You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 258. Just in time for the release of the new Deadpool and Wolverine movie, you'll love this story of how our guests caught the attention of Entrepreneur Magazine with a Wolverine costume and has since built a nine year strong content partnership with their publication.
Ben Angel is an award winning and best selling author, entrepreneur and influencer with over two decades of experience leveraging and teaching emerging technologies for competitive advantage, including AI. In today's case study, Ben gives us his behind the scenes process for how he leverages AI to create viral content that has garnered more than 5 million views, including one video that grew his email list by 10,000 subscribers. Keep listening to borrow his exact framework for creating headlines designed to trend on whichever publication you create content for whether you want to be a guest contributor, like Ben, or on your own website, and his top tips for leveraging AI without sounding like everyone else.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin, every Monday go behind the business and a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also here financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hello, everyone, welcome back to the show. Today, we have Ben Angel here with us. And I am very excited because as you know, we don't have a lot of male guests on our show. But when Ben's case study came across our desk, both my producer and I thought we have to have been on the show, not only to talk about AI, which is more relevant than ever, in today's social media and business landscape, but also because I think that all of us as business owners, and as brands want more visibility and want to get in front of new audiences. And I think Ben's case study is especially relevant to that today. So anyways, Ben, welcome to the show.
So I am so honored. You've led me on this show. I saw your first podcast, I think it was with Amy Porterfield. And you just have the best interview style.
Oh, thank you. That means a lot. Really it does especially coming from a content superstar and mogul like you. You know, normally with our show, we start off by asking people their Cubicle to CEO story. And I would love still for you to share your catalyst for how you leapt into entrepreneurship. But I think even more interesting is the genesis of your relationship with Entrepreneur magazine. I remember reading about it and it's it's so random. It's not something you would expect for how you became a contributor. So anyways, if you want to share either story, or both, we are here for it.
Yeah, so So I guess my Cubicle to CEO story is a little bit different because I originally grew up on a cattle farm in country, South Australia. So it was a generational farm that I grew up on. And it was over 5000 acres. So for context for people in the States, most farms here about 500 acres or less was 5000. So quite a large farm. Yeah. And from a very young age, were kind of thrown into the business realm to begin with. And I'd worked a few part time jobs in the past. But I did get to that point where I just wanted to do it for myself like my parents had done.
And I think they, they kind of really instilled in me a lot of drive and a lot of trust. And I'm very grateful to my parents that they they trusted me to make the right decisions, even if they knew it was the wrong one. You know, it's hard to come across sometimes, yes, but then kind of fast forwarding a bit when I was 23. I decided to launch a b2b networking group in Melbourne, Australia. And so every single month, we would get like a multimillionaire, a, you know, Star publicist who had worked with big names like Michael Jackson and the Dalai Lama, and I would interview them on stage. And, you know, there really transitioned and grew into becoming an author and a speaker.
But yeah, this story about how I connected with Entrepreneur magazine. I was reflecting on that earlier today. Because what had happened was I think they'd sent out an email one day, requesting businesses to share their Halloween Horror Story. And I think it was literally a week before I'd gone to one of my best mates 20 First birthday parties and he'd requested that we all dress up as Marvel characters like superheroes.
And I thought, You know what Australian gotta go as Wolverine grow out my beard for the first time, went to that party had a great time. Then a week later, when I saw that story, I'm like, You know what, I'm just going to drop everything. And just submit a video and see what happens. And my Halloween Horror Story was that I'd actually traveled from Melbourne, Australia to New York to attend a publicity Summit. And we each had 60 seconds to pitch to major TV producers. We're talking Good Morning America, the Today Show, ABC book publishers. And we went through that for I think, three or four days, and I was completely jet lagged because the timezone difference is insane. And then I think it was within 48 hours after that Hurricane Sandy hit.
So coming from Australia, never been to the States before, never been to New York, and suddenly, you're in one of the biggest storms in history going what happens next. And part of the challenge, and I share that story, my new book called The wolf is at the door, is about adaptability, because I'd invested well over $15,000, to be there to pitch all of this publicity, to then have it essentially wiped out by a hurricane.
Oh, my goodness.
And long story short, I did get a book deal out of that. That kind of doubling back to Entrepreneur Magazine, when they saw the Wolverine video, I think they were so surprised by it. That they weren't you know, this guy when Oh Lin, he dressed up as Wolverine to tell this story about getting stuck in a hurricane. And from there, it was kind of like an immediate connection.
