AI Spotlight: How ‘Smarty Pants’ Went from Idea to Amazon Bestseller Fame

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Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

Hey, what's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show in association with Believe Network, the podcast where we spotlight innovators creators, visionaries, and game changers reshaping industries. I'm your host CJ Moneyway Johnson, and today we're exploring the fascinating intersection of creativity and technology through the lenses of artificial intelligence. Our guest today is Eric Archer, Emmy Award-winning AI video specialist and creative strategist with nearly two decades of experience in video production and generative AI. Eric is the creator of SmartyPants, a revolutionary AI tool ecosystem transforming how businesses and individuals approach problem solving and content creation. He's also produced groundbreaking projects like Rufus and the first artist redefining what's possible in cinematic storytelling through AI. Eric, welcome to the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show, man. We're excited to have you today.

I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. So, Eric, man, you've had such a diverse background in both video and production and AI. Can you take us through your journey? How did you get into the world of generative AI and video storytelling?

Sure.

Well, I've been in television for a little over 20 years now.

Mm-hmm.

And so I came out of school with a film studies degree and went through all of the traditional stages that you would have gone through, you know, in a traditional production career. I moved to New York and I spent 5 years climbing the ladder there as a sort of a, you know, an office manager first, or unpaid intern first, and an office manager, coordinator, camera operator, producer, and then moved out to LA and put in some years doing that for bigger studios. And then came back to my home state of Massachusetts where I got into the public side of television, the nonprofit side of television, where I've been for the last 15 years or so. And so I've always just been adapting to the latest and greatest technology. You know, it's— it was, you know, analog to digital, and then it was, um, cell phone technology, green screen technology, DV, CGI, the next social media network. It's always kind of what's next, what do I need to learn, what do I need to be anticipating. And AI stuff was just more of those new tools. It was like, okay, I can see— this is a couple years ago— I can see that these tools are going to change my business, they're going to change workflows, and they're going to change how I can do things like research and image creation. And I use images all the time in the work that I do. So it just became really obvious to me really early that, that this stuff was stuff that I needed to learn. And so I dove in, and as soon as I did, I just realized how exciting and powerful all this stuff is. And I've been making some projects that are a lot of fun and kind of like proofs of concept of where the state of the technology is today. Just trying to spread the word because I think it's a resource that people really need to take advantage of. I think it's powerful and it really transforms what the individual, particularly the individual creator, is capable of now.

And I agree with you. I'm dibbling and dabbling in some stuff right now. I'd like to talk to you off the air about, man, when we get done with this. Get in there. That's very interesting because, man, every day, that's just my thing. I'm working on a project myself. And it's fun just creating, generating a script or, you know what I'm saying, the storyline. And then the most part I like doing, man, is the image creation, you know what I'm saying, to try to fit what you're trying to do. And I just got into it, man. I love it. I be at work doing it. I be at home doing it. You know, it's fun, man. So, so, hey, man, you won awards like the Telly and the Communicator Awards for your work in AI. What inspired you to start blending creativity with AI technology?

Well, as soon as I started to play around with these tools, particularly Midjourney, which is a really prominent image generating tool, uh, when I started to see that and play around with that, I started to think about how I could use it. Okay, now I can generate pretty much any kind of image. And so as a professional video producer, what can I do now? Like, what changes? And so I needed a, a project, and I found some material that my dad had done, some ancestry.com research and like some research into our family tree and stuff. And we all go— we go way back in the Salem, Massachusetts area, Salem Witch Trials area. We go way, way back. And so he has dug up pictures and dates and names and anecdotes and occupations and all this kind of data. And so I was like, maybe that is my project. Maybe I can kind of take some of this material he found and bring it to life with generative tools and make a little short video. And so that's what I did. I made a little video about my great-great-great-grandfather. His name was Rufus, and he was a barrel maker in the 1800s in Salem, and he was a volunteer firefighter, and he had 4 kids like me, and lives just down the road from me, or lived. And so I had two pictures of him and one of his gravestone. And so I just used all these AI tools to do more research and think about what his life was like and what was going on at that time in that area and look at Google Images and bring those in and really try to like tell the story in a couple minutes. I did voiceover as him, and I used some AI voiceover for that. And AI sound effects. And all of a sudden, these two pictures that I started with and some dates and names and things came to life in this little video. And it was just a really kind of a cool experience and a way to show that I think this is where we are, this sort of like Ken Burns-style documentary feel that's very simple— one picture, two picture, three picture— with some simple movement and just good audio and good storytelling. And that's it. So that was the first project that kind of— it got a lot of attention and kind of got me excited about pursuing this more and more. And ever since then, this was January of '24, I've just been kind of keeping up. My projects are kind of just keeping up, keeping in that same vein of like, let me just show everyone where I think the state of the art of storytelling is now. It's changing so often and so much. So it's like, all right, time to do another one and show everyone now it's here. You know, so that's kind of what I've been doing.

