Rob Greenlee shows podcasters how AI tools like Descript, StreamYard, and Opus Clip can automate editing and generate clips without replacing creators. He emphasizes becoming skilled at prompting AI, repurposing audio into video and shorts, and keeping authenticity central to avoid eroding audience trust.
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Well, welcome to Podcast Tips. It's great to have you with me tonight again. Um, I'm here to kind of talk about some of the cutting-edge stuff that's going on in the podcasting space and and give you some ideas to, to think about as you're on your, uh, podcasting journey. So like I said, thank you for joining me here tonight, or if you're watching this as an on-demand version of the show, this is an audio and video podcast too that can be found at adorenetwork.com. So I wanted to just jump right into it. So this topic is maybe a little may be seen by some as kind of a generic topic to some degree to have on the show, but it was one of those things that I kind of thought about a little bit, and I think lots of people are kind of struggling with this concept of how to navigate the AI world as well as the video world and to see how those two worlds are kind of coming together and impacting content creators out there. And I'm increasingly thinking about this term content creator more, and podcasting is just part of that, right? So we're becoming a much bigger ecosystem as creators, I believe. So we have the option to create video, we also have the option to create audio, and we can do all sorts of different things with audio and video. So So it can be short, long, can be published as shorts, it can be put out as audiobooks, it can be put out as a written book too. So the audio that comes out of this can be repurposed into all sorts of different forms. So I think that's kind of where we're at. So the topic of the show tonight is thriving as a creator in this changing, driven by AI and video world. And there's a lot of pushback in the industry about AI and video. And it's really, I think at the core, it's really all about change, right? Are we embracing change? Are we not embracing change? Do we just want things to stay as they are? And I think to some degree that's, that's what many folks gravitate towards, is just keep doing what you're doing. And I'm, I'm 100% okay with that. I'm not trying to do this show here to dictate how you do what you do and what you produce when you do it. And I think that's the bigger picture here. I'm just trying to shed light on, on on all this discussion in the media as well as in podcasts and as well at podcasting conferences like were just held in Chicago at Podcast Movement. So my feedback that I got from that conference that's been going on the last couple days is that video and AI are the main topics of conversation. And I think that is the way it is. I think a lot of people are already getting tired of this discussion because so many people are talking about it. So, and I guess I'm doing that again tonight. So, you know, I think that all of us will recognize that we are in a fast-changing environment. The AI world is changing what we do. I'm hoping that it brings a lot of efficiencies, and, and all of us can kind of, you know, adapt to this new, new world that we live in. And that's what I'm trying to do. But, you know, it's not always a successful path, only for the simplest reason that technology doesn't always work, and it's not always a perfect solution to anything. And there's good things about it. There's strengths about it, and there's weaknesses about it still. But I do think that all of us need to be proactive and knowledgeable about what's going on, you know, where is the industry moving towards. And I guess that's, that's the role that I like to play, is I like to look at where things are going and, and try and figure it out, right? And I think that's exactly what all of you are doing too. And, and And part of what I'm hoping that you'll do tonight is post a question or a comment in your, you know, chat area of the platform that you're watching, and that will show up in my queue. And at the end of the show, I can take your comments and your questions or whatever, and we can have a deeper conversation about this. But what I want to start out with is talking about leveraging AI, you know, taking advantage of AI to help you. And I think all of us are trying to figure that out. I know I am. I was really happy to see OpenAI and the LLM kind of chat AI is getting much better at creating artwork and it actually can spell a word now. So there's those tools which are getting better. I think that they're getting better at creating things that are helpful and maybe bring efficiency to what we do as creators. You know, it's still not an entire replacement for our own kind of common sense and our own reasoning. And I, you know, the more I use AI, the more I'm coming to that that kind of realization, I think, to some degree that these things are good, but at what point are we going to trust these things beyond our own kind of mental abilities, right? Are we going to, at some point, be so reliant on these AI tools that they will do everything for us? Now, granted, It just doesn't feel like that's what's going to happen here. It feels like this human-AI