That is incredible. I think it's a huge testament to the power of the pattern interrupt right, doing things a little bit differently that catch people just a little off guard, so they pay attention to what you have to say. That is amazing. I'm so glad that you know despite obviously, the hurricane and you know that disrupting not only I'm sure your plans, but so many people who are affected by that, that a good thing still came about right the the book deal and then of course, your relationship or the genesis of that connection with Entrepreneur Magazine, after they picked up your story for the Halloween Horror Story. By the way, if you still have either that video or a picture of the Wolverine, we got to include it like we'd love to.
Actually tried to find it the other way can I cannot find it. But I will tell you a little bit deeper. It's kind of it's kind of embarrassing. Now.
But I feel like it's the things that we find embarrassing or cringe in hindsight that catapult us into the best opportunities are stories, right? So if you happen to dig it up for the digital archive, please, please let us know. And we'll include it in the show notes so our listeners can enjoy.
Just for you.
Thank you, I appreciate it'll be our Cubicle to CEO. Oh. Anyways, I would love to know like once they picked up your story, and they ran with that, how did you continue to keep up that relationship to eventually become a regular contributor now for nine years for the magazine?
Yeah, I kept pitching on a weekly basis because we'd established you know, a fun little connection through that particular video, that it was much easier to get my foot in the door. And at the time, I was covering a belief publicity as well as Facebook marketing, and Facebook advertising specifically. So from there, I was able to submit brand new content for them. And even still today, like no matter what publication you submit a story to, you still have to go through the editorial process to get it approved.
And I've learnt a lot over my career as 20 years now on ensuring that it gets approval because I do all of the research prior. And you know, when I was attending the New York publicity stomach summit, I was very fortunate to work with a former Oprah Winfrey producer before I attended that and she really nailed down. Okay, the angles, what are your headlines? What is that specific pitch that is going to get their attention? And especially in today's environment? I think a lot of people think that AI is going to make it easier, when in fact it's going to make it harder, because it means that you're not just competing with the top one percent of people that know their shit, you're now competing with the top 60% of people that are now leveraging AI to do the same thing that the top 1% did.
That's a very fair point, actually. Because now you are essentially, like you say, competing with the conglomeration of what has been produced in the past all assembled together and AI being able to cherry pick the best of right, which I think also is another piece that really drew me to your case study, because you're not saying, hey, here's like five easy content hacks for how you can put out more or less the same type of content that everyone else does. But how do you really leverage this data rich pool to make sure that you are giving yourself the best chance at being seen with whatever content you're putting out there.
And for Ben's case study just for our listeners, it's all about how he leveraged AI to get his video content that he created for entrepreneur to garner 5 million views, which is I mean, massively impressive. Before we get into the details of that strategy, though, Ben, I wanted to kind of set the stage for the context a little bit, because I know this, this world of contributing, especially from a video perspective might be new to a lot of our listeners as it is to me. So I'm curious, when you create this content for entrepreneur, and it gets published on on their sites, do you still own the content? Or does entrepreneur at that point on the content?
I believe I would have to look up the agreement, but I believe that they do. Okay, because that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Because what a lot of these major sites do is they typically have another media partner for the video delivery. So what that media partner does is it doesn't just get published to entrepreneur, for example, it gets syndicated to all of these other news sites. Now, some sites will just publish up like an embedded YouTube video, I don't actually prefer that I would prefer it get syndicated.
And in this case, this particular video goes syndicated, which is why it got such huge views, at the end of the day, build up a lot of kind of momentum around the topic. For me, it's actually the success of that video, made me change my book contract with entrepreneur to cover the topic of AI, versus the topic that we're actually originally signed an agreement on. We're going to change this. So I you know, I think, you know, it's great to have your YouTube video embedded, but it's even better if it's syndicated.
That makes complete sense. I'm really curious now, because syndication is something that my husband and I actually love to talk about the nuances of from, from televisions perspective, like how talent gets paid off of syndication? Is it similar for your type of contract? Like if your video gets picked up and syndicated to other media outlets? Do you earn a royalty on any of that? No. You get paid the one time fee for the initial creation of the content. Is that correct? No, no, not even.
And I think you know, it's a very different kind of marketplace that we're in at the moment. And there's a lot of disruption occurring with major media sites, especially websites, there has been a decrease in traffic in the last couple of months. And I do suspect that AI is part to blame for that. So it's kind of there's a lot of shifting pieces at the moment. The second that you think you've adapted to AI, I can tell you you haven't. Most people have no idea what's coming next three to five years, right?