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Man, I love it, man. I'm soaking it in. I love it. And because, like I told you, I'm working on something and I really don't want to let people know what I'm working on until I get done. I tell people, I say, I got some stew, you know, I'm finna put some gumbo in the pot. I'm preparing it right now. Because I'm trying to get ideas because, you know, as a creative creator and being creative, sometimes you may come up with a concept and you'll have the whole concept done and then you'll start thinking about some more things and be like, you know what, I can implement this, this, and that, and then it scraps the whole beginning of the concept and you just start all over again. You know what I'm saying? Because that's just part of being creative because you want to put the best things out there. That you possibly can. And like you say, the research— like, I'm listening, man, I'm listening. Definitely want to talk to you about some things. So, E, your creation SmartyPants has been described as an ecosystem of over 100 custom AI tools. What was the vision behind this system, and how is it empowering users to harness AI effectively?

So If you're familiar with ChatGPT, then you know that you can go— if you get the paid plan, the $20 a month plan, that's what I'm on. You can— yeah, so you can make custom GPTs. Are you familiar with custom GPTs?

Uh, no. I mean, I just do the chat and just, you know, put in there what I want them to create, or, you know, saying like, yeah, things like that. I'm listening.

So this is something that I think you'll find really interesting. You can go into ChatGPT with the $20 a month subscription and create what are called custom GPTs. And the quickest way to get familiar with these is to go in and they're already there in ChatGPT. If you explore ChatGPT custom GPTs, you'll see other people have made them. OpenAI has made some too, and they do all kinds of different stuff. And basically what it's doing is it's a lot, you know how when you use ChatGPT, it's just a general purpose large language model. It'll go and try to answer anything generally. But what custom GPTs allow you to do is put a little set of parameters, specific parameters on top of ChatGPT. And it basically says like, I only want you to use ChatGPT's power for this one little thing. And you can kind of save that as a little tool of yours. So for example, one of the first ones I made was just I run a nonprofit TV station by day, and we have a number of documents that are like our main documents for our organization, like our handbook, our brand guidelines, our contract, our strategic plan, things like that. So you can upload documents like that into a custom GPT and tell it, I want you to answer questions from these documents. And then I can give that GPT to my staff. And say, if you have questions that might be in these documents, you can just ask this GPT now. So if they want to know what the dress code is or they want to know what the strategic plan is, they can go to this little tool now. And this is no code. This is just prompting this thing how to work. You can make these things. And so I started to make these things for myself, for my work. I just figured out little ways to just make these things like help me do my work faster. And then what I realized is that I could make them in a way that were general for business. When I took over the TV station, I had never been in a management role before, so I didn't know a lot of the business frameworks that I would need or how they worked or that they even existed in a lot of cases. And sometimes I would have to pay a consultant to come in and teach me this stuff. Because I just hadn't had the experience before. So what I did was I started to make tools that do those different analyses and mental or business frameworks and mental models and different things like that. And so all they do is they engage you in a question and answer, and by getting the information from you, then they go perform the analysis. So there's something called like a SWOT analysis, and SWOT is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And it's like this quadrant thing and you're supposed to, you know, put your strengths and weaknesses in and helps you figure out strategically kind of where you're at and everything. And so now I have a GPT that will just ask you what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, and things like that, and kind of through this question and answer put together this analysis for you. And so I wound up making like 150 of these things that do all kinds of different business tasks and you can use them to help yourself. So it's just a way to sort of like, you know, help a solopreneur or a startup founder or someone who doesn't have a lot of business experience, or even if you do and you just haven't done this particular kind of thing before, I think it'll be really helpful to you. You know, I had a mobile app once and I tried to raise a bunch of money and like make a big thing out of it, and I didn't know so many things about how to make that work. And so I think if I had had some of these tools to help me figure out the different parts of business, it would have been very helpful. It's kind of hard to explain without visuals, but that's essentially what's going on.

