EP 80: When and How To Use Midjourney for Growth

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Yeah, Mid Journey's great. You can with tax, you can create jaw dropping images and really push the limits of creativity. But can you actually grow your company with it? Can you grow your business, your department, your own career with just Mid Journey? Well, we're going to talk about that today. If you're new here, welcome. My name is Jordan. I'm the host of Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me not just learn what's going on in the world of AI. There's a lot, but how we can all actually leverage it, right? Talking about Mid Journey, how can we actually leverage that? We do it. Our guest today does it. So we're excited to talk about that. So as a reminder, if you're joining us live, drop a question. What do you want to know about Growing with Mid Journey? If you're listening on the podcast, make sure check the show notes. There's actually going to be a link back to I think a LinkedIn thread where you can ask questions of our guest today who is amazing, an amazing artist in Mid Journey and more. So before we get to that, let's talk about what's actually going on in the world of AI news. A big one, very big one. Let's start here. Microsoft has announced an open source version of ChatGPT for enterprise. This, y', all, is a big deal. So it is called Microsoft Azure Chat GPT and it allows enterprises to run ChatGPT within their network. Right? So I'm going to have a dedicated episode to this later, but I'm letting all of you know this is a big deal because one of the biggest reasons why so many companies have kind of pushed off AI is for security or they maybe don't understand how it works with their data. So having Microsoft Release this not OpenAI as an enterprise version, pretty, pretty big news. So make sure to check out more on that in the newsletter. Next piece of news, the annual DEFCON actually featured man versus machine. So we had hackers versus Chatbots. So we had some of the best human hackers in the world going head to head with chatbots from the big names. Meta Google OpenAI. So check out more about that in the newsletter today as well as this one may not be big from the business standpoint, but if you use WhatsApp, you're going to start seeing this a lot. So WhatsApp, owned by Meta, started testing AI generated stickers. All right, cool, fun, cute. But here's the thing. I think especially with all of the Meta slash Facebook platforms, you're going to start to see a lot of generative AI start to pop up in these platforms. So small one, but probably something that a lot of people are going to notice. So that was just announced. WhatsApp rolling out AI generated stickers. All right, well, let's talk art, right? Let's talk some Mid Journey stuff. I'm excited for this. So as a reminder, drop a question. Michael is already in here saying he's excited for Drew Brucker. So let's bring Drew Brucker on. So Drew Brucker is the VP of Growth at Lasso. Thank you for joining us, Drew.

Super excited, awesome to be here. Love the show. You know, I think this show is completely necessary, right? Just based on how fast and the velocity in which things are changing. I thought that, you know, that piece that you just brought up around the enterprise stuff, I mean, that is a game changer. So having something like this that you can log into every day and just kind of get caught up and feel like, you know what's going on is, is key.

Oh, absolutely. It's. We're here to learn. You know, Harold just said that he put on his learning cap, so. Thanks, Harold. Actually, Drew physically put on his learning cap, which I should have done today. But thank you, thank you to everyone joining us. So Dr. Harvey Castro joining us from Dallas, Woozy Rogers joining us from Kansas City, all the way from Bottega, Bogata, Columbia. Samuel, thank you for joining us. So as a reminder, if you do have a question about Mid Journey, drop it in for Drew. We're going to tackle it, but let's start, let's start at the top, Drew. So just tell everyone just real quickly, even just what you do at Lasso. What does it mean to grow at Lasso?

Yeah, so in my full time job, I'm the VP of growth. I lead a five person marketing team for our company. We are a mature series a startup in the tech space called a SaaS company, right? Software as a service. And so our ideal customers are live production companies that put on any live event that you can think of, right? Concerts, festivals, you know, corporate events. The people that set up those events pre, during and post, those are event companies. Those are the people behind the scenes that don't really, you know, get paid attention to when you attend an event. But they're, they're so crucial in putting on the event and make making it successful. And so we help them with scheduling, time tracking, payroll, travel, all of those components to put on successful shows. So that's what I do in my full time role. And. And it moves fast. Right? We're a fast moving team. And obviously when you're at a startup, you know, every day is a little bit different. So that's what I'm focused on day to day. And then, you know, just on the personal side, I'm a creative by heart, so I'm a photographer, I'm a graphic designer. I love anything aesthetic. Right. Which is just this perfect storm of events for me when it comes to Mid Journey because I can apply it both to my professional gig and also my personal life. Right. For something like photography, which after you have kids is much harder to actually pull off.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we kind of talked about that pre show and you know, I'm a former photographer, you said you have a little bit of that in your background as well. So when Mid Journey first came out, I think, you know, we're talking version one, version two, it wasn't too, too exciting for me as a photographer. But what do you even think and talk a little bit about, you know, your journey in Mid Journey and even what you kind of think of recently because I think, you know, again, not everyone's following updates, but I think since 5.1, 5.2, the last couple of months, Mid Journey is now on the level. It is hard to tell the difference between real photos and Mid Journey photos.