So for me, I look at the content production to go okay, I can generate leads out of this. It's media coverage. It also helps sell my books. So my book unstoppable, which I released through entrepreneur a few years ago that sold over 80,000 copies. Incredible part of that strategy was getting those weekly videos out. And from there, I can look at it and go, Okay, I generated X number of leads, which turned into X amount of revenue. And by looking at it that way, I don't kind of become despondent guy, I'm not getting paid for this video, when in fact, I actually am.
Right. It's just an indirect rather than a direct payment. Yes, totally. And I totally understand the appeal of that. I mean, you get to leverage a huge borrowed audience or platform to drive traffic back to your own things. And obviously, as you said, Everything still has to go through editorial approval, but you are able to, I'm assuming have some sort of creative freedom over the the content of the videos that you produce to align with your own initiatives that you're building in your business. Is that correct?
Yeah, I think that's the thing. entrepreneur never told me what topic to cover. I just kind of complete my video, I submitted a new video that will go on the site tomorrow. And it kind of goes up. But that's, that's after establishing a lot of credibility and a long form relationship that they have that trust that they know. Okay, Ben's gonna show up each week. Yep, deliver the content. And I also keep track of the content on my end to see if it is trending in their top ranked posts on the site when it goes live. And I will screenshot that, I'll put it kind of in an Excel spreadsheet. Okay, this trended number one or attended trended top three. What was it about that particular piece that performed well, in regards specifically to the headline? Because it doesn't matter how good your video is, their headline makes or breaks up every single time?
Yes, and I can see that because to your point, if no one clicks on your video, because of a bad headline, it doesn't actually matter the quality of the contents within the video, right? Absolutely. I love that you position for us. Okay, so to for listeners, the the main strategy, I guess, behind this content partnership that you have is to drive leads back to your own ecosystem, your own email list and whatnot, do you know by chance off the top of your head, about how many leads you've acquired through this content acquisition channel over the last, you know, nine years?
You know why? That's a really good question. I know, we've been keeping good track of the past two years, in particular, to see what video pulls in what yeah, the video that blew up was called the dark side of Chet GPT. And I made I think about several predictions, all of which have come true at this point. Even though a lot of people criticize me at the time, that particular one, I think it was over 10,000 lights, wow, and video.
Now, if you think I put in maybe a day and a half worth of work for that, to generate those same volume of leads through Facebook, you're looking at around 19 to $20 per lead cost. So 10,000 leads could be almost $200,000.
Yeah, that's incredible. Not to mention, and I may be misquoting this, but I believe I saw a recent email stat that said, for every dollar spent on email marketing, you return about $42. I believe I saw that from from flow desk, which is the marketing email marketing platform that I use. And I mean, that's incredible. 10,000 new subscribers is is a game changer for most businesses. And so that's incredible off of one video. And that gets me even more excited to actually dig into the strategy.
So like you said, this is really all centered around the headlines, and how do you grab people's attention to actually watch this? So walk us through this. from your own perspective. Of course, we'll be able to take pieces of this so that our listeners can apply it to their own businesses and maybe their flagship content channel. Yours is obviously your weekly video. But to start with, I believe you visit other outlets and and kind of look at what's already trending. Can you talk about just that piece?
Yeah. So the first step is really to get clear on your objectives. Is it lead generation is a media coverage? Is it to position yourself as an expert in the field, because that will really change the style of content that you're actually delivering. And so I'd highly recommend people take the time and this should be a common practice in business regardless, which is find out which media channels your ideal audience are actually following is that the Huffington Post is the Ink Magazine is it Success Magazine is an entrepreneur, there are 1000s upon 1000s of big websites out there that you can get on if you dress up as Wolverine don't have to do that it's okay.
But you can get on there if you can position your content to not just your audience, but their audience as well. So there's a key overlap that you want to focus on. And I don't recommend focusing on 20 Different platforms at the same time, focus on three or four as your first go because it might take six 810 follow ups to be able to get someone to respond back to you when it is time consuming that respect. So once you've found that particular platform, copy and paste all of their top performing headlines, and most sites have either Latest News or trending, which means these are the most popular articles on their site at hi, I'm Bane.
Once you've copied and pasted those, in the past, we had to do all of this manually, of course, we would analyze it, pull it apart, then we'd come up with 20 variations without the help of artificial intelligence. Now you can drop that into whether it be Chuck GPT, or Claude and actually ask it to analyze these headlines and break them down. In terms of what is it about these specific headlines that people are resonating with? Is that they have a scientific angle? Is that a quotes a breaking news story? Is there a statistic or a number in it. And what you'll notice with each different website, they all have their own very unique theme with their headlines. So even for me, for entrepreneurs, when I submit a headline, that might just get slightly tweaked, and so that there's something to be aware of to expect.