connection will be likely more of a— admit a lot of people don't like this too— more of a fusion between humans and the technology, because that's what we're doing today. That's what we do with our smartphones. That's what we're probably going to do with smart glasses. Is that it's going to be an interface, right, between humans and AI. Granted, AI may reach a point where it's so intelligent that it can do all these things. The question gets back to, as it relates to that connection to humans, are humans going to want it to do everything? I don't— I'm really kind of evolving to thinking that AI is going to replace us all to thinking that AI is going to just make us hopefully better, right? But maybe not to the level of human intuition and human creativity level. I think as I use these chatbots to create artwork and to create written content, I have to be pretty explicit with it about what I want., right? And, and be able to write a prompt. And it requires all of us to think differently. And I think that's the other part of this that doesn't get talked about a lot, is, is that the interface— humans interfacing with AI— is going to require us to think differently about the creation process. And what we tell it to do, it'll be able to do. It's Really, it's not that much different than using Adobe Photoshop or Premiere or any of these. It's just that in those type of interfaces between humans and technology, it's very kind of functional, transactional. It's very kind of this, you click this button and it does that, right? Where with AI, you basically tell it to do that click action. Right? So it's a different method of communication. It's more human-like, right? It's not so much taking your mouse and clicking on a location on the screen. It's more about you as a human telling what you want to the AI. Or as we will see over time, increasingly AI will be our interface to accomplishing things, right? It's going to replace this kind of layer that we see around how we tell computers to do things. So instead of going around clicking on little boxes and little buttons and things like that, we're going to have to get better as humans at communicating, right? And so as a content creator, guess what we're specializing in is we're specializing in communications, right? Are we skilled at being able to articulate either in a written form or be able to voice that into a computer? Now, this is where we ran into, if you look into the past, you know, there were software programs that could do like text to text-to-speech or speech-to-text, right? So you could go back and forth with this in the early years. And I think that's kind of where this is going because I have noticed, and even in the ChatGPT platform, that, you know, when you voice something to it, it's basically taking a little transcript of what you just said, and then you have to click the button again to actually run that request through the AI to generate the output, right? So, but I do think we're gonna probably move beyond that. And I think that the LLMs, ChatGPT is making that progress where they have a complete new interface where you can have a voice dialogue with the AI in real time, right? Like you're talking to another person. And it's pretty good. I'll have to play it on here, but I would imagine if you're watching this show, you probably already experienced a verbal conversation with a chatbot or OpenAI's ChatGPT platform. So you understand what I'm trying to say is that we're going to shift into a different way of telling our computers to generate content. And that's really what I'm trying to say here. So, you know, but currently, if you look at where we are today, AI is kind of, you know, on that path, right? We tell it through a textual prompt or a verbal prompt what we want to create, and we oftentimes are looking for it to have ideas that it can contribute to that. Not every idea for whatever you're trying to do comes from me, because then if that's the case, then the only thing that AI would be doing is really creating a transcript. So what we're looking for from the AI is for us, for it to take ideas that we have that may be unique, right? And, and feeding that into its brain of sorts, its electronic brain, and will generate something unique based on that prompt, right? So our human intelligence is telling it what we want, it's looking at what we want, and then adding its own intelligence layer on top of that, right, to build something that's unique a merger of intelligence between the human intelligence and the AI intelligence into hopefully something that is unique and that has value. And I also have found, and this show to some degree because I did use AI to help generate the flow of this show, but I'm also very much ad-lib on this too. So, you know, what AI did in this process for me is just contribute to my my kind of flow of the topic here. But it's up to the human to add color commentary. Might be a great way of thinking about it, right? And, you know, if you think about like a sports program where there's a lead host, that could be the AI, right? And then there's this sidekick, right, that provides kind of deeper detail. Now granted, the AI and the sidekick, which could be the human, could add color to whatever's generated. And I think that's possibly what