Yeah, you know, we were just talking about before we jumped on here, which was Mid Journey went from just this fun kind of tool, right, that you might poke around in and maybe use every once in a while to all of a sudden being so good in terms of the quality that you can integrate it into your workflow. You can start to use it in real life and use it on a daily basis. And it goes beyond just the fun aspect. It actually has some utility. And so I think that's been key. Right. Like as, as Mid Journey has grown, being able to trust that the quality is there to apply it in those circumstances has really been something that's been eye opening for me. And of course, right. The other thing about midjourney is because you can create things other than just realistic images. You can create anything from illustrations to sketches to chalk to any, any type of medium or style you can think of. The use cases really are infinite. You think of any piece of visual evidence or any imagery and Mid Journey probably has A role in it, whether that's now or in the future. And so I think one thing that, you know, I've been thinking about in my role is, hey, in my full time job, how does this make sense to use, right? Where can I use this instead of things like photography or stock photos, you know, how can I start to replace those things with something that's unique, that has the brand characteristics to it, you know, provides a mood, an aesthetic, a personality.

Right.

Some of those things that the, that stock photography lacks and photography itself just takes too long and it's too expensive to pull off. Right. So AI definitely has a lane in that. I think that's what's been super fascinating to me on the professional side and then personal side. Right. We were just talking about it. It's tough setting a tide time to find a location who you're going to shoot, bring the props, right, Wake up early or go late to a location to get the ideal lighting setup that you want. All those things are very tough to do. And now you can scratch that itch. An AI format kind of mirror the look that you're going after.

Yeah, I'm going to go straight hot take here because this just popped up in my mind and I think you might have had a LinkedIn post on this. Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe you commented on it. But you mentioned stock photography and I think that's something all, all companies, right? So even if you're not in charge of stock photography at your company, you probably see that, that photo on the blog post or the photo on the old website and it's like cringy, right? Is stock photography as we know it going to either die or completely change because of Mid Journey. What are your thoughts?

I'll be curious to get your thoughts. I think as we know it, it's, it's dead now. I think what's happening right is they're going to pivot, they're going to make their own move. I think Shutterstock just had something to come out. I, I saw this briefly, so I don't have the exact details, but something with Nvidia they now have this ability to basically take a photo and almost do like a 360 of different angles and so forth. So those create unique visuals in that aspect. It'd be curious to see and interesting to see what route they go down and how far that that road takes them. Because I think that's an entirely different avenue that we're not really seeing on the Mid Journey side. Having said that. Right, like going back to what stock photography is. Yes, I think it's dead, right? When you don't have to pick the Same Images as 10 other companies and see the same faces that you know is not really a happy customer on a business page, why do it? Right? Especially when you can recreate unique images that match your brand personality and the characteristic, the things we were just talking about at exactly the same price point. And look, the reality is stock photography, digging through those things is so painful, right? You only probably have three options for the dimensions. Square horizontal landscape. With Mid Journey, you can have any dimension you want, right? So that's huge. And then you don't have to go through 30 pages. I can pull keywords that I know want to have. I want yellow lighting. I want to have sort of like this type of style or this kind of mood. This is the distance I want. Some of those things you just can't filter through in something like a Shutterstock. And I'm just blasting Shutterstock for no reason. But you know what I'm saying, like this provides a whole different element in that capacity. And so the post that you're mentioning is more like a flowchart. And it's like, hey, look, if, if you're on a tight budget or you have a quick turnaround, you're going to go on this route, right? Maybe this is the better choice. Does it need to be unique? Do you have, you know, any sort of tolerance for imperfections in the end? Well, then you maybe want to go this route for sure.