But when you do that research prior, this helps you to prepare the content that you're about to produce, which obviously needs to align with that headline. The other thing it does is when you pitch it, the the editorial director or whoever it might be can look at it and goes, this was meant for our site. This is specifically written for our audience, I could see that it could trend on our site, you've just increased your likelihood of success.
I love that. I have two follow up questions to this. First is, like you mentioned, every outlet has their own unique way of either spinning content or writing headlines, as you said, so for entrepreneur, what do you deem as the Hallmark component of an entrepreneur trending headline? Is it a data piece? Is it a you know, what have you observed over the years?
Definitely numbers, numbers, so yeah, so. But it is important to say that it's changing every single month at the moment. And I think with artificial intelligence, we've just gone through a years, 10 years worth of marketing changes in less than one year, right. And people need to be aware of that, that it keeps on moving.
Right.
And so if you're, if you're doing that initial analysis, you need to do it in the days before you submit that piece, not months before otherwise, they may have likely already moved on to a different format that's performing better at that time. And because there is a bit of a drop in major sites at the moment, they will be testing everything. So you know, for me, I tend to script and produce and do the video the same week I released the video, you know, I would prefer to, you know, plan out four weeks in advance like I used to, you know, obviously covering the topic of artificial intelligence, it's changing every rapidly.
Yeah.
So the more recent the research is, the better your likelihood is. But I know for I think it's Ink Magazine, or even make make.com, I think is CNBC. They focus on success stories. Yes. So if you went from like zero, you were broken, you suddenly made a million dollars, that's something that would be on their site. Ink Magazine tends to cite like neuroscience or the neuroscience of productivity. So you have to align something, a media outlet with your own personal values as well.
That makes sense. And I have noticed that actually as a, as a repeat watcher of the CNBC make it series, especially with the income based profile stories, that that is definitely a repeated trend that has done well for them. I want to circle back actually, Ben to an earlier point you made that was too juicy not to dissect a little further, you said that when you first start out before you even start researching the headlines, you have to understand what is the objective of what I want this content piece to do for my business? Is it to build credibility? Is it to generate leads? Or is it simply to get media traction, more traffic, more attention, more eyeballs?
So if we take a look at those three individual goals, how would you adjust your approach to the content? Based on each of those objectives? Can you high level kind of walk us through what might be different the nuances of those three different objectives?
So the first thing I would say is if your objective is lead generation, I would not include that in your very first video. And here's why. You do not want to come across as purely using all leveraging them for your own economic gain, because that will turn them off immediately, you want to do a few videos before you kind of start putting it in there and seeing how far you can push the boundaries. thing that's really important for people to understand.
There are kind of ways that you can go around it, for example, if you're covering a specific topic, and you have a worksheet related to that topic, and of course, we know Amy Porterfield does this incredibly well on our podcast every single week, there's some kind of download that's attached to it. And she's, I mean, she helped me in observing her shape my own approach. In the when I started tweaking my videos to go, alright, I can mention my lead magnet at least three times in each video. And for me, I found three is the sweet spot, or it doesn't generate as many leads. But when I mentioned it, it needs to be conversational. So my be, I think at one point for my book, unstoppable, we were giving away a free daily planner.
And I would say something like, as you'll notice, on the bottom right hand section of the planner, you can do XY and Z. So you're developing the need for it, you're not explicitly saying, hey, download it, you gotta get this thing. Right. Right. I think that's a, that's one of those little nuance approaches people need to be aware of. If the focus is on credibility, then that specific approach would be weaving in your own personal stories. And, you know, it was at the start of last year, when I started writing my book, The Wolf is at the door, how to survive and thrive in an AI driven world, I realized how essential stories were going to be for the next decade. Because now even as an author, and this goes for any content creator, we do not want to be accused of using AI. Especially as an author, I've written I think, eight books now I'm losing track. But to me, that is like a, that's a knife in the heart.
So it was very when I started writing, I realized immediately that I had to write it very differently. I had to change my approach to make sure that I stood out. And I wasn't. I wasn't creating generic content, because we are fast, creating an entire group of individuals, which is the generic generation, as far as far as I'm concerned.
Thats the generation no one wants to be part of.
This, this is what artificial intelligence is creating, because we belong in injecting their own personal stories into it. So when it comes to pitching these stories, especially the credibility story, you need to make sure that your story is unique, and pulling those little pieces that get people emotionally hooked.
Right.
