How Stanley Productized 6.5 Years of Agency Knowledge Into a $200K/Month AI Business

Stanley Henry built a 7-figure marketing agency on one rule: never pay for ads. Everything organic. 1.2 billion views. After 7 years of building that agency, he discovered AI and he burned the rulebook.

In 30 days, he made $200,000 using Claude AI. He's now spending $3,500/day on Meta ads. He shut down parts of his agency, cut his team from 40 to 18, and replaced 11 project managers with AI.

His message to business owners? Fire your marketing agency. Build with AI instead.

In this episode, Stanley breaks down:
– The exact AI system running his entire business (he calls it "Kevin")
– How he productized 6.5 years of agency knowledge into digital products
– Why he records every conversation and feeds it to Claude
– The 50-60 "skills" that replaced an entire ops team
– His Meta ads playbook (3:1 ROAS, scaling to the US and UK)
– The "easily repeatable content series" formula behind viral growth
– Why he tells AI to treat him like the stupidest person alive
– How one time-lapse video made him $60K in a single month
– The 4-brand distribution system (personal, company, employee, newsletter)
– Why service businesses shouldn't run ads (but product businesses should)

If you're a business owner sitting on years of knowledge wondering how to leverage AI, this episode is your playbook.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The $200K month using Claude
03:15 Productizing 6.5 years of agency knowledge
05:00 The viral content formula (it's annoyingly simple)
11:00 Closing the studio, rebuilding with AI
17:00 Inside Stanley's AI operating system ("Kevin")
22:00 Where boomer business owners should start
28:00 Why you don't need to be technical
33:00 The AI slop debate (and the $7,500 typo carousel)
38:00 Distributing across LinkedIn, IG, TikTok, YouTube
43:00 F*ck/Marry/Kill: Social Platforms
48:00 Why he's now spending $3,500/day on Meta ads
57:00 Starting from zero in 2026
01:04:00 What AI should never take away

🔗 Follow Stanley:
  / stanleychenry 
  / stanleychenry 
https://www.attnseeker.com/

🔗 Follow Keira:
  / realmissai 
  / keira-nesdale-b287899b 
https://www.aiconsultancy.co.nz/

🔗 Subscribe for more conversations like this:    / @realmissai 

#ai #artificialintelligence #podcast #entrepreneurship #startup #claude #anthropic #multiagentsystems #agenticai #mindsetshift #businessautomation #businessgrowth

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I would marry LinkedIn because it's where all the money's made. So what it what Claude did is they did a product that then enabled us to sell it through our platform that we already have. We obviously already had across our platform, you know, 1.4 million followers that we've built organically. We realizes that by analysing every conversation we had trying to figure this out, AI was there, was able to find patterns that we took. And then based on a bunch of information from the client, we could repeat those patterns and get a pretty like a 90% of the way there solution for a client, all autonomously. AI can figure out what you're doing. Like it can understand the patterns that you're taking, but then it can also validate its own thinking by doing a massive search throughout the internet that we couldn't do. If you're a middle-aged and older person in business and you're a bit scared to do it, the thing that you have to understand at your age or your qualification level and expertise, you've got way better communication skills than someone in their 20s. That skill is why you'll be good at AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Stanley has made $200,000 in a single month using AI. He has cracked the code behind meta-ads and it has absolutely exploded his business. But here's the twist. Before AI, Stanley built a seven-figure marketing agency on one rule. Never pay for ads. Everything was organic. He has since burned that rule book and is now spending $3,500 on meta-ads. He closed the studio and rebuilt his entire business with Claude. He is now telling clients to find marketing agencies and build with AI instead. This is Stanley Henry, and this conversation is going to change how you think about AI, business, and attention. How are you doing, Stanley?

SPEAKER_04 1:49

Yeah, good, thanks. Yeah. What an intro.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, let's just kick it into it. So $200,000 in 30 days using Claude. How?

SPEAKER_04 1:58

Look, it's uh there's definitely a bit of clickbait there, but realistically, what I did was I had I've I mean, we've been running agency for six and a half years now. We're really good at the service that we deliver. And what I did was go, how do I productize this service into a format that smaller businesses could purchase? Because what we do as a business, we can't sell to small businesses, we're too expensive, too prohibitive. And we developed a way of like going, okay, we actually all this knowledge that we have, we were able to create a brain that like knows it all now and it can do the thing that we do at a much faster speed. Yeah, granted, it can't do it to the level we could do it if we do it in person, our like ability to take what AI doesn't go to the next level is greater, but we charge you know tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum to do that. So, how can we do something for like a fraction of that cost? That's what we figured out. So, although we did it in 30 days, it's like being built off knowledge for six and a half years, and then we're able to harness all that, use AI to synthesize it, AI to synthesize it, product, like turn it into a product. And then, like, yeah, we can do we can do content and market it, but the actual like we're not an e-commerce brand, and I had no idea how to sell stuff that way. So what it what Claude did is made it a product, um, took all our knowledge and made it a product, but then enabled us to sell it uh through our platform that we already had. We obviously already had across our platform, you know, 1.4 million followers that we've built organically. So that's the trick that we did. Um, but for a lot of a lot of companies out there, they've probably got like something that they can sell, or they want to sell things further, or they want to just like reduce costs. And what we were saying to people is they actually like we were a big old dinosaur type of business in that we were a service-based business. And within months, we had transformed everything. So like other people could do it too. So yeah, how we did 200 grand, it was that yeah, we productize our knowledge and then used AI, used claw to sell it for us, do it or take care of every every single part of it that you would have necessarily realistically, you would have had like six or seven people have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

So the knowledge that you've captured and turned into digital products, what exactly is it? Is it marketing knowledge? Is it telling people how to fill with AI? Like, I know that you sell webinars online and also these digital products. Like, what is somebody going to be getting when they buy one of your products?