happens. But I think increasingly we're seeing AI being used in a merger between humans and AI intelligence. And I think that's That's where I think we're heading. And I think we're seeing very early signs of that. Now, the question is, once we become too reliant on it, right, do we trust what it tells us? And that is the bigger question. Do we trust that it's going to do the right thing? And I see it in my own output that I get from these platforms. Is that it doesn't get it right. Um, it, it says things in the wrong way that maybe don't reflect what the human gut feeling is or the human connected association with whatever topic or content that is. And so I mainly use it as just a supplemental tool, uh, to, to help me in the creating a transcript, doing some light editing of the audio and video based on settings that I can make in software. So it's not like generally I'm just telling AI, just go edit my video. So we're still living in this era of clicking on things to make things happen. Now maybe there may be some AI technology in the background that's maybe taking my request and customizing that. I don't know though, I think a lot of AI today is camouflaged as AI when it's really just old school kind of process of very kind of rudimentary kind of programming that is applied in a way that maybe looks like it's AI. So I don't know, I think we're in an era of transition where some things are just not entirely what they seem. So, you know, the tools that I use, just to give you a list of those, is Descript, which is very good at editing video and editing audio too. So you kind of have to treat them separately. And I think I've talked about Descript on this show probably quite a few times. And then StreamYard, which is the live streaming platform that I'm using here. Has some shorts generation scripting in it that could be AI. You know, it could analyze the video and it finds cuts and places like that that it can make to create something that didn't exist before. And then I also use a platform called Kyoso, which is queso.ai, which is a— I can pull it up on the screen here and you can kind of see what that looks like here. Let me make it a little bit larger here and I will pull it up on the screen here. It's a little bit difficult to see, so I'm going to zoom in a little bit and see if I can get it a little larger so you can see it a little bit better. Um, man, zoom in a little bit more on it so you can see it better. But this is an example of an AI platform, right, that is being used out there. So you can kind of see this better here. And at the top up here, there is what's called Create AI Clips. And then over here is Create AI Influencer Video. So it can take an existing video and, or, well, actually it looks like it'll create, it generates talking videos featuring lifelike AI influencers. So you can use a standard influencer, you give it a script of sorts, and it will generate an entire video for you. And then this one down here is generate AI captions. So it'll overlay captions on top of a video. So you have that, but that's more of like a transcription to layering on top of, on top of a video that, that kind of synchronizes with the, the voice in the video, right? Uh, and then down here is generate written content from your, your video. So that's, that's a transcription service. And then just create an AI video. So go from idea to script to video in minutes. So that's the other element of this too, is that you can just basically create a textual script, input it into these tools, and generate a full video with a simulated human of sorts. Also in this platform, you can capture and record video too if you want to. And there's other kind of other little lesser, probably lesser used tools in here too. But you can kind of see here, I'll pull up one of my projects. So you can see here, I've used the tool to work on my new media show and my podcast tip show that I'm doing here, and it creates AI clips and things like that. I'll pull some up on the screen here so you can see them. So you can see how it creates a, you know, a rendering here of what a video looks like here in their, in the platform. And then it has different clips that it's found and it has a score rating in here based on these clips are usually about 60 seconds approximately or a little bit less. And they can be published directly to a consumption platform like a YouTube or those kind of things. So that's kind of how that looks. So let me back out of that and I can go back to just me here. And okay, let me remove this from the screen. So that just gives you a little bit of a taste of one of the, the AI tools out there and what they, what they look like if you haven't ventured into that. And I'm sure probably many of you have, so I'm sure it's not an entirely new thing. But that's, that's one I've been playing around with, and there are a bunch of others out there too. So, um, you know, and really I think relying too much on idea generation for your content is, I don't know, I don't always feel very comfortable with it quite, quite yet. I'm hoping that it will be a little smarter about that, but I don't know that we can ever 100% rely on it. I was thinking about that. I mean, if you create, like, let's say a content business plan or something like that in in the AI 4.5 with