Transcription
Uh, not have it hooked up to Zoom. Uh, and just Otter in the background, just to get the. That's my little hack. I, little pro hack for people that don't allow Otter. Don't tell Nick and Laurel. I know. I'm like, don't tell them though. As we're recording, we do their social media, so we're allowed. We use it for content, so we are, we're super. Not we look nice, but we're not very deceiving. Um, and then Crystal, are you recording this yet? I am. Okay, cool. So I'm just gonna give it literally one more minute, and then we're gonna get it. Kind of go over some stuff, um, because, uh, we want to show you guys a few things today, um, that's always our goal. If we don't get to all three, that's fine, um, because we always have next month. And then, um, we also have, uh, a gal, um, that, uh, is in, or has been, I don't know if she is currently, um, in Lenon Laurel, who is also really good at AI and has her own group. She's out of Australia, Monica. And, um, she and I have been chatting about doing something in Laurel's group together with Crystal and I. And so I know you guys talked about, um, wanting to learn how to do your own GPT, which I would love to show you guys that. And then Monica actually does like what I would call next level, where she does some automation stuff. Um, so I'm going to talk to Laurel and figure out what makes the most sense, um, and probably do the, show you guys how to do your own GPT. Crystal and I create GPTs all the time. We do social media stuff for a lot of our clients, and each client has to have their own voice. Um, and so we'll create a GPT, just a really simple one, um, that kind of trains, uh, the AI on the tone and how we want some of the captions to be. Uh, we still write the captions, but then just to keep it all consistent because we kind of go back and forth with who's writing captions on what. And so, um, we'll take it through our GPT, and we're always, uh, we're always adding to it. So a lot of times we'll get notes from our clients that will say, we want this to sound more like, um, X, you know, go look at this website, see how they do their stuff. Um, and so we'll kind of go in and grab that for tone and stuff. So, um, so awesome. So how are you guys today? Good over here. Been meetings nonstop. You guys just don't stop either, though, do you? About the same. Do entrepreneurs ever stop? No, I don't think so. Do you guys take weekends off? I mean, what does that mean, really? No. No, I've not known what a weekend is for the like about 25 years now. So, you know, everyone goes, what do you do the weekend? I go, when's that then? Yeah, you know, it's like, I think I'm gonna take a day off in six days. When's that? What day is it today? You know, it's like, because every day feels the same, doesn't it? When, when you're in business, right? I do firmly believe in taking downtime and having that work-life balance. Um, a long time ago in my career, I was, um, had the opportunity to interview Ariana Huffington, um, or I was the producer on that segment, and she had written this book that I do recommend. I made Crystal buy it recently called Thrive, and it's, it's her story, um, about, you know, she created The Huffington Post. She was working, you know, sleeping five hours a day and kind of in this like mindset of go, go, go, go, go, and that that was kind of what's expected. And then she literally burned out, um, and had an accident where she fell, um, kind of passed out, and, um, you know, she was fine, but it, it scared her, and it kind of took her on this journey. Um, and, uh, the cliff notes are, we actually perform much better when we do take a break and we do have that downtime. And what I loved about about the book is she does a lot of research into other, um, countries and other cultures and kind of has like concrete proof, not just this is my thought of how when you do take the time off, how much you come back way better. And when you take a lunch break, your performance and your brain taking that time to stop thinking about whatever you've been thinking about or working on, you'll come back and actually be way more productive than you were if you kept plowing through. And your ability to concentrate, your ability to come up with new ideas, your ability to problem solve, it goes down, right? You only have so much each day, and how you kind of reset that is taking a break. And, you know, I'm a big fan of meditation and stuff like that, but, um, you know, it all plays into it. Yeah. Um, years ago, I learned about something called The Ultradian, ultradian Rhythm. And I mean, we do work most days, but not so much on some days. But I agree with you, you need about, I think it's every one and a half hours, you need to take a break. And we have a dog. Yay! We, we have Tom who cooks for us. So everything. And we get into the work. We do get into work early, but that's 'cause I like to go for a cycle. I have a, a rhythm. But we also stop at 10:00. We go out for half an hour in the G. There's gardens around the corner. We walk the dog. And then we stop for lunch at 12:00. We have at least 45 minutes, if not an hour. And then again at three, the dog goes out. Then again at six, the dog goes out. And sometimes we will do evening meetings because, you know, you guys are in America, but not often. So we do work, you know, most days, but at the same time, we take a lot of time off, yeah, to what some people do, you know, so I know we got it good to choose. All right, guys, well, it is, um, and thank you for sharing that, Tina, because I do think it's important. Um, okay, so what we're gonna show you, we're gonna show you for sure two things and possibly three things today. So kind of going over that, Crystal, I'm gonna have you take over letting people in on, uh, the, uh, waiting room. Y. And chat too. Say that again. I'll be in the chat too, responding to people and saying hi to everybody as they come in. So. Okay, perfect. Um, okay, so, uh, some of you, I'm sure use this program, but we're gonna show you, um, some stuff with Opus. Um, Opus is a program, an AI program that, um, Crystal and I use on a daily, and it allows us to take, um, any video. We can take video from YouTube, we can take a Zoom link, we can actually take video that, um, is an MOV file that maybe someone filmed at an event, and we can put it into Opus and, uh, set some parameters, and the AI will actually cut that video up into clips that we can use for social media posts. It allows you to, um, export it in all formats, so you can do horizontal, you can do vertical. It allows you to put captions on that video, you can customize those captions, and it allows you to do some very, um, if you're an editor, I will say rudimentary editing, and go in. If you've never edited, it allows you to very simply edit stuff. If you want to extend the clip or cut stuff out of the clip, um, it even allows you, um, um, to take out with one click pauses. So if you, for example, interviewed somebody on Zoom, and as we know on social media, slow talking people, that pause probably don't do as well because people's attention spans are like, let's get to it. Um, and so with one click, it'll allow you to take out all the pauses. So it's, it's actually very, um, a very powerful program. Um, and then we're gonna hand it over to Crystal, and Crystal is gonna show you, um, how to use Canva. Um, there's an element in Canva. If you guys use Canva, there are so many options under the hood in that program. Um, and we came up with, um, our lesson today based on actually something that Laurel asked us if we can do. She sent us a thumbnail that, um, someone that interviewed her created, and she's like, okay, this screenshot of me on this thumbnail looks amazing. How did that happen? And so I, um, took it into Canva, and there's an app in Canva that allows you to upscale screenshots or pictures if they're low res, and it's really powerful. If you've never used Canva, that's where we make our thumbnails. Um, there's a lot of templates in Canva, but there's also you can customize it if you want to do your own thing. Um, having been one of the first people to ever use Photoshop, I am a huge Photoshop fan, but I will say you can learn Canva in an afternoon. Um, and so, and if you already know Photoshop, you can learn Canva in about five minutes. So it's, there's a lot under the. So Crystal's just gonna actually show you how to get in, and again, we always speak to the lowest common denominator, meaning the people that have never used it. And so she'll show you how to get to the, the place where you actually go into the templates, and then we're gonna show you how easy it is to upscale, um, and, uh, make a photo that you might grab if you do any kind of, um, thumbnails, which you should, because you should all be posting your content on YouTube. Um, and then finally, what we're gonna do is show you guys how to use Udio if we have time. Um, I have a lot of fun with this program. Udio is a program that, um, allows you to go in and kind of make your own music. Um, what I would use it for is not that I want to put out music on, you know, the interwebs. It's more for when we're making videos for our clients or we're doing stuff for podcasts. You can actually create your own customized sound, um, and actually customize lyrics, and it's really cool. I will say there's other programs out there that do what Udio does, and because it's AI, and because stuff changes on the daily, uh, just recently there was an article that came out that Udio is being sued. Doesn't surprise me, um, by like Sony Pictures or Sony Music and stuff. Um, and so it's still up, and it's still working as of today, but that's, you know, there's always copyright issues, and I think as we begin to explore the world of AI, we're gonna see a lot of this stuff, just because, um, it's so new, and so there's, how, how are we going to monitor and adapt and actually create rules and regulations to AI? Uh, we're gonna do that in, um, in the courtroom. So there