SPEAKER_04 4:17

Yeah, to to the first step, how did we capture all the knowledge? We I um I had seen that AI was coming for a while, so we had recorded every conversation that we've had in the business for the last three years. And um we took all of those transcripts and we took all of our emails over the last six years, and we had a local model here in our business, strip everything out, strip all the knowledge out, and then feed all of that, like take all the personal information out and feed all the knowledge back into Claude. So that was the first step, which is like something that not everyone necessarily has because they haven't recorded everything. You probably do have all emails because we've probably got an email client that can um recover all of that. Um, but that was the first step. That's how we captured everything that we did, and then we use some obviously smart conversations that we had with it to turn it into something, can ask it to build something out of it. Um, and then the things that we sell, like as an example, one of the things so we're we're a social media agency by trade, and one of our like philosophies for building social media accounts is to create an easily repeatable content series, it's like the base anchor series. And so when we say that, what we mean is it's essentially the same video, there's only one variable that changes every video. So sometimes it might be the day, a different day, we're gonna do a different thing. Or um, yeah, I don't know. Like there's a bunch of different things that you might do. In my one on my AI content on my Instagram, it's like the new thing I've done. Like, here's a new thing I did on my AI. And so that easy repeatable content series is like a it's like quite mechanical actually in how you develop one of those. And there's only so many ways to figure that out. And so what we've we realized is that by analyzing every conversation we had trying to figure this out, AI was there was able to find patterns that we took. And then based on a bunch of information from the client, we could repeat those patterns and get a pretty like a 90% of the way their solution for a client, all autonomously. Now, the difference between something getting 10 million views a month and getting like half a million views a month is that last 10%, which still requires us. But for most businesses, someone getting half a million to a million views a month is 10 times what they're currently getting organically. So with you know, a thousand dollars, you're paying us a thousand dollars, you're getting something that's 90% of the weight there. And for small businesses, that's like life-changing because at the moment they can't do that. And to work with us, you know, it's minimum twenty to fifty thousand dollars for an onboarding fee just for your first month with us. That's just too prohibitive for a small business. There's no, I can't afford that. Like I sell it and I can't afford that. Um, so it's that sort of thing that we're able to do. It's like, hey, we do this thing every day, and actually, if we analyze what we say inside these brainstorming sessions, because we've got the transcripts, AI can figure out what you're doing. Like it can understand the patterns that you're taking, but then it can also validate its own thinking by doing a massive search throughout the internet that we couldn't do. Like we're doing it from experience, it's doing it on like all of human knowledge. So that's why it can get pretty far along. The thing it can't do, which I don't know if it'll ever get there, is um humans are our like ability to create is very different to how AI creates. AI is just finding patterns and things, but we like humans are like kind of almost essentially like the the things that we can make connections between are so random. Like it's so random for a computer to do the same thing. It feels random when a computer does it, but it's not. It's just it's very much a predictive model. So that's where that 10% lies. So as a service-based business, if you're doing something like that, you're you're still protecting your service business because no one can do that secret source bit if you are actually really good. But like you just open yourself up to a whole nother market that you didn't have access to.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Talking of secret source, your marketing agency were king of virality, so to speak. I read that you had 1.2 billion organic views. So, what is that secret source for virality, or does it change between the product and the brand that you're trying to push? Like, is there a pattern that the AI has picked up to get 90% of virality throughout all of your content that you put out?

SPEAKER_04 8:37

Yeah, it's um, I mean, it's not actually that complicated. It's just it's annoying how simple it is, and no one believes that. It's just like tell a story. And um, with story con like when you tell a story, stories are beginning, middle, and end. They have a setup, a conflict, and a resolution. Every good story has that. And no matter if you read it in a a meme, like a one page meme, or a frame meme, or a three-hour epic movie, they all follow a beginning, middle, and end. And even a meme does that. It has your first glance of you, it like has a bit that gives you the context of what you're looking at. There's like a there's some bit that's a uh that has a conflict, there's some tension in inside the meme, and then there's a resolution, which is the funny part of it. And they all happen in a single frame. But then obviously a three-hour movie follows a three-ac structure, and then a short LinkedIn post does the same thing, and a short video does the same thing. They're all just stories. The trick is being able to um figure out a way to tell a story for that format whilst also incorporating the uh human truth or the insight that the brand wants to be known for. Right? That's the real trick of it. So you could get anything to go viral by just telling a good story on any platform, but what good does that do for the brand if it's not also telling the message that they want? So the secret source has been able to connect what goes viral, which is story, um, and then connecting that with a message, a brand message or feeling that you want. And where most people get that confused is um, oh, buy my stuff. That's what they think the brand message is. Buy my shoes, buy my webinar, buy my whatever. But that's not that's not the message you want to get. A message is always a feeling, like how do you want someone to feel when they see your brand? That's the bit that people struggle with. And if you ask AI just to do that, there's way more data in the internet telling it how to do sales content, which is call-to-action, sell stuff ads. There's way more data that it's been trained on, so it'll default to that. So you have to really make sure you're not letting it go down that pathway. You're really trying to get it to create content media. That's that's the real difference. And it's real hard to get AI not to do that. Like it just always wants to make sales too.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Cool story, let's go to that, because on Instagram, and that's exactly how I found you, you've been telling a story counting down 365 days to your 40th birthday. You are now three months into that. And the story that I picked up was that many years ago, when you and your wife started your marketing agency, you made a promise to each other that you, by the time you hit 40, you wanted to be able to do anything anywhere, total freedom. And this year you've really leaned into that skid and going all in as an introvert posting every single day on social media, telling your story, the wins, the fails, these successes, and just generally putting yourself out there uh for everybody to learn and discover. So, how are you making this happen by the time you're 40, counting down what are we, 274 days to go? How are you gonna get total freedom by the time you hit 40?

SPEAKER_04 11:56

Well, for the first six years of this business, six and a half years of this business, we were going for absolute growth and which meant there was nothing left at the end of the day. Like there was no profit. We've never made a profit, we've not tried to, we've spent every single cent growing it. And um this year was like, okay, we've got a pretty significant mass where we're at and revenue, and like in New Zealand, where we're based from, like, it's you know, we're in the top 1% of businesses when you look at size, which is outrageous because like we're nothing compared to the big, big guys, but like there's very few big, big guys in New Zealand. So actually, like from a we're a 1% business, which is insane to think about, and most we're one of the youngest 1% businesses too, that hasn't used uh hasn't had to raise his capital either. Like we're bully bootstrapped. So I, you know, at the start of this year, I was like, all right, well, um, how do we go to a point where I'm no longer uh the business is no longer relying on me being inside of it every single day that I still want to work and I'm always gonna want to, like I'm just that guy, like I'm never gonna know I'm wanting. But the fact that I had to be here every day for the agency to run was the bit that was hard. And the reason for it was is although I was reinvesting everything in, a lot of that reinvestment was inside our internal brand team. So our internal brand team that just runs our in our own marketing is seven staff, like seven full-time people. At the moment, um, so at our peak, we're a team of 40, and we've like whittled that down with AI. Now we're 18. Well, soon to be 20, we're about that's about half the size. Um, that 20 people, like a third of us, are just marketing us. Like that's all they do. So that's a huge cost to the business. So the first thing I had to say was like, well, how do I make sure that cost is no longer a cost and is now revenue producing? So these internal brand products that we've been creating, the webinars, the education products, these installations, that was what that was doing. And then I had to think about it in a way which was how do I ensure that I'm not the only one who could do this? Like, how can I build a product that long term I could get a really awesome educator or really awesome people who could deliver these products better than I can to eventually take over? And so we had to design a product in that way. And and that's kind of already done. Like the webinars I don't mind doing. I really enjoy the webinars, but the the secondary sale, the builds that we do, my team do it. And they and they're better at it than I am anyway. So, okay, cool. We found a way where I can do serve 400 customers in two hours in the webinar, and then we've and then everything that we sell off of that, my team can fully cater. Okay, cool. That takes care of, well, it's already taken care of. Like we it worked way faster than we thought. That 200 grand last month um was like six months ahead of schedule for us. So we've essentially already taken the internal department and turned it into its own revenue. So it's now not a burden, it's making profit. As soon as you take, I mean, you just did the math, take seven staff away from an agency and think what that does for profit straight away. Um the agency's now at a profitability where it never had, because I was spending a percent on more internal staff, that we are slowly now looking at, okay, well, who can we hire back into the business to replace my day-to-day inside the agency? And so that's kind of how we've been thinking about it. So eventually what my role becomes is uh product development, because that's like I'm the entrepreneur, I'm the guy who comes up the crazy ideas and figures shit out and builds it. That's what I do. Um, play with Claude, uh, be the brand. Like that's kind of my and then part of being the brand is also doing the webinars. We actually do think that me being on the webinars and the way that I deliver them and what I do there and like the the flow from socials through to webinar, that's a branding piece, actually. Even though we're getting paid for it now, it's still a branding piece. So that's part of my job. So then my job stops becoming like dealing with like agency customers, you know, like figuring out social strategies for customers and all the stuff that I do. We hire people in who are actually way better at that than I am. I'm not a marketer by trade, I'm a businessman by trade. Um, we get way smarter people. So then we've our goal is to just get that all implemented within the next 12 months, so before February next year. Um we are revenue, we hit our revenue goals after two months, um, which was actually insane. Like it actually still blows my mind. Like I don't want that to be taken for granted. Like I didn't we honestly thought that we'd do like 30k a month for the next four or five months before we figured out what would work. Um and on this track, we're already uh we're already two times ahead of where we were at this point in May uh from April. So month month to date, April versus May, we're already twice as far ahead as where we were. So we're on track to do 400k in May, which is actually mind-mummy. So revenue goals are hit, now it's like, okay, shit, wait, this this is actually working. Who do we now need to put back in the business? Because we stopped hiring. Now we know how Claude's working for us. Who are the humans that need to come back? And that's where we're that's the point where now, once we get the right humans in, ideally, I can stop doing as many things, and then you know, my team know, and like actually we've talked about that to our whole team. Like, where do we all want to be? Like, do we want to be in Auckland? Like, is this where we want to be? Like, do we all want to be somewhere else? Like, do we want to be in like because we all have an office here? Like, so those starts the conversations start having. I mean, my wife, she's Australian, she's like, I want to be good, I want to go back to Brisbane, like, give me back the sun, you know, things like that. But that's kind of how we thought about it. So, first of all, is fix revenue goals. Oh, well, first of all, is fix the productivity of the business, which we did. That was originally, use or to fix it properly, so we actually have real automation um in the business using AI, then fix, uh, then improve the revenue goals to save that big chunk of cost that was an internal, and then bring back the right humans to save me and some of the other leadership.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

