EP 160: Grow Your Brand With AI and a Podcast

This is the Everyday AI show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business and everyday life. There's a secret weapon to grow your brand and it's podcasting with a little bit of AI. Two of my favorite things. So thank you for joining today's show of Everyday AI. If you're new here, Everyday AI is a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me learn what's going on in the world of artificial intelligence and how we can all actually leverage it to grow our companies and to grow our brands to grow our careers. Right, so maybe you've thought about having a podcast before and you want to launch one. We're going to talk about maybe some benefits to doing that, but also how AI has now made the process easier than ever. Hey, talk about someone that talks about AI every day on a podcast. Today's show is right up my alley and I'm excited to have our guest on the show for today. And hey, live stream audience, if you are joining us live like Michael Forgey. What's going on, Michael? Make sure to get your questions in. We what questions do you have about growing your brand with podcasting or podcasting in general? The intersection of podcasting and AI? I want to hear it. Get your questions in. Thank you everyone for joining us. All right, before we get to that, as we always do, let's go over what's going on in the world of AI news. There's a lot saving the best for last year though. All right, so the EU is getting closer to its official AI act after talks went into the wee hours of the morning. So the European Union has reached a provisional agreement on regulating AI systems, including ChatGPT, in an effort to set a precedent for other negotiations. So these negotiations have been ongoing now for two days, but the agreement that we've been reporting on here on the show for months could finally be put to a vote in the spring. All right, Meta is adding invisible watermarks to AI content. So the Facebook's parents company Meta just announced that it will include invisible watermarks on all images created using its AI technology to prevent misuse. The company claims its watermarks are resistant to common manipulations like watermark removers, and it plans to expand this feature to other AI generated content. I'd like to know, what do you think about that? And I'm also wondering why Invisible, right? Yes, they want to encourage brands to use their their AI image generators to create images. But why not just go all the way? Why? Why invisible? I'm not sure. All right, and then last but not least, the news that everyone is talking about in AI world. Gemini is here. So the newest model from Google was released yesterday and is now live in its Google Bard product. So before Google was using the Palm 2 model, now it is using the Gemini model. So Google is saying that it is its most advanced AI model and it has three different sizes available for different tasks and different applications. So those three sizes are ultra, and that's for the largest and most capable models. Pro, which is a wide range of business tasks, and Nano, which is for much smaller, smaller tasks. But Nano will actually be able to run on mobile devices, which is pretty cool. So Google did release a pretty impressive promotional video, by the way, so make sure to check for that in the newsletter. We'll link straight to it and talked about some benchmarks that says Google Gemini is outperforming GPT4. And right now it's not available in all countries. Most notably, it's not yet, yet available in Europe. So keep your eye out for that if you are from those other countries. So, yes, I will be talking about Google Gemini a lot more. Join us Tuesday we are going to be. It's hot. Take Tuesday, y'. All. So, uh, Tuesday we'll be talking about, uh, Google Gemini because if I'm being honest, if I'm being honest, it looks like there might be a little more marketing than actual results, at least right now. All right, so again, thank you everyone for joining us. We have our guest for today, Ronsley Vaz Ronsley, I believe, was just hanging out in the waiting room here, but he dropped off. I know he said he was having a couple of issues, so we will give him a little bit of time to join the show. So, hey, thank you everyone though, for joining live. And as a reminder, if you haven't already, please go to your Everyday AI dot com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. We put it out every single day. Yes, that is why it's called Everyday AI. And if you are listening on the podcast, just make sure to go check, check your show notes. And we always have links to go check that out, other resources, other related podcasts, all of that good stuff. And hey, yeah, it looks different back here. That's because I am coming to you live from New York. It's Everyday AI, right? I kind of wanted to say that, you know, like, live from New York, it's Saturday Night Live, but I'm actually speaking today at the AI Summit in New York City. It is pretty impressive. There are thousands of people there. Some of the leaders in the industry, speakers, you know, from OpenAI, all the big consulting groups, all the big tech companies are there sharing not just their latest innovations, but delivering some pretty in depth and impressive, you know, speeches and, you know, different reports on artificial intelligence. So let me know what you want to hear. I'm actually probably going to be doing a show next week as well. We'll get that scheduled and let you all know. Just talking about some of the highlights from this conference because, you know, being able to go and talk to these people that are, you know, helping literally create the future of generative AI, it's. It's pretty. It's pretty exciting for me. And so let me know what you want to hear about, you know, because talking everything about, you know, from large language models to marketing to AI and finance, you know, there's. There's companies unveiling some new reports and studies during their presentations that I can share with you. So please let me know. Yes. Hey, like Monica said, great idea, Monica. Yeah, our guest for today was having a little bit of troubles, but it looks like he's. He's getting back on here. So enough of that, enough of the AI summit. Let's talk growing your brand with a podcast. All right, we're ready to go now. I'm extremely excited. No more delays. Let's bring him on the show. Here we go. Ron, the founder of We Are Podcast. Ronsley, thank you for joining the show.