will be lawsuits, and stuff will change. So we might show you a program one day that's not there the next day because something came up. Um, but as for now, it's still there, so we're gonna show it to you because, um, it's pretty cool. So with that being said, I'm gonna get into Canva, or I'm sorry, into, uh, Opus and show you guys how to do that. So I'm gonna share my screen with you guys, and I already have it set up, um, but I'm gonna take you guys to just the home screen. Um, um, so this is Opus. Um, when you get into it, there is a free version that allows you to cut up X amount of clips, um, and then the paid version. What I like about the paid version is you actually pay for how many hours you actually, Opus, I'm making up that, uh, verb, how many Opus, the Opus clip. So you would get into it and you go to create, which will take you to the screen. Um, these are all of my projects, and so is just what I've been opusing. Um, again, we do a lot of stuff for Laurel and Success Finder and then our own stuff, so that's where you'll see that. And, uh, there's two options. You can either drag, um, a link from YouTube into, or just, uh, copy and paste it into here, um, or you can actually upload, um, an MOV file, an MP4 file, webcam, whatever it is. Um, and the cool thing, if you have the paid version, and I'm gonna show you this starting off, is, um, there's always, uh, I'll just show you the clips like this when it opuses your video. It will do everything the same, and then you can go in and, when I say the same, the same frame rate, uh, or the same framing, whether it's vertical or horizontal. And then it also allows you to pick your captions. So this is one I opus, and I'll just play it with the lowest cost of purchase I've seen on the internet for memberships. Like whenever I'm seeing your screens, I'm like, how is she like getting $1? So where you saw the captions, the presets were set to have these guys split, and to have the captions in the middle of the frame. And then we used Laurel's, uh, Laurel lime green. And so really quick, I'm just gonna show you if you have the paid version, how to set that up, because otherwise you can create a template. If you don't create a template, you can still go in and adjust it. It's just going into every single clip that you want to use. So I'll just show you that really quickly, and then we'll just take you in and kind of show you the bells and whistles, and I'll show you, um, really quick, just how to upload something. So before I would have uploaded something, I would pick what template I wanted. So I would go in, and it's right here, brand template, and I would click on brand template, and it will show you off to the side all these presets. Now, again, once you go into Opus and, uh, it does what it's going to do and cuts up your video, you can still go in here and adjust it, but this is just what will be the default. And so it has your aspect ratio, where you can do the 16 or the 9 by 16, um, which again, would be your vertical, uh, 1 by 1, and then the 16 by 9. Crystal and I pretty much just use these two. Um, this is the layout where it kind of does some auto stuff, but this is where, um, the AI will actually try to make decisions based on the type of video you uploaded. So fill means it's gonna fill the screen, fit means it's gonna fit the screen, split means that there were two people in the interview, so it's gonna give you some options where it splits them and just doesn't show one. Screen share is if, like what I'm doing right now, I'm screen sharing, so it would allow it to go full frame. And then the three would be if there were three people on Zoom or in the interview, and then four. Um, I keep it on original ratio here, and in the caption is where it would allow me to go in and choose, choose, do I want the caption lines to be one per page, three? Do I want it to be at the top, the middle, or the bottom? So here is where you can see it's just showing it. This is one line, versus if I clicked on the three lines, which if they had a lot, it would do three lines. And then the auto, it's gonna make the decision whether it's should be in the middle of the screen, at the bottom of the screen, at the top of the screen. I just leave it on auto. Um, this is the animation, is how the text would come on the screen. I have it on bounce. You can put it on underline in a box. Some people like that pop, where it will kind of pop on the screen. Slidings, this is where it will slide from the left. Um, and this is just something I would say to play with. I leave it on bounce. That's kind of my default unless the client or Crystal and I want something else for our stuff. Um, it actually allows you to go put in a hex code for color. So, you know, some people don't care. Um, I like to keep everything. Crystal and I are very much into branding, and part of branding to me is, let's use our brand color. So at a glance, people understand what your brand is. Um, and so with Laurel, again, we kind of go back and forth between, um, the color of her book to her, Laurel lime green. Um, and then if it's like, if she interviewed, uh, a certain guest, and maybe we want to play with it because I also like, like variety. I don't like it to always be the same. We might look at what their brand colors are and kind of make the caption their brand colors. Um, you can pick the font here, um, and then it gets into, do you want like uppercase, lowercase, uh, the size of the font, do you want it underlined, do you want a stroke on it? There's a lot of different, um, options that, again, the best thing to do for this, because it, it's, you know, kind of long, is like, just go in and play with it. Um, this part is your AI keywords highlighter. So this is where AI decides what words are important that would light up. And so you can actually go in and pick which ones, the colors that you want for that. And if you don't want that, you can just toggle that on or off. All right, so that's where I would save the template. This, I already have this template, so I'm not gonna save it. And, um, I will just go back and show you then how that would work. So let's say you wanted to do, uh, make a bunch, you had a video that performed really well on YouTube, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna Opus that because there was a lot of good content, people seem to like it, and I can use that for my social media content. Um, you would go into that YouTube, and so I just picked one from Laurel, um, that did well, uh, and that was also short, so I could just show it to you. So I'm literally just gonna, and this is on her YouTube page, and I'm just gonna copy that URL, and I'm gonna go back to this, and again, I could literally drag a file into here, or I can just paste. And so now it's going to begin to kind of do its thing. You see it already found it, and, um, because it was so short, it looks like it did it pretty quickly. Um, if it's a longer video, it will come up and say, okay, it's doing its thing, it's uploading it, and usually videos that are anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour take about 20 minutes to upload into Opus. Um, and it says you can peace out, leave the screen, and it will do it. Here is where you go in and you can make decisions on, um, what you want Opus to do. So here's the caption, um, presets. So you can actually go in and do stuff that they already have. So let's say you don't have your own brand template, you don't know what colors, and you don't want to think about it. They have a bunch of caption presets that you can go through and just kind of look through and see what you want, or you can go to your templates and you can pick the one that you just did that I showed you. So I would do that. Um, only add captions without clipping, I always have that just toggled off. Um, here's kind of a cool thing. So if it's a video that you know the content of, because Opus charges you, um, by how many minutes you Opus, let's say oping, um, a Zoom video where you bullshitted for 15 minutes, you can actually go in and just slide this over and say, I don't want you to Opus the first 15 minutes, so you're not wasting time. Here's where it has the preferred clip length. So there's auto, which is zero to three minutes. Um, it's not giving us the options of longer because this clip isn't, but this was, um, is in beta to where if you do want longer form clips, it allows, and this is fairly new, to do five minute to 10 minute clips, 10 minute to 15 minute clips. Um, my sweet spot is kind of at 60 seconds to 90, but I'm just gonna leave it on auto because a lot of our clients also want longer format, and when I say longer format, in the three minute zone, so they're not just going for like the 60 second YouTube shorts cutoff. So I'll just leave it on that. And if you actually want to have Opus only clip clips where you talked about very specific things, you can actually go in and topic filter by keywords. So I don't do that because really, usually the stuff that I'm opusing, um, is a Zoom interview that Laurel did or that Cher and I did, and I know the content. Most of it, a Q&A thing, or it's a lesson, and so I don't need Opus to try to figure out what to Opus. And then literally, you just go up here and you say, get clips in one click. And this is where it will say it's loading it, and a little window will pop up in just a second, um, that says it's fetching its video. Does it vary? Circa 1980? I kind of like it. Um, and this is where it says the estimated time is about 16 minutes. Um, and it says you can safely leave this page, and, um, what will end up happening, we're not gonna wait the 16 minutes. I'm just gonna click over to my other Opus window. But when we get done, when it's done, it will literally pop up like this, and so this is a different video that I did, but this is how then it will show up, and it will have all the clips that it deemed good. And so this was an hour video that, um, Evelyn interviewed Laurel, and so I got this