Yeah, I like that, man. You know, like they say, uh, I think when I first started in this, you know, you have mentors and you listen to people, and they were talking about a chat box, you know, something that it just do what you wanted to do. And I like how you say how you could just implement things in, in this analysis and then it'll do this and that for you. Hey man, I'm soaking it up, E-man. I'm soaking it up. I like it, man. I like it. Now E, let me ask you, man. SmartyPants was recently featured in the Amazon bestseller, The CEO's AI Playbook. What impact has this exposure had on your work and the growth of this tool?

Yeah, it's been pretty amazing. It's such early days for AI. In general that everybody is trying to learn it at the same time.

Every—

sort of dropped on everyone's doorstep at the same time, and now everyone from interns to C-suite executives are trying to learn this technology. And so I think if you have projects in this space, people are interested just because there aren't that many projects yet. And so the fact that someone like myself who had no real prior experience. I don't know how to code, you know, I was just a video producer in obscurity really until a couple years ago. And then made these tools and then a lot of people started to take notice. And so it's gotten some great attention. And what's more exciting than the attention is the fact that I'm starting to collaborate with people who are bringing their subject matter expertise and combining with my custom GPT building expertise and we're kind of collaborating on these things that we can co-market and revenue share and things like that. So for example, like I have a product market fit GPT if you're trying to figure out product market fit, but I paired up with this marketer who has his own 11-step proprietary product market fit framework. And so we baked his 11-step framework into a GPT and now people can utilize his framework without him. They can just— it'll walk you through his framework. And so we can kind of co-market that. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for those kinds of collaborations. I have another friend who's in real estate and we're building him a bunch of GPTs and stuff for everything from like, welcome to my city that you could give to a client or things that help with processing documents and things like that.

So all, so all of this information and everything is in the book, like how to—

So the SmartyPants tool is featured in the book, but SmartyPants itself is available for free and it's on a, on a platform called Gumroad. And I'm sure we could share the link, but people can grab the link there. And it will take you to the platform where all the tools are, and you can try them out. And then if you do, I'd love it if you let me know what you think, because it's a work in progress.

Okay, I didn't have this on my question list, but just let me ask you this question. So you say SmartyPants is free, it's a free tool. Why did you, you know, saying, just curious, it's such a great tool, why are you letting it go for free?

Well, it may not always be free, but I found Gumroad recently, and what I liked about it was that it had a free option that enabled people to pay something if they wanted to. And so I thought that would be a nice first step because I don't really know its value and I want to get some feedback and usership data and things like that. So I really want people to try it right now and just tell me if it's good or bad or broken or whatever. And, um, you know, if you're willing to do that, then take the link and use it for free. You know, I think it feels good to give people that kind of resource. And then down the line, if things continue going well, then maybe I'll monetize parts or all of it. It seems pretty easy to turn that on, but right now, you know, it's so early, I'd rather just get it in people's hands and see if people find value in it.

Okay, no problem, because I'm going to get on there today and check it out. I'm getting on there today and check it out. I told you before we got on here, I told you I liked you, Eric. Don't like Boston, but I like you.

Fair enough.

And I like what you bring to the table today. Uh, hey, I don't know who this podcast episode is for or if it's for anybody else out there, but I know that it's for me right now. Hey, so E, AI is often seen as complex and intimidating. How do you ensure that SmartyPants remains accessible and easy to use for people who may not have a technical background?

Sure.