That's essential, you need to ask yourself, what specific emotion Do you want someone to feel? And the same process for creating video is the same process for writing a book. And for this particular book, each chapter actually follows a stage of grief. It's the subtext of change, denial, acceptance, potentially depression is taking our jobs, our clients are cleaning our work, to help people emotionally work through that. And I think if you can have that emotional impact, especially with the people approving your content, you'll get it with the people watching it. And that's what's gonna drive for leads.
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Super, super insightful. So just to recap, so far, you've said If it's meant to build credibility narrative is incredibly important, especially your own personal, unique anecdotes. Then for lead generation, it's all about the subtle product placement, if you will, it's like very similar to I don't you know, in movies, I always look out for this. Is there a scene where they randomly just have a pain in shot of the fridge? There? Are these these characters randomly sit down for a beer a beer break, right? Like I always notice those things because I'm like, oh, okay, see that very subtle product, maybe sometimes not so subtle.
But you know what I'm saying? It's kind of that similar idea that I love the example that you gave where you were like, Oh, I'm referencing my planner. And if you haven't gotten your planner yet, then obviously it immediately triggers your brain to be curious about oh, what is this planner that he's referencing? Where can I go get it? So love that tactic? The last one if you're just wanting more eyeballs, traffic, media attention, and that's your main objective? How do you adjust the content approach to serve that purpose?
I think I would try and piggyback off another major news story. What is what we're seeing trending online at the moment, and I've started testing it in the last few weeks as well, is just reacting to a particular news story. And for me, that's incredibly easy, because there's a new news story on AI every single hour, right at the moment, and I'm noticing those types of videos are far outperforming everything else. But the good thing about doing those reaction videos, is that you automatically position yourself as a credibility on the top as an authority on the topic. Because you're giving your expert take on it.
And it might be that you disagree with the expert that's talking. So when you're looking at media coverage, whenever you can piggyback off a major news story, the better it is. And it may not be for the first video that you submit. But I would recommend it in videos going forward. And look, we're about to start experimenting that if I have a video with top three tips or top three keys on how to adapt to AI, then I'll react to something that someone said for each of those elements instead of going down the same track that I think we all get stuck in that trap. Right. Right. They got a tip one. I don't know how many.
Cool?
Yeah, I know. It's so it gets so boring after a while. Yeah. And you know, that's the key point is that things are changing so rapidly. You want to start testing things that other people aren't doing. Because everyone is doing the same damn thing right now.
Yeah.
AI is making that easier.
You know, I really want to re emphasize this point that you just made. I think it's so smart. Piggybacking off what's already viral and trending. I mean, we see this in in pop culture, right, like, Well, I've been a huge Swifty since I was 14 years old. Like it's like the trend right now to to, you know, either love or hate Taylor. And it's really interesting for me just seeing how many different media outlets across all industries, not always necessarily related to entertainment or even sports. Use her name to spin this very wild story that will has almost nothing to do with her. But they'll use her name because they know it's going to get clicks.
And so I find that really interesting. And then also another example that popped into mind when you were you know talking about piggybacking is since you mentioned earlier you found our podcast through watching Amy Porterfield interview on our show. All I'll give a shout out to Amy one thing I thought she did so brilliantly recently was during the controversy for Harrison Buckers commencement speech, right that went viral and people had all sorts of reactions either positive or negative towards it.
And I think about a week or two later she released an article and I can't remember what the outlet was. I want to say maybe it was Business Insider, but don't quote me on that. that there was an article where the headline was something like Amy Porterfield or like this eight figure entrepreneur agrees that women should quit their jobs. Obviously alluding to that, you know, that particular speech. But the twist, of course, in that article was.dot.so, that they can start their own businesses and become their own boss.
And it was a really, I thought it was such a clever way to kind of hop on that cultural moment. But in a way that was very true to her her brand and what she creates content on normally. So anyways, I just wanted to throw that in there because it kind of sparked those those memories for me.
Yeah, and, you know, it doesn't need to be authentic. With a Taylor Swift thing. I've seen it with a lot of investors online, the top five tips that you could about investment, you could learn from Taylor Swift. In short, it's, it's gotten ridiculous at this. So it needs to be authentic and align with your brand values. Yeah, for me, I'm discussing the problems and the possibilities of artificial intelligence.
So I will do a reaction video to someone who says, AI is not going to replace you someone using a will, which that needs to die a death. Right? Because that's not true. So it aligns with not just my perspective, but it also aligns with the content and the promotion for my new book. So you need to think about, okay, what is this cultural moment? Does it is there a connection to my own personal values? And is there another connection to my actual product?