So, build a whole entire AI system around your business that was already operating to get efficiencies and win back more revenue. How would you suggest to like how have you actually set that up for yourself? So, do you have a different agent for marketing, different agent for lead generation, different agent for different aspects that was once an employee? Or like how have you partitioned up? Because to run your whole entire business with one AI is an extreme task and it would get delusional and hallucinate and you know, give you results that aren't actually productive. So, how have you actually set up your operating system to run your marketing agency business and to try to be able to remove yourself from that business as well in the future?

SPEAKER_04 18:33

Yeah, so um the way we did it was uh this idea of like separate agents, I think is um it stems from the open core environment that people are used to. And I I didn't go with that architecture. I just it's really good for one person and one agent. It's not really good when you're rolling it out across a large team that has multiple clients and where it's at. Like it didn't, where everyone needs to be in it at the same time. And the reason for it is that, yeah, you're right, that like one context window it has for that one agent, it gets a bit delusional if it's going to keep running, and I have to keep clearing, setting. Well, the way we did it is that the the base architecture is probably somewhat similar in that we have like a bunch of context files in a brain, which is essentially just a bunch of markdown files, a bunch of um word docs, essentially no pads, and then we have um everything else connected into it. So um every email, every you know, chat message, transcripts, everything comes into it, plus all our like CRM, our zero for our finance, our analytics, everything gets goes into it. All the data gets stored, like like hard structured data, like analytics and finance gets stored in um uh uh uh what am I just saying, like a database. And then so it's easily queryable, and then all the qualitative stuff that builds the context lives in markdown files. Once you've got that, you're not having one agent in it. You like you know, sometimes like I'll have 20 things going in it at once, but I don't have like a sales agent. I have one brain that's like we call it Kevin, and Kevin has like access to everything at all times. Because when you really do run a business, a sales cycle isn't independent to everything else. And if you think of it independently, you miss so much context of how to do that, especially in a business like ours. How I sell to one client is gonna be so contextual to how I've delivered for 50 other clients prior. And so actually, like I want this brand, I want every agent we spin up inside of it when it does a particular task to be able to have context of everything. So what we instead did is what are the skills that we need? Like, what are the things that we needed to do and build a really robust skill system? So I spent most of January and and parts of February, uh, we mapped out every task that we've ever done that we do. And I think I got to like 754 tasks mapped out. And like that comes from my days of running hotels, because in hotels you that's you you run like a paramilitary operation almost. So SOPs and stuff are like really normal for me. So I was able to map those out, which is a pretty massive feat, but we did it. And then I was like, okay, well, what skill, um, skill doc and AI language of like essentially an SOP for AI, what skill do I need to solve for this thing? Okay, cool. Okay, and then can I use that skill across many of the other tasks? And then we realized actually about 50 to 60 skills will cover all these tasks. Um, and you can adapt it. And there's some master ones that happen up at, you know, we sort of had a hierarchy of skill sets. So there's some that are just running in the background, they run every 15 minutes, every three hours, every six hours, and they're just stuff that happens. Like our update client skill is a really important one that runs three times a day 6 30 in the morning, midday, and 6 30 at night, and that goes again. Okay, since you last run this, what are all the emails that have been that have come into our tenant? What are all the chats that have happened in these sets of um Microsoft Teams chats? What are all the transcripts that have been saved? Okay, pull out all the information you need and update all the context files. And so that keeps everything up to date. That agent is just like a almost a project management tool, it's just like making sure everything knows where it is. So instead of going, oh, we need a bunch of agents running off and kind of like that true agentic world. I just don't know if it's really fully implemented a lot at the moment. Like there are stuff that do things autonomously, but is it truly like an agentic how do I say it? You know, like it's truly like acting independently. And the problem is I I I think it's like halfway there for a lot of people, but not truly fully there. So I instead of doing that and like across 20 people getting mistakes, I said actually this is a way simpler way. And I actually watched this um conversation with Anthropic and Google did a keynote talking about it. Like actually, just yes, let's say fully autonomous agent tech world is on its way, but actually for most businesses, a really simple context layer with really good skills and in the layer of automation is like 99 is better than 99% of most businesses out there. So that's kind of the architecture I built. So actually, I don't have one agent, I have like whenever I spin up a new terminal, it's essentially that makes sense. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

So, how have you taught yourself? Because there's many boomers out there with businesses that are getting a bit archaic. They maybe spun it up, started operating 20 years ago, built on old systems, and are still using that old system today because it's what they've always used. They're afraid to change it because they don't want to disrupt what's already working and it's working good enough for them at the moment. But they do know that AI is coming. They don't really know how to implement it or where to start, but they want to maybe start. So, how have you actually gone from zero to hero level in learning AI and then implementing it into your business?

SPEAKER_04 23:59

Uh, I think there's like, well, there's there's two parts to it. There's one, like my brain and how it works, like my my skill set in business is business, not marketing. And I think that that's um a real interesting thing to think about because a lot of business owners uh usually go into business, especially like say small businesses, they go into business because they're good at the thing that they do. Um I've I was never a marketer, I used to run hotels for a living. Um so I got into organic social, not because I'm good at organic social, but because I knew how to run a business and I could hire people who were really good at it. So I think that's a really important distinction for a lot of people. If you're a business owner and actually you the thing you're really good at is the thing you do, not business, then you probably need someone who understands business systems first. Because I understand that really well, like I said to you, I was able to break down all the things that we do. And as soon as I had that broken down, I just had to give that to AI, but okay, tell me how to automate it all, and then it was good. But a normal business owner will go who who isn't business minded, who's actually like learned business because they had to, but actually what they're really good at is being a plumber. Is for them, they're going, well, actually, I don't know what I do all day. I don't know all the processes really well. I just I I just know how to be a good plumber, don't know the thing. So my advice at that level, if and that's probably like, to be honest, that's probably like 80 to 90% of business owners out there. Uh they've they've got into business because they're good at a skill. For them, it's going, hey, you need to go talk to someone who can just interview you. You can you can do a chat for sure. You can do an AI, Claude, whatever, for sure you can do it. A lot of them will be too scared to do that or they're too old to think a reliable way. So go get a human, record the conversation, and just like start to break down your business. Like, what is it? What can you do? But most people are like, okay, cool, I see all this AI, but actually, what is it doing? Like, how can you get it? And and I find those conversations really hard to have with people. So I'm like, I don't give you a question. Like, it can do everything.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Like, that's the thing, it can do it. People think it's magic and you it can do everything, you know, it can do your marketing, it can do your content, it can do pay your finances, it can do everything for you, it can can like research your competitors. It's sort of like too overwhelming. People were like, where to start, and then that's why they don't start.