Well, I mean, I think this level of AI technology that we're at in general is the easiest technology you'll ever learn. It's because it's conversational. That it's so easy. You really don't have to learn anything technical to utilize these platforms. If you want to get deep into image generation and stuff, then there's a little bit of learning curve. But for the most part, using tools like the ones that I've made only require the ability to have a conversation or answer questions. You know, you make a free account at this platform called Whimsical where I have everything hosted, and then you can go in there and poke around. All you're doing is clicking on links and then clicking on a button to engage with the tool, and then it walks you through everything. So it's designed to be as easy as possible for completely non-technical people. That's not necessarily the point, but it is that easy. You know, I think it's as valuable to a C-suite executive with 30 years of experience as it is to a junior employee, just in different ways. I think for a junior employee or someone just starting out, they'll find a lot of educational value in it because they'll probably be like, "Oh, I didn't even know these frameworks were a thing. Like, what is a PESTLE analysis? What is a gap analysis? What are these things?" That's where I was at a certain point. And then a senior executive or someone with a lot of experience can have a very high-level conversation with these things, a very high-level analysis conversation. So, I think it's got a lot of broad value.

Mm, man, I'm liking it. I'm liking it. E-Man, you touched on it earlier about, you know, your grandfather and the story that you started creating, and you've produced some incredibly innovative projects like Rufus and The First Artist. Can you share the story a little bit more in detail about Rufus and how you used AI to bring the life of a 19th century copper to the screen?

Sure.

Well, so I started with a lot of research around what was going on. My ancestor lived through almost the entire 1800s, and so I was able to use some AI tools to do some pretty deep research about what was going on right where he lived in the years where he lived. And it wasn't that long ago that there weren't pictures available also, and so Pretty quickly, I was able to get a lot of information and a lot of imagery together that was specific to that time and place. And fortunately, I had a couple pictures of him, and so I was able to ingest those into some of the image generation tools and just try to make them look more cinematic at first. You know, I had this little sort of like wallet-sized fuzzy picture of him, and I was able with AI to make a 16:9 beautiful, like, film glossy image of the same guy, basically. And that alone is pretty powerful, just that I can, like, now make this beautifully cinematic image as if a cinematographer took a film camera out at magic hour and shot my ancestor on— in these Salem streets with the cobblestones, everything. It's like, wow, this is amazing, you know? And now I can go into ElevenLabs and I can type out his words and have it pick a voice that sounds like he might have sounded and have him speak to me in words that he might have said. And I can make a GPT all about him and actually sort of fake communicate with him. I interviewed him as if he was real. And all the sound design, you know, horse hooves on cobblestones and different things, you know, the seaport sounds and different stuff like that, you can make all those effects in ElevenLabs and other tools now. And so I'd make all those pictures and I'd use other tools to turn the pictures into video clips and then edit all those video clips together into the final piece. So it's kind of like being like a music DJ where you're like taking little samples and bits and pieces and now kind of mashing them all up into video.

Yeah.

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You know, I laugh because you know how sometimes you be at church And the pastor— I know our pastor just said this yesterday— he said, yeah, I'm coming down your street, you know what I'm saying? I'm coming down your street. And man, if you not on my street right now, uh, because just last night I stayed up till 4 o'clock this morning because I had an idea, you know. I'm working on— like I said, I'm working on something. I had an idea. I got a cousin who does the music production, so, you know, he— it's just me and him right now because I'm trying to get him in 'Cause you know, I had, you want to have music for the scene. And I remember we was working with some guys before, you know, they wanted us to get into some stuff they was doing. And my cousin said, well, I need a treatment. You know, I need the, I need a treatment. I need the visuals. I need to see what I'm doing, you know, whether to bring this in and to bring that in. And so I remembered that when he told them that, so I want to give him a treatment, right? And so I did a storyboard a couple weeks ago. And so I say, man, I, you know, I, I kind of need the beats and everything so I can put it on iMovie, right? That was my thought. I said I want to put it on iMovie to see how it goes. And so last night, as I'm finishing up the first episode, I said, you know what, I want to see the visual part of it, how, you know, they put the music in it to see, you know, saying to replicate what I'm trying to go with it. So that's why I say, man, you on my street, you on my street, man. You are on my street. I was just doing that till 4 o'clock this morning, man. I am loving it. I'm loving it.