Sorry, man, the Internet just died on me. And it was, it was, it was. I was panicking. Thanks for having me. This is great.

This is great. Hey, you know what I always like to say?

This is.

This shows the realest thing in artificial intelligence. This is unscripted, unedited. We put it out as it is. So, Ronsley, thank you. Thank you for doing the tech troubleshooting and jumping on. But maybe tell us a little bit about, Ronsley, what you do and tell us a little bit about We Are Podcasts.

Well, yeah, man. For the last 11 years, I've been making podcasts for some of the most famous people in the world. Politicians, actors, songwriters, athletes, big business, small business. I started doing this before people knew what a podcast was. Wrote the book in 2016. You know, I've done. I've. I've done over 1500 interviews and, and helped over 1200 people start and. Or brands and personalities start and grow a podcast. So I, I've done a lot in the podcasting world, but before that, I was a computer scientist, software engineer, took two companies to ISO 9001, and it seems like it's the perfect intersection for Ronsley come 2023.

So.

I'm very grateful and super excited about artificial intelligence, what it brings and how, know, creators and creative people can actually use it to the advantage and, and, and, and put their gifts out there. So that's me in a nutshell, man.

Yeah, I love it. And it's, it's interesting, Ron, because, you know, you do have a deep background in both the technical side, you know, with your computer science background, and then also podcasting. You know, being in the space for more than a decade, can you talk to just how much different it is now versus, you know, 10, 15 years ago? Yeah, I did, I did my first date. Like, I, I don't even know if I've ever talked about this. I was doing a daily podcast in 2008, and then I took 15 years off and restarted it. But. But how much has podcasting changed? Specifically with AI? Yeah, just tell people a little, A little bit.

Massively, massively. I mean, I can look at a waveform and tell you that that's an arm and that's an R that, you know, because we had to look at waveforms and we had to listen to everything to find out what went in and what went out. Now you can do that with a click of a button. You can remove half sentences, you can play with equalizers, equal. Equalize people's voices, you can remove background noises. So simply, and it's very, very different, it become much, much easier. And hopefully that lets us put all that effort into creation of the show and making it more engaging and making it more for our audience and creating something that is quite unique.

Ronzi. I'd say right now, at least, my take on this is human connection is more important than ever just because of how unfortunately, know cheap the written word is now with large language models. You know, we just talked at the top of the show about Google, Gemini Chat, GPT. But, you know, it used to take a lot of talent to, to put out great written content, and now that the playing field's been leveled. So with that in mind, do you think that, you know, video and podcasting and being able to connect with an audience through a podcast is kind of the. The way of the future, quote unquote. Even though it's been around for so long?

Yeah. I mean, just think about it. Auditory sense is the most connected sense. We've been passing down stories for generations through that auditory sense. Parents sing to their kids before they're born because of the auditory sense. It's a sense of connection that a lot of other mediums don't have. And when you think about who would you rather buy from someone that you've read a bunch of emails from, or you've listened to someone's voice for the last half hour, the chances of you, you know, buying from someone. And it's not only about buying. It's. It's more about. It's more about your view of the world in general. We are not thought to raise our voices and say, this is what we think, because we might get judged or someone might call us, you know, that we say that we're wrong, but we've got to start to embrace that and have the conversation. It's okay to be. It's okay to not have the whole perspective. It's okay to say, this is what I feel right now. And, you know, being open to the conversation and allowing people to contribute, I think. I think is more important than ever, especially for people trying to solve their audience's problems. Right? Like, if you think about true empathy, if you're really in business to create an impact, and that's my definition of entrepreneurship is, you know, solving meaningful problems. You know, artificial intelligence brings. That, brings that. That capability so much closer. A lot of other things that you would have to learn, you don't have to learn anymore.