SPEAKER_04 26:12

That's why they don't start. So you need someone who can walk you through that process and put it in the uh order of priority and hierarchy. And so for me, the first thing was project management. That's the burden of our existence. Like um, we have 11 people in our team whose only job was project management and now have zero, and because it does it all on its own. And like, we didn't have to get rid of any of those people. They like they slowly leave and move on, and over the last 18 months we just refused to rehire. And I and I kind of knew this is the biggest burden for our business. And it's not because of the people, the people were awesome, it just had to be done. And and it was like, this is so tedious work that can be easily automated. So you go, what is the what is just one thing that you wish you could change? And like I had two calls with clients, uh, with people recently. I was talking about this, and one was um, I get I've literally got 4,000 unread emails in my inbox, Dan, and I can't keep on top of it, and I get so much stuff every day, and I miss ones from clients. And I was like, how many clients do you have? And I go, well, 30. I was like, you can just set up a super simple automation that is like anyone from this domain, send me a WhatsApp message and tell me what it is. So then you don't even look at it, like leave your inbox for EA, just leave it. Oh shit, and I'll just call them. And like they're like, oh, if I could do that, that would save me months of headaches. The amount of stuff I miss, and then clients get annoyed at me. And so just like that is the easiest gateway drug. Like, what is one thing that would change your world today if you did it? And then just go down that path. The problem is a lot of people don't know what that one thing is. Actually, it takes a bit of coaxing to get it out of them. So have a conversation with someone like, you know, jump on a call with someone who gets AI or like a business coach or the person you're talking to doesn't need to know AI, the person you're talking to needs to understand business. That's what they need to know. And then once you got the idea, you go, okay, cool. Okay, so Claude, I want to be able to do, I'm missing all these emails from my clients. Can you go and research 10 ways I could potentially sell for this? And it'll it'll figure it out for you.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

To break it down further into the technical side of things, because I think that's also a barrier stopping some people from starting as well, because it's kind of overwhelming, it's learning new software, it's a little bit scary for some people. Like, how have you taught yourself the technical side for setting up and operating with AI?

SPEAKER_04 28:30

Okay, so I um I actually don't think it's technical at all. I actually think people think it is, but I um I actually it's built on language models, it's not built on uh code or it's not built on computer language or nothing. I think if you're a middle-aged and older person in business and you're a bit scared to do it, the thing that you have to understand at your age or your qualification level um and expertise, you've got way better communication skills than someone in their 20s. Just just exponentially better because you've had to do it for so much longer. That skill is why you'll be good at AI. Like I was saying it to my father-in-law, like he used to be a GM of hotels, uh, actually similar to me, but he was um he went way further in his career than I did. He was like a fantastic GM and opened a bunch of great hotels with hundreds of thousands of staff all around the place, all around the world actually. Um and he was like, Oh, I'm not sure about this thing. I was like, you know how you like you would delegate to your team? That's how you talk to AI. Like, you just have to tell it, like, hey, I was thinking about this thing and I've got this idea and I need you to do it. Can you can you figure it out for me? And then it would do it. And then these days, if you trust it enough, you can just let it go. Do it as well. Like, you don't actually need technical skills. And if you have to do anything manually, you can I like the what I this is literally what I do. Um, I say to it, okay, if you need me to do that physically because you can't do something, can I need to like get a key for it or something, right? I'm like, break it down into uh a hierarchical numbered list with grade five reading level, and like and every like assume I'm the stupidest person you've ever met and make it as dumbed down as possible, and I'll just work through steps one by one. And every time I get stuck and I can't see it, I'll just screenshot it, put it back into and say, I don't, I'm not like break it down, give me all the steps again. I swear to god, like I am pretty like I do understand tech a bit, but when I'm when I'm doing stuff with AI, I become so stupid. I just like and I'm just like, no, because like I need it to be done exact, because if I did it myself, I might make shortcuts that might have have a long-term effect downstream. Because I might miss something, like I might not give it a scope that it needs to have, or something like that. So I um I should just literally say to say to like walk me through it, dumb it down. And I also tell it, don't shortcut this. Like make sure you've got like everything. Like if there's something else, like scopes are a real important bit for people who don't know who are listening. Like when you build like an app inside of say Zoom or whatever to access all your Zoom stuff, you have to give it access to things, and I'll say to it, like, what it like predict some future access you might need so I can go do it all now. Like, don't just get the things you need for this one task. You know what I do. What are some things I might need in the future? Because I don't want to have to go back through this process again. So like tell me the stuff. And so it'll give you a full list to do it with. And you know, sometimes I may make mistakes and not need stuff or need more stuff later on, but it'll still be better off than if you didn't. But so when it comes to technical stuff, I actually um the reason why I was able to do it is I'm not afraid to break things. Like, as much as my IT department hate me, like I would break, I'll break everything. I care. I last night I was fixing some flows in Clavio and I just set them off because I was just like doing it fast, and I literally emailed 220 people the wrong email. Um, and probably and I was like, oh, so I had to resend another email and say, sorry, forget that, I'm an idiot, I was playing a flawed, yes. But I just don't care about that. Like I'm like, fine, like it is what it is. Actually, like I get emails back from people like nah, this is cool, like it's cool to be part of your experiments then, like, because they know what you're doing almost. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But um, to my to my point is, I'm not I am technical actually, like I if I really had to, I know some stuff, but I don't use AI in a technical way. I actually use it in a really stupid way. Like I pretend that I'm really dumb with it. What I'm really good at and what where I've built my career on is that I'm very good at communicating to other people what I need from them. And now I just treat Claude, which we call Kevin, the same way. Like, hey Kevin, like this is what I'm trying to achieve. And I have it repeat back to me what it thinks I'm trying to um achieve in its own language. Uh and if we're on the same page, I'm like, oh, execute it.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Sounds good, like you're very good at following instructions. And I do the exact same when I'm working with Claude. I ask it to treat me like it's the first time I've ever approached this problem. I don't know how to build with AI, step it through, and I'll follow the instructions bit by bit. But I think it is kind of the the interface, the user experience kind of looks a little bit daunting because for the first time ever, people who are non-technical, non-coders can actually create code and create um applications on the webs or create these little agents at the ease of just talking to it. Uh, you don't even need to type to it anymore. You can just talk to it and it actually does work, which is kind of mind-blowing for a lot of people. I want to move on to uh like attention because there was a you I know that you set up an automation that was creating carousels to sell your webinar, right? And even I went back and I had a look at them. I was laughing because there were some spelling mistakes at them, but essentially they were doing the job, right? They were converting clients. And can you talk me through that process of setting up a carousel to sell a digital product online? And um, like does it actually matter whether it's slop or not, if it's providing value?