I love it.

So, uh, that's awesome.

You can feel the power, right? Like, you can feel like as an individual creator, like, you can do more now, right? Yeah.

Yeah, man. I mean, amazing. AI is amazing. It's helped me a whole lot as far as what I'm doing in the podcasting world, generating, like, today, you know, the scripts for the podcast. Is generating social media posts. And then it takes a lot off your plate where you could just generate it, proofread it, or whatever, and then automate stuff, you know what I'm saying? Okay, well, I don't have to be on there every day. I can automate things for weeks at a time, you know what I'm saying? And it just saves so much, so much hassle, man. Because, you know, being— I know you in the space that you in, you know, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of, you know what I'm saying, uh moving parts and things of that nature. You may go from one thing to another, and then— but you got to keep it all together. You got to keep it all organized, you know, and still be creative and put out stuff that people— that people would enjoy, man. I'm loving this, man. So let me ask you, E-Man, getting off of the smarty pants for a second. The first artist explores the artistic and spirituality of early humans. In the place where I can't pronounce it, so I'm not gonna even— you know, but what challenges and opportunities did AI present during the creation of this film?

So that was a fun one. So I got a call from Dreamflare AI, which was a new platform, and they were trying to be a place like Netflix for AI content. And so they were looking for original content from me, so I needed an idea. I was very excited. I mean, this was a dream come true for me, actually, to be asked to make something original for money. Like, I had never been asked that after 25 years working in this industry, you know, never been asked to make something original and we'll pay you. So that was a big deal in itself. So I needed an idea, and so I got that idea, um, from my kids' history textbook. They were flipping through history textbook, or I was looking through their history textbook, and on one of the pages— well, each page was like a different period of history. So you'd open it up and there'd be two pages with pictures and visuals. They're young kids, so it's pretty basic stuff of different periods of history, all the way from like, you know, before the dinosaurs to today. And there was this page that I opened up and it was about the first artists, like literally the, the humans who drew the first figurative drawings on cave walls 40,000 years ago in what is now Indonesia. And I was just like, man, that is wild, you know? Like, there was some person who was the first person to do that, like a human, Homo sapiens human being. Like, that's why— 40,000 years ago, what are we like? So I started to look at the pictures of the area, you know, what did it look like back then? It's like these big mountainous islands, very like lush, tropical, pretty cool, very like, you know, you start seeing Jurassic Park in your mind, you know. And then I started thinking about— I used the pictures in the textbook to— similar to Rufus, I took those pictures and started to use the image generators to make that world, you know. What would the animals look like. They're a little more prehistoric, so they could be maybe a little scarier. All of a sudden, I'm like, man, this world is like beautiful and terrifying, you know what I mean? You're living in a cave, who knows if there's a saber-toothed tiger out front, like wild stuff. And yet you're making art. They were drawing, and so I learned about how they did it. They crushed up these red ochre rocks and made it like a dust and a paint, and they would blow it out of their hands and they put another hand on the cave wall and that would make a, like, a silhouette of the hand and stuff. It was just fascinating. So I decided to make a piece about this first artist, the person who was the first person to make art ever. And it was another proof of concept piece. I just wanted to kind of show where I thought the level of storytelling and technology was at today.. And so I generated all these images. I tried to make it realistic. I also made it in first-person perspective. I thought that would be kind of compelling to feel like you were this person, you know, so you're going through their experience, like waking up in the cave and going out to find this red ochre. You bring some rocks home and you crush it up and you make your artwork and you're trying to survive the journey and stuff was the idea. And So I was able to bring in influences of like my— this artist I love who makes all this nature art with rocks and twigs and stuff and kind of wove that in leaves and everything. And it was fun. I involved my kids a lot. I have, you know, 4 little kids and showing them the rough cuts and letting them contribute ideas and stuff like that. And so it was educational for all of us and just a lot of fun to really try to push the technology and see what I could make. And so I made like a 2-minute piece of that, basically.

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Man, so when you made it and you sent it off to her, what was the response when you sent it? It sounds creative. Like you say, you put your— a lot of times that's what we do. You put yourself in the shoes. You try to be there at that moment and be this character and how they thinking. So how did the company respond to it when you sent that?

