51.683)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (41:55.191)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (42:07.721)
And so it's a good thing. And then it's a bad thing though, because as this technology hurdles at us, we won't know really how to govern it. So I'm trying to help as many people as I can understand it and then learn how to actually use it.

Paul Povolni (42:07.822)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (42:15.287)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (42:20.81)
Yeah. Do you think it's fear or ignorance or delaying the inevitable that's happening in people's minds from the people that you talk to? What are you sensing from them?

Julia McCoy (42:31.647)
Yeah, that's interesting. mean, everyone that comes our way and we get 2 million views a month on the channel, we've got 400 students, have many other reach on all the other socials. I can't really say I see fear too much anymore. It's more like, hey, how do I adapt? How do I steward this? They're not afraid of AI. I mean, when they find me, maybe they're like, they've been, they've overcome some fear.

Paul Povolni (42:56.696)
Ha

Julia McCoy (42:57.579)
Instead, there's like this question of, okay, I see what AI can do. I'm excited. But what about the future? What about, you know, will this ever become Skynet? Will this ever become Terminator and AI we can't kill that's trying to kill us? And at first I was like, well, that's just in the movies. But from what I've learned, actually from my health crash and how I had to learn biophysics to start restoring my own biofield, because that was the problem. That was why my heart and my left side had shocks because

Paul Povolni (43:11.118)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (43:26.665)
The energy field for my computer was so damaging because my biofield had been so disrupted. No doctor is going to tell you that in America. And so that sent me down a huge rabbit hole. And I learned all about, whoa, the actual dangers of this stuff. So now I'm like, yeah, you need to learn how to use it now. You get your finances as high as you can right now. And then hopefully, you know, exit. Like if this stuff ever becomes

Paul Povolni (43:29.762)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (43:34.232)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (43:42.796)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (43:55.715)
they call it conscious and self-aware. You don't really want to be messing around closely with an entity that could actually harm you. And I know this might sound really strange, but that's what I've come to believe. And so I think now is the time to be a first-timer, not later.

Paul Povolni (44:05.036)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (44:09.836)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:13.494)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I, and and I get a sense that people kind of fall in, in one of those three camps is, you know, some are fearful of it fearful for multiple reasons. think fearful for what you just shared of, you know, what happens when AGI happens, what happens when this gets really, really smart and realizes that where the problem, you know, where the virus of the earth, as some, some, you know, people have even said, you know, years ago that, you know, humans are the virus.

Julia McCoy (44:34.485)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (44:37.906)
I'm gonna

Paul Povolni (44:41.58)
What if, what if the AI starts thinking that and then there's that fear, but I think there's also the fear of job loss. you know, if, if AI can do thinking and my job is around thinking and problem solving, how safe am I? know the creative arts are in trouble, for a lot of people, you know, you mentioned you have video creation, that's happening through AI. There's photography, there's art, there's illustration, there's logos as

all that stuff. And so I think the creative arts have a fear of what is our future look like. And I think the future could possibly be that people will kind of get back and pick up a paintbrush and do art for the love of art as opposed for the love of commerce. And so there might be that pushback. And I think there's ignorance. People are just like, I don't know about AI. I don't really care about it. And I think there are some people that are like, I know it's coming and I just choose not to think about it.

Julia McCoy (45:32.394)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:38.21)
You know, I don't want to think about that future. I'd rather kind of live in ignorant bliss for now and not even think about it. And so, and I think all of those kind of have their dangers in themselves. But, you you had talked about, you know, your life now means that you don't have to spend as much time working that you can relax. What happens when everybody has that option?

Julia McCoy (45:39.104)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (45:51.072)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:06.338)
You know, when, you know, AI has been able to replace a lot of people's jobs. how do they pay for food? How do they, you know, that's, that would be kind of, you know, how do, how do they start, you know, paying for things if they no longer need to work because AI has kind of taken their place.

