2025 AI Predictions & Opportunities with Matt Wolfe of FutureTools.io

If you're worried about AI taking your job or making your business or services you offer obsolete, this episode might just change your mind. I brought back my really good friend brother from another mother, Matt Wolf, who spends every single day, holidays, weekends, it doesn't matter, middle of the night. This guy's always analyzing every single AI breakthrough and trend that comes out there. He's made a whole business out of it. Matt used to be the co host of this podcast and old business partner of mine, and I'm happy he's doing what he's doing now because he gets to come back and share what he's been discovering, these breakthroughs. But what he's discovered about 2025's biggest opportunities probably isn't what most people are talking about. And Matt totally breaks it all down and gives you this on a platter so you can walk away from this episode and start building with this in mind. It can completely transform and change the way that you think about your career, your business, the way that you serve people and just connect with humans in general. So take notes. Follow Matt, Go To Future Tools IO, that's his website. Follow him on YouTube and beyond. Enjoy the episode.

It takes a lot to grow your business. I'm talking about attracting an audience lead, scoring with your new leads and customers, and also just managing all of the channels that you gotta manage. A lot of managing. So a lot of long days, late nights, weekends. Hopefully not too many of those. There's a better way, and that's what breez it's made by HubSpot. It's a new collection of AI tools. It's even easier for people like us marketers to attract an audience, increase leads, and score those customers really quickly. It means you're going to have a lot more time back and a lot to celebrate. So visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Hey, before you get into the episode, I urge you to hit pause and go check out the AI Digital mind. It's like a digital twin of this podcast and a whole bunch of other content I've released. Go to hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe it's hustle and flowchart.com AI Joe you you can literally chat with this podcast with me and my guests in text, audio and video for free if you want one of these made for yourself. If you're Interested, go to hustleandflowchart.com interest and we make these things out. So enjoy. Let's get to the episode. It's good to see you again, Matt you too, Joe.

I saw you last weekend and the weekend before, but it's never too well. I mean, maybe sometimes it's too much, but it hasn't gotten too much yet.

Maybe we'll take a week off. You're doing ces, right?

Yes, I'm going to CES on Monday and I'll be there till Friday.

Oh, no. So next weekend's open. You need to hang with me.

Yeah, it is, actually.

Hang with your fam. Yeah. So for everyone, we are. This is Senor Matthew Wolf. He is a return guest of many episodes from prior. We don't need to explain ourselves. He's back. But, yeah, we're talking about our coffee dates. So we've been doing a little weekly meetups, and I think it's been kind of fun for both of us to, I don't know, like, chat YouTube. You don't have a lot of people to chat YouTube, obviously. AI Stuff Life.

I did see you posted something about YouTube last night, which I'm going to bring up, because I thought it was actually quite interesting. I have a few threads for. For where I want to take this episode. I told you a couple of them.

Let's pull on those threads and unravel this sweater.

Don't tell me what to do. Sweater. Are we pulling off of getting weird already?

I'm just thinking of the Weezer song.

I know. The Blue Album is the best. The best. Well, what. What are you excited about right now, Mr. Matt? This is January, early January. We're going to try to get this episode out ASAP. Jacob. Sorry. But. Yeah, start of 20, 24. 5, which is wild. I don't know. How you feeling? Are you feeling. How you feeling? I'm just going to leave it there.

I'm feeling good. Yeah. I mean, everything's been going good in AI land and YouTube land. And we mentioned I'm going to CES next week, so I'm really excited about that. CES is like. That's like Disneyland for tech nerds, right? That's.

Tell me, tell me more. What is. What is ces?

Yeah, so CES is the Consumer Electronics Show. It happens every year in Vegas, and it's where all of the, like, big tech companies come and unveil, like, some of their, like, prototypes that they've been working on. Like, it's stuff you can't even buy yet, but it's, like the future tech that they're showing off to get feedback on. Right? So, like, last year, they had, like, clear televisions that you could see through. They had Flying cars. They had, like, new 3D printer technology. They had different types of humanoid robots that were, like, wandering around the show floor. They had, like, you name it. It's like, Heck and Gadget Disneyland heaven for nerds. Right? So I just kind of, like, wander around with my camera, trying to, like, film as much of it as I can and just in awe of, like, what's coming.

So what is. What's been like. Because you went last year, right? Was that your first year or.

Yeah, last year was my first year going. Yeah.

Was there anything, like, did anything get published or, like, some published but, like, released to the public from what you saw, or is it, like, years and years out?

No, no. There's still a lot of stuff that they show off that's like, e. Like, sometimes they announce stuff that's coming live, like, right now. You can get it. Then usually it's stuff that's like, here's. There's always a lot of stuff that's like, here's what's coming, but it's going to be available in, like, three months. And then there's a lot of stuff that's like, here's a prototype we're working on. We don't know if we're ever going to release it. Right? Like, that's some of the, like, car technology and stuff like that. The, like, last year they showed off, like, the rabbit R1 was one of the announcements during CES, and that came out a few months later. There was a bunch of, like, new laptops that were announced from companies like LG that eventually came out. I don't remember, like, specifically, but there was, like, a lot of, like, little personal consumer electronic stuff that they did show off, and then it becomes available, like, later in the year. So it is kind of a mix of, like, here's what's coming, like, this year, but also here's what may never come. We're just putting out in the world and showing you what we're capable of.

Just to tease you.

Is there anything that you're, like, most excited for when you go to these things? Because I know, like, you. You see it all. You get some pretty good ends. The fact that you have a YouTube channel that people want you to talk about their stuff, obviously. So is there anything you're looking out for?

You know, I always look out for anything with AI in it. But the problem with CES is now. Now everything has AI in it, right? So it's like, last year, I was. There was literally AI in everything already. Last year they had an AI barbecue. They had an AI toilet. They had AI beds and mattresses. They had, like, you name it. They put AI in everything. Like the AI toilet. Imagine a toilet where you poop in it, and then the. It's got sensors that analyze your poop and say, like, hey, you might want to see a doctor. We notice this within your poop.

So the biome check is, like, happening just.

Yes. Like a. Like a. Like a gut health check. By looking at your poop. Right. Like, that kind of stuff exists. And they show it off at CES now, the demos, they're not pretty.

I was going to say they don't actually know it.

That would be pretty epic marketing, though. You're like, you know what? We brought a porta potty to ces.

If anyone struggle, everybody come watch me take a shit.

That's great.

Okay, so AI toilets. What's the. Like, I was going to. Because one of the questions is, like, what's the weirdest thing that AI toilet? That's.

That's a pretty weird one.

I see it pretty useful, but it's like, how often do you really need to be analyzing your. Yeah. Any other ones that. That kind of stand out? We're talking old technology is last year, obviously, you got new stuff.

Yeah, I mean, some of this stuff they showed off last year, and we still haven't gotten access. But I'm trying to think.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, they. They put AI in everything and some stuff like, doesn't need AI. Like, I saw, like, AI E bikes, right? Which, like, what's the point?

Right.

Like, really, they were like, E bikes that had, like, chat GPT built into it so you could have conversations with your E bike. Right. I was telling you about, like, a Qualcomm car that had the ability to use stable diffusion inside of the car. So you can be driving down the road and say, hey, make me a cat on Mars eating unicorn poop or whatever.

Right.

Like, and it would generate that image and put it on your display inside of your car. Like, why do we need that?

Because that's not distracting at all.

That's a thing that exists.

All right. So, yeah, the AI fication of everything is basically was the theme last year. We'll see. What. This year?

Yeah, that's going to be the theme this year, too. Last year it was like, AI for everyone was, I think, the sort of slogan of the year. And this year, I think it's something very similar, like, AI even more for everyone. AI even more for everyone. Yeah, it's Something like that. AI for everyoneer.

There it is.

Yeah. I don't know.

It's like Funner California. Our buddy dubbed that, you know, and had a. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Funner AI for everyone.

There you go. Oh, I like it. Gotta give credit to bourbon, though. All right, but. All right, so ces, that's gonna be rad one of these days or years. I gotta get out there. Yeah, I heard it just like, what takes over the whole Strip.

So it's pretty much, yeah, 100 and I think 140,000 people last year.

Okay.

It's. It. It's in the Mandalay Bay, it's in the Venetian. It's in the entire Las Vegas Convention Center. It's in the Fontainebleau Hotel as well. It's in. There's stuff going on at the Aria. It's like literally spread across. And that's actually sort of one of the frustrating things about CES is like, I mean, the Strip isn't that big, but when you put 140,000 people out there and they're all trying to get Ubers or Lyfts at the same time, and they're all trying to get from like one hotel to the convention center at the same time, it's a cluster. Like you're trying to go two miles, but it takes you an hour to go two miles, you know, so it's. It's kind of frustrating because you kind of have to like, go spend one whole day at like, one venue and not really move around, because just trying to move from venue to venue takes up hours, you know?