It's been received well. It's, it's been distributed and received well. It's gotten some nice attention, and I don't know that anything will happen from it, but that's okay. You know, that moment has kind of come and gone already, and on to the next concept to prove of where we're at now with new things like all these new platforms and new features. And it's always, I mean, You know, every few months it's a different landscape.

Yeah. Hey, so speaking of that, from your perspective, E, how is AI transforming the media and entertainment industry today, and where do you see it in the next 5 to 10 years?

Oh boy, it's so disruptive, and I think it's only beginning to be felt, but I can feel it in the conversations I'm having with you know, the people in my network at varying stages of this type of work, they're all feeling the shifts. I mean, it's getting harder and harder to think about what images I need to shoot with a camera anymore. I mean, think about that. That's a profound shift. I have a lot of friends who are directors of photography, and that's wild to think like, man, I'm— before I think about calling them, I'm going to think about, can I generate it myself? And I mean, that's just going to multiply out across fields. I mean, I just— I did casting for a recent AI ad, all AI people, you know. It's making me a better writer to the point that I'm like not thinking about working with writers as much. I mean, it's tough on the disruption side. Like, I feel for people, but I'm also in the industry getting disrupted and trying to just ride it out and figure it out, you know. So Yeah, it's profoundly transformative and we're only starting to see the effects and the disruption. You know, there's a number of different startups and things, Hollywood to Bollywood, are trying to figure it out. So it's been interesting to have some of those conversations with some of those groups. And man, 5 to 10 years is like— 10 years, the world will be unrecognizable.

Tell me about it.

5 years, also same comment probably. I mean, God, the rate of change right now is so insane. And the way it all compounds is that exponential curve or whatever. Like, just every time you learn something, you can just use it so much faster now, and it just grows faster and learns faster. I mean, we're in a really wild time.

Yeah, in more ways than one. Hey, so, yeah, so you touched, you touched on it for a second, man. And you know about the producers and the photography people and things, different industries. So just let me ask you a question, man, because I think with AI, and I know you know because this is what you do, a lot of people often are concerned about AI replacing jobs in creative industries. Not only that, you know, like you can go to a White Castle now and it has an AI generator asking you what do you want, you know, saying to eat and to place your order and they always get it wrong. And so, uh, you know, I ain't lying. And so how do you address these fears and how can creative professionals adopt the rise of AI tools?

I think the fears are valid. In most cases. I think that it will be very disruptive and there will be a lot of job loss. That being said, I think the bar for individual creative potential has risen 100x. So while it's very disruptive to companies and bigger groups and people who work at those companies, I think for you and me and the individual creator, It's so empowering and the power has just shifted to the individual. And I think individuals should really look at how they are an individual. What is it about you and your subject matter expertise and your interests and the work that you want to be doing and things you know about? How can AI support you with that? And how can you blend that with AI? Because I think that's where a general but very smart tool can't, can't get anywhere near you. Like, you have your own collection of experiences and knowledge and stuff, and that is as valuable, maybe more valuable than ever. Easier for you to scale that knowledge out, take it more advantage of more opportunities around that knowledge, you know what I mean? And also like to be able to create more, a lot more. You know, so I, I, I, on one hand, am concerned and empathetic about the job loss, and on the other hand, I'm really excited about the unlock of individual creative potential.

Yeah, I'm excited too. And, and I ain't gonna lie, I keep saying this, you're making me more and more excited about this as we go on. I cannot wait to get to Smarty Pants today. And as I was telling you earlier, I was working on a project and how sometimes you may do some things and just scrap and start over again. That's my mindset right now. I think once I get to this and find out the in-depth things that you're telling us about, man, like you say, just the individual creativity of it, we're excited about it. But then, you know, because as I was saying with, uh, with White Castles and things of that nature, you have places like, you know, the stores where they, where they have things where they're trying to get rid of customer service as far as cashiers and things of that nature. This thing, like, I worked at— I used to work at a candy factory. A matter of fact, I worked in the casino industry for a long time too. And these things, they was always trying to implement, you know, into the companies or whatever at the time. Didn't know about AI that they would, you know, say— just thought that they was like robots and trying to run the line and stuff like that, or have robots dealing cards into the players. I know they got some of them Uh, in Vegas they got a couple of those tables where you don't need humans at the table. It just runs, you know, by— hey, now that I know what it is, AI-generated, uh, things of that nature, man. So yeah, I mean, hmm, yeah, you caught between a rock and a hard place, you know what I'm saying? Hey, so, so, E-Man, let's get ready to wrap this up, man. Like I say, I enjoyed you bringing all these nuggets to the table, man. So Eric, after all your accomplishments, what's the biggest lesson you've learned about blending creativity with technology?