off of YouTube, and out of it, it picked 29 clips out of this hour that it deemed would be good for social media. And Opus actually ranks each clip on what it thinks will be the best performing. Now, I can honestly say, I don't, eight, seven times out of 10, I don't agree with it. Um, so take that as you will. It really does it by grabbing keywords, and so we could have a quick conversation about Nick Peterson, and Opus would recognize Nick Peterson as being trending that day and say this clip's gonna do well because you talked about Nick Peterson. Well, whatever we said about Nick Peterson might not have anything to do with the rest of the clip, or it might not be in the correct context. So that's where it does its best. But what Crystal and I also love to say is it's where it's at. It's at its worst today. So we've been using Opus for over a year. It has gotten exponentially better than where it was a year ago. So it will continue to get better. Um, so that's this kind of ranking right here, the 99 to 100. Um, the hook gives it an A. It literally rates it back like we were in school. The flow and A, the engagement and A minus, and trending, um, an A minus. It literally gives us like some, um, feedback. The video starts with an attention-grabbing question, effectively catching the audience's attention. It sets a strong hook right from the beginning. Um, and then it kind of has it here. It also gives us a headline that it deems would be a good headline to use. Again, we use this very much as just a starting point. I don't really think it does the best job, but what's similar or what's recently new to Opus is it actually allows you to change it. So if it wants you to regenerate the title, I can go here and click on this and say, give me an interesting title, give me a catchy title, give me a serious, or give me a question. So it says, how to achieve a cost per purchase of $1.90, secret strategies revealed. So let's say I want to turn that into a question. Does its little thinking, successfully regenerated it. How does she achieve a $1.90 cost per purchase? I actually like that. Um, I'm looking at that clip, and it's 15 seconds. That, that's where I'm gonna deem it. It's probably not good. I'm not a fan of a 15-second clip, but who knows? Let's watch it, and I'll just show you since it is short what it did. And our little clippy is not playing, which it does sometimes. So we'll skip that and go to this one. So cracking the code, unconventional advertising strategies. Let's see if it will play that one. I always, I always like, I don't know why people are so weird about competition because I really don't see anyone as comp, you know, competitors because we're all in this together, and we're all giving value to the same group. So thank you for having me, and yeah, so I started working in television in 2002, so this was like way before, you know, Facebook was a thing, and even social media. And so, you know, a lot of people when they come into my membership, they're always like, wow, this is something completely different. Like, your way of doing advertising is something that I've never really seen before, and it's because I set up my ads ecosystem as a strategy that I have been doing to watch television shows for years. And so the way, so I'll stop that. I like it, right? And I would watch the whole thing, but just on time. So, um, I noticed when it first kind of started to play, I always, I always like, I don't know why people are so weird about comp. Okay, so it did a little weird thing there, right? Kind of started before she starts, where Laurel actually kind of starts in. And so I'm gonna show you guys how to edit that, um, and also just off to the side here, so you can kind of see what these are. This is how Laurel and I communicate. So I'll go in and, um, Opus stuff, and then I heart the ones I like after I've adjusted them, and then if she wants, she can go in and see the ones that I liked and kind of watch them, and if I'm on the right track, she's good. If not, she can actually go in and edit stuff. And if she doesn't like a clip I picked, then she'll unheart it, right? You can also, and I do this, um, when I go to export, so I can just look at it. You can actually close this whole thing by just giving it a thumbs down, and it actually has feedback that you can give Opus, um, reasons that you disliked it. And if I click one of these, a window will actually pop up and ask because Opus always wants to learn. If I did it on accident and I want to bring it back up, I just click on it. So if I go to this icon, there's this icon, export, this is download, and then edit. So right now, I'm just gonna show you guys these two, because this is really the only two that I use. Edit the clip. If I click on edit the clip, it will bring it up with a timeline, and this is where if you have done a lot of editing, this is where it's a little bit archaic, but simple for someone that's never, um, isn't familiar with editing, it really allows you to do it. Um, and so it's telling me, loading it, take some resources, might take a moment. Thank you for your patience. And again, this is where sometimes where Opus, um, it can be quick, but it can actually be really slow, um, in getting stuff done, but it's a lot quicker than if you were to take this into a, a more traditional Final Cut Premiere Avid editing thing. So over here is where it now has, um, our transcript of everything. It shows the video, and then over here is the exact kind of stuff that I was showing you before, where you can get into the captions and the clip layout, and this is where if you wanted to adjust stuff after you had already opused it, you can do that. Um, and it's not popping up on the timeline. Again, it's kind of wonky. If I kind of click on it, it will, um, I just kind of avoid that too because it, um, sometimes with the timeline is what kind of slows it down. So, uh, I just try to edit within this. So couple of things, I can add a section. So if I go, but before I do that, I'm gonna take this out. So this is where I think it was kind of, um, it had pulled the word I randomly, and so that's where there was a little glitch. So if I just highlight that, highlight that, I can go in and literally hit this little thing, remove caption and video, and just remove the caption, or just remove it all. So it just cut that. So let's say, so now it starts with, I don't know why people are so weird about competition because I really don't see anyone as competitors. I like that, right? Let's say there was a section that I wanted to take out, I could literally just go in and highlight it and again, just hit remove caption and video, or if there's a section where the caption is incorrect, and right now there could be, but I have not found where I can go in and edit the caption if it spells something wrong, or someone's name, or it's just not right. So I'll just go in and remove the caption. Um, there could be a way to edit the caption. I have not explored it enough, and if there's not, now there will be because that would be feedback that I'm sure a lot of people are giving it. Um, you can add b-roll. I don't even deal with that, so that's just something that right now I'm not even gonna go into. Um, and oh, this might be where you could actually edit the words, um, which I haven't even played with that, so I'll go play with that later. So that's how I would remove stuff. So let's say we want to add something. So let's say the clip wasn't long enough, and we wanted to add it. I could just go here and add, and it's cool because it will bring up the transcript, and it highlights what is in the clip, or it makes it more white and grays out what is above it and what's not. And so if I want to continue on, or let's say add after she says, oh, that's so beautiful, I love it when you said that about competition because how on earth can I compete with you when you have basically templated your personal journey on ads, right? Let's say I want to add that. I would literally just highlight it and click add, and now it's gonna kind of do its thing. You can kind of see over here in the bottom left that it is rendering that, and it's gonna add that. And once it does that, I go in and I save my changes. So that's kind of how there's very basic, um, editing, shortening or lengthening or taking something out of a clip. The other thing that you can do in editing is, let's say that you didn't want it to be in, uh, this format, or you wanted to see what other options of the display. So before I actually show you that, because I clicked on it, let me also show you that. Let's say you don't like how Opus framed these guys. Laurel's a little close, and maybe I don't want her to be so close to the camera. I just click on it, and it says crop. If I click on crop, it then pulls up the video, and if I want to make her closer, I could actually do that. But let's say I want to make her zoomed out as much as I possibly can, and I'll be careful just to get it on her video, not on hers, otherwise it will put that in there. And it looks like that is about the most that I could do. So just to show you guys, I'll actually zoom her in so you can see that. I would never do this, but if I hit apply, it will kind of do its thing, and then it brings her in way closer. Um, and you can do that for both of them. This is also where I can go in and, let's say, I don't want it to split it. So if I click off of that, now it's just gonna show whoever's talking, and it allows just for that. Sometimes if it gets wonky, you can kind of play with this. If I go fill or fit, so sometimes since I, now it just says fit, now it's just gonna fit the two people in there. I will say where Opus is a little bit, again, archaic, and there's just like things not quite perfect in it, sometimes it doesn't do all these correctly, and so sometimes I just have to go in and play around and just kind of hit these buttons to get what I want. Sometimes if I hit fill and fit, it will bring a frame or a video to