Have you been on the. This, like the, the Tesla loop that's over?

I haven't yet. No, I haven't tried that yet. But last, the Tesla loop only goes between the convention center and like one of the hotels.

It's a resort world. Yeah, I stayed there and then I took it just to the convention center, took all the kids and family, and then just took it right back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, that's the only. That's the only loop it does. It doesn't like, stop at other hotels or anything like that. So it's like, unless where you're trying to get to is like really close to that, like, resort world place. It's not super helpful. And last year when at the end of one of the days when I was at the convention center, the line to get on the Tesla loop was like a two hour line.

I was just going to say, I'm like, it's not the quickest process because you're literally funneling everyone into a single car every time. And. Yeah, yeah, we found it on an off day. It was like a Tuesday.

So, yeah, I found the real cheat code during CES is the monorail. You get one of the hop on, hop off monorail passes that lasts like, five days or whatever. And at the very end of the convention, like, like, like at 6pm or whatever, whenever, when all the Expo halls are shutting down for the night, the monorail is a cluster. Right. Everybody's trying to funnel onto the monorail at the same time. But if you're kind of going back and forth during the day and you're not trying to get on it right as the Expo is closing and stuff, it's actually pretty easy to hop on and off the monorail. So that's like. That's. That's like the life hack, if you're going to ces, is get that monorail.

Pass, maybe Vegas as a whole, too. I don't know.

But, yeah, probably.

Yeah, definitely. Ces. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, one of these. One of these years, we'll share some time there.

Yeah. Because the monorail does go to the convention center also.

Right. See, so you just do it to the Tesla loop hop. You know, just take.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, so that's exciting. That's happening soon because you traveled a ton, a metric shit ton. That's an accurate, you know, depiction of your life last year. Yeah. Which was crazy. Yeah. And is this year going to be a lot of travel like that for you?

I'm trying to cut back this year. There's a lot of events that it's kind of like. It's cool that I experienced them once. Do I really care to go back to them again? Probably not. I mean, there's a handful. The thing about going to events is it's really fun. I love connecting with the other people. Most of the, like, CES is an exception because it's like, it's like visual wonderland. Right. Like, everywhere you look, you're just like, oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's really cool. Right. But most of the events I go to are like keynote presentations where you're basically sitting there watching a glorified, like, slideshow presentation. Right. By a. Yes. It might be a Jensen Huang or a Mark Zuckerberg or, you know, some big name giving the presentation, but it's still like a glorified keynote presentation throughout the whole thing. Right. So some of that kind of stuff, it's like, that's cool. It's it's fun to be there. It's fun to like sort of connect with people at Facebook or Meta. Like I actually know people at Meta now that I can call on if I need to. You know, there's other influencer creator types that are out there that I met that maybe we can do collabs now. So for me like the real appeal of those events is actually making those connections, meeting those people and like having sort of ins at some of those companies. But I don't really care about sitting through a lot of the presentations anymore. It's more like I love CES because it's like that visual stuff you can get hands on with a lot of the tech. I love Augmented World Expo because that's like all VR and augmented reality stuff and it's all demos. You just walk around from booth to boot to booth and try this stuff on and demo various like AI or Arkansas and XR tech.

Right.

So like I love the like hands on experience stuff and I would like to do more of that, but I don't know about the like keynote presentation type stuff.

We went to a lot of conferences back in the day in the marketing sphere and like, yeah, I think in the early days we went to some keynotes or whatever presentations that were going on and then we quickly realized we're like, you know, the fun is actually at the bar, it's connecting with people, it's getting to know.

Or in the hallways. Yeah.

Or the halls. Yeah. Wherever. But people. Right.

Yeah.

Because you never know it collabs and obviously it goes transfers to what you're doing now with all sorts of different fun collabs that you do.

So yeah, I mean like when we used to go to a lot of the like digital marketing related events. Right. Like we did used to sit in on the keynotes. Right. But we quickly learned, I mean it was event dependent. But in the marketing world like half the keynotes are pitches. Right. Like they, they teach you something but leave out an element and at the end try to sell you their software, their course or whatever to get the rest of it right. So we kind of learned like, oh, they're just going to like not give us the full picture and then pitch us something at the end. Or you know, there was some good events like Trafficking Conversion Summit. They sort of had like a no pitch policy so people would get up on stage and try to like give their coolest stuff. But I mean how many of those events did we go to where the coolest stuff that we learned came from? Like Sitting at a bar with somebody at 12:30am and they were breaking down one of their processes or, you know, hanging out at Denny's at 2am While somebody tells us about this crazy cryptocurrency thing that's about to bubble up and we totally ignore them. Like how much of that kind of stuff is really where the value is at those events?

You're twisting the knife. I knew you're going to bring it up too. We won't go into details, but I think you've heard of this cryptocurrency. It was roughly, I don't know, 15 years ago at this point. It was something like that.

It was 2010. It was 2010. You know, he told us about. I won't name the cryptocurrency by name, but it's like initials are btc. And at the time it was a couple bucks and now it's a little bit more than that.

We were told all about how to mine it, how it works and all. And Matt and I, mind you, it was, I think it's even later than 12:30. This is like one or two in the morning. It was just like over our heads.

Yeah.

And the story continues. And yeah, we'll, we'll leave it there. But yeah, early days for that old btc.

We should be retired millionaires on a beach right now.

Yes. Moving on. Let's see. I, I, you're, you're a man of the trends and of the times. And when it comes to 2025, I feel like, well, I'm curious. What are you thinking about in terms of like, what's exciting, what's developing? Like maybe what you're obsessed with right now? I have a list of different tools and things that you. There's a million tools, obviously, Future tools to IO. If you don't even know what that site is, just go there. Matt runs it, him and his team. And AI bots. Yep. Like, I guess let's start off like, what's the trend of 2025 in your eye when it comes to AI? Just tech that's like, that us common folk can use and actually implement in our businesses and our life and all that. Not just fly car shit and all that.

Yeah, I think 2025 is going to really be the year of AI agents. If you're paying attention to like the AI world at all, you're probably hearing the talk of AI agents bubble up quite a bit.

So basically an AI agent is like AIs that can use tools on your behalf. So right now, like imagine you're writing a blog post for WordPress. Well, if you're going to use AI, you might go to ChatGPT and say, hey, write me a blog post about X. It writes you the blog post and then hopefully you double check it to make sure it actually reads well. And you don't leave in like as a large language model in the actual text, right, Which a lot of people tend to do. But it will write you an article, you copy, paste it, put it into like WordPress, then maybe you're going to create AI thumbnail for it. So you go to Mid Journey or Stable Diffusion or Leonardo or whatever and you create a thumbnail for that and then you upload it. Well, if you were going to use an AI agent, it would be more like you pull open your phone and say, make me a blog post about the coolest drones of 2025, right? And all you do is you give it that prompt. And what it will do will it will go to Chat GPT, it will go and do the research for you, it will write the article in ChatGPT, it will copy it, it will paste it into WordPress, it will open up your image generator of choice and then generate an image for you that goes along with it. It will take that image, put it into WordPress for you and then press publish, right? All you did was tell it, make me a blog post about X. And it literally did everything else. You go to your WordPress website, it's live, right? That's kind of like an agentic framework workflow of like writing a blog post or let's say you need to go on a trip and you want to go with your family to Hawaii in April, right? You can say, hey, I want to do a trip for four in April to Hawaii, look at my calendar, pick the best dates and book the trip, right? It will go look at your calendar, find out what dates you have available. Go look at the airlines, look at what flights are available, price, you know, price, check the flights, find the cheapest flights, find the best time to fly out, book your hotel for you and then send you an email saying you're all booked. Here's your itinerary, right? That's sort of an agentic process. I think we're going to see a lot of that kind of stuff in AI in 2025 where you give it one thing you want to accomplish that might be like a multi step process that uses multiple websites, multiple tools and from your one prompt it's going to go do all of those things and then come back to you and say, I'm done. Here's the result, man.

And that's. So it's essentially it's workflows, right? Like if to kind of dumb it down for anybody to understand, it's like, hey, okay, you can string things along almost like a Zapier or make.com workflow, right? Where there's like a series of steps and it essentially accomplishes those based off of some preset.