You know, I think early on, during social media days, you know, it took. It took companies a while to catch up and to say, okay, this is the way that we need to communicate with our. With our customers and potential customers. But it got to the point where if a company didn't have social media, it was weird, right? Are we at that point now with podcasts, right, where especially if you're a big brand, a big brand or a brand that really prides itself on, you know, customer service or providing a great product or service. Will it be weird if. If companies don't have a podcast, just like it's weird if they don't have social media?

Well, I. I think. I think more and more people just imagine you spend so much of time on your brand, just adding, like, giving your brand a voice is such a huge advantage, because then people can hear about your brand even before they even imagine buying from it or being associated with it. There's a huge advantage, and that's why lots of big companies now have their own podcasts. It's a massive advantage to be able to be in someone's ears for that long. And Just think about it. Right, right. When you think about consumption, every other form of content, including video and text, has to be. You got to stop what you're doing to consume it. And, and, and podcasts or audio, you don't. You don't. And I'm not saying only create an audio podcast. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that when you record in video, you have all the forms with you right there, and you give your brand a huge advantage, a massive advantage you give. You, you're. You're setting it up to win because of the reps you're doing. Every rep is not only creating content from a video, audio, text, social images perspective, but it's also, if you're doing it right, is a business development tool because you're potentially having a business development conversation with the right person and could open doors that even you might not even think of, which has happened. Which happens all the time. All the time.

Here's. We're gonna go straight to questions because we have some great questions. And if you are joining us live and you have questions about how you can grow your brand with AI in a podcast, get them in. But, Tanya, thank you for the question. Saying, Ronsley, what advice would you give to some amateurs in the podcast industry? Great question.

Well, I think I'm still an amateur. I feel like I'm learning all the time. I'm a business owner trying to be a podcast or learning to be a podcaster. And I've learned over time that I'm a bad listener. So some things, that, some advice is get the strategy of your show right first. The equipment is not as important nowadays. Microphones are very, very good. Cameras are very, very good. I'm traveling with, like a massive rig, but I don't need that massive rig. Like, I can just use the iPhone camera, which I'm using right now, and put it through a cable. And it's a lot easier to get a podcast going in terms of equipment. But get your strategy sorted. Like, how does this podcast differ from all the other podcasts? And what tends to happen when you make a podcast is, if you're making it yourself, is you fall into the trap of creating an amalgamation of what you've already listened to. So if you listen to like five or six podcasts regularly, you'll tend. Making a. Tend to make a podcast that is an amalgamation of those because. Because that's what your experience is. So getting a sounding board, talking to people about your idea of the podcast, allowing yourself to get the strategy right. And not rushing into it. And how does it benefit the business? How does it benefit you? How does it benefit the audience? And how are you not going to stray? How can you say no to people if they don't belong in what your strategy has outlined? For sure, like, be consistent. It's going to make a massive, massive difference.

It's such, such great advice there. And, you know, I'll even add on to that. But I'd say find your unique place, right? Because the last thing you want to do is, is put, you know, because it takes a little bit of bravery to get out there and to create a podcast for the world to hear. But find your unique space, you know, what makes you or your viewpoints or your business uniquely better and try to focus on that. Ronsley, like, I think one people. One thing that people maybe don't understand or get wrong about a podcast is that it can help your business. It can push your business goals. It's not just a vanity project. Can you talk a little bit specifically on how podcasting can lead or help business growth?