Yeah. And, and if you're listening to that, I'll, I'll make sure to share that in the newsletter. So if you're not signed up, go to your everydayai.com sign up now. And yeah, by the way, yeah, it's Stock photography is, is going to die. I think, you know, you're going to have those that establish partnerships. You know, like Shutterstock has partnered with Nvidia. I believe they've partnered with OpenAI. So you'll have it. Some of the, those companies exist still, I believe, but as we know it, I don't think so. As a reminder, we do have other episodes. You know, Brian, Brian just with a comment, he said more Mid Journey. Awesome. So, yeah, make sure to check the, the show notes and I'll, I'll drop it in the, in the thread here on LinkedIn as well. So we did have kind of Mid Journey for beginners. Uh, but you know, even like Harold said he used Mid Journey for his company logo partially. Uh, Drew, we have some of your fans joining Saying, uh, Jess, thank you. Drew is an ace at Mid Journ. Y' all are about to get schooled. And Abby saying, looking forward to hearing from you. So, so yes, let's, let's school us, Drew. And I'm going to go ahead. If you are joining us live, I'm going to be putting some of Drew's Mid Journey creations and some of his tutorials on the screen. But Drew, just walk us through. How can people actually grow their companies, grow their departments, or grow their careers by using Mid Journey?

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You know, I think it's going to be different for every business, but going back to the use cases, it would be beneficial, right, to think through and start, start to shortlist. Right. All of the different ways that you use visuals in your company. Right. So I think naturally I'm a, I'm a content person. I started in content. My mind initially goes to things like articles, podcast, thumbnails, YouTube thumbnails, go to social media clips, you go to blogs. Right? Like live events. All of those things can have a specific, you know, look and feel to them and can apply directly to your brand. Right? So that's one thing that you might have already paid a designer for or somebody on your team as a graphic designer, and they're spending maybe much more time there than they need to be. You know, I know there are agencies or even bigger teams out there that do have graphic designers on their team and they're still using Mid Journey just to expedite the process. Right. So Whether you're on a big team or a small team, that doesn't matter. The use case, is there other things that you may think of? You know, internal and external presentations. You need an image. You think of a brand book or a brand library building out a specific look and feel to all the images that you use. That's something that we've done at Lasso. If you're looking for UX or UI mockups for a new website or an app or anything like that, that can be done in Mid Journey. You think about training materials when somebody comes on board. Email marketing. One other thing we're doing is website images, campaigns specifically. So we had a, a customer only event that we did at a trade show recently, came up with the name and Chat GBT came up with the description in Chat gbt. In terms of the brainstorming of, hey, how can we tie this into Lasso? And sort of a wild west cowboy culture lingo and feel. And then we designed all of the assets in Mid Journey. So the campaign itself was in Mid Journey. We created a lot of swag for that event that was from the image that we created in Mid Journey. Right. So like all of those use cases coming to life was, was really cool. And that was, I think that was back in April now. Right. So that was even four or five months ago, which was really a cool time to kind of experience. Hey, I created this by myself on here and here it is in real life. So, you know, the list goes on and on. I would just think through your individual business, hey, what are we currently using right now? What are the, what is the tech stack we have in place for images and how can we offset that? Now I'm not going to lie like there is a learning curve to midjourney. Right. So you can't just sign up and expect to get great images off the bat. You do need to put in a little bit of the experiment, experimentation, the time, the sweat equity to kind of know what you're doing in there. Jordan. But at the same time, you know this as well as I do. I think the barrier to entry is going to come down a little bit, not only just because of the evolution of AI, but this getting away from Discord. Mid Journey has already said that they're building their own UI and, and I think Discord, whether you like it or not, right. A lot of people aren't comfortable in there and so once that happens, I do think there's going to be a little bit more access and a little bit more, I guess, willingness to jump in.