Well, I think it's really what we were talking about with the individual potential now. I think to me, that's the most profound and exciting shift that's happened is that individual people can now make entire productions on their own. And you don't need permission, you don't need funding, you don't need proximity to New York or LA, you don't need people who are, you know, professionals at these different things. And I think that is so exciting because all of that was required until very recently. You know, all of that access was a prerequisite of getting into the industry and having any success, and now that's just not there.

It's gone.

And so if you're a kid from wherever and you can get yourself a laptop and a few $20 a month subscriptions, you are insanely powerful. You know, if you can start to apply your abilities and, and creativity and stuff, then there's a whole new set of opportunities available to you. You know, it's still going to be based on merit You still have to be good at it, but you have a chance that you didn't have before. And I think that's awesome.

That is awesome. You know, because you said something earlier too that made me think about it because I was talking to a guy last week about— he's in the real estate, you know, 600 companies in his portfolio. And I was telling him how my son, you know, me and my wife was talking and how, you know, he's only 14, but that's something that he said he wants to pursue. As a career. And, you know, we were talking about it and things of that nature, maybe trying to get in with them to, you know, to push them along with it and to help them and learn it ourselves. And you said something about, uh, you had a friend that does real estate and you creating, you know, saying things of that nature for him. And, you know, I, and I think it's cool, man. Like you say, it's just endless possibilities out there, man. And I agree, any kid that got a laptop or whatever, you know, wherever you are, you can get to that as long as you don't stay Bosted! I'm on that, E. I'm on that.

I know it's your show, I'm not gonna fight that.

I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. So, uh, with so many exciting projects under your belt, what's next for you? And are there any upcoming projects, tools, or events you're particularly excited about?

Uh, yeah, I'm working on a new AI ad now for a cool, uh, crypto app, and I'm going to continue to try to build on the things that I've built over the past year and keep learning. More than anything, I think that's still the main job, is just keep learning, because this stuff is going to keep coming out. And, you know, I think it's all of our jobs to keep learning, but I'm definitely excited to try to teach some of this a bit more. And try to bring this, bring more awareness about this stuff to people too. I think, you know, I want to be part of sharing this with people who need to know, you know, I think this stuff is powerful stuff and I want to put it in the hands of people that can really use it.

Yeah. And like a lot of people have been saying lately, because I've been going on more shows, doing interviews myself this year to, you know, like you say, to promote what I'm doing and things of that nature, more exposure.. And what you're doing now, man, is great. And the more you go on podcast episodes, the more people, you know what I'm saying, can get excited. It's to a broader level. So anyway, E, man, thank you for coming on, man, sharing your expertise and vision with us today, man. Your work is a testament to how technology and creativity can work hand in hand to create something truly extraordinary. But before we wrap up, Where can people learn more about your projects, connect with you, and explore the SmartyPants AI ecosystem?

Thanks for asking. I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. My name is spelled kind of funny, E-R-I-C-H Archer. I'm always kind of posting what I'm up to there, and I have a portfolio site called cgacreative.com, and that has a link to SmartyPants on it.

CGACreative.com. Okay, cool. So again, man, thank you, Eric, for joining us on CJ Moneyway Show. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If today's episode inspired you like it inspired me, please leave us a review, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who's curious about AI and creativity. Make sure to check out Smarty Pants and Eric's other work for a deeper dive into the world of AI innovation Until next time, stay creative, stay innovative, and keep pushing boundaries. This your boy CJ Moneyway Johnson signing off. We outta here. Peace.

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