AI Is a Time Reducer: How Content Creators Are Using AI to Scale Faster

All right everybody, welcome back. South by Southwest live, AI Profit Machine House. My name is Chris Weiser here with a special guest. We got Trent Knox here from Austin, Texas.

What's up buddy?

Doing well.

It's a great event so far, man. You brought out people pretty cool.

Yeah, we got to bring in the heat tonight. It's pretty exciting. We got Noah Hutten here this afternoon. We got Chengyi here. You just did a little networking out there on the front, on the front desk.

I came in and out, but I caught it.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. So tell us about yourself. We got, got a whole crowd here watching tonight. Tell us about yourself.

Yeah. So people probably know me as a content producer. I produce content for, you know, different people in small business, podcasts, live streams, webinars. I'm interested in the event because I became a builder. I work with a lot of people on Lovable, Replit, you know, these platforms and built my biggest community is in the gaming and esports space. And so we built on, we built on Lovable and work with Antigravity and Claude Code and those things.

Okay. What do you see from your standpoint? Where— how is AI changing your, you know, your side of things? Like, obviously you're talking about Lovable and Replit and some of the baseline builder platforms. Yeah, but what does it look like from your standpoint? How is this making you more profitable today?

Yeah, in terms of marketing side, like the biggest brand we work with is Opus. Opus does most of like the content repurposing stuff, right? Clips are the main thing. I mean, if you think about Twitch or Kick or any YouTube or whatever, like the big thing that drives the most traffic is going to be those clips. So we do a lot of clipping, especially for podcasts and livestreamers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So from, from your standpoint, you talk about clipping, you talk about profitability, you talk about growth. How does that— how does all the AI side— does it make you more efficient? Does it make you better? Like looking at it from a— and what's your role in your company? Just so I'm clear. So I'm the owner-operator. I run all things. You are the guy. I knew that, but I just want to make sure everybody knows.

Yeah.

So from your standpoint, how does it make you more efficient? How does it help you make your team more efficient?

Well, so I was actually talking to someone else at the event earlier and like, I feel like in the beginning of the year it's very much personal brand driven. So like a lot of it right now is my team is focused on me.

Yeah.

And then secondly, like once we get over the like, oh, New Year's resolutions or whatever, then people start thinking about business and like—

that's a really, that's actually a really good point about, about the new year and that kind of stuff.

People start to focus on themselves. Much more than like their operations or what they're doing. And so then when it comes back around, then they start thinking about, oh, what can I do with my e-commerce brand? What can I do with, you know, my new venture or whatever have you? And so, but to more directly answer your question, I think AI is a time reducer so that it'll speed you faster to the new copywriting you have to do on your website or the clips that you have to create. It's going to reduce the amount of time that you have to create. New forms of content or new packaging or the leverageability factor.

That's the leverageability and scale factor helps you next level. How many people you have in your team right now?

Well, it depends on what you talk about, like partners and everything like that.

Let's just say full-time staff. I'll say full-time.

3.

3. Okay. So, you know, it makes you— and what does— what does part-time staff look like?

Oh, so, you know, we work with people in India, we work with people in Pakistan, everywhere. In that regard. But in terms of like more like part-time, full-time, we have somebody in AI that's based in Chattanooga, and then we also have somebody who's in, in India.

So does that, from your standpoint as a leader— and this is where I was going with that question— does it help you like massively increase their workload and make them more efficient from your standpoint? Or, or is it from your standpoint, are you trying to potentially not necessarily replace them. And I'm really trying to take people away from the replace people standpoint to how do we make them more efficient and better, right?

Yeah, for sure. Well, so there's a couple of things. One, they are— one of them is not as AI-powered as the other. The one's much more of an entrepreneur, you know, very much motivated to do his own things. So that's really great. But actually, I was like, as I was walking up here, I heard somebody say something like, agentic is not like, oh, who's using agentic? You know, and that blows my mind.

It's almost kind of comical if you really think about it. Yeah.

And I think, I think it's actually probably a lot true right now.

Yeah.

But as Manus, as these open clause and things like that evolve, there will be more opportunity to replace your virtual assistants.

And I think, I think to me, like, the agentic is a, is a joke mindset. It's kind of like, I understand what you're saying. It's not perfect right now, but how early are we? Very, very, so insanely early, right? Like it's so insanely early that maybe right now it's not perfect, but it's definitely coming and we're getting to the point where— but agentic is the future.

Yeah, right. I mean, it is. Yeah, absolutely.

So I think, you know, from my standpoint, it's looking at it like you have to be a forward-thinking leader. It sounds like your mindset is around that as well. It's not a crazy squirrel going nuts here.

Well, is it a black squirrel? Because we have black—

it's a brown squirrel.

Oh, it's brown squirrel.

Live video, folks. So from, from that standpoint, where's your head around the AI-first leader mindset? Is that something like you— it sounds like you're fully embracing that.

Well, I just surround myself with builders. I think right now you have to. Yeah, but I'm in Discord communities, I'm in, you know, school groups, these things, just looking for the next person who's building something that's going to, you know, influence me or motivate me or make me, you know, much more of a, like a predator in the video space over here. Yeah, you know, producer, editor.

That's why I saw Jeff over here hanging out, sitting here all day just working with us, waiting, waiting for shit to happen. Yeah. So as we kind of wrap up here, we got short little bursts here, little episodes, little shorts here at South by. We're live at AI Profit Machine House here at South by Southwest 2026. What's a couple tips you can give to somebody that is maybe a smaller entrepreneur or a new entrepreneur or maybe even a legacy seasoned entrepreneur How do we use AI and believe it?

Well, I would just say, you know, I give credit to your event. I've met people at all different, you know, stages right now. I think when I bring up Agentic, not everybody's really talking about it.

They don't get it yet. They don't really get it.

But I think people who are maybe entrepreneurs or working in an organization, or even if they're entrepreneurs getting started with— and I want to say this, like people who have like, like a fear or not a fear, but an aversion to paying for a subscription or subscription fatigue. Just figure it out. Like, I just—

yeah, I have to—

you have to buy into these programs because there are features there that are going to organize the way that you do your work, and they're only subscription right now. You can build them yourself, you know, with open source models and whatnot, but it's really complicated. So I would say to get started, you just need to have a relationship with a chat, whether it's OpenAI or Claude, or it's Grok or whatever it is, just to start to establish that relationship on a commercial level. If you're an entrepreneur or you're an entrepreneur, a lot of people are just using it as consumers right now.

Well, and so many people are just using it as a chat, almost a chatbot, right?

Exactly.

It's kind of like taking your girlfriend. Yeah. How many girlfriends you got? So I think, you know, a good lesson for everybody. Take it past the chatbot stage.

Yeah.

You're maybe not agentic yet, which, you know, for the most part, an agentic mindset is think of an employee. Could you hand over something to an agent or to an AI bot and just let them work? You really can't yet, maybe, but I think certain things are getting there.

You might have to buy an AP.

100%. 100%. But as we go, I think that's really good advice. So, all right, Trent, good to see you, buddy.

Great to meet you.

Great conversation. And AI Profit Machine House here at South by Southwest Live. We'll see you guys soon. Take care.