Yeah, 100%. And if, if you are brand, brand new to mid journey and you're hearing what Drew is saying, don't worry, we're going to have prior episodes in the show notes and in the comments here. You know, on this LinkedIn thread, we have a couple episodes literally for beginners going from sign up to all the way. You know, not nothing advanced, but some of the basics. And, and as a reminder, if you are listening on the podcast, we're just flipping through some of Drew's work that here that he's sharing on LinkedIn, you know, has some great, great resources on, on how to get the most out of mid journey. But you know, real quick here, a great question from our community here, Leonard saying, Drew, what are your thoughts on how to get business doing mid journey work? I think it's a great, great, great side hustle. But what's, what's your thoughts on that? And if someone has kind of developed some of these skills, Drew, how would you recommend that they can go, you know, kind of create a little, little side hustle out of that?

Yeah, I think there are just like, there are the use cases. You go through all of those components. There are just many opportunities to use it as a side hustle. Right. So one thing I've done right, is create sort of a core course, a guide, if you will. More, more of a guide than a course to this point, but, but really a tactical way for people to get into mid journey, understand how to use it. Right? Here are the different options and levers that you have at your disposal. And then here are all the things that you can think about in order to create a great image. Right. It's not just the keywords that you plug in, but, hey, maybe shifting the angle of the subject, maybe you're going for a certain mood or lighting or you want to, you know, sort of look, have this look like a particular movie or photographer, artist, right? Like all of the components that go into building a prompt, you know, that's in that course. And so that's, that's one route you could take. You could take the route of building out. Like I just was talking about a brand book for a company that takes a lot of time normally. And so if somebody doesn't have the skill set to be in mid journey and create a consistent look over and over again with the images, there's an opportunity, right. You could pitch that. I think there's something to be said about training, you know, companies, either one on one or one to many, you know, in terms of the tool and the use case and Jordan, like, I think one of the eye openers for me is when I started going down this path and building out the guide, I realized I was kind of in my own echo chamber. And there really aren't a lot of people that have been in Mid Journey and are using it very, very consistently. Right. There are people that have may have jumped in there once or twice or they've heard about it, but they just haven't jumped in yet. And so there really is a window of opportunity right now to lead the way, to dive in fully and help expedite this for teams. Because AI moves fast and unless you are in the weeds experimenting with it, you're probably not going to get caught up.

Yeah. Fully agree. Not just on how fast it moves, but you just have to jump in there and you have to, you have to get your, get your hands dirty a little bit.

Right.

And it's. And, and let me tell you this. You know, Mid Journey's been around now for. I don't have the exact date, but it's. I think it's been a year and a half. It's been more than a year and it's, it's much easier now than it used to be. Right. Like even in the newest version of Mid Journey 5. Two, I think 5.3 is supposed to be coming out any day now, but you can use almost plain English, whereas, you know, in earlier versions you almost had to kind of speak AI image prompts. So I think that's, that's really helpful. A couple comments, wanted to get to Maryse. Thank you for joining us, Jackie, with a question here. So didn't think of website mockups. Can it do full wireframes?

I haven't ex. I haven't experimented with fully full wireframes, but yes, I think you can. It's not something that I've really played around with at that depth. I know you can do, you know, pretty simple UX and UI wireframes. Right. So if I want to have like a clean design and I'm looking at a particular page, right. I want it to be a product page or a homepage or a contact Us page. I think it can at least give you sort of like that hero section and maybe some of that. I'm not sure how it works in terms of the scale of an entire page. I'm sure it's possible. Maybe somebody else knows, but it hasn't been something I've played around with too much.

Yeah, yeah. And shout out. Jackie. Jackie's. Doing great things to Paul, you know, trying to get AI into the schools there. But yes, Jackie, kind of like what Drew said. You, you, you can, in ways it's a little limited. We've, we've experimented with it before. I think we actually shared about it in one of our last newsletters. So you can do partial wireframes, but again, if you want kind of granular control, you're not really going to have that in terms of, oh, I kind of want this size, I want this type of layout, this type of UI ux. But it's a great starting point and a lot of great people start in mid journey with an idea and then move over to Figma.

Jordan, wouldn't you say it's more of like a visual jumping off point? Right. Because I mean you can identify, hey look, I really like the cleanliness or the simple simplicity of this or even just the structure of this particular section of the web page or the wireframe. And so I think it can be a really good ideation point. Almost like a mood board, if you will, from the creative side.