Right, right? No, all of that makes a whole ton of sense. Going back to your step by step framework for actually executing this plan. So you said, once you narrow in on, you know, a few key outlets that you would really like to leverage their audiences and create content for you go and you pull their top trending headlines, you feed it into an AI chat, I'm assuming you use chat GPT. But there's a couple other tools that you recommend as well, right?
You can look at this point, they're all kind of merging into one and becoming very similar. I think chat GPT 3.5 does a better job than church GPT. Four, okay, as an analysis tool, so you feed it into there, get it to perform the analysis. But I would ask it to perform the analysis and provide it in a grid format. So then you get it nicely formatted with a key breakdown of, okay, their headlines use numbers, the headline has an emotional trigger in it, where it cites a particular expert in it. Once you've done that step, then you upload into it your own titles that have performed well.
And, you know, performing well doesn't have to mean millions of views. It could be a few 100 clicks on an email, it could be that email subject line, or it could be a video that you have a couple of 100 views on. But you've generated sales from upload those subject lines or titles into it and say, I want you to do an analysis, comparing my titles, that to the titles of the publications, you just analyzed, and identify the differences. Here, we're not just asking to produce the content. Here, we're employing critical thinking, to find out what is working and what isn't working.
Because if you just ask AI to do the job for you, you're not learning anything. And you're certainly not going to be in be in the top 1%. It's going to be another me to generic brand that you're going to end up creating. So you want to actively learn from it. You get it to perform that analysis. And then finally you ask it, create 10 different subjects or headlines based on my content, using the key breakdown of the top performing posts for this particular platform. Then it will give you kind of a nurtures your expertise with their headline writing styles. And what I also like to do is to ask the AI from this list, break down the top three headlines that you believe will perform well on this website and provide your reasoning.
Ooh.
Now most people when they use AI, they don't ask for its reasoning. Yeah. And we know that AI hallucinates and it combines fact with fiction. And one of the one of the biggest issues that I don't think, you know, it's been interesting to observe This small business community I gotta say, because it's almost like rainbows and unicorns, rose colored glasses with when it comes to artificial intelligence, that what they discovered copy leaks actually did research on chat GPT 3.5 60% of its outputs contain some form of plagiarism. 60%.
Yeah.
Now, if you're pitching to the media, and you're in inadvertently plagiarizing work that could potentially be on their side, forget about it. You've lost all credibility in a split second. So this is why you asked her to provide your reasoning. But that is, you know, that is your building. Point. I would as a precaution, I would also pick their headline that you like, drop it into Google and see if someone else has used it. Because I have had, I have had a few cases of looking at and going, Oh, okay, this headline was directly pulled from this website.
Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, that is a great warning and heed to anyway, anyone employing AI to help them, like you said, do these critical analyses. I wanted to real quick clarify something you mentioned when you were talking about doing the initial analysis of the headlines on the outlet itself. And you said, provide this in a grid format. And then when you said, okay, then compare with my own headlines and tell me what's different? Is that also, I know, it's a minor detail, but I assume it has some form of importance, since you mentioned it. Is that also compiled or delivered in a grid format?
Do you in every analysis step? Do you ask them to provide it in a grid format?
Generally, I think with JpT 4.0, it's automatically going to provide it in a group format. Okay, I prefer it in a grid format, because it's just easier to digest. The other reason that I get it to do that comparison is not just for our understanding and learning. It's because you're actively training, this specific chat window on headlines. Got it. And the more interactions you have with that chat window, the better it gets.
And a big mistake a lot of people make is that they'll try and do all of their work in one chat window, they'll get the same chat window to write their email, their video scripts, their headlines, but every time you change the topic that you're doing, you're retraining that AI window.
Would you mean, the waters with the with the varied inputs? Right.
completely, because every time you give it a new input, you're updating what its focus is, right. And if anyone's use the GP teas, for example, that are kind of pre built, I've noticed that when you asked her to do a different task, it then asked for your approval to update the GPT. Oh, interesting. So it's, you know, it's very direct.
So I encouraged you know, we have an AI course we've got hundreds of members in, I encourage them that, you know, each specific folder or chat window is designed for one key task and one key task only.
Got it, that already is a huge, I mean, seems obvious when once you've stated the reasoning for it. But I have completely been guilty of doing that I just put all of my inputs into one, right? Because I'm already that person with 100 open tabs. I'm like, I don't need another five just for just for my AI tools. But that that makes a lot of sense. So I hope that was an aha moment for some of you listening as well. What other tools besides chat GPT Have you gotten a lot of great use out of just for others who may be exploring the world of AI?