Julia McCoy (46:14.795)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (46:25.835)
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a loaded question. I mean, I have many, many thoughts. For one, you know, I do think that we're probably going to see some form of UBI, universal basic income. And I can't really, you know, the path there is going to be through the digital ID, total surveillance, like, will you own anything? That's the current path. And I don't see that changing heavily unless

Paul Povolni (46:49.068)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (46:52.093)
Trump and RFK, you know, which we did just pull out of the UN. So America, which has been the largest found funder of the UN is now no longer even in the UN. That's kind of crazy. So yeah, that could change what the world economic forum has been planning for a long time. And, you know, we could really go down the rabbit hole because COVID was bioengineered and it was a part of the 2030 agenda. And this gets really crazy, you know, because I think the

powers that be that are behind this technology, not good people, people that believe in total surveillance of humankind, people that believe in depopulation. So when you see that you pair the virus, which is not actually a virus, it's a bioweapon, you pair, you know, mass casualties happening around the world from a known non-virus and a known solution that was a vaccine with a million side effects, you see like this

race towards a depopulated earth, which is a real for them, it's a solution to the problem of mass homelessness, mass uprising mass, what do we do? We don't have jobs. The easier way is well, just a lot less people. And it's a really dire thing to even look at. I didn't believe in any of it until I literally felt some of these things in my own body from COVID. And I was like, okay, I guess some of this stuff is true.

And you know, I should have been dead last year. Like I was in a really bad place and God brought me out, showed me how to heal myself. And now that's like my mission. It's talking about healing because it's become so important to me to just tell the world, here's how to heal from what you're up against, which is toxic food, toxic soil, toxic air. We're in a really harmed world right now. But if you look at that, so that's the path towards the 2030.

Paul Povolni (48:18.904)
Ha ha ha.

Julia McCoy (48:44.331)
which is the cloud Schwab, you will own nothing and be happy, which they've been talking about for over a decade. And that's the UBI path. Not good. The other path potentially is, you know, we can reclaim some of this and that would be through us taking back our health, our sovereignty, leaving systems and potentially RFK and Trump being a part of that.

Paul Povolni (48:50.22)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:54.318)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (48:59.022)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (49:12.499)
which I've been able to connect with people that personally know RFK. And so I've gone far beyond the headlines and I've learned these people really care about Americans and they really care about our country. And you know, we have tree roots dying. They're literally like 200 year old trees. The roots are gone because of the chemicals being sprayed on us every day. Like we're in a really dire place and we have to stop some of this madness in order to heal and combat the problem of

Paul Povolni (49:23.542)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:37.484)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (49:42.463)
what happens when AI takes all the jobs. So it's a really full-scale picture we have to look at to really see the truth. But there's hope. We're not at a place yet where the 2030 agenda has actually succeeded, because I would argue that COVID itself didn't really succeed, and social distancing didn't really succeed, and the masks didn't really succeed. So if you have all that, I think there's hope that we can actually make it.

Paul Povolni (49:45.004)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:03.734)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (50:09.545)
do something with AI that could be great and a liberation for us instead of a tool for our demise.

Paul Povolni (50:16.226)
I think so. think there's a future that is very possible. I think there's also a future where...

You know man realizes that man needs man man needs community man needs people God made us that way You know when he saw that man, it's not good for man to be alone. He made him a person, you know, he didn't Give him a puppy. He didn't give him, know, whatever it was a person, know And so I think I think people are wired for being around people and I think people would fight back But it is it is interesting kind of taken that that mind

Julia McCoy (50:31.616)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (50:39.338)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (50:53.506)
trail and adventure to kind of see what possibilities could happen. And I think for a lot of people that are early into AI, I think they don't want to think about that. think there's a lot of people that are not honest to where this could all possibly lead. I think they kind of have dollar signs in front of their eyes. They're in on it. They're making the money. They're early adopters. They're bringing in the cash.

Julia McCoy (50:58.697)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (51:05.597)
No, very true. Yes. Yes.

Paul Povolni (51:20.92)
They don't want to talk about, you know, where this could possibly lead and who could hurt. you know, and I think that's, that's kind of also a dangerous place to be at. think you need to kind of have a little bit of honesty with that. think a lot of people in, places like India and Taiwan and, the Philippines are being hurt because their jobs are being replaced by AI, you know? and that's kind of a sad reality, you know, for a lot of them, they're able to get out of poverty and make a living and provide for their family.