look like this, and that's what I want, maybe on a different clip. Those two options don't do that, and so I'll just, again, click off of them, click on them until I get whatever framing I want, and that's just kind of a glitchy thing within Opus. Um, and then I just hit save, and it literally will then go back to, uh, the original clips, and it will say, give me about three minutes before you'll be able to kind of look at it, and that's when I heart it, and I move on to the next clip, and I'll just go in and kind of edit all of our clips with that. So that's kind of how Opus will work. Um, before we move on, I'm just gonna show you one more thing in Opus, um, but I wanted to know if there's any questions on that side of things before I move on. Yes, Tina, just a small thing. I noticed that the next clip had, um, Laurel had stuck in a bit of a strange, um, you know, you know, kind of thing. Can you change those things like with thumbnail over the top so that you, you know, because when you start somebody's video, they, especially if it's not your face, I don't care about mine as you can tell, um, if it's like some of you trying to impress, and you've just done an interview with them, that and their face, like, can you put a thumbnail on top of that if it's the right words, and you know what I mean? Don't you? I do. I totally do. So yes, you wouldn't do that in Opus, though. So once you, uh, exported, which is the next thing that I'm gonna show you, once you export the clip, then you would do your thumbnail or your cover photo, like if you're, you know, whatever you're putting it on, you could create that and do that. But let's say that you do want to change it for whatever reason, if you find another use case and you don't like the actual image, you could change it the same way by adding video to another, like going back a little bit. I wouldn't recommend that, but you could go add section and get it on a different thing. But really, what it's showing you when it does that, so her thing that's just where she starts, right? But if I hit play, you know, Gary Vee is about to release a new book. By the time this podcast airs, he might have already released. So unless you were literally gonna take that exact frame of that video, I would just take a screen grab, which Laurel or which, uh, Crystal is gonna show you next on how to actually use video to make thumbnails. It's just what it's sto at. Sometimes got clients who do their videos and they've started like this, and I'm like, I don't want their beginning video to that. But at the same time, I don't want to spend a lot of time changing what my Cent. That's what I was just gonna say, like, you could definitely take a lot of time finessing that. I would say, I don't think the bang's worth the buck, and I would just put a photo. Yeah, if it was a quick way and you knew it, I was gonna take that and use it. Yeah. Um, so let's say you've gone through, like I did this interview, and I've hearted all the clips that I like that I wanted Laurel to look at. I'm happy with them, and she says, yep, go use them. So then the next thing I would do is I export everything. And Crystal and I export everything both vertically and horizontally because we put everything on all the social platforms, right? You might only put stuff on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, so you might not need this, and you might just have to set your template and go. But if you do need it, then literally what you would do is you just go here to download clip, and it downloaded it in that preset, right? So now it is downloaded into my downloads, and I'll just show you really quick. That's kind of like saying, you know, TV ads only work for a certain, you know, type of person when it's really, you know, I. But then what I do in my workflow is I go do everything vertically, and then I go back through and to turn it horizontal, I literally just go back to edit clip, and this is where I've learned how wonky Opus can be, but if you just keep clicking, it eventually gets you where you are. And I would go to clip settings, and I wait for it to come on so I can kind of see what my video looks like, and again, it always tells us it's fetching the video. And this is where I would turn it into 16 by 9, and a lot of times it warps the video or does weird stuff to it like that. And so this is where I would say, okay, I want it to fit the screen, and kind of see what that does. And that seemed to do exactly what I wanted it to do. And I just go through and I go, and when I do this, I will go down to the timeline and I just kind of scroll across and make sure that every cut, it did that. Sometimes again, it gets wonky, and I actually have to highlight a clip if I made some cuts and make sure it did what I wanted on that video. Once I've done all that, I just hit save changes, and I go back and then wait the three minutes, and so that's where I'll just go through and do it to all of them, and then I go back and I export it. Now, one of the things, uh, to note, and this is something that, um, Crystal and I have learned, is that you need to watch your final clips after they're exported. Sometimes Opus does wonky things, and so, and just like it won't have saved your changes, or it's just, you know, again, it's a really powerful program, but it's by no means perfect. And so what we do, and because there's two of us, um, we kind of our, our second set of eyes for each other. So if she opuses something, um, I will go through and watch the clips. And if I open something, she'll go in and watch the clips, or we just do it, you know, I just get in the habit of once I put them all in the folder, I go through and I just watch them and make sure that they've been done, um, correctly, because sometimes it just, like, for whatever reason, it didn't save the changes, or maybe I clicked off the window too quick. Um, so I can tell you right now, because that did take a long, long time to show you guys that, that we're probably not gonna show you Udio, but we will show you Canva, and we can save Udio for a different time, just because Udio is more of a fun one, and in all honesty, if you want to learn Udio, um, you can just go to it. It's like Studio minus the ST, and start playing with it, and it's, um, very user-friendly, and you can do a free version. Um, we will show it to you if it's still around, and the, the lawsuit doesn't kick it off the interwebs. Um, but I want to have time to show, um, you guys how to take a screen grab of video and upscale it, just because, uh, I think it's a really cool thing that Canva does. Absolutely. Eve, thank you so much for that awesome tutorial. Opus is incredible. So like, and it's so great that Tina asked this question when she did, because it really, this next step for me is kind of like the beautiful decor, the icing on the cake that makes everything look really great. If you're following me in the chat, I'm a big branding and aesthetic person, so I'm like, use this to get your colors, use this to like, really differentiate. So what I'm gonna show you in Canva is really going to help you be able to create a beautiful brand aesthetic very quickly with your content. So let's say you've done all of that, and you've got your clips. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here. I'm gonna start with, let's see here. Let me get my YouTube set up correctly. Here we go. So I'm gonna start by sharing my screen and show you this screenshot I am holding on to of Laurel. Can everyone see that? Can you give me like a thumbs up if you can see everything? Looks good. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so let's say we've interviewed Laurel, we had a great chat, and we don't have a really nice high-res picture, which is gonna be the case in most of the time that you guys are doing this, is you're not gonna like reach out and say, hey, do you have a professional headshot? So this is gonna be a great way that you can get a really beautiful thumbnail without bothering anyone for a headshot or going back. So, um, I paused it on this great frame right here because, to be honest, it's, it's a little blurry, it's a little imperfect. We can kind of see here that it's like a little, kind of artifact, that's a design term for wonky, basically. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a screenshot. So I am on a Mac, so for me, that's holding shift, command, and hitting the number four, and it gives me this crosshair. I really like doing it this way because I get exactly what I want. On a PC, I think there's a different key combination. You can Google it, but if you have a Mac, shift command four will bring up this crosshair, and you will literally drag over the shot that you want. So I want this nice big shot of Laurel here, going, woo! And as we all know, Laurel, the woo is kind of almost famous, a little bit, where she's like, woo! Stop being sassy. So we have that. Now, that screenshot is saved to our computer. Now we're gonna scroll over to Canva, and we are going to upload this into Canva. Now, like Eve mentioned at the very beginning, there's a lot under the hood here, clearly there, like a ton of stuff. This is a really big program. I'm just gonna go through exactly what you need to make this thumbnail work, and then we're gonna go over this, um, you know, kind of at a later date. We'll go kind of more in depth into it. So when you're in Canva, the first thing I want you guys to do is go to this little section right here, and it has all these icons. You want to click on the social media, and we're gonna focus on YouTube thumbnails, but to Tina's point, if you're gonna put this on Instagram and you want a beautiful cover image, you would choose, so like Instagram story, to get that nice ratio. So it's either gonna be nine by, sorry, nine by 16 or 16 by 9. Does that make sense? So we have the horizontal and the vertical. For this, we're gonna do a YouTube thumbnail, so we can scroll and we can see these things that are here. We just.