ChatGPT, that it will create you a terrific kind of content plan and, you know, how you're gonna create it and what the format is. It'll give you a lot of good ideas, but I think a lot of ways it's just a starting point, right? I think you have to refine the titles, and I think you have to refine the the depth and the scope of the content to better, better reflect, um, kind of who you are as a creator and what are— what's important to you. What do you want to tell people about? You know, what do you feel comfortable with associating your own personal brand with on the, the certain type of advice that it gives? I'm not always comfortable with it. I mean, I do a lot of customization of any outline or script that, that any of these platforms create. So, but it can create an interesting workflow and an interesting flow and a show format. And I see Dave Canyon, uh, posted a comment in here, says, cool, QSO AI, got it, um, I'll check it out. So he's gonna jump in there and check it out. I mean, it's just one of many. There's, um, Opus Clip is another one that does a, does a terrific job, and it's very, very well known out there. And, and then, um, but there, you know, there's always a new one. I'm constantly getting emails and, and LinkedIn outreach from various founders and CEOs of, uh, different platforms that are wanting to talk about their platform. So, you know, I appreciate that a lot because I think that there are a lot of interesting ideas that are coming down the path here. And then, and I think I've talked about a lot of the best and most effective uses for AI, but, you know, it's starting to, you know, it's from the idea generation to the structure of the content to I think that the phase that we're still moving into, and you saw a little bit of a glimpse of that with the QSO, is the creation part, right? That you don't have to be on mic. But increasingly, I don't know that the rendering that's created with the AI artificial humans or the cloned humans is quite good enough, but it probably will be at some point. But is— then it gets back to, well, what's the writing style? Does the writing style reflect me as a human and how I would speak and talk and communicate? Maybe the way I speak and talk isn't very good. So I think some people will use these tools if they don't have a very good kind of personal communication style, and they don't want to have to worry about getting a, you know, a studio set up and having all the recording equipment. All they have to do is do a terrific job of creating a script, and then they can run it through. And I think this is going to happen a lot with advertising. There's a lot of talk about these cloned humans in video being a replacement for the influencers out there. And I think that is definitely in full swing right now. So, and that's gonna drive a lot of improvement to the AIs and the cloning of humans. And I think we are gonna see more of that happen. And the question gets back to, I don't know 100% yet what the reaction is gonna be from the consumer side of all this. And increasingly, I'm seeing this divide happen between the creation side, and this is a much bigger conversation, this divide between the creation side or the creator side or the podcaster side is increasingly disassociated from what the audience sees things as and what's important to the audience. And because that's a difficult one for even, even these AIs to know is, and I prompted on, on a regular basis, well, what does the audience want from what I'm doing? What does, what do they want to hear from me about? And sometimes I will, I will take their, their advice and I'll give it a try, and it doesn't always work. It's not always in sync. It, it, I guess at the end of the day, it just doesn't know enough about me. And so when I get on a show talking about a subject and a topic that the AI thinks is a priority, priority to my audience, it just may not gel in the way that the AI maybe thought it would, and maybe it's not as good coming from me. There's— so there's a lot of human factors that go into this that make it challenging to be dependent on it. And I guess that's, that's my key takeaway. And also, let's, let's now talk about the whole, um, you know, this, this video movement, right? And increasingly, some people are saying it's a video-first moment or a video-first movement. And that's kind of coming secondarily to AI, is the importance of creating video. It's not just all about audio anymore. Now granted, it depends on what community you're talking about. If you talk about the video community, it's always been video first, right? But if you're talking about the podcast community, It's for a very long time, it's been video first or audio first. So there's these natural divides that have been developing for many years. And my position on it is that I don't really care, right? Podcasting, if we're talking about podcasting, podcasting has involved video since 2005. So You know, my vision of what video's involvement in podcasting is kind of one in the same. I don't see things are being dramatically different now than they have always been. Because when I was working in podcasting, video was a big chunk of this medium. It's only the recent years that it became just all over on YouTube. And, and increasingly showing up on