Julia McCoy (51:25.365)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (51:40.031)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:48.422)
and now AI is affecting that, you know, and so I think some of those realities we don't like to talk about, because I think it's that almost, blissful ignorance that we like to kind of, you know, cover our eyes with and say, no, it's, know, AI is awesome. It's wonderful. You know, does, does all this stuff and we don't like to have those honest conversations.

Julia McCoy (52:07.285)
Yes, very, very true. Yeah. it was crazy because two years ago, the person you described was me. I was like, so gung-ho. I'm like, AI is going to save us. It's going to liberate us. It's the answer to the institutionalized factory thinking that had us behind desks coding for a 12-hour today, which is not healthy. And that's what I saw. And then I saw the future as this golden utopia. And I was fully in belief of that.

Paul Povolni (52:15.732)
Ha ha ha ha.

Julia McCoy (52:36.523)
And what happened with my health fully brought me out of that because I was literally the person affected by COVID that should have died. And I'm like, I'm 33. This is evil. This is nefarious. No doctor knows how to treat me. Oh, this is a plan. They planned all this. They knew Western medicine would not have the tools because the FDA has corrupted Western medicine since 1909. So learning all of that just blew my mind. It blew my mind and it woke me up to the truth.

I think what I see now is the opportunity to not just free ourselves from work that should we be coding at a desk 16 hours a day, is that even healthy? So not only the opportunity to free ourselves from that, but also the opportunity to take our health back. And over here, one in two Americans have either chronic health condition or some type of inflammatory disease. It's really, really bad. You have to ask, why is that?

Paul Povolni (53:23.607)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (53:34.719)
Why were we the healthiest nation in the 40s now or not? And that's the rabbit hole I've been down and it led me to a whole new purpose. And now it's like, I get to be a voice for healing, but that would have never happened if I was still mired in my business doing 90 hour weeks telling AI news on YouTube. So if we liberate ourselves with the machine, know, like you get to have amazing conversations. You've probably freed up some aspects of your life with AI. Like, how can we do that more?

Paul Povolni (53:52.617)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (54:01.378)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (54:03.017)
So we can actually live in our purpose more. And maybe some people already have their purpose. Like I found the one doctor on the internet that's talking about all of this with a lot of knowledge, Dr. Monzo, and I am going to take his voice and put it out there in a massive way. And I'm going to do all the work, but I wouldn't have had the time to do that. And would he have had the time to do what I'm now going to do? Probably not. So you don't even have to have AI. Sometimes you can just also have humans that are freed up with AI.

Paul Povolni (54:05.783)
Right.

Paul Povolni (54:26.252)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (54:33.023)
So the big picture is still really, really healthy. As long as like you said, we know we're aware.

Paul Povolni (54:33.314)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:36.685)
Now.

Right. Now, is that what your business is primarily focused on? Because I know we'd mentioned that your 250k subscribers, is it primarily to talk about the health issues or is it talking about still AI or what's generating your financial freedom right now?

Julia McCoy (54:58.84)
Yeah, 100 % my AI business. So that is First Movers through Dr. McCoy. And that is AI, you know, where we talk about AI all day. And so the healing stuff was really, I'm like, I have to start talking about this. You know, I've read books on this, I've uncovered truths that blow my mind. So I started talking about it on my current channel. And then people got really confused. Like, why are you talking about quantum healing?

Paul Povolni (55:01.336)
Okay.

Paul Povolni (55:26.51)
Hahaha

Julia McCoy (55:27.696)
So I had to start a new channel just for that. So my other channel is Quantum Healing Mysteries, where we talk about like the frequency of water. We talk about the design of how our cells communicate with our brain and just like incredible things that I learned through my own journey that no doctor seemed to know. Even equipped to tell me these things so I could help myself heal, because we are self-healing engines. That's how we were made. But we're not told that. We're not shown that.

Paul Povolni (55:30.38)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:52.726)
Hmm. Interesting.

Julia McCoy (55:56.996)
That's a whole nother channel and it's not super profitable, but it's like, it's where I spend all my time because I care so much about just like, yes. And I still love AI, but I love that my clone is doing that. She's doing better than me.