I'll give you an example, right? I mean, a real life example. I've just set up another company in Dubai, and I went to Dubai not knowing anybody, not a single person. And a few, like, a month ago, I spoke at an event at the Ritz, and the person, one of the persons, I finished my speech and they came out and they were talking to me and they were like, man, how much money did you spend on SEO? And I was like, huh, that's an interesting question. I thought he was going to say something about what my speech or something, what I said on stage. And I said nothing. I said a grand total of zero. He's like, because I googled you and you're everywhere. And I was like, wow, that is the power of a podcast. And now those are things that, those are seeds that I planted a long, long time ago. And I'm friends with some really cool people because I've got a podcast. There's no other reason. I mean, I've only met them because, you know, I've interviewed them on the podcast. We've become friends, and it's just become a thing. And now I just feel privileged to have this platform. So a podcast opens doors for a business that, like nothing else, you can look around and see who has your target market and has no competitive overlap. They do very different things to you, but they serve the same audience, and you create a platform that's attractive for them to be on, and that helps this one audience and you've created a business development tool like no other. Every conversation is a partnership conversation and if you have 52 of those a year and two of them convert, that's going to massively benefit your business. Hey.

Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on Genai. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to to use gen AI. So whether you're looking for chat, GPT training for thousands, or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too. Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to your everyday AI.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website. We'll help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on just gen AI. And that's, that's a great point because also Rony, I think podcasts solves a lot of. A podcast solves a lot of problems that businesses have, right? So connecting with your consumer, talking about how you can solve their problems, but also ongoing content, right? Can you talk a little bit about some of the benefits of taking a podcast just like this and then being able to repurpose it and maybe let's sprinkle in some AI in there as well, because I know, you know, so maybe how can you even use AI to repurpose conversations like this and to create better and more content?

Well, in general, I think right now the quickest thing you can do with any recording is take the transcript and put it through something like Claude and find out things that are inside the transcript that you might have not seen or heard or thought about. Ask it for relevant quotes that are related to certain things and ask the transcript for different things that you're looking for. Take those things and Descript today is what a remarkable tool where you can create reels, you can remove ums and ahs, you can remove background noise, you can create studio sound. It's such a massive. And if you know that you say certain words over and over again, you can find those words and remove them as well. So that is using artificial intelligence, which you know is massive advantage for editing. But then you can find B roll clips when you're creating your reels through AI, which is again, would take ages if you had to do this on your own. The ways you can repurpose right now, there's never been a better time for you to take your transcript and take your podcast and repurpose. But what I would love for people to think about is to separate the recording phase from the publishing phase. I mean, this is a different show, this isn't a live show. But if you're recording a podcast, you're usually recording it without it going live. And that whole thing does not have to be the published podcast. Like, you would never read a blog post that's not edited. You would never read a book that's not edited. Why would someone listen to a podcast that's not edited? So try to think of them as separate parts and you can edit really well today using artificial intelligence. And you don't have to spend all this time listening to certain pieces and marking them and then replacing them and doing all that kind of stuff. So use descript for that and then have templates like make sure that whatever you're creating has brand guidelines and it is representing your brand identity. Right now, AI is this magic trick that everyone's showing. Everyone is an expert on AI today and they're really pushing that agenda that they've just started to use ChatGPT. But let's learning from some people, like people who are just learning. AI is like a seventh grader teaching a sixth grader. It's like you can learn only so much. So I'd really encourage you to learn artificial intelligence where it plays a role in your business, how it can improve the different operations in your business, how it can help you grow audience credibility. Take responsibility because artificial intelligence will easily be the biggest conversation of our lifetime by a long shot. It's going to change everything around us.

All right, so we have a lot of questions. Ronsley and I know you know your stuff, so we're going to try some. A little bit of rapid fire here. So let's, let's go through a couple of these questions, see if we can't get some answers. So Tara asking, I'd love to know what your favorite post production AI tools are. And for video podcasts.

Yeah, descript. I've said that a few times. Right now, VideoSnap IO is a pretty good one for finding B roll, then using Claude to ChatGPT4 to talk to your transcripts, but then you can use Notion AI. If you store your transcripts in notion, you can ask similar questions. You can write really cool show notes by putting a transcript in, giving it a template, and saying, this is the type of show notes I want to create. Look at this transcript and create that. Which used to take ages at one point. So AI tools are good, but more importantly is the process for extraction. What is your step by step? What are you going to do once you stop record? And if you have a checklist, that's going to make an even bigger difference than having an AI tool, I promise you. So if you have a process for what you do, that's going to help you massively if you have a podcast.