other, other platforms like Instagram and Facebook and, and TikTok and those. And so that's kind of shifted the conversation, and that's why video is becoming more important. It's not so much about video podcasting per se is what's driving this, even though YouTube has tapped into that. Um, but you know, there's a lot of people that say, well, video is becoming essential now, really, if you're an online content creator. If you're a podcaster, you can definitely make the case that video is not essential. Uh, if you're a podcaster, video is not essential. The infrastructure for podcasting is primarily built right now in practical terms, is built mainly for audio. And I think that's the important way to think about it. And, but video has always been kind of like a companion to podcasting, but it was always kind of like a smaller part of podcasting. I would say in the early days when video podcasting was really big, it was maybe 30% of the podcast market. Every major media company was doing a video podcast. Now, when I say a video podcast, I typically mean a video file, an MP4 file that's distributed in RSS, just like audio podcasting is today. It's just that it was in a separate feed, separate RSS feed, which nobody cares about RSS feeds anymore. But this podcast, this Podcast Tips Show has a separate video podcast feed. So I have an MP4 file that's in an enclosure tag in RSS that's available on Apple Podcasts right now. You can go watch all the past episodes that I've done of this series in a video podcast RSS feed, which is available in Apple Podcasts. There's a lot of people that are shocked when they hear that there is video in Apple Podcasts and there's video in Pocket Casts, which is another big podcast consumption app. But there are a lot of podcast apps that don't support video. So, you know, it's this, you know, it's this weird thing. And if you look at even Spotify, Spotify doesn't support video via RSS, even though they just rolled out this emphasis on video. So video is a very complicated mess right now, and I wish it would just kind of like settle out, um, and, and everybody just support, uh, video and RSS, and we could just kind of move on with this conversation. Now, a lot of the big platforms want you to go in there and just upload directly to them, just like YouTube and Spotify does right now. So this kind of syndication via RSS of video is not really happening as much. And I like— if you followed the series, it's a couple episodes ago I talked about streaming via RSS, and I would like to see that, that develop and happen because I think it would solve a lot of the inherent business problems and distribution problems that podcasting has today, and it would open up the pipe for RSS to be used in audio as well as video distribution more again, right? So like make RSS more important to the podcast industry. So, you know, and to be able to integrate video without potentially compromising audio. Which a lot of these big proprietary platforms are trying to do. They're, you know, Spotify says if you upload a video and you have an audio podcast in there, they're going to use the audio from the video to replace the audio that was in there that came in there through your RSS feed. They will replace it. So that cuts off all your audio monetization. You don't get any. So, and hopefully it gets replaced with the video monetization, but That's a whole nother conversation that we don't have time for, but Spotify has made that challenging. So let's also just quickly talk about, well, what do you need to create video nowadays? And I think, I think it's a complicated conversation, but increasingly I'm hearing people say that, you know, just look at your your smartphone that you have today, your Android or your iPhone or whatever, you know, it's typically got a 4K camera on the back. And there's no reason why you can't set that up on a tripod and get a little wireless mic attachment, clip it on here and plug it into the bottom of your iPhone. And and do your podcast no matter where you are. Do it in your office, you can do it and just record it. And it's also possible to, to live stream it too. So it's, it's very, very possible to do this without having to get— I mean, you're probably going to need to think about lights to some degree to just make sure you're, you're lit well. I've got, you know, I've got like like 3 small panel lights that are above me. That's kind of— that's kind of— there's a shadow right here is, is because the lights are kind of shining down on me to some degree. So I pull my hat back and you see my face better. But, but just getting a small light that can kind of just, you know, illuminate you better, even on your iPhone. And your iPhone or your Android device has good low-light capture too. And it, you know, all these phones support 4K and 1080p, so there really shouldn't be any reason why you couldn't do— and you can also do vertical video too, right, and publish that as a supporting kind of effort to help market your audio podcast, to talk about the topics. It can— it doesn't have to be the same content. It can be separately recorded content, um, that basically talks about one of the topics that you did in your full audio show and just put those out and try and get some interest from, from folks out there. But so