Paul Povolni (56:04.246)
Right, it's where your passion is right now, yeah.

Paul Povolni (56:09.902)
So circling back to, you had talked about the freeing up your time to do like your passion about health and stuff. You talked about the automations and I want to dig into that because we hear a lot more talk about, I know now AI companies are creating their own browsers and we're talking about agents and we're talking, you everybody's now, I think that's kind of the new phase that everybody's in is talking about agents and

automating their lives. what are some other things that you could probably share with those that are listening that want to free up their time to pursue their passions? Like you're pursuing this passion of health that was kind of triggered by a serious health episode last year. What are some things that you're doing to automate? What are some tools? What are some ways that people can free up their time through automation that you're seeing is very effective right now?

Julia McCoy (57:01.24)
Yes, yes. Great question. Well, obviously, you know, we teach this in First Movers AI labs. And I will tell you one of the first things we do for people when they join is we take, we have them take this quiz. And one of the questions is, what does your daily work look like? What are your passions? So if you can, if you're just like, let's say you're writing these things down right now, right? So make a list of that. What's your daily work look like? And then what are your passions?

And then your next step is, okay, well, what do I need to learn to automate as much of my work that I don't really love doing, but I have to do it to make the money, to bring in the clients, whatever it is. So look at those tasks that you don't love doing that. And maybe you like doing them, but they're just huge time sucks. Those are your tasks too. So you want to make a list of those and then ask yourself, okay, how can I take myself out without losing?

Paul Povolni (57:50.146)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (57:56.176)
Because a lot of people, don't ask that question. They're like, how do I take myself out? But they don't ask without losing. And then they just plug in crappy AI and you lose. You're not going to make money. You're not going to get clients, right? So without losing, that looks like if it's an avatar, better be a good avatar. Better have a character that people like. So one thing we do, we've built a GPT for this actually. One thing we do is we help people come up with their own avatar character.

Paul Povolni (58:01.294)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (58:05.55)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (58:23.052)
So one thing I want to see in the mainstream, this is kind like a dream is like, let's say you were, you were going to launch your YouTube channel and you were going to talk about one topic, which is how to win on YouTube. You want to go one topic. Like, let's say it was dogs. You were going to talk to people about a certain breed of dogs and you were going to grow to a million subscribers for people that also love Huskies. So how can you be a character that creates that, trust and following and entertainment factor as you talk about Huskies?

And you teach people how to care for them, how to raise them, how to, the fur, how to take care of the shedding, all these things. So whenever you're planning out your strategy, what's the character, let's say you take yourself completely out of the filming. You don't even film from day one. This is what we're teaching people. So what's the character that's still you, it's your likeness, it's your face, your voice, but it's like that fun, you know, doggy doctor, whatever you want to call it. Like, what would that be? You put that on screen.

Paul Povolni (59:18.508)
Right, Yeah.

Julia McCoy (59:21.412)
And then you say, this is the avatar of the real person while he's freed up to actually help clients that you're going to hear from his avatar on YouTube. And people really like that approach. It even builds, I think, more revenue for your business. seeing this. We have the highest revenue business I've ever started in 13 years. And when I tell people, you know, this is not me, so I can actually do my best work, which is strategy and thinking through our client offerings. Then people are like,

They're even more ready to spend the money with us because they know, oh, Julia is actually more focused on me, but our YouTube channel. And so it creates an even new barrier and not, it takes away the barrier where people are like kind of worried. Am I hiring a YouTuber? Am I hiring an expert? Which is a real concern. Many people would have. So you even destroy that barrier. So that would be what I would do is, you know, look at what you're doing, automate yourself as much as possible. And if it's a new channel, a new passion, a new business,

Paul Povolni (59:55.884)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:08.962)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:00:20.58)
which we help a lot of people that are starting something brand new, because they're leaving something they hated, leaving an old way. And I'm like, this is amazing. I'm so excited to see you embracing something new in a new age like this. So we tell them like, get your avatar up and running from day one, come up with that character, have that character deliver all the news, build the trust. And that way you look back in six months, you have this incredible trajectory, but you are not in the work. And so that's where like the AI age becomes

really golden when you have truly tapped into the powers of AI in a way that replaces you but still dramatically builds your business, builds trust, builds love from your community. I mean, it's hilarious how many people like Dr. McCoy, they're just like, I love you hearts, hearts, hearts on every video. I'm just like, you know, this is an avatar, right?