I think for me, copy AI is one of the best because you can choose your which AI model you want to use, whether it be GPT 3.5, for re or Claude. But it's the organization within copy AI, which is phenomenal. Because if you look at Claude or chat GPT, you kind of get this tiny little navigational menu on the left hand side with all of the titles of the different folders, at least within copy AI, you can create different projects. And you can also share those projects with team members.
But you just have to warn the team member do not retrain my AI team member by asking her to do something completely different. So I think for that I you know, it's not the most exciting AI platform, but I think if you're getting strategic about using artificial intelligence, I would suggest was one of the better ones.
Okay, thank you very helpful with the plagiarism piece, because obviously, that is very important that we are all careful in proceeding with that outside of taking, let's say the three winning headlines that the AI chat spits out and says, These are my top picks. And here's why I know you mentioned sometimes you'll google it just to kind of cross check.
But outside of that manual cross check, is there any other either prompt, we can feed the AI tool to prevent the plagiarism from being as likely or to verify if any piece of it has been plagiarized?
I would not personally ask the AI to verify it, because it tends to lie.
We've learned AI is a liar. Yes.
I've spent over 3000 hours on this research and testing I in the past year, and you do have to be very careful. If you're concerned about plagiarism, I mean, for me personally, as an author, I need the inspiration for the headline, not necessarily the content.
Sure.
So the content I write myself that's, you know, I guess I'm old school now and wanting to do that still myself. But if other people are concerned, then originality AI is one of the better AI detection platforms, and plagiarism checkers. I will say that things are moving so quickly that these AI detectors are going to have a lifespan, meaning that AI is currently being trained on all of our content. And I think it was breaking news yesterday that AI companies have been training on YouTube videos when they're not meant to. Yeah.
Okay.
Which literally every platform is doing it right now. Wow. So, you know, you do have to be very careful. And that's why I have, it's why I covered so many personal stories in my new book about artificial intelligence, because that's one thing that people can't replicate, right? They can't suddenly say, you know, I was in a hurricane Sandy, and I was pitching at this Media Summit. So I own that story.
Yeah.
And as an author, it's an even as a content creator, Nicholas creative that I've been for over 10 years now, is that I need to realize I need to be very strategic and moving forward, that I use AI for the headlines and brainstorming and maybe rewriting, but not for the real hardened essence of that content, that can be easily copied by anyone. And the law is right now is that AI Generated Content cannot be copyright protected.
So if someone is creating an entire course, using artificial intelligence, heads up, anyone can take that course and sell it, you don't own it. It has to be your work to have any kind of legal protection. And, you know, there are a lot of copyright lawsuits around artificial intelligence. And I would encourage course creators to look up some of these lawsuits because the AI that we have right now may not exist in six months time. If some of these lawsuits are successful, that's wild.
I mean, like you said, keeping us on our toes every single day in terms in terms of what to expect, but I appreciate you bringing these potential hurdles to light because they are things that we need to be cognizant of, if we want to have long term sustainability and protection of our own businesses, right?
Well, I think the thing for people to realize is how do you adapt unless you know what you're adapting to. And I don't think cause creators fully understand the change that is occurring, which is that we're going through a period of the democratization of information. Now, if we look at when the tractor was introduced, that democratized food, which brought its value down it brought the price down, the farm farm struggled, which meant they had to produce more food make less money.
Now, in that scenario, content creators are the farmers. The information is the crop. And AI the tool is the tractor. But the challenge that we're experiencing right now is big tech is becoming the farmer who are taking our crop of knowledge and then repurposing and reselling it. And for creators to understand that analogy is that your value is derived in the ability to legally protect your information because that increase Since its value, and I would encourage it, there's a lot of deep thinking that goes on in this topic, which is, you know, have some of our skills already expired?
Because so many individuals can now clone our work, and replace us within five minutes. So what is your strategic advantage? Not in the next three to five minutes using AI to write an email? What is your business going to look like in three to five years. And that's why I really wanted to deep dive into these topics for the new book, and the online course, because I just see so many in the small business community, they're not prepared, and that has me concerned.
I mean, this yeah, this is a deep and very black complex topic isn't even the right word conversation, I guess, to unpack. And I feel that it's interesting, the more advanced we become technologically with AI, it almost feels like what really sets people apart is the simplicity of what makes you human to begin with, like you mentioned, like the emotional aspects of, you know, you and I could even say, the exact same script or words or teach the same things, but the slight nuances in our perspectives and how we filter the information or regurgitate it or even in just like our voices, maybe someone connects more to yours than to mine or vice versa.
And so it's very interesting to watch almost that regression of what makes you unique is actually is the most simple parts of who we are.