Yes, but the difference between like a make.com or zapier or you know, the Mind Studio or one of those kinds of tools is that those ones you sort of pre build a flow, you tell it like, hey, go, you know, start by like you can, what I just explained you can do with those tools today, right? You make a workflow where you can tell, you know, give it a prompt of what you want it to create. And then using make.com, you can create this visual workflow where it will write the blog post, do the research, you know, right. Make the image, publish it to WordPress for you. You can build that kind of stuff right now with those tools. What an agent would do is you wouldn't even pre build the workflow. The agent would just know what tools it needs to go use. Right? So you don't even get into make.com or zapier or any of those tools and build out the steps. You just tell it, here's what I'm trying to accomplish and it knows what tools to use and it will go and do all those things. I think a lot of like, like make.com and Zapier. I think right now those are like a middleman for like an agentic kind of workflow. I think those middlemen are going to get cut out. I think you're going to see Claude and Chat, GPT and Gemini and all these various AI models that are out there. Be able to just do that stuff. You tell it what you want it to do and it knows what tools are available or it will do the research to figure out what tools are available. Go use those tools on your behalf. I think it's going to be more like that where you're not pre building anything. You're just going to a AI tool giving it a prompt and it does it all.

So it sounds like the LLMs like OpenAI and anthropic and Gemini, like I said, I would imagine that's probably where they're building things internally, right? So it'll just kind of happen based off and I'm sure you'd have to integrate various things. Like, I know Google, Google Drive is now integrated with like ChatGPT and in, you know, Claude, and obviously Gemini has it all too. So it's like, it's already starting to, like Gemini feels like it's maybe the closest to that because it's like looping in all their apps and everything, I guess, like. Yeah. How do you. What do you see there?

Yeah. So Claude already, Anthropic, already released a feature for Claude called tool use.

That's right.

And it's sort of a pain in the ass to set up right now. You actually have to install some stuff locally. You have to use like a Docker container that runs like Python script inside of it. And it's, it's, it's, you know, not for like tech noobs to set up and use right now, eventually it will just be built into Claude where you can tell Claude to use tools and it will do it. Right now there's like this whole setup process, but I've used it before, and right now it can open up. Like, I did an example on one of my videos with it, where I had it go to my YouTube channel, sort it by most popular videos, copy the titles and the view numbers of all my most popular videos, and then pull them into a spreadsheet, right? And so I just gave it that one example and it literally navigated to YouTube, went to my videos page, sorted it by Popular, and copied and pasted titles and download numbers, opened up an Excel spreadsheet and pasted titles and numbers into the Excel spreadsheet and it did all of that autonomously. Now I ran out of like, OpenAI or Claude credits, right? Like, it hit like, Like Claude has rate limits, which is one of the biggest downsides of cloud right now is it's pretty easy to hit the rate limits. Well, I was hitting their rate limits on using the tool features, so I couldn't actually get it to accomplish fully what I wanted to without it hitting the rate limits. But we got a glimpse of like, I just told it to do this thing and it went and used all of these tools for me and gave me the result that I wanted. So we've seen that with Claude OpenAI said towards, like, I don't remember if they said it November or December of 2024, but they said we're looking at probably January to release the tool use for ChatGPT, which is the same kind of idea. We recently saw Chat GPT roll out a Windows app and a Mac app that can actually look at your desktop and look at what you're doing and give you feedback based on what you're doing. And some tools, not all tools, but some tools that can actually interact with on your behalf. Most tools that still can't yet, but eventually it's going to have access to be able to like move your mouse around, type stuff on your keyboard for you and actually take actions on your computer for you. Claude can do that right now, but it's very, very archaic and we know Google's working on that as well because they want to integrate with Gmail and Calendar and Drive and all of their suite of tools to sort of tie them all together using AI. So yeah, we're already seeing that kind of stuff happen. It's just going to get more and more sophisticated and more and more brain dead simple for anybody to be able to use it.

That's what it seems like. It's like all the LLMs, it's the engine behind everything essentially, right. That's where all the money is getting invested. It's the foundational layer. You have all these other startups that are plugging into them for obviously the data and power. So there's at least my brain goes to. You're probably going to get a base level of agents in all the LLMs of some flavor, right? Like the basic and then, and then you'll probably see startups start to pop up for any kind of vertical or like specialized kind of use. Right.

I don't think we're going to see a ton of new large language model companies pop up. Right. I think the companies that are already doing it are already too far ahead. Right? You've got OpenAI, who's probably the leader, you've got Gemini who's not too far behind. I would say Anthropic is probably like in third place right now as far as like the most capable models. Gemini and OpenAI's O3 are pretty close to each other, but O3 nobody has access to outside of OpenAI. So the best model available right now for consumers to use is actually Gemini. Google doesn't get enough credit. Gemini is like the best model as voted on by users and by capabilities and all that kind of stuff. So you've got, you've got OpenAI, you've got Google, you've got Anthropic and then you've got a few companies building open source models. You've got Mistral, you've got Llama Meta basically building Llama. There's a handful of Chinese companies like Quinn is one of them and then there's Deepseek is the other one that's like a large, it's an open source model that's like as good as GPT4O now. So you've got a handful of companies that are building these large language models, but they're so far ahead now that it would be really, really tough for new companies to come in and build another large language model, like the level of these large language models. So I think what you're going to see is any company trying to get into AI now, they're just going to go leverage one of these models and build on top of it. I don't know if you heard about like Inflection AI that was, was it Reid Hoffman's company?

I think Reid Hoffman was like one of the big investors in that one. But basically Inflection AI built a chatbot called PI, which was like a conversational chatbot that you can have discussions with. And then basically I think was it Microsoft? Microsoft Aqua hired them basically and took all of their employees and Inflection kept on going. And then when Inflection kept on going, they basically said we're not going to try to build new large language models, we're just going to leverage existing ones. Character AI, same thing. Character AI was a company that was building its own large language models underneath. But Google, OpenAI, Anthropic were all so far ahead of them. They basically said we're throwing up our hands. We're not going to keep on pursuing building large language models. We'll just start leveraging what exists. So I don't think you're going to see many more new companies build large language models. I think all companies now are going to just plug into one of the existing ones.

Makes sense because I, I think, I don't think I shared this with you actually, but there was a report I need to that kind of broke that down is like here's the landscape of how things are. It's like you have the LLMs, that's where they're, they're raising billions of dollars. And I mean you would know the, the amounts even more. I think Anthropic, maybe it's like a month or so ago got like what, 4 billion or maybe it was more.

6 billion from Amazon. Yeah, 6.

Yeah, 6. Okay. Yeah, so it was off a couple of. But it's like it keep like to compete against. It's going to be tough.

So in the words of one of our friends, every couple billion counts.

It was a different letter I thought. But he's right, he's Right. So yeah, good reference and, but it's absolutely true. So that's where the startups is like the layer of, you know, you have the now with the LLMs which will keep evolving but it's like you're not going to compete against them. So if you're thinking of like a vertical or something to, you know, I don't know, maybe there's like an agent and I'd get your, I'm curious of your thoughts on this because with all the shifts that are happening, people I think with agents think of like, oh my God, it's going to replace so many jobs or processes. Like I know marketing is probably one of the, probably one of the fastest or easiest things to automate or agentify because there's just like, it's a sequence of steps. It's kind of like data analysis. It's like, okay, so based off of this data input this, give me this result, you know, and like how should we craft new copy or whatever it might be?

I guess like opportunities and threats. I'm curious of, of your mind, like what, what pops up when it comes.

To the marketing thing. Right?

And we're, it doesn't have to be marketing either.

Yeah, no, no, but I want to talk about this. I, I, you know this is obviously all in the theoretical right now, right? We're just sort of speculating what could happen. But you know, when it comes to marketing, if everybody has the same capabilities and everybody is able to be a world class copywriter, everybody is able to be world class at SEO, world class at building funnels, world class at email marketing. Right? Like you name a marketing sub niche, if everybody in the world has tools that make some as good as everybody else, well that sort of devalues all of it across the board. So I still think marketing is going to be important because the best marketers are going to be the marketers that figure out how to like move above what everybody is capable of doing. And so I think you're going to see like, okay, copy has gotten really, really good and page building has gotten really good. And I think, you know, looking at threats that's going to make it harder to determine what is a legit product versus not legit product. If everybody can make a professional looking website with really solid copy, they it's really compelling. How easy does that make it for scammers to also create crap like that that people are going to fall for? So I really, really think that in marketing specifically, if everybody can do it, it's of very little benefit. To pretty much like everybody as well. So you're going to still have to figure out how to stand out. And I still think humans in the loop are going to be what makes a lot of this stuff stand out. Like humans that understand human psychology, understand what makes people want to buy versus not want to buy. And yes, AI is going to get better and better at that. But again, you've got to stand above the rest. Marketing is all about standing out above what everybody else is doing. And if everybody can do all this shit really, really, really good, what makes you stand out above that? And I think there's always going to be that game in marketing of like, okay, now everybody can do this. How do I do it slightly better. Um, and so I don't really see it taking a ton of marketers jobs. I think it's going to make marketers jobs and lives a lot easier. I think it's going to democratize marketing. Right. But I think the best marketers are going to figure out how to even stand above what AI is able to create.