Go ahead and click on YouTube thumbnail, and we create a blank one. Once that loads, there are a couple of different things that you can see here on the screen. You can search for the type of thumbnail that you want to create, or if you're very creative and graphically inclined, you can definitely make this out of thin air. Or you can choose some of these templates that exist that you can then edit.
So let's say we really like "Secrets You Should Know." We don't know that dude, that's not Laurel, but that's... we like the red. Maybe we like the colors here. We're going to click on that and allow it to load here on the screen. You can do any of these, whichever aesthetic you like. If you are not graphically inclined, I would say that if you're short on time and you want something that looks nice, choosing one of these pre-made templates, um, is going to kind of get you like a good 60% of the way there. You can change all the colors, all of that. But again, just for the sake of time, I'm going to show you this specific part with the upscale, um, tool because I think a lot of people don't really know about the upscale tool.
So now that I have this here, this lovely gentleman, unfortunately, is not Laurel. So, deuces, bro, he's out of here. And we are going to go to the upload section. Now, we are going to... this is other people. We have some... I made a, I made Lego Laurel the other day, which was kind of fun. Um, so I haven't showed her that. So, hello, if you're watching. There's Lego U. Lego U is a thing. Um, she is watching because she made a comment that her hair is called swamp hair. Swamp hair? Okay. I was like, it's a little artifact. I'm sorry. When I'm screen sharing, I can't see the chat, but I love that. So, uh, Laurel, we have Lego Laurel for the future. Um, and that should be something fun.
So let's go here to upload files. Normally, when you screenshot, it'll automatically save to a downloads folder. If you're on a Mac, I love using this recents because I'm someone that eternally loses where things go. So if you use recents, it'll literally show you like what is the most recent screenshots and things that you did. So I'm going to pull this one in. I'm going to go ahead and add it in. It's uploading right here. Gives it a little second. Let it go. Swamp hair. I can't. I can't with her sometimes. Okay.
So we are going to click on this image, and it's going to populate here in the thumbnail. Now, obviously, we don't like this. This doesn't work, right? It doesn't look like the gentleman before where he was cut out and it was nice and high-res. We have her background. So the first thing we're going to do before we upscale, and this to me was such a game-changer. If you have ever done Photoshop in the past, what I'm about to show you is going to blow your mind because this would have taken hours to do in the past. You would have had to go in and draw these tiny little squares all around Miss Laurel to get all that background cut out. You ready? This is so good. This is so good. Edit image. Look at this background remover. Watch this, you guys. When I, when I tell you, when I first saw this, I was like, the years I have spent cutting out backgrounds. Like, this is amazing. So the background is gone. So now we have something that looks a little bit more like the gentleman in our original thumbnail, right? That he was cut out, he was kind of off to the side. Um, for this one, I'm actually going to flip Miss Laurel around so she is looking that direction. So edit image, right next to it is flip. She's upside down. I like this in particular if you have an image or a screenshot where someone, say her arm was cut off, there. We wouldn't necessarily want that on the other way because it would be wonky, right? Cuz you'd have like the line here. So just being able to flip it around gives us a little bit more freedom in making things look better.
Now, this is the kicker. So we have this image of Laurel, a screenshot. We have the background cut out. So we have it in the, in kind of a form that we can use, but we need it to be a lot sharper, right? We need it to look a lot cleaner. We need it to look a lot more high-res. So because it looks like swamp ass, she said it. I didn't. Laurel, I think, I think you look beautifully and swampy. I feel like now I can't photo... not Laurel, I can't stop associating this picture with like Shrek because every time I hear swamp, I think of Shrek and now I'm like, I love that. Um, so make sure when you're up, when you're going to this next step, you're going to make sure that you're clicking on the part of the image you want to edit. You may have multiple pictures here. So say we had a couple of these in here, we want to make sure that the one that we're clicking on is the one that we're going to edit. So we're going to click on Miss Laurel. We're going to go back up to edit image here. We're going to scroll. See this little butterfly with the magnifying glass? This is the game changer. This is the game changer. This is something that wasn't even possible a few years ago. Um, God, even, even a year ago, I think upscaling is pretty, pretty new.
So basically, depending on the low resolution or the resolution of your original image, you can upscale up to eight times. I won't get into the technicalities of how this works, but suffice it to say that the more that we're trying to upscale, the more the AI has to kind of fill in the blanks of the data that's missing from the image. I guess I got pretty technical there. Basically, we're taking it smaller, we want it bigger, we want it higher res, but it doesn't have that information from the photo. So it has to, AI has to create those spaces. So we're going to upscale to 2x because it's still a fairly decent photo. So we're going to upscale. And she thinks it's fairly decent. I like it. Beautifully lit and perfect. But we're going to let Canva do it. Same. And so we're going to hit upscale. We're going to let it do its thing, and it can take a second. So, you know, Jeopardy soundtrack playing. Okay.
And so here we can see the before and the after. Do you see how much cleaner that looks? You see how like all of that pixelation, that blur gets cleaned up? It definitely has a filtered look to it, so you can tell that it's definitely been edited, but the end result tends to be a lot crisper, a lot cleaner, a lot better, I think, kind of overall. Do we see that? Are we seeing the difference here? When I scroll over it, you can barely... To be honest, Crystal, just at least on my computer, I'm on a laptop. If you upscaled it again, would it be even more or no? Um, so when we upscale again from this position, what tends to happen is the AI tries to figure out where it went wrong, and then we might get a third eye. We might get, you know, an extra. Okay. So, and then do you always start? I'm just asking questions out of the chat now. Do you always start with 2x? Um, not necessarily. Um, I like to typically start with 4x. If that option isn't available, it means that the AI can't produce that. The AI can give us twice the data, it can't give us four times, six times, or eight times the data that's missing. So I would say go up because you can always come back down. But I find my sweet spot is between the 2x and the 4x because we do get a really realistic version. Um, we've run clients through this before. One of our, our very, very fancy lawyer clients, I ran through and definitely gave him a third eye and, um, got rid of that really quick. So, but yeah, definitely if it's available to you, I would say play with it. Go all the way up if you can.
And if you wanted to start again, I'm just asking questions from the chat. Um, let's say you got to this place and it didn't look great, right? How would you go back? And say, okay, like, oh, you just hit go back. I can see that below. But so what I have found is that when you get to this point and you're like, yeah, there's a third eye, this isn't working, that may just mean that there's not data in that original image for the AI to confidently fill in those blanks. So at that point, I would go grab another screenshot and I would try with a different image. So as you saw in my recents, I had two different versions of Laurel, um, on my, that I took screenshots of to try because the first one that I upscaled, there wasn't that big of a difference, so it wasn't that impressive of a change. This one definitely is more impressive of a change. So I'm going to go ahead and apply it because it is small. I'm, I'm assuming on your guys' screen and you won't be able to to see the difference. So hopefully you will now.