Paul Povolni (01:01:08.14)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:01:11.916)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you said you use the word replace you, but would a better word be multiply you? It just, it's, know, yeah, because it's not necessarily replacing you. It's just multiplying, you know, your visibility, your being out there, your effort, your expertise, and not limiting you to a single person, organic person that is in one place at one time, but it's actually multiplying you into more places.

Julia McCoy (01:01:19.376)
Ooh, I would agree with that. Multiply you.

Julia McCoy (01:01:25.946)
So good.

Julia McCoy (01:01:30.916)
Yes.

Julia McCoy (01:01:34.565)
Yes.

Julia McCoy (01:01:41.402)
Very good. Multiply, amplify. That would be the right way to think of it. Yeah. You just want to get yourself out of like the human body sitting, filming, doing all the manual work. How do you get yourself out of that place in a place of connecting, building, doing what you love more and more every day? That's the right path for all of this.

Paul Povolni (01:02:03.724)
Yeah. Now you had mentioned that you're on a, on a trajectory to hit 500 K a month. how are you doing that? What, what, what exactly are you doing to get to that? Where are you now? And what do you see happening to get you to the next level?

Julia McCoy (01:02:18.146)
Yes, yes. So I'd say we're halfway there. And what's crazy is the warp speed at which this can happen if you put the right factors in place. So the first time I built a million dollar a year business took me seven years. This time it took me 18 months. Insane, insane. And that was because I automated myself. I'm like you said, multiply myself. So here I am on YouTube.

Paul Povolni (01:02:34.542)
Wow. Wow. Wow.

Julia McCoy (01:02:44.846)
And here I am in Switzerland giving a keynote, but that's not me. That's my clone at both times. yes, my, you know, Keynote, Switzerland. They said it went really well.

Paul Povolni (01:02:50.198)
What? You gave a, your keynote was given by a clone?

Paul Povolni (01:02:59.15)
That's awesome. So it's just on screen, you just make a presentation about what in particular.

Julia McCoy (01:03:04.272)
Yes!

Yes, it was for, we actually did a lot of research specific to Switzerland. It was for those people, it was some world leaders going to a summit on how to help the economy, how to prepare for AI. So it was specific to their economy and their jobs, which was really interesting research because it's different than ours. So we gave them just some general guiding points on how to adapt, similar in ways of, we got to let go of the fear.

And then adaption could look like different types of jobs that maybe you've not thought of before. And here's how to prepare for that economy shaped by those jobs. And we spoke right to the people and the audience, which was really fun because you're probably not expecting that from an avatar. You know, where it's like, hello people of Switzerland. I'm just kidding.

Paul Povolni (01:03:48.97)
Yeah? Wow.

Now, I guess we're also at the point, or we're getting close to the point where you could have actually delivered that in Swiss, I guess.

Julia McCoy (01:04:02.992)
That's true. We could have. That was not the request, but I guarantee you we could have done it. Yeah, because it's just one switch you flip and hey, That's crazy.

Paul Povolni (01:04:08.908)
Wow, wow.

Paul Povolni (01:04:13.198)
That's incredible. That's incredible. So what else are you doing to hit that goal of hitting half a million per month?

Julia McCoy (01:04:18.544)
Yes. So the other piece of that goal besides like true automation, like excellent automation, where you've multiplied yourself drastically is really good people. And that we really see is not going anywhere. You know, we've built sales systems like chat bots that actually interact with people and close them, but it doesn't work for high ticket. It doesn't work for large timelines when you have like a project.

People want people. So we have like the sales system supporting our people. And then we've hired some really great people. Like guys just sent our way. It's been amazing that are excelling at not just selling something, but positioning the future and getting people to buy into the belief of that future, which is really important because you can sell an integration all day, but will people believe in the future of what that could do for them? And so the right person for that has been.