SPEAKER_04 34:01

Yeah, so uh for context, I the actual uh message in them was good. It was the message I wanted to do. And so there was about 12 of them or something coming up exactly on these carousels. Um and they were just talking about different parts of the build that I'd done um already. And when I uh my my goal was, okay, actually I know that these are good messages. I was gonna write, and it was all in my Kevin's my brain that I had, it had all the context of these things. And I said to it, okay, well, actually, I'm gonna see if you can autonomously figure this out how to generate these and make it all, schedule it, and do it all on your own. Here's the outcome I want. And I let it just do it. And uh, I mean, the comedy of errors that happened, or the main one that happened was that for some unknown reason it decided to use the lowest image generation model for Gemini when it's hard-coded to always use pro. And so it just got the text all wrong. And it I didn't check any of them, I just let them go. And yeah, well, I did like seven and a half grand roughly in sales directly attributed to those carousels. And the and the actual conversation was less of an AI conversation and more of just a human behavior conversation that like spelling mistakes might turn some people off. But for the majority of humans, like we don't really care. Like, it's the message we come there for. Like, what was the message that we got? And I think if I continued to do them every day and they're all that bad and I never fixed the people, but like, come on, Stan. Like, we I can make a better one than that. You're meant to be the AI expert. So it would have eroded my trust over time. But then like I knew I was running an experiment, I had to let it play out, see what happened. And I sort of made a video to tell everyone that, like, hey, here's what I actually did. Um, when it comes to AI slot, I think that for the most part, if you can improve it, you should over time. But for a lot of people, you don't really know what even AI slot is when it's yourself. Like it's really hard to understand. Like, you'll see people will say, Oh, that's AI slot, but probably only because you um there are lots of things that people will see every day at the moment that they won't realize is actually AI slop, and they kind of misinterpret what they think is AI slot. Like they'll look at my carousel and go, that's slot. And and the point is not really like really what AI slop is is like meaningless generation. Like it does nothing. Like there's no point to it. There's no point watching a cat with half a shark body swarming around it. Like, there's no point to it. Like that doesn't do it, it doesn't even entertain. Like, it's just slot, like it's just wasted time. My message still came across in my carousel. It was just a bad quality, it was a bad version of it. It wasn't necessarily slot, it still got a message across, even if you couldn't read one of words. Um, which is you know exactly the same thing if I just accidentally missed out it myself, which you know, as a human you do all the time. So I think like what I was trying to prove to people was actually just like if you know your shit, get your message out there. Like tell people tell people the story, like tell them the things. Like, if I can do seven and a half grand of actual slot, what if you just did you put a little bit more effort than I did, which was literally like I one-shot it on my floor to make it do it? And like, you know, like what if I just trip did three prompts instead of one, or just checked it before I twisted it? Maybe it would have been better. And that was my point was that like, does it really matter? And if it didn't go really well, that would have been interesting. That would have been kind of a shock because that would have been that would have told me a data point going, oh well, actually, story isn't all that isn't all that matters. And so I was it was like a bit nerve-wracking because if it didn't work, then I'll be like, my whole philosophy of content goes out the window because I figured the story was there.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

And but like it comes back down to the roots of telling the story, find that emotional feel. People are know who you are and following along with your journey and everything, and they're they can see you learning in real time. And I think that's really relatable as well, because there's so many people out there trying to figure out AI, but there's nobody that they can follow along on that journey of discoverability and failing in real time. And you're actually not afraid to fail in real time and share those experiences with your clients, with your audience, which I think is so awesome. Um, because it is true that there's no massive, you know, you don't can't go learn this at university yet. You know, there's no set master's degree, or there is probably butt coming up. But for a lot of people in my seat, your seat, and people that are following and watching, they're exactly the same. They know it's there and they're trying to discover it. So I think what you're doing, um, and I found you on Instagram. So I think that you're also across many other platforms. So how do you distribute to your different audiences across the different platforms? I know you've put a massive audience on LinkedIn, that's where you just start out. But across like LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, threads, uh, personal newsletters, like how do you distribute to these different audiences? Do you tailor it differently or do you just one-shot it all as well?

SPEAKER_04 39:02

Um, we have probably four main ways that we distribute stuff. Uh could argue five, but the four are my personal brand, the company brand, the staff's like employee-generated content, um, and then a newsletter, um, a company newsletter. And uh you could say the fifth one, arguably, is our podcast, my podcast that we do as well. It's kind of my personal brand, but it kind of sits separately. Um so my personal brand gets distributed across all socials pretty equally. The only thing I don't do is put my videos from Instagram and TikTok and YouTube onto um LinkedIn. And the only reason for that is I've got a kind of a different audience there that um they probably are interested in watching the video or like what's coming out in the videos, but they're not gonna watch a video on LinkedIn. They've probably got it on at work and their scrollings, and we know that from the behavior. I'm probably better off taking those videos and turning them into posts, like written posts. I could do that. It's actually like Claude could do that with its eyes closed, um, transcribing doing stuff. I just haven't done it yet. But so my brand is one way that we create content and distribute a message from my perspective. So, my perspective as a business owner on a journey building my business in public is essentially the brand. The company brand, um, which is our largest brand, so there's about 1.2 million followers across our company brand, um, on mostly Instagram and TikTok, and then a little bit on YouTube and LinkedIn. Um, that brand is pure entertainment, pure top of funnel. Um, it is based on this idea of boss versus employee. It's usually my employees taking the piss out of me, me rage baiting and getting angry back at them being the grumpy boss. Um, and there's our top of funnel um sort of stuff. It's pure entertainment, it's purely just like uh, hey, this is a cool brand. Like we like them, they're fun. And then it sees my face a lot. So then when they watch my personal brand, they make a connection. Um, then we have employee-generated content, so all my team are uh encouraged to make content on their own platform any way they want. Like it doesn't have to be about the business, it can be about anything. Um, they just have to be doing it with the intention to grow that platform and what are they learning from that intention? And uh people see it, they see it, and then they see them in the main in the main brand, and then they make the connection, they realize shit, this is attention seekers everywhere. Um, a LinkedIn that's very common, people walk in our office and be like, wait, this is all of LinkedIn on, like in this office. And then the um the newsletter is the only place in our entire content system where we talk about marketing properly. And so it is a marketing newsletter targeted at marketers and small business owners that goes out every single day. It is a very entertainment-first um newsletter, so it's very much like uh it's almost written, like it's tabloid, but it's very good information. Like Sophie, who writes it, when you read it, you can feel how bratty she is in the writing, and like that really comes across. She's like a marketing brat. And uh, but it's like that's the tone and feel that we want of it. It's really fun, but it's also very good information, like it's really high-level. She does a lot of research, she does a lot of um, she writes all of it, but she uses Claude to help. So she'll she'll see stuff because she's reading stuff all the time. She'll find a take on something that she thinks, and then she'll use Claude to do research on it to get uh get the data that she needs, and then she writes it. It'll give her a shell, and then she fills it in and writes in the way she wants. Uh so she writes one article every day, it goes out seven days a week. Um, so that's kind of our four ways we think about it. So, as a practical thing for other people, when you have a brand, that brand probably can show up the same way on all its platforms. And then if you want to tell a different story, then do it under a different brand. So you might have your company and the founder brand, it's probably where most people will start. Um, and then the third and easiest one to bring in is employee-generated content. How can you create a culture where your team feels safe to make their own content and you as a business owner or a leader understand that I don't need them to talk about me? People will make the connection on their own and they'll just feel this huge presence. People know that. Like people already, they'll see our team leave the golf and do their own things, and I get the kudos for it. Like people are like, oh, that that kind of he's extension CRA. That's awesome. I want that, you know. Like that's that's the byproduct of having employee-generated content.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