So now we have a more upscaled version of Laurel, definitely a more photoshopped looking version of Laurel that we can then use. This looks a little wonky to me personally, but again, this is where the AI is trying to fill in that data. Oh, you can see it much better there. Just to say that, um, like I can see from here, once it got pulled into here, at least on my little screen, that she looks like she got airbrushed and she got filler and she got her eyebrows done, right? And the hair got, the hair got a little smoothed out. So going from, and if you guys can see it here on the left, going from that really pixelated image to this, while this isn't perfect, is a significant improvement, right? Because we are be, we are able to scale it up where if we went with the original, we wouldn't be able to do it at all. So, um, I'm going to go ahead and add to design. So what this is going to do is just give me another one so I can have many a Laurel, which who doesn't want more Laurel? I know I do. Um, you can also, I'm going to show you the other one as well, just so you can see the different, different ways that it may upscale. This is an adorable screenshot. I actually really wanted to use this one. And sometimes, sometimes she's the, Canva is wonky, just like the Opus is wonky.
Another question while we're waiting for this: Is this, this option available in the free version of Canva, or is this only the paid version, or do you even know because I know we just have the paid version? That is a phenomenal question. I don't, I can't say for certain that it is. Um, I feel like the free version of Canva isn't super limiting on ability, but limited on quantity of output, if I'm not mistaken. So it's not something I can firmly speak on 100%. Um, but I would definitely, I would definitely have a look, um, and see if you, if you can. And Canva is also, not to dismiss this question, but, um, incredibly affordable. I mean, this is something that Crystal and I talk about all the time with our business, how we're able to be so profitable is we're not paying the big bucks for Final Cut. And I mean, we actually have Final Cut, but it's like, there, the tools out there now are very, very affordable between CapCut and Canva and Opus. I mean, it's like, wow. Absolutely. And I was talking to Tina in the chat earlier, and I said, you know, just based on what you were showing with Opus, there's just the two of us running this agency. Without these tools, we would need five to seven people to do the capacity and the quality of work that we can do using these tools. So it really is incredible. But I do believe it's in the 10 to 12 a month range. And somebody, Sabine, just said it is on the free one. So that's cool. Fantastic. Thank you so much for clarifying that.
So with, and one thing, sorry to interrupt again, Crystal, I just, I'm in the chat and it says, uh, Nina pointed out she has creepy AI hand with four fingers. Definitely do pay attention to that because that is where AI with fingers, literally, like I can always tell because it just doesn't always get it right. So just do pay attention to that. A lot of times, how we would fix that, just because that image, we would just make it bigger to where you couldn't see her whole hand, so you couldn't figure it out. You know, it's like one of those things that if you don't know, but do pay attention to that because sometimes it will. That's where I always see AI, in the, the eyes and the hands. Laurel actually has very naturally sparkly eyes. Um, but most people don't. And so I, I'm like, that's been AI'd because there's the AI sparkle twinkle. Exactly.
So this, this different screenshot, I'm sure you guys saw, did allow me to upscale up to 3x. So I went ahead and chose that. So we can see the changes here. And I think that's a pretty, the changes, I like that one better. I think the other doesn't look like Laurel after we upscaled her, right? So again, when, and like I mentioned, remember what the AI is doing. It's taking data from something this big, and it's kind of like, imagine if you had a, a postage stamp and you wanted to make it a poster. There's, there's a lot of stretching of things. So what the AI is doing, instead of trying to stretch that data out, it's trying to fill in the blanks. And that's where a lot of the creepy AI hands and all of those mistakes come from because it's trying to figure out as a computer what's missing. So with this one, definitely looks more like Laurel. We have one, two, three, four, five fingers this time. So we are good to go. Yay. And then we can upscale, we can make it a lot bigger and put it into our thumbnail.
And also show them, just because this is another thing that we do, is how to go in and just adjust like the exposure because I think that is like the icing on the cake because to me, this photo still looks, as much as now she looks smoother, it does look like a much better quality. Um, I can't tell for sure that it's been taken from a, um, from a, uh, video, but you can go in and, uh, actually start adjusting the look of it. Absolutely. So definitely, definitely if you're a novice, play with this. Have fun with it. Um, if you don't know what you're doing, auto adjust. Every time, auto adjust. Let it do its thing. It's going to color correct. To see, it brought back a lot of warmth to her skin. Um, and there's ways to make things pop. So we will, like, we can bring up the brightness, we can bring down or bring up the contrast, the highlights. So with these changes, though, what's really important, you guys, is doing micro changes. We don't want to do this, right? Or we don't want to do this. We want to like, do little subtle changes that start to enhance the image, make it brighter, um, bring up some shadows, bring them down. So we don't want to like slam the the toggle in in one way. We really want to do these micro adjustments because otherwise then we get, you know, you see how we're going crazy here, unless you want black and white. But you know, we don't want to go crazy. Which I love.
So Crystal, one of the things in the chat, and we can kind of say how we, because again, AI is not going to be perfect at this point, but there's a hole in her arm right here. Sharks have been bad in the Gulf lately. That's hilarious. So like, either you can go back and do it right, because sometimes it will make it better that time, or a hack if you do like this image because I think Laurel's smile looks really good, stuff like that is we might use graphic design to cover that. So we might actually put the text right over that. And again, like it depends on how much time you have and are you, is this iteration one or you, you know, minimum effect of like, what is the goal? And so a lot of times because like one of the things that Crystal and I have said, um, is, you know, we have a friend that actually worked for the Huffington Post, that their entire job was just to make thumbnails. Right? That's all they did was make thumbnails. And he said that he could make like four a day, four thumbnails a day, and he was paid a lot of money. So if you have a team and if you're making thumbnails for The Huffington Post, yes, by all means, you're probably using a bunch of different stuff. But is this going to work for us now? And their ways to work around it. And sometimes, like I believe everything is fixable. And it might not be spending an hour going back and really trying to get AI to do it. Like sometimes it's just go get the hammer and put in the nail versus calling the contractor to come back to the house, right? That's how I would have done it. I'm like, let's just cover it, you know, right? And just by moving the text over a little bit, problem solved. Fast and ugly. Yeah, go dirty early. Go ugly early. I think someone said that in, uh, one of the success circle things, is go ugly early. And I love that. You know, it's like, and again, like if we were doing this for a client, like you will see, it's not always going to be perfect, you know, unless the client provides you with a professional photo that was shot with a decent camera. I mean, even an iPhone or a smartphone would be a decent camera nowadays. And you're dealing with taking stuff from a screen grab of a video. Work around it. There's a hack to everything. There's a hack to everything. There absolutely is. And I think the biggest takeaway from seeing errors like this and seeing issues like this is there are ways to hack around it. Don't let that be the stopping point for you starting because I think as entrepreneurs, we have a lot to do. And sometimes, especially with social media, we get a little concerned about what people are going to say and how they're going to think and what the comments are going to say. And hack it. Don't let that be the barrier for you making progress in your business because moving literally one word over, your problem solves it. And we all move on with our lives. Um, I think Nina mentioned in the comments like, or in the chat, that yeah, people love to point out problems. I've been an influencer for 10 years. They will find, they will find an eyebrow hair out of place. They will. Don't let that be the reason to not, you know, get the ball rolling and create your content.