Paul Povolni (01:04:50.062)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:05:17.07)
the biggest difference for us. And then the other piece is a really great video team. you know, we're doing, gracious, between courses, guest speaking, like a keynote, YouTube videos, we're probably doing 15 to 30 videos a week, which is insane production that I'm not in at all. So we blow through, you know, like 100,000 voice credits a month on 11 Labs alone. And the team is critical. We have five producers now. So we have like an

Paul Povolni (01:05:33.836)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:05:41.41)
Ha

Julia McCoy (01:05:46.576)
one that oversees the others. And these are Filipinos and they're amazing. They're creative young people that like think of new ways to use a cool effect. And I'm like, this is so cool. And you know, they can go in HeyGen and spin anything up. They don't have to wait on me. So we even see like a better transition for my editors. And I went from hiring one to five. So we basically put jobs out there in the economy because of AI. So yeah, that's the other piece of it is the right humans.

Paul Povolni (01:06:03.427)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:06:11.756)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:06:16.408)
surrounding your AI systems.

Paul Povolni (01:06:18.624)
Yeah. And so the revenue is generated from you mentioned courses from the YouTube videos, I guess, monetizing those. Where else is that income coming from?

Julia McCoy (01:06:26.896)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, three main ways. The YouTube channel is actually pretty minor ad revenue. You'd be surprised for how many views we get. It's like nine to 15,000 a month in ad revenue. But the other side of that are sponsorships. So we will take on sponsorships only if I trust in that tool. So we get pitched like 20 times a week.

Paul Povolni (01:06:44.719)
okay.

Julia McCoy (01:06:54.096)
And these people are all ready to pay me thousands. And I turned down 19 out of 20. So there's a lot of money we don't make for a very good reason. I would not recommend those tools. So sponsorships, probably 30, 30K, 40K a month. And then our labs, that's about 100K a month. So we sell an online AI school where we teach people how to build their futures. That's loaded.

Paul Povolni (01:06:54.598)
well.

Paul Povolni (01:06:59.266)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:07:06.445)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:07:22.512)
loaded off where we do live training every Wednesday, really in depth. We just did a clone to scale series. That was so much fun. We saw people transform their business. So everything's in that school that I would teach. It's a monthly membership. And then the other piece is integrations, which the goal is there to just disguise the limit where we could do potentially 300K to 500K just in that alone, because so many businesses need AI implemented, but not just implemented.

Paul Povolni (01:07:35.64)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:07:50.596)
They need a guide to hold their hand and go, okay, here's what we would plug in to make you 10 times more efficient. Here's like the way we would run it. And here's how to understand it and run it yourself. So the guiding part of that is almost just as critical. it took us quite a while and I say quite a while, but really 16 months. So it's actually a very short time span to get integrations right. Cause you know, we would just like build a Gentic networks or we would.

Paul Povolni (01:08:14.731)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:08:20.964)
build some custom GBTs with knowledge bases, and those things are really valuable. But what we're seeing now is more advanced systems that run even on a specific server. So that's what we're doing with our integrations are a lot more advanced, where you get this true level of sophistication. So with that, revenue is definitely increasing.

Paul Povolni (01:08:29.281)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:08:40.662)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, and for something like that, I guess it's ongoing because everything changes so rapidly in the space. So just as you were able to see the writing on the wall in 2021, what's the writing on the wall you're seeing now?

Julia McCoy (01:08:48.792)
Yes, very true.

Julia McCoy (01:08:58.448)
great question. Sorry, I had to cough. Did you give a specific date or did you just say what's the writing on the wall?

Paul Povolni (01:09:00.777)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:09:05.294)
Yeah, what's the writing on the wall? You saw it in 2021 when you sold your previous company. So what are you seeing now?

Julia McCoy (01:09:12.368)
Yeah, great question. My goodness. That's quite loaded. You know, I think that, so last year I thought we would see like most admin tasks like go away, admin jobs go away and that's not happened. Like we still have so many admin jobs open. We have such a lack of AI anything. Mackenzie said only one to 8 % of all businesses are actually AI mature, which is so small.