gear is not a big deal. I mean, you can spend all sorts of money on fancy video cameras and, you know, and I've, I've done that to some degree. I've got You know, I've got some portable video cameras and things like that that I can take with me to record various things that I'm playing around with. But, you know, this show right now is being done through a 4K camcorder that's mounted in a teleprompter of sorts, is what it is right now. So it's You know, but audio quality is important too, so you need to think about those things as well. So if you want to post comments or questions in the comment field of the platform that you're watching this program on right now, then I will answer your questions and go through all the comments toward the end of the program. So let's go ahead and jump forward. So the whole video side of things can be done very easily. And without major investment. But the big thing is making sure you're well lit and do think about your background to some degree. What does that look like? But it's not that important. Just make sure that you're well lit so people can see you and then just have a good wireless mic. You know, some people are doing this, you know, hold the mic up and talk talk into it, which I could do here too. It's just a matter of, uh, turning the mic on. I can just do— hold it up like this, and a lot of people can, uh, can just do, do a show like this, right? Or just pin it to your lapel, and that's okay too. So let me go back to my mic here. My my regular mic. But so I don't think you have to make it complicated. I just think you just need to think about what you're doing. Really, what's most important is what's the content? What are you trying to accomplish with your content? Who are you trying to help? What kind of, what kind of a community are you trying to, to build here? So, you know, because what What we are living in is a large platform dominated world. So Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Rumble, and a bunch of smaller apps out there. But some of those apps, like Pocket Casts, is a pretty decent size organization. So we are playing in a world of big platforms, because those big platforms have access to audience that we want to reach. So it makes sense. So, but increasingly it's more challenging for independent creators to succeed. So how do you stand out? Well, I think you stand out, and that's part of why I'm doing this episode tonight, is that, you know, using these tools like we're talking about, using the tool of video and using the tool of AI, can, can maybe help you further down the path of standing out. But I think there's a lot of other things that could potentially go into standing out and creating a loyal community. It's, it's also what you do outside of the show too that can help build that, that momentum, right, and build that connection with others. And it's really about doing exactly that. I mean, what are you doing to reach out to other people that are maybe in your, in your genre. It's not easy right now. People's budgets are really tight, so there are a lot of people that have been limited to trying to build what they build just based on their just very simplistic efforts. You know, it's— it takes a lot of work to do all this stuff, and a lot of us, if you're not a, a full-time creator that's making a good income from being a creator, this is just kind of like a side project for your business or whatever you're doing. You probably don't have a lot of resources to, to put into it, and that's one of the, the challenges because a lot of the bigger shows typically have more resources or they have teams that can be focused on trying to drive attention to your program. They can apply to be considered for an award, or they can— that takes money and that takes investment. Or they can hire a PR agency that can go out and generate some PR. Or you can, you can be a part of a, of a guest booking service that can book guests on your program. Or you as the host can go on other people's podcasts, but sometimes that takes investment as well. I've done all that stuff through my work in podcasting for many years, of being a show that has guests and then also being a guest on other people's podcasts. And I do do that on a regular basis. And those are the kind of little shortcuts. And increasingly, shows are having to run ads in other podcasts to promote their shows and to grow their audience. Now granted, there's always these these iTunes promoters that are always approaching content creators out there, that they, they want to pitch them to, you know, generate so many downloads for their shows. And, and some people take advantage of that, some people do that. It doesn't always turn out that great for you to, to go down that path because oftentimes, even if they were successful in generating downloads for you, that doesn't mean that once you stop paying them to do what they do, that your downloads will stay at that same level. So you may be artificially inflating your, your numbers, but once you stop paying for that artificial inflation, then the numbers go back down to where they would be if you just would have stuck it out more organically. So, and then also thinking more about, you know, what's your niche focus with your content and what platforms are best for that niche., or