And pause really fast on that note, because I absolutely agree because I feel like this pulls out the need to have a, like the touch of a human has touched this thing. Because you're right, everyone democratized marketing, everyone's going to be a world class marketer to however that's graded because that will change with technology as well. But it reminded me of Greg Eisenberg on Twitter. I saw our ex, I saw him post. He's a great follow, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, he's a good buddy of mine. Yeah.

Oh, is he? Okay, cool. I love his stuff. And somebody said he's like, I feel like a trend is going to be one of these like, you know, writing that isn't perfect websites maybe that look kind of like. Yeah, you know, it's like it's gonna.

Go back to the days where all the websites are built on like, they look like they were built on geocities and have like little flaming skulls next to the title. And everything's animated gifs with smiley faces that spin on the, on a black background with green text.

I can literally visualize I had one of those skulls.

Everybody did.

It was a green one though. And it was rodent. I was on Tripod. Not. What was it? Angel Fire.

There's Angel Fire, geocities, Tripod.

Those are the top three, I think back in the day. Right?

Yeah, there was one more that I'm drawing a blank on. But yeah, those were, I think those were the biggies.

I was a tripod. Guy.

But I bet you were.

You would know.

Oh, man, we're way too close at this point, Joe.

Well, it's funny because we would go place. This is a little side note. Like, we go places and, like, people would say, you guys look the same. I'm like, well, literally today we both fired on the mic. You know, the riverside that we're recording? I'm like, we're wearing the same damn shirt. Like, we haven't seen each other. It's been a week, but still, some things don't change. All right, what other. What other things popped in mind? I. I brought up Mark. I'm happy you made that note, because I think that's a pretty common. I think it's a good frame to have. And. And also on that note, too, you and I talked about it. I'm starting to put out some videos on this. Like, I feel that with AI, the need for human connection, and not even the need. I feel like having that human element's gonna get more important than we all realize and, you know, through technology, connecting us in different ways. Talked about Delphi and the way that, like, feel like you can connect with anyone on their personalized level now to, like, crazy extent. But it goes with, like, any other thing, like agents. Okay, cool. I want something done for me, you know, with my liking, and this robot or whatever will do it for me.

Yeah.

Maybe it's to connect with someone else. I feel like that human intervention connection is going to be more important than we all think.

Yeah. No, I totally agree. I think humans being involved in the whole thing is going to be a marketing tactic. Right. Like, one of the things that I've been kind of getting from the rooftops on my channel for, like, a couple of years now is that when it comes to, like, video on YouTube specifically, we're seeing this huge trend of faceless videos, right. Where people are using AI tools to just quickly generate videos and put them on YouTube. Right. And they're, you know, you can spot them from a mile away if you are, you know. You know, AI, right? Like, I can spot, like, oh, this was 11 labs. You can sort of tell in the pacing of the voice. And like, okay, it might sound like a real person, but they're speaking very robotically.

Right.

You can sort of pick that kind of stuff up. And we're seeing a lot more of these YouTube channels. Just, like, have chat GPT create a script, have 11 labs create the audio for the script, and then they're either using AI or like, a story blocks type site to Go and overlay the whole thing with B roll, never putting their face on camera. And I think that's a very sort of transient trend. I think we're going to see that happen for a small window of time. People are going to get sick of that kind of stuff. They're going to want to connect with real humans again. That's why I think, like, if you look on YouTube, there's a lot of AI channels now, right? When I really started to focus on AI a few years ago, there was a handful, but there wasn't many. Now there's, like thousands of them. The ones that tend to be popular, that get the most views, are the ones where there's an actual real human being showing their face and sharing their ideas and, you know, talking about their opinions and stuff. The ones that are like, these faceless channels you're seeing not always do quite as well. There's a few exceptions. There's a couple channels out there that are doing really, really well with it, but I think they were the ones that got in sort of the earliest and managed to hop on the trend with the right timing and everything. But the new channels that are popping up that are these faceless channels, they. They're just not really getting as much traction, at least in the AI sort of tech space. So I really, really think that human element of being a real person, that if we're walking around at ces, you can potentially bump into me. We can get a selfie together. We can, you know, nerd out for 10 minutes or whatever. Like, that kind of interaction, I think, is really valuable. It's also the reason I started doing weekly live streams.

Right. That's right.

You know, like, I want to interact with the community. I want people that are interested in AI to jump on and ask me questions and hear me actually say their name and respond to the questions and show I am not an AI. I just love talking about this stuff. I'm a huge nerd that loves nerding out. That's why I'm doing these live streams, so we can just nerd out together. And I think those sort of, like, human connections are going to be super valuable. And, like, that's the next marketing strategy is like, be a real person and don't be a dick.

That's pretty much it. I think that comes up pretty often, like, when we hang out too, like, yeah, at least, like, be cool to people, you know, with the experience and going to Padre games and like.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, it's something we bring up because I feel like Yeah, I don't know. For whatever reason, a lot of people, at least online can be straight up dicks. Obviously in the comments of YouTube. I mean, you've experienced that a lot. Twitter's probably not. It's better, but still, you know, But I don't know. Yeah, the whole thing around human connection, it just rings more and more. I'm just like, this is so much more important than I think most of us realize. And hopefully AI helps bring us a lot more together in a lot of ways.

Definitely.

You know, Internet connected the world. AI usage adoption is like, I don't know how many times quicker than the Internet was in phones. So it's like you have AI adoption is just through the roof all throughout the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, when it also, you know, coming back to the topic of like AI sort of taking jobs from people. Yeah.

I welcome it.

Do I.

Here's the thing, like, there's this like double sort of thing that's happening with people where they come home at the end of a long day and complain about how much they hate their job, but then at the same time they jump on Twitter and talk about how scared they are that AI is going to take their job. Right. I think the jobs that people don't enjoy doing, the ones where you're coming home and you're complaining at the end of the day about how much you hate your job, those are likely the ones that AI is going to take first.

Right.

And like, why are you freaking out about that? I, like, I.

I don't want to be like, unsympathetic. I am very, very sympathetic. I am very empathetic. Whenever people talk about, like, their fears with AI, I like to listen, I like to address them, I like to talk about them. I like to understand where all these, like, all sides of things are coming from. And so I know saying that sounds very un. Empathetic of like, through your job, you hate it anyway. Why do you care about it? Like, why do you care if you lose it? Well, also jobs create income and you need that income to survive. And I, I understand that part of it. But could we also possibly see this as like a blessing in disguise? If AI takes that job, maybe it means you're going to move on to something that you actually want to be doing. Maybe it's something you actually enjoy doing. Maybe it's something that you're not coming home at the end of the day going, I hate my job. Right. Like, maybe that's what it's going to create for you. Maybe we can look at that. Glass half full versus glass half empty. Empty side of things. And look at this as like if AI ends up taking your job, well then A, it probably wasn't the most skilled job in the world. B, it probably wasn't the most fulfilling job in the world. Maybe this is that blessing that you need to go and find something that is what you really want to be doing. Saying that, and you know, I'll step off my soapbox here in a second, but saying that there is no better time in the history of humanity to go and create your own career, to go and build your own thing, to go and create your own software product and try to sell it, to create your own YouTube channel, your own podcast, your own blog, your own sort of content business, your own agency to help other people. It has never been frickin easier to do any of that. You've got ChatGPT, you've got perplexity, you've got tools to make graphics for you. You've got AI tools to do SEO and copywriting for you. You've got tools where you can give it a prompt and it will build software for you. Like, there has never been a better time to start building some little side hustles. So when your job goes away, the one that you hate, the one that you say at the end of the day, I, I hate my job, but also complain that AI might take it away. Well, guess what? Start building something else with everything at your disposal. Because if you build something else with everything at your disposal, you won't give a shit when it goes away. In fact, you'll probably be cheering that now I get to focus my time on the thing that I want to be doing. All right, Soapbox.