There's just this feeling of like, wow, this company's yeah, you're cross-pollinating across the whole entire digital world, right? And that means that eyes, you're winning attention across many different generations, across different um like female, male audiences. Uh, and I'm sure that all of your employees are have their own take. There's a marketing person, there's somebody who might be an athlete, and I mean, everybody's pr is projecting um their own take on the world, but it's coming back through into the channeling, like the core of all of your whole entire business is like. Getting attention and growing the whole entire dominance online, which I think is fantastic. So I have a little game for you that I want to play, and uh you're probably very familiar, familiar with it. It's uh fuck, marry, or kill between the different social media platforms. So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, or LinkedIn. You can marry one, fuck one, and kill one. Where are you gonna go?

SPEAKER_04 44:26

Um I would I would marry LinkedIn because it's where all the money's made. Um and I would probably fuck Instagram because it's my favorite. Oh, did you know?

SPEAKER_01 44:40

We can put YouTube in there as well.

SPEAKER_04 44:43

I I'd fuck YouTube, it's my favorite. It's uh it's all my guilty pleasure, let's put it that way. And then I would probably kill X. Like X is great, like in its own world, and I get it in its niches, but in my niche, it's like not. Like in AI, maybe, but like that's not really my niche. My niche is business owners. It just like doesn't pay for it.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

I work in the the tech world, but more like the crypto blockchain world as well. And X is where it's at. And also we're both here in New Zealand as well, which is like kind of a small island, developed island, but at the very bottom of the world in our own little micro bubble over here. But nobody's on X um in New Zealand at all. And I think I'm probably the only one of all of my friends, anybody that I know, no one would be on X, but uh internationally, I think even X1 one of the top apps and for news in America or something like that. So it's interesting to see the different apps, uh how they are used and how people prefer them in different um like geographies around the world. Um so yeah, I think that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_04 45:48

We had a client in uh Silicon Valley last year. We were over there helping them. So they were they're called Sunday Robotics, and they um we helped them like go public because they were not public on IPO, but public as their brand. They were in stealth up until that point. And uh so the AI robotics company, we did it all on X and it like it took off. It was crazy, just like the tech bros who are there and everyone in AI and robotics, and I think within like the first week we'd done like 10 million views across this brand that was the day before in stealth, and like the founders now got like 40,000 followers. Because like if you pick a niche that is big on X, you'll get them all, like they'll all come in jokes. So, like I could probably do AI content there. I'd have to change the approach because it's it's a different it it it looks different on X uh from the way I do it, but um it is just one of those platforms, like you say, like in New Zealand, no one's on it, so it's like and even in Australia, no one's on it, so like no immediate impact for me. Um and also I just like don't enjoy scrolling on it, like I don't enjoy the content on it, so because of it, I don't buy into it. How knowing how to use it, yeah. I mean, it's easy enough to go viral on it if you really want to. It works all the same way as all the other platforms. It's just like for me, like probably the people I'd attract on there probably know more about AI than I do, so I'm not gonna really sell them. Whereas on like Instagram and LinkedIn, like I'm lights years ahead of most of them. So I'm finding a better audience, especially around AI and social on those platforms, whereas X like you get like the hardcore nerds, like the hardcore ones, which is cool, but like I'm a massive nerd, but like I'm thinking of it from business perspective, so I feel good.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

I almost agree on that as well, because yeah, it's definitely where the hardcore people is where I found out about open core first, it's where a lot of the AI news drops first. And um, but I don't post my stuff on there because again, I think they'll be ripped to shreds because they're way more advanced.

SPEAKER_04 47:43

I'd get smashed in there. Like the stuff I do, people who get what I do, they're like, come on, bro, like you're not doing that right. And like people message me all the time on it on Instagram, like, mate, you need to go swap this key out. You exposed it all like shit, or like it's in your little, and I'd go in and change it. I'd get distraught on X.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

They wouldn't be absolutely just okay, yeah, you'd be drained in seconds.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

All right, I wanted to know this one because you built your attention seekers marketing agency on the philosophy of organic, no ad. And now you're spending three and a half thousand dollars a day on meta-ads. What changed and how do you run your ads? What's that process look like?

SPEAKER_04 48:25

So um we we still don't run ads necessarily for the agency. I think um we my philosophy of not needing to run ads was that uh in the beginning, we uh it wouldn't have made sense for an agency to run ads the way that we did. Um it would have cost a stupid amount of money to do it to the level we needed it to be. And the return would have been really slow on it actually. Because like when you run ads for a service-based business, you're getting a lot of bad leads. Like it's a lot of bad, like a lot of them are like opportunistic people. Um whereas actually in service-based business, what you're looking for is alignment with the person that you're trying to do business with. So you're trying to find the right type of audience, and you do that through telling stories over time and they've got trust, and then price stops becoming the reason they choose you, and trust becomes the reason they choose you. Whereas from an ad, um price is far more they're far more price sensitive, right? Um, also, I can't make a sale in an ad. I have to make the sale after probably three to four weeks of nurturing the client. So it's like there's no direct correlation to it either. So I I don't I still don't believe that most service-based businesses should run ads until you're a certain scale where you've got a massive sales team that needs to be fed leads. Um, but when it comes down to product, so we're selling these digital products, we're we're literally just only advertising the webinars. That's kind of our top of funnel product. You can buy it's it's small enough of a uh product in terms of price that you can make that decision right then and there in the ad and buy, like a typical e-commerce product, right? Like if you're gonna buy something in e-commerce shopping, you can buy it right then and there. And I can all I had to figure out in that process was can I sell these webinars? Like, is my are my ad costs less than the ticket price? If so, keep dumping money into it. At the moment, we're kind of running on like a three to one, so that's amazing. I give it a dollar, it gives me three dollars back, I'll run it all day long. I'm trying, I can't spend enough money fast enough, right? That's like what I'm trying to do. It'll eventually like well, I don't know. I if I keep feeding it good creative, and I, you know, I've only been doing it through New Zealand, Australia at the moment, so I start to open that out to the US and the UK, like that'll um that'll keep expanding. There's more and more audiences. Um we my like goal with that is lit literally like how much can I spend? Like, actually, like how fast can I scale this up? But with meta ads, you can't do that, you can't just turn it from 3,000 a day to 30,000 a day. Like it'll just start wasting money. You've got to slowly step it up. So, how do we do that? Well, there's two ways we do it. First of all, which I think is somewhat misleading when people like myself and other people talk about using AI to do meta-ads, is you have to understand the creative, you have to understand what is it that is gonna make a good piece of content for people to watch and actually buy from. And out there at the moment, with all this analysis on ads is done from current ads. And I just don't think current ads are very good. I think a lot of people uh a lot of ad companies are math people and they make they they like they're extrapolating data out of ads that they came up with, but not necessarily extrapolating data out of ads that creative people have come up with. Um, because a lot of creative people only get given jobs that are like TV ad level stuff, right? Like the big things. So you don't get like these the best creative minds making simple meta ads, like you're just not getting them on those jobs enough of them. And so as a company that does organic content, literally like if you watch my webinar ads, most of them are just like my posts that were organic that performed well as a mini chat flow, and we just push them to buy them. And so that piece there, you can't, I don't think you can automate it yet. Like, I just don't think the tools are really there anyway to watch video properly and analyze them right. I I don't think that I think that's the skill bit that comes in. So that bit there, don't take it for granted. But if you if you don't have that, sure, there are like the ads that e-commerce brands are working with, the static ads and all the things they do, there's enough of it. They obviously make money, so they're still good. I just think you can do them better. So there is you can autonomize that, but I think as more and more people do that, that's gonna get harder and harder to do because you know Facebook already creates the ads for free almost anyway. So, but if everyone's doing the same, what's makes you stand out? So that's the first part of it. I think that that is a human problem that humans should solve. People can argue with me with that. The second part is like the buy-in of it, the buy-in of it is all automated. Like Claude is like Claude can set up a campaign, set up all the parameters of what you need it to do. It can monitor it, you can ask it to like do an analysis every day to see what's working and what's not, recommendations, um, and that all of that work is is like a real agency business. Like so many agencies do media buying, they don't do any creative. All they care, all they do is place ads, watch the trends, and then tell someone else to go make them more creative. Claude can do all of that. Like, and actually, Facebook's even making it easier to do, right? They've released the new um thing just in the last week that makes it even easier for Claude to do that. Um so that part of it, the way I had to do it, I haven't played with the new way that um Meta released, but um the way I did it was just set up a meta app. Super simple. Claude taught me the steps one by one, how to go and do it. And then I just talked to Claude and I just said, like, hey, like we built a skill which was meta ads. I run Ford slash meta ads or meta campaign, and then it asked me a few questions, says, Cool, what is this? Gives me the things, and then it goes, okay, here's a fold. I've just created a folder, go put all your creative in that folder, and then I'll I'll set up the ad. And then it sets it up, and I just have to go in and approve it. Turn I I still turn them on, just to ensure it hasn't done like a $40,000 a day or something. Um, you know, you still want to sometimes they hallucinate when they shouldn't, and so you just go double check. Um and then that's it. I just turn them on, and then every day, like I don't I look at meta ads for like a top line view of like cost per acquisition just to see is it kind of trending the way I want. But like today, actually this afternoon, I've blocked out some time. Um I know that my trend I'm trending down, like I'm trending um my cost per acquisitions is trending the wrong way, it's getting more expensive. And so I'm gonna have a proper get to do a proper analysis and think, and I'll probably make four or five new ads this afternoon put into it, like to help it. So that's all done by meta. Like, um, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