that niche? And what's your authenticity layer, and how does that align with the platforms? I don't know that you have to be on every platform, and I'm talking about consumption platform or watching or listening platform. Some people choose to just be on a couple because that's all they can handle. And is that platform that you're working with, is it demographically aligned with you? Like, like this show, I probably get more consumption off of Apple Podcasts with this show than I do off of Spotify. Spotify tends to be a much younger, uh, user base, which may be less attracted to a show that's done by an older person, right, like myself. So you kind of just have to align yourself with platforms that are gonna be more favorable to you, that have audience that's more likely to tune into your content. And then your monetization strategies have to align as well. So, you know, what is important to you? What kind of relationship do you feel like you can build with your audience? Is that audience, are you best trying to go after ads, which requires scale? Are you looking for sponsors which can sponsor you at lower scale levels, potentially, or maybe more targeted? Are you interested in creating a certain segment of your show that's paid, paid for, paid per view, or pay per month, or paid community around your genre that you're providing more expertise that can help that community beyond just what you do with your podcast? Or your video show. And that's more of an audience support process. And if you're doing branded content, if you're doing content to support a different business than just directly to your podcast, then that's a whole nother opportunity too, you know. But, you know, I think as we talk about these topics, you know, the— you know, you have to keep in mind what the audience perceives of your trustworthiness, your authenticity, and builds loyalty. So I think that's, that's an important part of all this as well, is maintaining that personal connection, especially as we try and navigate the world of AI. We are kind of potentially setting ourselves up to having an issue with authenticity and trust with our audience. And that is, that can be a challenge, you know. So how do we maintain that, you know? How do we keep talking to our audience in a way that gets, gets value to them? And because if we automate stuff too much, then it kind of loses some things on the human connection. Now, you know, this is a very kind of a difficult perspective to have right now because we just don't know where AI is going to take us. So is AI ultimately going to be more trustworthy than a human? I don't have an answer to that. So, and I don't know that we need to be worried about that right now. I think humans still need to create the content for, for now, and I think I, I'm doubtful that's ever going to change. So, um, so that's, that's the bulk of the, of the content that I wanted to cover tonight. Um, so my, my wish for you is that you would go out and experiment and try new things. You know, find your lane of sorts with all of this and be, be bold and try stuff. You know, there's, there's new technologies out there, there's new opportunities to, to learn things new, but try and use these technologies and still maintain your true and unique personality and voice and vision for what you want. And I think that's the key takeaway from tonight, is that as we face these challenges around what we're doing, whether or not it's right or wrong, you know, maybe it's more right for you to just stay with audio. Maybe it's more right for you to do audio and video. Maybe it's more right for you to just do video. Let's say you're very, very talented on the camera. And maybe you can build a huge channel on a platform like a, like a YouTube. Many people do. There's people that are making a million dollars doing content on YouTube because they've been able to figure out how to scale to millions of people watching their content. And it's possible on that platform to actually do that. That may be possible to scale beyond what you might be able to do with an audio podcast. Now, if you've been able to scale at that level on YouTube, you know, it's probably a good idea to, to see or to find out if the audio from that video can be repurposed into audio and create potential sponsorship opportunities on the audio side too, you know. So I wanted to, to invite you to ask some more questions and you know, share your, your thoughts. I've got, um, one in here, actually a couple people, but I would love to see a few more, uh, if you happen to want to or have some thoughts about the things that I've talked about tonight. Maybe it's just an overbeaten topic right now and I'm gonna have to find a new path to, to talk about this if, if this topic doesn't, doesn't resonate. But I do think that it's at the cutting edge of what we're all trying to wrestle with. So, you know, how, how to adapt, how do you, how do you become successful? All of us wants to be financially successful at creating online content. If you're going to put the effort in. And people want to be able to connect with audiences in a, in a deeper way. And, and for some, it's not all about just making direct money from the show. It's all about just building community to support another area of things that do create