And you're damn right. Yes, yes. And if you are offended by anything Matthew Wolff just told you, you should start listening to Matt Wolf's videos more. You know, mine too. But start building this stuff, like literally, if it's pissing you off, it probably means there's some truth behind it. But I feel like a lot of the world you're absolutely. There's. I think there's just a misunderstanding of what is happening right now. I'm going to pause this really fast to go shout out another podcast that I think you should peek at yourself. It's called I Digress. It's hosted by Troy Sandage and it's also brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Thank you. And what I love about this podcast is that he keeps it short and Snappy, it's actionable and to the point. It's under 30 minutes. I digress actually helps you eliminate a bunch of complexities and complications, confusion when it comes to your business. Your marketing gives you a bunch of frameworks and strategies to help you scale and actually be sustainable with whatever success means to you. So go check it out yourself. I urge you to go listen to I Digress. Wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to do a quick shout out one more time for the thing I talked about, Top of the episode, which is the AI version of me and of this podcast in my YouTube videos and all these things. It all lives within this AI platform. I used Delphi AI to create it and I want you to use. Mine is totally free. Go to hustle and flowchart.com/AI joe. That's hustle and flowchart.com /AI joe. Test this thing out. It's crazy. You could type with it, talk with it, you can even use video and you can look up anything from, from this podcast. You can ask a question about your business life, any scenario. It kind of learns about you with the information you give it. It's rad. You will love it. And also there's a lot of people who are asking, how do I get one of these? How do I build it out? The cool thing is my team and I have been building a ton of these every single day. I've used the platform Delphi AI for two years. I'm actually one of their advisors because I was one of their first users and just gave them a t ton of feedback. I love it. But we build these things. So if you want to use it for lead generation, for, you know, you have all this content as an expert, author, coach, type person, we can put that into this digital brain and make it interactive. You could use it for customer service, internal training for your team, for your organization. Lots of uses. If you would like one of these, I can pass over an exclusive deal. There's no one else that's, that's offering this out there. I work closely with Delphi as one of their partners, agency partners, to build this out. So hit me up. Type hustle and flowchart.com interest into whatever browser again, that's hustleandflowchart.com interest and hit me up. Let's build this thing together. All right, back to the episode. You know, any new technology, especially something like this, that comes on so fast because literally the rapid adoption, it's faster than anything else as a whole, globally and something like 2x times faster than just mobile phones or smartphones, I think it was. And now, at least, like, this was December. It's like 55% of the world has used AI in some way. That's the entire planet. It's like, holy shit, that's a lot. That means everyone's starting to start waking up just by just using ChatGPT. First time you use that, you're like, whoa, yeah, I could do that now. But think about all the other things you haven't even experienced yet. You know, there's a list of tools I just posted on my Twitter from a16z. They basically, you know, it's like their apps unwrapped. And it has, I don't know, like 20 apps on here. And I reposted that. I'm like, start testing this. Because, you know, once you understand how this stuff works, I mean, we talked about agents, Matt, and I want to go down this again. But it's like, there's so many opportunities to build out these agents or show other companies that might really benefit from having them in the. In their companies. And you could be the one that stewards that or advises them or consult, whatever the hell. Like, these are just some ideas I have immediately. If shit hit the fan right now, for whatever reason, I would do that because everyone hears the trend. It's like, well, great, fulfill it. You know, get really good at a part of that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, newsletters, right? Newsletters, like on Beehive or Convertkit or I guess it's just called Kit now, but, like, it's so easy to build a newsletter, pick a niche that you're excited about, have AI sort of help you round up the news. Have AI help you, like, organize it into a newsletter that reads nicely, and then go in and spend 10 minutes putting your own voice, your own input into it, your own opinions into it. You've got a newsletter business right there in whatever niche you want to build it in that takes you. Let's say it's a weekly newsletter. It takes you probably a half hour a week to run this newsletter, right? Like, there are so many opportunities. Like, you can use Cursor or Bolt or Windsurf or Devin or one of these AI software tools that are out there and create, like, a simple software that solves a problem for people and go and sell it for 10 bucks a month to use it, right?

You can't.

You get a thousand people to use it. You're now making 10 grand a month, which is probably more than you're Making in that dead end job that you complain about at the end of the day.

And you can hang out at home with your family or wherever the hell you want to live and do your thing. And I would say, Matt, surprised you missed this, but it's like, go make some YouTube videos based off the newsletter you just constructed.

Yeah. Or the other way around. Make YouTube videos and then have them use AI to convert them into a newsletter.

Bingo. It doesn't matter, but just do the damn thing. Yeah, but absolutely right. I mean, like, you know, content outlines or brainstorming, a lot of that. You know, you're not going to get all the creativity from AI, but at least like, you spark it, it will spark back with some more ideas and then it's up to you to do something with it.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I like that. That was a good soapbox.

Where would you. All right, so you mentioned. So let's say, like, if you were to go and build some agents right now or something that, you know, maybe it's not a full blown agent, like, you know, Anthropic has done or, or, you know, OpenAI is coming out with Gemini. Like, where would you point people to start? You already mentioned Cursor Bolt. There's a couple other ones.

You said Windsurf and Devin. Those are all software tools. So. Those are all coding tools. Those are tools where you tell it what you want it. I mean, Devin's a little bit different. Devin is like. You hire a Devin. I don't know, it's very weird. It's like 500 bucks a month and cursor's 20 bucks a month. And for me, works just as good.

Our buddy Brad Poole, he's literally building out a software for his company right now in Cursor because I pointed him to Rowan's masterclass. Your buddy.

Yeah.

And he literally spent about $40 and has built a complete app. Front end, login, back end. It's wild to manage like a whole financial all with Cursor. And he's like, holy shit.

Yeah. We did a podcast episode over on the Next Wave. Me and Nathan, we brought on one of our friends, Riley Brown. And on that episode, it was like an hour long episode, we built an app in real time on that episode. It was like a sort of like Evernote style app that was like a web clipper where you share notes and stuff. And we built that whole thing in the course of that episode. And by the end of the episode, we had a working Apple and we just did it live on a podcast right so it is, it is freaking wild. I did that two years ago on my YouTube channel where I built a little basic side scroller video game on a, on my YouTube channel. That one took me a good like 10 hours to build. Then I edited the video down to like 30 minutes. But it, it's gotten way, way better. You can code up anything. And one of the things I've sort of been obsessed with lately is trying to solve little problems in my own business.

Tell me.

And write little scripts in like Python or whatever to solve those problems, right? Like for example, and a lot of this stuff I build already exists, but I wanted just like a simpler tool that's specifically tailored to my needs. So like, I try to download a lot of images from the Internet so that I can use them as like, you know, memes or whatever to put on my videos or things like that. And a lot of times they'll download in that webp format. And everybody freaking hates webp format because you can't pull them into like video editing software. And there's a lot of tools that don't accept webp and it's just annoying, right? So I created a little Python script that opens up a box on my, my computer. I drag a WEBP file onto it, it converts it to a JPEG and then deletes the original webp. And all I do is drag and drop it. And it's the simplest app in the world. I built it in like 20 minutes with cursor, but it solves a problem for me. And then I, and then I started running into like these AVIF files or whatever they're called. Same thing. They don't really run in a lot of apps. I couldn't pull them into my videos. So I added to that app, all right, also accept AVIF files. And it accepted that, right? And then I ran into this issue where on YouTube, right? If, if you try to upload a PNG as your thumbnail and the, the file size is too big, like it doesn't let you upload a file that's bigger than two megabytes on YouTube. So I went and added to this, this software tool. If I drop in a PNG file, I want you to convert it to a JPEG and make sure it's under 2 megabytes, right? So now I have this file, this, this, it's just a little box that opens up on my, my PC any image file I drop into it, it deletes the original file and makes a JPEG of the same existing image under two megabytes so that I can use it on a YouTube thumbnail. And I, like, pretty much have that app open on my computer all day, every day. And as I'm downloading images, boom, toss it into there, and it just replaces the image. I. I don't have to open up an image editor and save it as a new file. I don't have to open up any sort of browser tool to do it, like, literally drag, drop, done. So that's one of the files that I built.

Another one that I said, that's. That was using Cursor.

That was using Cursor. Another one that I built is a. Is a transcriber. So, like, I was using descript, right? I don't really edit with the script. I don't really do the whole thing where I go and delete sentences and edit with description. What I was using descript for was like a really quick translation transcription service. So I would make a video, I would pull it into descript, get the transcription of that video, and then I would get. Take that transcription, I would open up Claude. I would plop that whole transcription into Claude and say, help me come up with titles and thumbnails for this video. And I'm paying, I don't know, 30 bucks a month or something like that to use Description. And all I was using it for was a transcription tool. That's it. That was the only feature I was using it for. So OpenAI has an API called Whisper, the Whisper API, which does the same thing. It takes an audio file, converts it to text, and gives you a transcription of it. So I use Cursor to build a little app where when I'm done with a video, I literally drag and drop the video file into this same thing. It's just like a little box that opens up on my computer. I drag and drop the video file into it. It uses Whisper, transcribes the whole thing, and then once the transcription is done, it then says.

It has another prompt in it. This says, all right, read this transcription and give me ideas for titles and thumbnails. And then it automatically creates a little text file in a folder on my computer. And in that text file, it's got the full transcription along with potential titles and thumbnails for that video, right? So I was able to cancel my Descript membership because all I was using it was with a transcription service. And I don't need to go to multiple places. I just throw in a video file, it makes the transcription, and then spits out a, like, title and a bunch of title and thumbnail ideas for it. So I don't have to go to the script, I don't have to copy and paste my transcription into Claude and then get the output. It's just drag drop done. It takes, you know, five minutes or something to transcribe it. But once it's done, I, I have everything I need and I was able to cancel a couple tools to do it.