Well, one thing I realized in a writing the wolf is at the door is I found myself going back to topics that I'd covered earlier in my career, such as personal branding. My first book was on personal branding back in 2009. This was before anyone was talking about and I was speaking at 60 Plus events a year. And writing about the topic of AI I'm very much realizing is that we each need to double down on our personal brand.
But I also think a lot of the older strategies they used to be employed in marketing are going to make a comeback, for example. It's exciting. It's it's bizarre, exciting and bizarre at the same time. So for example, everyone started writing their resumes with artificial intelligence. It was reported a couple of months ago that a company received so many applications of these resumes that they had to shut down their submission process online, and tell people to send it in via mail.
I thought that's what you're going to say.
Yeah. So when you think about it, in the next few years, certain, you know, the channels online are going to be flooded. Some of us are already starting to think about these older channels that people are completely ignoring, that are less crowded, that you can now gain a competitive advantage in.
Who knew direct mail could be cool. Again, I mean, maybe a creative spin on it's fascinating. I hadn't even really given much thought to that. But I mean, I feel like this entire conversation, if anything I'm hoping same as what I've experienced is that for our listeners, that age just starts to open your awareness of of a lot of different changes to how we create content, how you stand out, not just obviously from the functionality of the use case that you share today, but just at large, like like you said, how do you protect what's yours?
I did want to wrap up this case study Ben by bringing it more full circle for maybe the people who are listening to this and they go, okay, this is a really interesting application of how to find the right headlines that are going to help me generate more visibility for whatever end objective I want, right? Whether it's lead generation, credibility building or just more traffic in general. But for those who are like, you know, what, I don't know if I want to go the path necessarily of utilizing these headlines to create pitches to then be either a video or write written contributor for these for these outlets.
I kind of want to more so applied to my own content channels, like maybe someone listening is also a fellow podcaster or their their own YouTuber, or maybe their medium is writing blogs or emails. Do you have any, I guess, wisdom to impart on how they can take the strategy you've shared in this case study today and apply it to their own content channels. If that's the case.
Yep, I would directly if you're not going to pitch that's absolutely okay. This is some of the best research and training that you can do for copywriting. But I encourage you to use it for your own videos, your own blog posts, your email subject lines, and follow this exact same formula. You know, out, make sure that you put your own unique spin and twist on it. So it's uniquely yours. But it's the exact same process. It's just that you're not pitching it.
Got it? Ooh, that last piece kind of got me thinking, I wish there was a site like an aggregator that would tell you which email subject lines are trending or like top openers for companies the way that article headlines are, because I'd be so interesting to like, claw through your inbox and find all the top headlines and cross compare them to your best performing subject lines. That's, that's really interesting.
They would I mean, there are you can find lists of like the top 100 emails ever sent. Oh, interesting. Barack, Barack Obama, I think has one of the very, very top really, okay, I can't remember this specific subject line, but it broke records for fundraising. But I think, you know, when it comes to the email, one thing we do, and it's, I guess, a little bit old school book, we put every single email in an Excel spreadsheet so that we can perform our analysis on it to go okay, this email generated X number of sales, this one did zero, but maybe it was building up to the next stage sales.
So then we kind of put that in maybe a top 10 list. And then when we go to write something new, we have that as, I guess, the training for the AI to come up with new angles.
Awesome. I think that key learning really then is I mean, data is power, the more you can collect data, and then feed it to, you know, an automated analysis tool, like like any of the AI chat tools we mentioned today, the more you're able to harness that information for optimizing, optimizing your content output.
So thank you, Ben, for this incredibly insightful conversation. I would love for you to share where our listeners can continue to connect with you purchase your new book that's coming out, all the things.
Sure, they can visit thewolfofai.co. So that's thewolfofai.co. And it's available in every good bookstore right now. And, yeah, very humbled. Amy Porterfield wrote a incredible review for the book. So yeah, they can find it online. And it's a very different take on artificial intelligence to make sure that we prepare people for the next three to five years, not the next three to five minutes.
I like that long term vision for something that's changing by the second seems like a paradox, but but very important work. Thank you so much, Ben. All of the links mentioned will be below in the shownotes today. Also, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's going to be below in the video description. I think the best way to learn always is through observation.
So if you're curious to see how Ben implements a strategy in real time in his weekly videos that he contributes to entrepreneur, I will post his entrepreneur Profile link below so you can go and look at all the recent content that he's published there. Make sure you check out his book, and thank you all so much for listening in. Thank you, Ben. We'll catch you guys in next week's episode.
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