revenue for, for the person doing the podcast too. So Let me pull up a comment that Dave Canyon left in here. Thank you, Dave. Dave wrote, I've made it this far without AI. I need my brain to work as much as possible on its own before I enable it with AI. And don't want to do too much with AI. I'm concerned about my synapses getting wrecked or weak. But if my workload gets too much, you know, it's tough. You know, I agree. I'm a one-man show, then I see it using it as, as I need it, right? And that's probably a rational way of looking at it, Dave. I certainly appreciate that. And, um, and Johnny writes, uh, hey Rob, thank you so much. And if you, yeah, you know, anybody out there, just jump in here and share with me what you're thinking about this whole topic. Of thriving as a creator in this AI world, as well as this push towards video. And, you know, I'm, I'm trying to figure it out too, so I'm, I'm right there with you and trying to think about this stuff at a deeper, deeper, more thoughtful level. And I'm also seeing a lot of people out there, you know, struggling with it, seeing a lot of people out there that are finding success. Um, and really, at the end of the day, this is, this is a content business, and content business is hard. It's not, um, it's not easy to obtain large financial success in the content business. You know, there's a lot of X factors that go into it that are hard to fabricate. It's either you have it or you don't, to some degree. That's the, that's the truth of the matter. I mean, I think all we have to do is just look at, you know, there's been significant investment and talent that's been behind movies and TV shows over the years and radio shows and and talk shows and things like that that, you know, don't turn out to be successful. So it's, it's a risky game, especially in the environment that we're in now where there's just so many people doing it and there's so much competition. And increasingly we're seeing a lot of the big media talent shift over to competing directly with us as well. So, you know, I think it's a challenging landscape for being a content creator. So, well, it doesn't look like I've got any new comments or questions coming in. So I certainly appreciate you being here and following the show here. I wanted to share with you, I do have a YouTube channel here that I wanted to share. It's youtube.com/@RobGreenlee. That's with two Es. And you can also reach me on my email at rob.greenlee@gmail.com and also on X @RobGreenlee. And I also do a live show every Wednesday night at 8 PM, uh, called The New Media Show. And so you can check out Todd Cochran and I on that show where we talk about some of the same things that I talk about on this, but It has a lot more of Todd's commentary on it. So where this show is, you know, you're getting all me. So it depends on what you like. If you like Todd, then go, go to watch that one. If you like me, then watch this one. Or if you just want to watch both, it's great too. And then this show and all the other shows that I do that are podcasts are available at theadornetwork.com. That is my own podcast network that that I have, um, that's up there that I'm working with others, uh, to help, uh, launch their, their shows. And I'm also the chairperson of the Podcast Hall of Fame at podcasthall.com, which I'm going to be firing back up and getting moving forward to the, the 2026 event coming up where we will induct another 10 members into the Podcast Hall of Fame. But If you want to go watch the, the 2025, um, induction ceremony that was in Florida last January, you can go to that website, uh, podcasthall.com, to, uh, to watch that. And I'm up on stage talking about the Podcast Hall of Fame, and, and there's a master of ceremonies, and it's like a 2-hour ceremony because we induct about 10 Podcast Hall of Famers into the Hall of Fame, of which there's like, I guess, like 50 Hall of Famers already so far inducted. So, well, thanks again. I, I'll call this show a, a wrap at about an hour. And so if you want to reach out to me, feel free to do so. I would love to have you, um, with me in my next episode. And I will find a— maybe I'll find a risqué topic. If you have any topics that you think I should try and address or cover, I would love to hear your ideas on that. What are you seeing out there that nobody's talking about that maybe we should talk about? Is it fraud and scams? Is it the collapse of the podcast industry? Something scandalous? It seems like that's what everybody's talking about on YouTube these days is how the economy and the world is collapsing and how the world is caving in on all of us. So maybe doom and gloom is the topic du jour that gets people engaged these days. But I don't know that that's really too authentic to me. I'm more of an optimist and like to look at things pragmatically and be helpful to others, not try and fearmonger. So, well, thank you so much for being here with me tonight, and, uh, catch you next Thursday at 7 PM Eastern, uh, 4 PM Pacific. So good night. And if you're not following me on my YouTube channel, jump over there and, and give me a follow. I do a bunch of other shows over there too that you can get access to if you're interested. So thanks so much. Good night.
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