Dude. Well, and speaking of that, you were even telling me what the other week you took all of your financial statements recently from like credit cards, whatever, at your bank and you threw em into Claude, right? And then you basically had analyze to find all the recurring subscriptions you have. So. And obviously we don't need to go into detail, but the point is we all have a shit ton of recurring subscriptions, AI tools or not, that are $20 a pop, $30 a pop to add up. That's probably a really good way to find ideas of what to make. Like you're probably just using maybe a feature tool per tool per thing. And I don't know if this exists, Matt, but like with OpenAI, the API like Whisper is one of the features or the tools you have access to there is there an easy way to see what's possible, possible and what you can API into to basically do some kind of action?

I'm sure on the OpenAI documentation there's like all the various APIs that are available because OpenAI has a lot of APIs, right? People think of OpenAI and they think of Chat GPT, but we also forget that OpenAI also owns Dall E3. OpenAI also owns Whisper, which is a, you know, a video or audio to text feature OpenAI owns. They also have Sora, right?

Sora, yeah.

So like, like, but Sora, I don't know if it has an API yet or not.

Yeah, I can't. It might be too early for that.

But there's now the O1 open, there's now the O1 API as well, which does a whole bunch of like logic and reasoning and essentially double and triple checks its work before it gives you its output to make sure it's giving you the best possible output.01 has an API now, Advanced Voice Mode has an API now where you can create apps, where you talk to the app, just like you do with Advanced Voice mode on ChatGPT that has an API now, so you can build that into apps. You jump over to Claude, Claude has a lot of APIs like that, those types of things as well. You jump over to Google, Google has APIs for all that kind of stuff. Google has APIs where you can upload image files, video files, text files, and have it do stuff with them. I don't think VO2 has an API yet because it's not really publicly available yet. But like, Google also has Imagen or imagine, I don't know how it's pronounced. They've got their own image generator. All of these things have APIs that you can plug into and build tools on the back of. And right now when it comes to APIs, most companies are just like shopping on price. They're like, which API can I use for the cheapest to build this thing?

Yeah. I mean, and this is again why it's so damn cool of a time. Like back to your soapbox of like, find a problem that a lot of people have or maybe some archaic thing that hasn't been AI fied yet or some. Something that, you know that is just going to be obsolete because of what's happening out there. And yeah, start by building it for yourself. I think that's always the best way. It's like build a tool that you know you need.

Yeah.

To maybe save some money, save some time, your team time, whatever it is, do something better. But then like, shit, that could be a product, go put it out there as, you know, could be maybe a Google or Chrome extension or some standalone app.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, all these apps, all these little apps that I make for myself just to solve my own small problems, I take them and toss them up on GitHub is open source. So any of these apps that I build for myself I throw on GitHub and then anybody can go and download and build off of them and make them better. Like I mentioned, I put out that game a couple of years ago that was like just a run and jump game where there's like little platforms, there's coins on the platform and you just, it's like an infinite scroller. You go and you just try to collect coins and then eventually you fall into the lava and then you try to beat your score on the next round.

I played it, I remember that one.

And like, I put that up on GitHub and then I saw a whole bunch of people start to fork it and make better games out of it and they put like more intense backgrounds onto it and they put like the ability for like the little character to shoot guns and they put like little aliens on the platforms that try to attack you so they can shoot them off the platforms. And I saw, I saw like a Whole group of people start to build off that stupid little platform game that I made and actually turn it into something quite a bit cooler than what I started with. And I'm like, that's so cool to see. It's like I put this seed out into the world and watched it grow. Now I'm watching other people sort of harvest that plant and build cool shit with it.

You know, I gotta find you on GitHub for whatever reason you're not coming up.

I think it's just Mr. Eflow. It's the same username pretty much everywhere.

I forgot the Mr. Yeah, I'm like, someone else has your E flow here.

There he is.

Okay, cool. Yeah, everybody go follow Matt and see what he's talking about. Because I think a lot of these things like me has never been. Call myself a coder, but even though I built that Tripod site back in the day, I know basic HTML, but like, it doesn't. It's not complicated because like with Cursor or Bolt, it's all a prompt. Like you can one. One shot. You know, I've heard the term like row and chang. Talk about like, oh, you can one shot this app and like you can make some cool shit with just like one prompt. But obviously you could break it down into little steps like you would with any chat GPT prompting. You might.

Yeah, yeah, I would say like, typically you can get like the bones of something decent with one prompt. Most often. More often than not, you're going to go in there and give it more prompts and you know, improve it and go, oh, I wish it had this feature and add stuff to it and things like that. But yeah, you're going to get, you're going to get like a pretty good like rough draft of whatever your product is with a single prompt these days.

And dude, yeah, I just, I just found your AI jump game and it has 13 forks.

Nice.

I'm like, that's pretty cool, man.

Yeah, I actually, that's something I want to do a follow up video on where I take my existing game, pull it back into Claude or sorry, not Claude, Cursor. Pull it into cursor and then actually build off of it and improve it and make it even cooler myself and then show off that process on a video.

I think you should, man. Yeah, revisit it, dude. I think this would be a cool little callback. But what I was saying was like with GitHub for instance, just understanding, okay, this whole flow of, hey, you can make something with just some prompting. You don't need to be a device. You know, it probably helps if you knew the language and all that, but watch some YouTube videos. Watch, watch your video. We'll link it. Jacob, let's link that in the notes, you know, from, from Next Wave podcast. But it's like if you start to just kind of see the process and this is how I've learned and got more comfortable, it's like, oh, it ain't that bad and you're not going to break anything. It's super cheap. Or try it for free. Or you could just copy something that you made already mad. Or someone else on GitHub, create an account over there, start following people. Yeah, it is FAFO. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think, I think with GitHub too, like, I think GitHub has like direct integrations into like cursor and tools like that now where you can find a repository where something's already pretty well built for you, pull it into cursor and just start building off of it just for what's already out there.

It's. I don't want to say it's so easy, but it's the time that we're in right now. It's like, man, you got an idea, you want to solve something and you know, solve it for yourself. But again, thinking of the opportunities you about to, you know, lose your job or your industry is becoming more obsolete, or you see opportunities, maybe it's more that you're seeing, like, oh, shoot, there's a gap here that I can automate with this AI mindset and just start, like, start searching around, see what people have already built.

Well, it really blows me away because I don't think most people think this way, right? Like, I, you know, talking to a lot of people, like, they don't think in the way of like, oh, I can build me tools. AI can make my life more productive. AI can actually help me create a business so I can get out of the job I don't like doing. I don't really think people think of it like that. I think people see AI and they think, okay, they're talking about AI. AI is obviously chatgpt, which is what people use to cheat on their homework, right? Like, that's what people think of when they think of AI. The majority of the world, that's what they still think of. It's actually a very small group of people who look at AI in this way and go, holy crap, this can actually change my life if I'm using it the right way. And it's know clearly Changed my life. Clearly changed your life. Like, we both built entire careers off of what AI is capable of now, but the majority of the world is still thinking of it as like a machine that cheats on homework for you and is one day going to have robots that rise up and kill us all. Right. Like, that's what the majority of the world thinks of when they think of AI, they think of cheating on homework and Terminator like scenarios.

Yeah. And like, I think about, I'm like, you know what? Is that possible?

Bring it on.

I think this is fun. You know, it's like, it's a crazy time. And I was going to make a note too, that the fact that you have built something the last. Was it two and a half years? I think it is. And that's been about roughly how long we've been working kind of independently, I guess we'll say you're on the podcast here. We had business for a lot of years before that. The cool thing, something that we've both done independently is build something. I wouldn't say from scratch because it's all leveraging the foundation we built for so many years. And every single person listening and watching has that same opportunity. It's like, where are you currently at? Whether the relationships, knowledge, whatever it is, industry ends and like, build from there. Like, don't feel like you gotta start something from total scratch. Like you jumping into AI doing videos and future tools might seem like it's like, whoa. Matt just went totally, like, no. Yeah, I don't. I know that's not true here. Was it fresh? Yes, in a lot of ways. But yeah. So I just, I guess caution to, like, don't just start something from scratch where you're like burning the ships or burning the boats, necessarily.

Yeah, no, I always suggest, like, if you're going to start building stuff with AI, build it as like a side hustle first. If you've got a job that's paying your income, like, don't give that up yet. Like, start building something, see if it can make income and if it surpasses your current job income, then cool. But now start looking at, like, what your next move is. But, like, it's so easy to just do. As a side hustle right now is like a side bonus income on top of your regular job. But yeah, I mean, going back to like, your. Your last point too is like, I don't know how often I hear people go like, I sprouted out of nowhere or like, I was an overnight success or whatever.