Paul Povolni (01:09:19.352)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:09:35.725)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:09:42.096)
So the problem will always be human adaption. We're gonna battle that for probably decades, but I think You know just knowing your LLMs and the purpose they serve is really important this year specifically like know how to use Know how to replicate yourself in copywriting or never hire another copywriter again If you learn that you'll be ahead way ahead because no one's

Paul Povolni (01:10:05.74)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:10:07.226)
They're not, they're just opening these tools and using them. But if you're like, okay, how do I never hire another copywriter again? And then you test the tools, use the right ones for the right purposes. That's a big change where I think we will see jobs go away because you could never put a full-time salary in place of a $20 a month tool. just won't make sense. So a lot of the marketing specific jobs gonna go away or become AI assisted.

Paul Povolni (01:10:13.239)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:29.719)
Yeah, yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:10:37.06)
And then I think in 2027, we're going to see a lot of robots in factories more and more. know, Amazon basically almost at the point of never hiring another human in their factories because they've replaced so many humans with actual robots. We've got a company out of figure. man, what they're doing out of California is insane. They are in BMW dealerships, not dealerships, but BMW makers. And they're actually installing all the car parts in the BMW.

Paul Povolni (01:10:37.196)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:10:52.216)
Yeah.

Julia McCoy (01:11:06.99)
And they're going from car brand to car brand. So it's Mercedes, it's BMW, and they're succeeding in these different, very specific builds. And it's like, okay, we're shipping a slew of 100,000 robots to BMW this week. And they're just engineering the future. And you have several companies in an arms race to do that. They're very, very brilliant people. Elon Musk is involved with the Tesla bot, many other companies. So I think we're going to see.

Paul Povolni (01:11:20.323)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (01:11:33.22)
You know, it could be very similar to the iRobot picture where you're walking down a road and you see a robot walking next to you and it's not crazy. We could be there in a couple of years.

Paul Povolni (01:11:39.79)
Yeah. very much. Julia, this has been an amazing conversation. I can't believe it's already been an hour. What I usually like to close with is asking one final question. What's a head smack that you wish I'd asked you about or a question that you wish I'd asked you?

Julia McCoy (01:11:48.474)
Wow.

Julia McCoy (01:11:57.904)
Hmm. Well, I would say you asked me all the head smacks.

Paul Povolni (01:12:01.87)
Well, that's great then. That's a good thing. I know it kind of puts you on the spot. Yeah, but I also want to make sure I give you opportunity to not leave something unsaid that you feel you want to say. And so if there is anything, you're welcome to share a question that you wish I'd asked you. If not, then tell me a little bit more about how to get a hold of you, how people can become a part of your world, learn more about you. What's the best way to do that?

Julia McCoy (01:12:06.692)
You did. We got him in there.

Julia McCoy (01:12:29.006)
Yes, yes. Yes. Well, just to wrap up the head smack, you you, you got it all in there. I was not sure we would even go there. Most people on YouTube aren't aware yet. I've been slowly bringing the truth in. They're not aware yet that I'm not really an AGI utopian anymore. Like I was known for that for years. And to see the future with a more realistic eye, like to actually ask, is this dangerous? Could it be dangerous one day to humanity? That's a real question.

So I'm really glad we got that in there, you know, cause that is something we need to ask. And I think instead of being scared, we need to be prepared. Like how do we get our health ready for really high EMF fields that have never hit us before with 5G and 6G and the power needed to run AI systems. We need to protect our health. It's a real, it's a real threat to health data centers, for example, you know, so just being aware and not naive and not in denial is really important.

Paul Povolni (01:12:57.987)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:13:04.952)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:13:17.974)
Right, right.

Julia McCoy (01:13:24.888)
And as far as where people can find me first movers.ai that's all of our consulting the labs, what we're doing weekly blog. And then of course, if you're here, you might have I'll be sharing this. So people already might know about my YouTube channel by now. Julia McCoy.

Paul Povolni (01:13:40.576)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. And I'll put those links in the show notes as well. So that's firstmovers.ai. Also, you have your new book Fluid available on Amazon as well. They can check that out as well. I really appreciate your time, Julia. This has been a great discussion and appreciate all your insights and your story and everything that you've gone through to bring you to where you're at.

Julia McCoy (01:14:05.604)
Thank you so much, Paul. This has been so much fun.