Yeah, for sure. And then another, another question we have here. I don't even know if I know the answer to this, Drew. So Brian asking, can you create images with transparent backgrounds?

That's a great question, Brian. I honestly hadn't even thought of that. I have thought of, hey, you can create a plain background and then right. Remove the background in another program. I don't know, Jordan, have you played around with that?

Yes, I've tried it. But kind of like what you said, Drew, I think, I think the best we've ever been able to do is just a plain, plain white background and then, you know, open it in Canva Photoshop, you know, remove background program.

Brian. I think that could be coming though, if that's, you know, like there are certain things too and we should probably point this out. Like there are certain things in mid journey right now that aren't ideal but I think are going to get solved very soon. Right. Like still you've got a little bit of the finger issue. Sometimes you get an extra finger in there or like one that's growing on top of another. Yeah, that's gotten much better. But you've also got logos and letters which I think are going to continue to get better and improved too. Right. Which just expand the use cases and almost the professional nature in which these are going to be used too.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. That's a great question, Brian. I think we're going to start seeing new Features, you know, even if we look at how Mid Journey has changed recently, you know, simple things that are very helpful, you know, like the zoom in, the zoom out, you know, being able to do subtle varieties, you know, when you get a new image. I think Mid Journey is changing and bringing a lot of new features. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. But, Drew, we've. We've gone all over the place. We've gone top to bottom. We've talked about growth, we've taken some great questions. What's your. What's your takeaway message for people, whether they are new to learn or maybe they haven't even gone in Mid Journey yet. Maybe they're new, but they're thinking, all right, Drew, you've got me convinced. You know, aside from following you on LinkedIn and sharing, you know, following a lot of the great tutorials that you share, what's your advice for people that are a little newer and they really just want to grow their company or grow their career with Mid Journey, what's the takeaway message?

I would say, whether it's you or it's somebody else, invest the time to play around with it, and I do mean play around with it, because there is no better way to learn than actually doing it yourself. This is one of those programs you could. You could follow other people's prompts, you could get all these tactical advice, but unless you are playing in the program or you know, somebody that is, you're not fully going to understand how much it can be used. So I think one thing is just going through that experimentation and playing around with it that is going to naturally and organically open your mind to different ways to use it. One of the cool things about it currently being in Discord, right, is when you jump in, you are going to be pushed into what's called the newbie channel. So you can see other people's prompts that are generating at the same time as yours, which I think personally is a great way to learn. At the beginning. You're starting to see different words. You're starting to see different what's called parameters, right? These dash, dash words, or, you know, ar. Right? What does this mean? Let me plug that in mind and see what this does. And so I think, you know, there's definitely power in that. And so if it's not you, it should be somebody else on your team. And I'm talking to anybody that's just an individual contributor all the way to somebody that's on the C Suite. I just talked to a team of VP of sales, VP of marketing, and C suite of why this is important and why they should care. And I think the reasons are pretty simple, right? Money, time and compromise. In terms of the way that you're getting these images, that alone is worth it. But then when you think about the competitive advantage of AI, the scalability that comes into play, the enhanced creativity and potential virality that you can attract by using these images, it's a no brainer. So make sure that you're spending the time and energy, whether it's you or somebody else in your team in this area. It's going to be important and it's only going to get better from here.

Yeah, absolutely. Drew is not lying to y' all guys. Like as a former photographer, designer, small business owner, this Mid Journey I think is one of the most exciting advancements in Internet technology that I've seen in a very long time, you know, including ChatGPT, which I'm a, you know, I'm a huge fan of. But Mid Journey right now I think is is just so far ahead of other players in the AI image generation space. Like what Drew said, definitely worth checking out. Drew, thank you so much for sharing your insights intel strategies to help people grow on Mid Journey. Thanks for joining us.

Awesome to be here. And if anybody has any questions after the show, I'm free as well. Jordan, thanks for having me, man.

Yeah, absolutely. As a reminder, go to your everydayai.com we went over a lot in today's episode. We're going to be breaking down everything that Drew and I talked that that we talked about. Also, we'll have links to some of his work and guides. They're definitely worth checking out. So make sure you go to your everydayai.com Sign up for that free daily newsletter and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day on Everyday AI. Thanks.

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 youreverydayai.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.