Love that. All right, here we go. Next question. What platform to broadcast live? Which platform might you recommend?

Well, there's streamyard, which is what we're using right now. Restream IO ECAMM Live is a great one. If you don't have ECAMM for Mac, if you have a Mac, I definitely recommend ECAMM for a variety of different things. You can do some pretty cool. You can record multiple cameras, you can go live, you can have a virtual camera. There's a lot of things you can do with eCamm. So those are my suggestions.

All right, perfect. And then one more here, Cecilia asking, how often do you have to have a podcast session for it to be effective?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I recommend that it goes out weekly, at least a weekly show, if not more regular. And that does not mean you. You record every day. That means you can record for three months for the whole year, but it just gets published every week. And that gives you. That gives you reps, that gives you cadence, and, and, and people look forward to tuning into the podcast.

All right, I lied. There's one more great one, because I know we can't keep you forever. But Tanya asking, where do you see podcasting going in the future? Yeah, because I've even seen it personally, Ronsley change so much in the past, like, year, especially with AI. But where is it going to go?

See, I know there's lots of videos out there showing you how you can make faceless YouTube channels. But I think more and more we're going to want to converse with people, real people, and I feel long form will come back. Like, look at a lot of things, right? Electricity. We went from candlelight to electricity, and now we pay a lot of money for a candlelight dinner. So there's a Lot of things that we're going the other way. And I feel long form will come back, even though right now we have a short attention span, it is gone to shorter episodes. I think there's going to be new ways of communicating in podcasting. Like, there's going to be more soundscapes and immersion of sound. Like, we've done some pretty cool work with some pretty, you know, impressive artists on how we can change frequency inside the podcast to make someone's limbic brain turn on. And so there's some really cool things that are going to come out. And I think for us just practicing our craft, like practicing. There's a. There's a really different of mine, Daniel Priestley, and he says this thing you get, you know, as a podcaster, just put. Putting your stuff out there is. Is just. It's just a good rep to do.

And hey, as. As we wrap up here, Ronsley, because we've talked about a lot. We've talked about even the. His a little bit of the history of podcasting. We've talked about how you can grow your brand with it, different tools and techniques that people can use if you're an amateur. But what's maybe that one takeaway for someone that's been on the fence for a while and they really want to use this to grow their. Grow their brand, grow their career, but they don't know how. What's that? One piece of advice and maybe that one thing that they can do on AI, maybe that's going to give them the biggest return to get them over that hump.

Well, I'll say this. My ancestors did not have the opportunity to switch on a microphone and say whatever they wanted to say whenever they wanted to say it. So I feel responsible. I feel a responsibility to learn how to do that. I feel that we've got this opportunity these days, and we kind of forget how privileged we are in general. So let's take a step back and be of service and kind of not worry about how everyone wants to make an impact on the planet, but they want to look good while they're making this impact. So I want to say that you don't have to. You just have to do the rep. And if it comes out good like today, like, you know, I could imagine, you know, you on. On this kind of going, where's Ron Slay? He was just here, you know, and it could be stressful, but you still showed up and you're traveling. It's like there are times that, you know, you don't actually want to show up. You do the, you do the rep and you learn from the rep. It might not be a great rep, but it's a, it's a rep. And that's, that is something that we've got to take into consideration. So there's no tactic. It's just the truth.

That's not only great advice, Ronsley, for getting a podcast up and running and being successful, but also just for life. So thank you for sharing that one. So, hey, thank you, Ronsley, so much for joining the Everyday AI show. We really appreciate it. All right. And hey, as, as a reminder, if you haven't already, please go to your everydayai.com Sign up for that free daily newsletter. We going to break down what we talked about today with Ronsley, preview what we have coming up on the show later this weekend, next week. So thank you for joining. We hope to see you back for another episode of Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

All. Thanks, man.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit your everydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.