So are you turning yourself into the advert? Is that what I understood? So you're creating a video talking about the webinars or just showing your what you're doing behind the scenes. You post that onto your Instagram and then you assess whether it was received well or not by your audience, then you turn that into an ad, you put that into a folder and then get Claude to actually run that and pump it out. Use Claude to analyze that data and then tweak or whatever. So when you say this afternoon you're gonna go record some more ads, you're just gonna go make some more content, pop it up on your profile and see how it performs, and then run it from there. Is that the workflow?

SPEAKER_04 55:38

Pretty much, pretty much. There'll be a couple ads that I'll do that will be direct that I'll just chuck straight in there because we would have learnt enough. I mean, we've spent since the last time I changed ads, you know, we would have spent 40 grand by now. Um so there'll be enough data in there to know actually, this worked really well. I'll sit down, we'll and analyze it as a team to be what did this why why did this creative work really well? Claude can't really understand that because it can't get full context of what was in it and everything. So we'll sit down and go, what why what's our hypothesis on this? And we'll make two or three versions of it that are different that I can just put straight up. But then I'll also know, hey, this organic creative that we did that worked really well organically, it did even better once we put money behind it. It did this, make three or four more versions of that content. So, and one of them that's really simple for us that's worked every time is me just like it's a time lapse from here pointing this way of my computer screen. Of me just literally grinding away work in I made this much money in a voiceover. Like one of them, one of those videos is probably responsible for about 80,000 bucks in April. Wow. Like it maybe not, maybe 60,000 bucks and April, just that one, it just went off. Like it just has converted so well and still is converting really well. So, how can I make another version of that? What was it um that did really well? We've done other versions of it that have performed okay, not as good. So, was there something else in it? Was there was the number that I said in? I think that one was 90, I made $95,000 at that point. Was it the 95? Like when I did the hey, we did 200k, maybe it didn't perform as well. Maybe there's something just with numbers, you know. No, certain numbers do different things to our brain. So it's all those little things you're looking at. And uh Claude can do some of it, like you can give it a screenshot and analyze, but like there's a layer of human intuition there that we kind of just know to come up with hypothesis for it. I think in the future, like obviously as these systems get smarter and faster, they can actually analyze video properly, because at the moment that's way too intensive for it. Um, yeah, it'll it'll be hard to figure out. They'll find patterns that we never didn't do existed.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

Well, what would be your advice to somebody if they didn't already have an audience and say they're starting a fresh Instagram account? And so a lot of or some of your traction must have come because you've already built seven years of you know branding online. So if somebody was starting to zero to grow, how would they start? It can they do use the same recipe?

SPEAKER_04 58:06

Yeah, I think that um if you were to just like depending on what it is that you're trying to build, um, if you I think on a personal brand on Instagram, it's really um good if you just share your journey of what you're doing and showcase that process of it. I did mine obviously recently with the day such and such until I turn 40, and then I start sharing AI things and I splatter in other stuff as well to sort of round out my person. Um but if you just share your journey and you keep iterating and changing, you could get to 20,000, 30,000 followers like within a month, like pretty easily. Like, especially if you took it to some level of extreme of what you do, you can like I could go even more extreme, I could actually try like my time lapse content is so lazy, like it's so lazy content that I'll literally get to like 11 o'clock. I've been grinding on cord for the whole day, and I'm like, oh damn it, I'm gonna do something. Luckily, I had the foresight to put my um uh time lapse up before I sat down. But if I think for people who like are new and need this to grow fast, who don't have the six years, seven years that I've had behind me, just like put out four or five bits of content every single day, try different things. Like, it's not that hard to grow on Instagram and other platforms if you just try. Like most people just don't try. They'll do three or four posts of artists as well, they don't give it up. Just try a little bit harder. Just like it, you're you're you're asking to uh create a platform that can generate 200 grand like mine, like put some effort in it. Like if it's about to deliver a price of 200k a month, like put a bit of work in and just try figure this out. It's not that there's enough resources. So if I was starting from zero, which essentially my Instagram was kind of zero, like people knew my face because of things, but my Instagram, a lot of my followers on that are different to the other, the other platforms. Um, I found a whole new sort of audience. I just said, okay, what is my identity here? Okay, I'm this business owner who's adopting AI. And my whole identity on all my other platforms has always been me building in public. So I get cool. I'm gonna build my new AI first business in public as I do it. And then I realized that actually I'm I didn't know at first, actually, but when I started posting it in the feedback I was getting, I was like, bro, like how do you like what do you what is this? Like, what is called code? And I realized I found a part of the internet that was like, I mean, actually, it's 99% of the population. They're like, wait, what is this? This is crazy. How did you do that? This is crazy. I've heard of these things, but like you're showing us, and then leaned right into it. So if I was someone else, I would be like, well, what is it that you're trying to build? Because not everyone's gonna do an AI first thing, they'll have other stuff that they're gonna do. Um, just get your identity right, lean in it, and then just double down this week. So that's why on the weekends when I don't have client work, I'll put out five posts a day because I'm testing stuff. Like I'm just trying, what can I figure it out?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