I've seen a lot of these comments, I'm like, I just chuckle. Yeah.

And I'm like, I put my first YouTube video up in 2009. I've been actually doing content marketing, you know, either by myself or with a partner like Joe or Bradley or Josh Bartlett or like I've had partners over the years, but it's always been in this like content base where I've been trying to put out content and build a business around content. I mean that's been the game I've been playing for almost 16 years now, you know.

Absolutely. I mean that's how you and I start. I mean you were doing some of that prior to. And we worked together at your parents shutter company. You know, it was all content. But what I was going to say, it's like if you look hard enough, we might have already taken these offline.

Yeah.

With the good old samurai videos. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We did some YouTube stuff going back.

To like 07, I think.

Yeah. It might have been, I think that might have been a different channel.

Yeah, it was, we had a, we had like. It wasn't our personal channels yet. Yeah.

So I don't know if that'll see the light of day ever again, but.

I don't know if I wanted to. Me with my like cut off sleeves and we're sitting around drinking Coronas in front of a 1983 or 89 Suzuki Samurai legitimately and then on like a.

Friday night where we're just, you know.

Calling people aliens randomly because we've, we've got a buzz.

Corona, buzz.

Yeah.

Skunk beer. Yeah, those. But yeah, there was, that was early days, man. Yeah, we've been doing this for a.

Long time and I think a lot of people I know, at least, you know, speaking for myself, I know like a lot of people just saw me sort of come up over the last two and a half years because of the AI stuff. But it's like we've been playing this game for a long time and you know, going back to what you're saying is like, I think everybody has to look at it like a Venn diagram. Right. So for me, I've studied digital marketing for almost 20 years now. Right. Like I feel so old saying that, but it's true. Right. We were doing it artisan days.

Right. Yeah.

So like I've been studying digital marketing. Things like copywriting and you know, know, funnel building and list building and email marketing and you name it. All of the stuff under that umbrella of digital marketing we've been studying for like 20 years now. When it comes to video production. I, you know, probably didn't get as into it until about, I don't know, I think I really got into video production around 2020. Right. It was like around Covid. You and I went and got that studio in El Cajon and I. And when we got that studio, I remember you were on vacation or something and like I went and ordered a shit ton of camera equipment and lighting equipment and sound equipment. And when you came back, I had built like a recording studio for us.

That was pretty cool. Yeah.

And so it was around 2020 that I really got into video production. And then in 2021 we started working with Randy, who's like a video producer by trade. He actually films like Mariners games and Seahawks and, and stuff like that.

Everything Seattle?

Yeah, everything Seattle. And then we started working with him. He taught us how to be much better video producers, how to get higher quality content, how to cut out fluff of our videos, all of that kind of stuff.

The run of show we have everything kind of organized.

Yeah. He taught us how to use like. I didn't really get into editing with DaVinci resolve until we started working with Randy and, and all that kind of stuff. Right. So if you look at my Venn diagram, I already had two circles of it. Digital marketing and video production. I just added AI as like a third circle to that Venn diagram. And then I found that sweet spot in the middle of AI marketing and video production. Right. And I just put all three of those together. And these other two, I'd spent 20 years on one of them, five or six years on the other. And now adding AI into the mix, it was like, all right, we found that perfect blend of sort of skill sets that, that all work as something that, that works together.

But you know, you had the WordPress classroom, so like you're recording tutorial videos for ages. I wouldn't call it really video production. I mean, it was using online video. But like you I think have always been like the best trainer. Someone that can walk through step by step, like big picture, but also like, here's how to actually get something done. And obviously that comes out in YouTube your videos now. So you've been practicing that muscle for nearly 20 years as well?

Yeah, yeah. I mean it is. I have been trying to make videos since 09. I mean like the YouTube channel has been around since 09. I actually left my very first YouTube video up just because I knew people would go and like look at what the first one was. And I think it was like a Video about how to hide affiliate links or something like that.

I'm sure I've seen them. I gotta look back at it now and see what it's all about.

Yeah, I mean all of the recent comments are like, oh, I just came here to see what Matt's first video was. And you know, stuff like that now. But like I've been putting videos online since 2009. The WordPress classroom, like looking back to that, that launched in 2009 as well. And I remember I made the videos. I think I was using Camtasia back then to record the videos.

Think you were because you were on PC or no?

Yeah, I would. It would have been a PC back in 09. Yeah, yeah. So I was using Camtasia to record and I was using Sony Vegas to edit.

I remember that.

Yeah, that was, that was my editor of choice. But then I could not for the life of me figure out how to put them online. Right. I knew I can upload them to YouTube, but if I put them on YouTube then people would be able to find them and then they wouldn't pay for my course about WordPress. I didn't want to put them on YouTube. And then like, I don't think Vimeo existed yet. There wasn't really much out there. And then that's when we came across our buddy, Josh Bartlett. Josh Bartlett was like, you know, you can use Amazon S3 to publish videos. He showed me how to use that to publish videos on my website. And then after that he went and built the program called Easy Video Suite, which turned into like a multimillion dollar company for him. But back at the time, like I had no idea like how to go from, I have this video made. How do I get it on the Internet so people can see but not publicly available like on YouTube. And I remember that was like a months long struggle to figure that out.

Man, we are dinosaurs.

But it's so true. I remember exactly those days. It's funny how we remember like, nope, those were the PC days. Remember that app because it's accurate. And the flip cams, can't forget the flip.

We had flip cams or Kodak Zi8. Zi8. Is that.

Yeah, we, we go back y', all green screens in the living room. Yeah, we did all.

Even before that I was using a Sony Digital ELF camera, like one of the little small like rectangle cameras that. Yeah, like I loved that little camera because it was like, could fit in your pocket but also shot videos. I used that before I got my, my flip cam. And then eventually got my Zi8 Zi.

Well, it had all the HD capabilities that, that the Zed did.

Yeah.

And then.

Yeah.

Oh, those are the days. No, these are the days. Damn it. All right, so what I want to end on is another thing I'm going to pull on screen, Matt. So be prepared, you'll be familiar because you just posted this like last night or something and I thought it was very timely. So speaking of YouTube, basically, Matt, and I'll point you guys to this because I think it was a freaking awesome case study. You know, you're like literally breaking down what's working for you the most right now in on your YouTube channel. And you know, I know from our private conversations when we're having coffee without the recording happening, other than iPhone spying on us, that, you know, you tell me all these little experiments you're doing and I think that's where it's like a nice outlet for you. It's great for me because I'm learning as well. So thank you. But like you put it on blast on Twitter and you like broke it all down. You know, everything from long form videos, which are like what, your news videos or like some 20ish minutes around there and then you have, you do. You're doing shorts. So YouTube shorts. What TikTok, you're an Instagram, basically anywhere short can be. And then now live streams, you know, and you're doing those basically all. I mean, every day there's something coming out it seems like.

But yeah, I know I have a piece of content coming out seven days a week. So yeah, my, my content strategy is like every Monday I do a live stream. Every Wednesday I put a random video on YouTube. It might be a tutorial, it might be some big news announcement. It might be like top 15 tools to accomplish X or whatever. Right. And then every Friday I do a news breakdown of. Here's all the news that happened throughout the week. And then seven days a week, every single day, I drip out a new short. Which some of my shorts are actually purposefully designed to be shorts. Like I script them, I record them, and I make a short. Most of my shorts now are actually clips from either my long form videos or my live streams though. And so that's pretty.

This is pretty intriguing though. Like, you think shorts are a waste of time because what this post that if you're watching that is you basically are. You're breaking down your views to earnings.

Yeah.

In a nutshell, based off of these different formats, the long form short and then live streams and it's fascinating. We're not going to break down all the stuff, but I mean, you got screenshots here. I'm assuming you did not Photoshop these or.

I did not Photoshop them.

Gemini ing them now I think is the new term. But yeah, I mean, like, but you can see the breakdown of what this was. A short 3 million views. You got what, 12,000 subscribers. Made about a little over $400.

Yeah.

And then you go over here to your. I'm assuming this a long, Long form. Yeah, yeah, long form. 1.2 million views, 19,000 subscribers, 13,500 bucks. I'm assuming that was on. That's almost a year long, right?

Yeah, that was. Yeah, it was 10 or 11 months ago. Yeah, yeah.

And this guy, what, a couple of months? A little over two months for the short.

Yeah.

Okay. Yep. And then about a year for the long. I mean, it makes sense. These things are evergreen and it's obviously still climbing.

Yeah. The point that I was trying to make on that though was like a short that gets 3 million views makes $400.

Bingo.

A long form that gets less than half of that. 1.2 million views made over $13,000 thousand dollars. Like, what percentage of like, higher is that? It's just kind of showing that like, shorts can't really do it for the money.