So, um, I think, I think that's it as far as the upscale goes, goes, and the removing backgrounds go, and the thumbnails. I know that was a really quick toot. Um, but hopefully that worked for you guys. And I think we have a couple minutes and depending on everyone's time, if we have time for questions, I have time. If anyone wants to stay on, I'd love to. And just before we get to questions, just kind of a, um, housekeeping is, so as we're doing this, because we're going to be here the last Thursday of every month. And again, we always want to hear from you. Um, and that's just something Laurel is doing, added value for you guys. So, you know, AI is, is not going away. So learn it. I mean, I always say the threat is real. And the thread is that your competitors are going to start using it and they're going to get ahead because they're going to be able to do things faster. Um, and, um, what we want to do, because I, I jump into your guys' group a lot, especially with the value bomb, and there were so many, like, where's the link? Where's the link? Where we put the link in there many times. And I get it, there's 4,000 people in that group. So not everyone's going to get the memo. These videos, we're going to put on our YouTube. And we will give Laurel the link. We will put the link in the group, right? And but we will also, it will be on our YouTube page. So we're going to try to do that immediately afterwards, just so it gets done. Um, so if you guys, I know you guys are very helpful with the other people in the group, if people are asking where the link is, just direct them over to our YouTube because that's where it's going to live. Um, and if Laurel will give her the link also, and if she wants to put it in her program, um, that's up to her and she can, you know, make those decisions and give, uh, directions to where it is. But that's what we're going to do for now on, just so it's in one consistent place. Um, so you guys have that. Fantastic. Tina, all of these replays are in the AI accelerator in the library. That's awesome. Awesome. So the replays are in there. That's super cool. Amazing.
Okay, my question is really easy. Um, when you gonna tell us about Udio? [Laughter] We'll do that next time, baby. Again, wait a whole month? I don't want to wait a month. You can literally go to it, Tina. It is so easy. It's not the same as you guys showing us what you know. We go, we have all these things already, but we don't have time to dive in because we're really busy. Show us what you know. And we go, didn't realize that was even there. Didn't know you could do that. Yeah, having the time, and you think I'm going to go into these things, I'm going to learn them. And then you learn CapCut and you go and learn, like, you know, Opus, all that. But don't play them the song. Eve, you gotta play them the song. Okay. Oh, the song. Okay. Can I tell them the song? And then they'll give me their song and then show me how what we do like everyone else could go away. Can even Crystal stay and show you what I'm gonna do? You guys, for Tina, because I have time and anyone that wants to jump off can jump off. I will go hang out for sure. Someone asked another question and I'll go to Udio and I will pull up the song and show you a very quick little demo of it. Yeah.
Has any questions while Eva is pulling that up? Udio. Udio is a fun one. Uh, when we found out about the lawsuit earlier this week, we were like, man, took them longer than we thought to get to it. But in the meantime, while you can use it, get in, get out before the lawsuit comes down. And I don't know if it will. I mean, it could be bogus. I mean, it's like, it's one of those things that we don't know what's going to happen with it. We don't even know what the lawsuit's exactly about. I mean, it's copyright stuff, so it might be something of removing something. All right, so I'm going to share my screen really quick. See if this is Udio. Yep. Okay. So as you will notice, it does say beta. So this is a free version. If you want to pay for it, what I notice is the difference. I'm not paying for it right now. Is the difference is the length in which you can create. Okay. And so what I would do is go to create. And that is where the learn about. So I would go to this, and this is where I would begin to look in, like giving it prompts of what I want. Again, this is going to be quick, down and dirty. I'll go into detail about this next time or the next time we decide to do it. Um, it gives you suggested tags where you can choose what kind of music you want. Here is the lyrics. This is where I would type in my custom lyrics. Instrumental, deciding if I just want instrumental, um, and you can also do autogenerated, which I never do because I'm always using the custom. And so to appease everybody, Tina, Laurel, I'm going to go to my creations. And this is where I've just had fun, right? So because, uh, we're part of the success circle, I created, um, a couple versions of a song. All of them are going to be 32 seconds. So I'm going to play you a couple of them, and hopefully you can hear it. If you can't, then I will find the downloaded version. So tell me if you guys can hear this. Can you hear it? Yeah. Okay.
[Music]
That's one version. But I wanted to go have fun. Laurel hasn't even heard these. So I'll play another version. And I apologize to anyone with the swear words because, uh, this is, uh, this was for Laurel, Nick, and Brandon. [Music] Right? So now because I'm more in a sassy vibe, this is my down-tempo version. And some of these might have slightly different lyrics because I think I made a whole bunch of these one time. The success finders here, she knows her stuff. Naked talent, you join team, get best. And if you don't like that one, we have this one. That one's my favorite. That's my favorite. That's got to be the one, Eve. That's just fantastic. A few find your hanging out. It's what we do. The success. This here with Laurel, she knows stuff. Brand talented as get. And I'll play you one more. Laser find in your crew. Entrepreneurs coming. It's a breakthrough. That's finder. When we unite with Laurel, P. Everything's right. Nick and Brandon talented is F. Join the team. No second guess. The success finder where dreams take flight. Your path to success, shining so bright.
All right, so you can go and have a blast. I personally use it to make up songs and send happy birthday to my friends who then are like, I didn't know you were a musician, or they think I paid somebody to do it. So, um, it's fun. That's actually the first thing I did on Laurel's birthday is I sent her, uh, and Christina, a happy birthday from that, and she's like, what is he doing? So it's just fun. Secret talents. Secret talent. But it could be fun to make like a little intro for your podcast or a little intro for your YouTube, just, you know, get in there and have fun. And just allows you to download them. And again, um, and then that's, you know, they're just audio files. So it, it's really nice in that way. Tina said she heard. Tina said she can hear it really well. So we're going to have to download it and put it in the group. I think we should. Who couldn't hear really well? Tina. Well, it was a little artifact you coming through. So. Oh, we'll download. Barely hear it at all. We couldn't make it out. You're gonna need to download and put in the group, Eve. I can't hear. I'm sorry. I wish you guys would to start stop. No, no, it's okay. It's okay. You just have to download them or put them in the group with the explanation so we can get nice. Have to do that now. Okay. Yeah. You any of very well. I'm winding you up. It's an English thing. It's called humor. You put it in the group because you think I can't hear it. And then everyone gets to hear it. That's what we do. It's drive. The last one was the best, but they all were a little spotty. Oh, I'm sorry. That's something like I'm British. This is how we humor. That's see if I have it. Um, yeah. All right. Well, I'll find it and then do it. We had this problem before. I thought it was somewhat solved by me taking out my microphone. But what abs. We'll get it. I'll, I'll give it to Laurel to post somewhere. Maybe that's what we'll do. We'll make a, we'll take all this like b-roll of Laurel and like put it over it so she's like doing the pew pew. Everything. It'll be great.
Does anyone have any other questions before we re-wrap for today? Anything about what you learned? Any requests for next time, other than more Udio, because I think that's going to be the big fun one. But if anyone has anything else, otherwise, I think we'll wrap. Not like the way Eve just did with the music. Creating the GBTS would be awesome. Learning how to do that. So is that next time? We'll figure that out. I want to talk to Laurel about that too and figure out what would make most sense. Again, Monica wants to come in and share some stuff. I do think that the GBTS would be first. So yeah, 100%. And that's a, we'll let you know. We'll let you know. Yeah. And that's a longer process. So it wouldn't like in, we wouldn't, that would be like the focus of that session, I think, because it is a longer process to train it, to show you guys how it all works, to get it going, versus like today where we're like, let's just try and show you guys as much as we can and have a lot of fun. So, um, what the GBTS, what else would be helpful? Like, uh, again, like our whole showing you that Canva thing came from Laurel asking me, hey, can you make this look better? So, um, and if you can't think of anything now, you can also throw it in the group and just tag Crystal and I because we do get in there and look. And then, you know, again, we're, we're committed to being here at least through the 2024, the last Thursday of every month, unless there's a holiday or something. And yeah, we'll let you know. But that's our goal.