What's the biggest excuse and stupidest excuse that you've heard for stopping people from putting out content?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:00

I think the most common one is insecurity. Like, I don't think it's stupid, I just think it's it's the most common. Most people are scared. And you know, as a fellow Kiwi, like you know, like in New Zealand, we'll often talk about it being tool poppy or or whatever. And a lot of people use that excuse that Kiwis don't do that, like we don't put ourselves out there, but that that's not true. The humans don't do it. Like, humans are all insecure. Literally I was doing a cool with a bunch of guys in our communities and there's a guy from California, I had him up or talking through, and he's like, I was like, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you gonna put your face? He wanted to put like an AI avatar in place. He's like, Oh, I just don't want to deal with all the backlash and all the negative comments. I was like, and I and I I said to him on the call, I was like, you know, every Kiwi in New Zealand would think that every American should just go out there, just put themselves out there. We just we all say it to ourselves, oh yeah, the Americans are so out. And I was like, it's actually just because we see all your media, which is a tiny percentage of your population. But most people in the world are very insecure um when it comes to what other people think about them. And so that's a big barrier. It's the most common. I get it, I I don't I don't care what other people think, but most people do. The the stupidest thing I think that um people do is oh, I'll wait till I've done this and then I could do it. Like I was still gonna guy last night, and and and no offense to this guy, he's the weapon, but he was like, oh, he just built a business. His first year in business, he'd done 800 grand. And he was like, no, no, I'm just gonna wait until I got to a million and then I can do it, because then people, you know, it's a million people that trust me. I was like, no one's gonna know. Like, no one cares. Like, no one, like people just want to know what the hell you did, mate. Like, you were in prison two years ago, and now you've like you've created this super wholesome company, changed your whole life, and created a way forward that you never have to go back to that world ever again, and you're helping people out of the same situation. Bro, like, as if people aren't gonna watch that story, like that's amazing, right? But his like actually he's not stupid, he's actually real smart, obviously, what he's done. But that is a like what I would call a stupid excuse where you're waiting for this thing. But actually, what people want to know is how did you get to that piece? Like, people would love my story if they are because they're like, wait, we saw you break it like all the way along. We've we've gotten the emails that you shouldn't have sent. Like, we're part of that process. Shit, but he's he's still succeeding, and that's cool. And and I've been bus building this business in public since literally day one when I quit my job six years ago, six and a half years ago. So I have a lot of people who have been following since the beginning, they're like, man, this is the best, because we know you didn't just get money from some dad who helped you do some stuff, or you didn't just raise like we've seen that you struggle. So I like that I think is a stupid reason to not do it. It's like, oh, I'll just wait till this and then I can. No, no. Tell me how you're gonna get there, and then tell me how you're gonna get to the next one. That's what I want to know the end bit in between.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

I was talking about it's the story to get to the destination, not once you're at the destination, where to next. And I think that's the most relatable part of the journey, the zero to one. Um, whereas when you're on that journey, perhaps you're looking at the one to one hundred, that's where your eyes are. But the people want to know how did you actually go from the zero, like the initial phases of that. So I think that's super important. Now, anyway, I'm gonna wrap this one up and I want to finish on one question that I asked all of my guests. So AI can do a lot of things today. What is one thing that you hope that AI never takes away from us?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:19

That's a honestly, that's such an interesting question. I am such a technophile that, like, is there something I mean, I would be disappointed if technology took away my neck techniques.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

I love that answer.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:38

I would that would be you know how good it is to eat a good meal? That is the that is like the best thing in life, like that. That is up there with sex, like that is as good as it gets. And uh, you know, like I think like Matrix, right? Like the slot that they got served. Like, imagine if we worked lived in a world where um AI was like, no humans, this is all you need. You don't need anything else.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

Maybe that'll be just a what's your death room meal? I have to know.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:04

Oh, you know what? Actually, my death row meal is actually real stupid. Um it's just like the best bread ever with the best butter and some soda.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

And here you are talking about AI taking. I know.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:17

No, no, no. There is there is like literally in my mind, I like I love, I'm I'm a I used to run hotels on February, I've eaten all the foods and I love it all. But there is something so simple with like a good bread, like hot loaf of bread or some butter and some salt. It is like crack. And actually, like when you do get it, it's like I'm already salivating now. Um, but that's like that's literally like everyone always asks me, like, what is that? It's like and and they and like when I worked in hospital, I worked at some like the literally in London. When I worked in London, I like literally one best restaurant in London. And um still like my favorite dish on the menu was like the freshly baked bread that the chef would make. I was like, there's just something about it. That like it's its simplicity that makes it so good. And like like I'm a pepperoni pizza type of guy. Like I'm not, I don't, I just want it simple, like cheese and and a couple bits of pepperoni. And I think there's something like really unique in this simplicity. I love like super intense flavors and stuff that yeah, but it's so it's so dumb coming from a foodie. I think that's the thing. When you've tried everything, you realize that the best things that is such a great art.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

I could just imagine you and a sal just receiving your nice, freshly baked dough of bread, and it's like just hoffing into it, and the people will be like, what the hell, man? Like final wishes, a loaf of uh great bread. But I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

So, Stanley, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people uh find your webinars? We'll drop all of the information down here in the links. But in case somebody's listening or watching, how do people follow along with your journey, sign up for your webinars, perhaps come along into your lock-in, which we haven't even had time to speak, speak about if that's still going ahead? Sounds super epic. But yeah, how do people uh follow your content and learn from you?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:01

Yeah, look, the best way is just my name's Stanley Henry. I've been out there long enough that if you Google it, put an AI, you'll probably find it. Um, yeah, lock-in's happening next weekend. Not this weekend, next weekend. It's gonna be awesome. We've got a bunch of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Can we quickly just tell people what this lock-in is?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:16

Oh, yeah, it's like a 36-hour lock-in. It's 9 a.m. Saturday morning to 9 p.m. Sunday night. There's like a six-hour break in between to go home and sleep, but we're literally just gonna fill the office with business owners or just people who are keen who just will build shit together. We've kind of done it for people who are at a level of like business or business leaders, so it's not just lots of uh young guys just like trying to figure it out for the first time. Like try to put a room of people who are actually business owners, and one of the ways we did that, it costs a thousand bucks museum dollars, but in return, it's like fully catered. We've got a massus coming, like it's like like five-star coding, it's gonna be actually crazy. Um, but you're paying for two things, you're paying for like um all the stuff that we get, but you're actually paying to be in a room with other people who are doing the same thing, and when you bounce ideas off like that, it'll unlock so much. Like, I'm I'm pretty good at it, but when I talk to other people what they're doing, I'm like, wait, wait, that's actually smart, so smart. I should do that. And then I just saved myself a month of trying to figure out that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:13

That uh network and the power of network and the knowledge that you can get from other people bouncing our ideas off is very like invaluable. And uh I think that's also something that the AI world is missing because we're all remote working from in our own little fens or burrows or cages or whatever you want to call it, figuring it out. So um, yeah. Anyway, I'll wrap it up on that. So um, your name on Instagram, we'll pop the details down below. Anything before we go, but otherwise, yeah, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been so great to connect.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

Yeah, nah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.