Yeah. And I know, and obviously this is what, ad revenue through Google, right?

That's ad revenue through Google. Yeah.

So like, of course you could have sponsorships for shorts to bump that up. But yeah, point taken. It's interesting. And then the live stream, like, talk about that. Because I thought this whole strategy of like, you know, you can gather attention through these other ways, but then the live stream itself, you know, and I know it's a newer thing. Well, actually this, this live stream you show. I'm still looking at a screenshot here, everyone.

Yeah, that one's actually over a year old.

Little over a year.

I just picked the one that had the most views.

But still it's a good, it's, it's worthy, you know, but like not nearly as many subscribers. Nowhere near. But the views are lower. Higher revenue than the shorts, of course, 1900 bucks. But what you made a point is like, this is where you bond with your community.

Yeah.

Like, this is where. Yeah, really the glue of everything at.

The end of the day. So like YouTube really has like three main types of content. You've got your long form videos which are just like prerecorded normal videos you publish on YouTube. You have shorts, which historically have been one minute. Vertical videos now you can go up to three minutes, but historically they've been one minute. I still publish one minute because I like that constraint of figuring out how to get it into a minute or less. And then you have live streams. You can argue they now have a fourth with podcasts, right? But, you know, how about community posts?

Would you put that in there?

Community posts don't really do much for your channel. Like, you can't make revenue off community posts. There's like zero. Like, they don't put ads on community posts, right? And community posts only get shown to your subscribers. So you're not going to grow subscribers. It's just like a quick way to communicate with your audience, right? I'll use community posts from time to time, but it's usually like, hey, guys, I know I post news videos on Fridays, it's coming out tomorrow instead because I'm traveling today or whatever. Right? It's just like a way to make quick announcements to the audience on there. So I do use those sometime, but not very often. But like, the short form is really actually pretty good at growing new subscribers for your channel and getting discovery. The problem is a lot of people who only watch short forms are never going to watch your long form. So you'll grow subscribers, but you're not really going to convert a lot of them to long form viewers. But if you keep posting short forms, a lot of those people will keep watching your short forms, right? So you still have that engagement with those people. They're just going to stick with short forms. The live streams, they don't grow subscribers at all, right? Like, if people don't know who you are, they're not already subscribed. They're probably not going to be alerted of your live stream. They're probably not going to show up. But it's like the best way to build that engagement. It's the best way to build a bond with your audience. Like I mentioned earlier in this call, like, I love getting on. And just for the most part, I do like three hour AMAs, right? I might have a couple little bullets of like, if nobody's asking any questions, here's some areas I'll take the conversation, but I almost never even need to look at my notes because it's like from moment one, people are asking me questions and it's just off to the races. I'm just interacting. I'm just going, all right, somebody asked this. Let me show you a tool that can do that. Oh, somebody asked this. Let me actually break down My workflow of how I do that. Oh, somebody asked this, all right, here's, here's how I do that. And it's just like, it turns into this three hour like AMA where I'm just breaking down my workflows, sharing what I'm doing, answering questions. It's just, yeah, it's just like a three hour ama. And that really, really builds like a good bond with people because they're like, oh, you know, he's actually interacting with me. Like I can actually feel like there's two way communication. I ask him something, he responds. He actually shows me stuff. And that also turns into what's called super chats, where people can essentially tip you if they like what you said or they're paying like $20 or whatever. And if they pay that money, it makes their comment more prominent in the chat so that it's more likely it'll get read. And so what ends up happening is you'll do these live streams. You're bonding with people. People love it. They start like tipping you, they start super chatting you. Next thing you know, like, people are super chatting you to like, to, to basically get you to respond specifically to their question. So people are interacting with you and if they're like really appreciating what you're talking about, they'll basically be like tipping you and throwing money at you, like as a thank you on this live stream that you're showing. I think later on in the live stream, somebody actually gave me just 200. They're like, hey, love what you do. Here's 200 bucks. And I'm like, oh, damn.

Yeah, that's right. I mean that's, it's a side benefit I don't think I ever think about. Most people probably don't.

No, no, I'm definitely not doing the live streams for that. It's just kind of like, oh, that's cool. Like when I started doing live streams, that was not even on my radar. I didn't even, I literally didn't think I would make a cent off of live streams. I was just like, I'm going to do them because I want to interact with people. But then those like super chats and stuff start coming in and then, you know, one or two people do it. Other people see that. Oh, he's actually responding quicker to the stuff that has like a super chat attached to it. I'm going to ask my question with, you know, a couple bucks attached to it. It's like when we used to go to the dueling piano bars, right? You can go and ask for a specific song for the dueling piano people, but the people that stick their song with a 20 are much more likely to get that song played right.

Their attention. Yeah.

And again, I'm not doing it for that. Like, that is not my motive of the live streams.

Yeah.

But it is really, really cool to see.

I mean, it's attention. That's all. That's all you're going for. And it makes perfect. And it's someone that wants to give back to you, which is rad. So, yeah, go check out the live streams. That's kind of why I'm showing this on screen here too. And obviously follow Mr. Matt Wolf over there. Well, it's Mr. E. Flu, but not Wolf here. And you just published this video literally seconds before hopping on this call. So. Yeah, I'll have to watch that later.

Matt, we have gone longer than I budgeted for, but that's okay. Is there any before you go get that hair did, like, what other Anything that. That you want to share before hopping off? Anything you're excited, frightened about, maybe anything that. To close this one up. And I think we'll do another coffee date podcast shortly.

Yeah, I don't. Nothing that I'm really, like, worried about. I do think we are going to see a lot of like, AI generated junk. Right. I've always kind of worried about that, but I think that's already here. I think like, there's so much junk on the Internet that, you know, that's one of the big complaints people have is like, it's going to generate so much slop. We're going to have so many crappy articles and crappy memes all over, like social media. I'm like, have you been on the Internet recently? Like 90% of it's already crap. Like, what are you talking about?

I mean, we already went through the election cycle, you know, at least this last time. We're all still living. Most of all.

Yeah. I mean, like most search results when you Google something these days are like somebody who optimized to get like an affiliate click or something that you know is getting stolen by honey apparently. But I don't know if you heard that whole story.

I didn't know that. Oh, fun.

Yeah, there's a whole big old controversy there. But anyway, we won't get into that. You know, I do worry about more and more like AI slop. I do think that AI video in 2025 is going to get even better than what we're seeing right now. I think 2025 is going to be the year where we get AI video that people really go, I can't even tell. This is AI. I mean, we've already seen some videos that. Yeah, you have to look really close, but you're like, damn, that is good. I think 2025, we're going to hit that moment where, like, somebody's like, people are going to get fooled by an AI video and think it's real and it's going to go viral and it's going to spread and then everybody's going to find out later that that was AI. Right.

You said Sorrow. Sora was is, you know, this ChatGPT or OpenAI's video. But you have VAIO.

Yeah. VO2 is even better, but it's not publicly accessible yet. It's like only some beta testers have access.

Yeah. But what you showed me because what you made like a rhino.

Yeah.

I think it was right. That was with Vayo too.

That was Veo. Yeah. Vo.

Vaio.

Yeah.

Whatever it is. Yeah. I was like, this is crazy. It just looks like you're right there in the Serengeti. Yeah.

Yeah. I still don't know if it's supposed to be VO or vaio. I keep on hearing people pronounce it vo. But then also veo is look in Spanish, right?

Yeah. Or then you have video.

I don't know.

Yeah. So I don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but, like, on my YouTube channel, I always get people in the comments correcting my pronunciation, but I'm like, I think they're both right.

Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, I agree. The video thing is going to be. It's going to be wild. And whenever that's released by Google. What, DeepMind, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's going to be wild. You know, we have Sora Turbo, which isn't even the full model of Sora. I think we're going to see a much better version of Sora coming out. So that's coming. That'll be out sometime in 2025 is like the much more improved version of Sora, I think. Yeah. So, like, if my big predictions are better, better video better and better 3D object generation from AI, like creating game assets and stuff like that with AI and then all the agent stuff that we talked about earlier, I think that's going to be a big thing in 2025 as well. Other than that, I don't really have many ending remarks. I think we covered a lot of ground and we've covered a lot of ground in previous episodes that we've done together. So, you know, we've covered marathons worth of AI and YouTube discussion over time between our episodes. But, you know, check out the Next Wave podcast, check out Future Tools, and check out my YouTube channel.

There you go. Subscribe everywhere.

Go get, like, subscribe. Hit that bell. Notification ding.

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Also, subscribe to the Hustle and flowchart podcast and YouTube video. Yeah, and Joe's going to be cameoing on some of my live streams in the future.

There you go. Keep a lookout.

All right, y'. All.

Matt, appreciate you, brother.

Yeah, you, too, man. Good talking.

Yeah.

Sam.