We have a question in the chat from TR who said, what program do you use to schedule all the posts? Um, we like Loomly. Um, it's really powerful. It's really affordable. And the main benefit to it is the calendaring system is fantastic. We've tried Later, we've tried Hootsuite, we've tried a bunch of these other ones. And we found that Loomly, um, is really not only the most banging for your buck, but in our opinion, the easiest to work with. If you have a team, it does allow levels of access. Um, so it really is an incredible program and makes things a lot easier. And yes, I will absolutely put it in the. It's very good if you're an agency, it's too. To me, it is the most user-friendly to go with your clients, to give them access to look at stuff at a glance. Um, it has different versions of, you know, how you can give notes. Um, but the big difference, and I'm not the one that uses it as much as Crystal, but when we went in and looked at Later and we looked at, um, Hootsuite, what we really liked about Loomly was the actual, like, how it displays, um, kind of at a glance calendar where you can easily see, um, what, uh, what platforms you're putting stuff on. And, um, the calendar view and just being able to kind of see what each post was, which if you're just doing it for you, you might not need that and you might prefer Later or Hootsuite. Um, but that's just us. Laura wants us to know that she likes Hootsuite. I know. Have we ever used GHL for? What is GHL? We kind of scheduling. You guys, well, everybody knows what GHL is. It's Go High Level. It's been around ages. It's got nearly everything you can think of in there. I'm going to tell you that the scheduler has gone from bad to worse because you used to be able to put it out everywhere except for your personal accounts, but they've actually stopped being able to put out on groups now. So I can do it for most things. It's if you're already paying for GHL, it's got the marketing schedule in. They're just as good. You, you can schedule in advance, way in advance, and you can have your staff go in and see what's being put out already. And so I don't know that, but I'm assuming it's a similar kind of concept. It's just if you're paying for GHL, you might as well just use it. Doesn't work. Yeah, for sure. We don't, we don't use High Level personally, um, largely because I have a tech background and a software background and I like things to do things exactly the way I want them done and I don't like to hack things, um, unless I absolutely have to. And so I like having, with, with with certain types of programs, and not necessarily speaking to the ex fact they get in gal. Laurel's out here spelling T in in the chat, um, but even it could even be, we use, I don't want to pick on High Level, we can pick on QuickBooks for example and say that there are certain ways that you want to run your books and QuickBooks will get you 80% of the way there. If there's a different solution that actually does 100% of what I want, you know, so that's kind of how we tend to pick the AI that we use, the software that we use, and any kind of recommendations that we make, um, is based on actual, like use cases and getting in there and making sure that it does everything that we want. Um, that being said, our needs are typically very different than a solopreneur because we do run an agency. So not only are we managing our internal social, we're managing social for a myriad of clients. And the main thing about, what's interesting when it comes to Loomly, and as I've mentioned, at the, at a glance, is that when you're really scheduling out your content, and Laurel is a great example of this, who, someone who puts out tons and tons and tons of, roughly what, 30 pieces a day, feels like sometimes, like at least 10, that like we want to make sure that we're not repeating the same topics over and over again. So let's say you have an interview and you only have one interview and you want video content, you don't want the same person over and over and over again, right? Because it starts to look like a mistake or that we're not being varied enough in our content. So it really does allow to move things around and see things in a way that allows you to be very strategic and intentional with how you're distributing your content. Um, but High Level, apparently, yeah, totally. Yeah. And totally to address too, what Nita just said, absolutely. Like when we have clients, like a lot of how Crystal and I work is we more act as like a fractional CMO team. And so we will have somebody on the staff, uh, that will post a lot of stuff organically because it is always better to post organically, especially like with, like Instagram, for example, you can go in and pick music off of Instagram and it does like that. Um, and it's just one of those things. It depends on the size of your team and what your agreement is with, uh, your clients. If you're posting 15 clips a week, you could probably do it yourself. If you're posting 15 clips a day for 10 different clients, you're going to use a scheduler. Um, and the schedulers do, I mean, we do analytics on stuff and we have found that there is a little bit of truth. And I'm not, I will always lean on do it organic if you can. Um, but we have had and done analytics for one client for almost a year now, and we do a combo of both. And so we'll do scheduled posts and then we also have a team on the staff that we actually assign each one of them to post something every day. So there's five posts going out a day organically on all the things. And we have had clips or we have had posts done with the scheduler that have done and performed and got more engagement than the ones that do organically. So there's always an argument. Even though I do believe that the algorithm does favor if you do it on the platform, obviously Instagram wants you on Instagram. Just us, I think they would be smart to not knock you for doing it because I think there's a lot more, you know, you want to do and get the most out there. And it's more of the user experience to me than it is actually the person, the content creator. But that's, you know, a conversation to have, uh, yeah, a different time if we want to philosophize on.
I was going to say, there's a, it, it is definitely part of a bigger conversation that really does come down to, yes, there are limitations, yes, there are these things. At the end of the day, if your content is good, it's the shares, it's posting it. Just, there, there are strategies that we put around content. Like just posting it and then posting and ghosting is guaranteed to tank, right? We know that. We all know that. If you're not using the platform, I would even venture to say that it's almost more important to use the platform after your scheduled post is out and engage it and share it and tag and do what you need to do than it is to post organically. But I think the, um, and I'm going to be really blunt here, the, I think the main thing is, let's not go into, is that going to suppress? Is that going to suppress, right? Like, don't let that be a barrier for you to do things. You know, scheduling and getting it out to 50% of an audience is still better than not doing anything at all. So we don't want to use these as excuses to not make these massive changes in our business that are going to produce results. Um, and remember that so much of this is about the quality of the content and encouraging that share versus what the algorithm is or isn't going to do on any given day because you can drive yourself crazy looking at algorithms. I mean, it's all we do when we drive ourselves crazy with it. Value, quality, good content above all. Don't worry about all the BS of algorithms and the tech side of things. It's not your job. Go out there, do your work, make great content, put it out there. That's all you need to worry about until you're Russell Brunson or or Tony Robbins or whatever. Then we'll deal with that then, you know, or Laurel, or Laurel, right? Like when you does like she doesn't. We can use a scheduler or really easy. And like, you know, we do, uh, social media for the success finder too. And it is like, right now, and it's like a strategy. The goal is to get content going, right? Like we have to show the little audience that we have that we are now getting content going, getting our voice. Well, once we get that laid out and we get in a good rhythm, our strategy is then to go in and three times a week post organically on different things, you know, so it's, it's like, I never say it's black or white. There's always that gray area. And just to kind of put an exclamation point behind what, um, what Crystal just said, is don't let it stop you. You know, and Crystal and I know this from darn experiences. We have our V and like are so like forcing ourselves to even do our own social media content because we're doing so much of it for our clients that it's like, okay, okay, let's just now do it, you know, and just get out there and just start putting stuff out. Uh, so if you guys want to follow us on Instagram, V Creative, we have a hundred followers because we don't do anything. So that's what we're trying to do too, is actually get out there and do it. Um, come be 101. You guys love you guys. Thank you for those of you that stuck around. Um, again, uh, happy to be here and thank you Laurel for the opportunity. And, um, we will catch up with you guys in a month. Absolutely. Tag us in the group. Let us know whatever you need. We're here to help. Thank you so much. You, you're brilliant. You're amazing. Tina, I'm sure we'll see you on another call really soon. Probably. All right, guys. Have a good one. Bye. Bye.