Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Have you ever wished that creating content for your business was easier? Well, Cody Schneider is here to tell you that by using AI right, it can be. Cody is a renowned AI innovator, digital marketing expert and the cofounder of Swell AI. Today, he'll share how AI is changing the way that creators and brands produce content from blog posts to videos. Cody's AI solutions are helping creators generate huge volumes of optimized content, boosting brand awareness and driving organic leads. Cody's expertise isn't just theoretical. He's proven it in the real world. He's played a key role in propelling Roopa Health to over a $100,000,000 valuation in less than a year with his innovative content strategies.

Cody Schneider [00:00:37]:

I mean, think about the short like how short memories are too. Right? Like, I can post the same tweet from 3 months ago, and it's gonna go viral, like, every time. And it's because, like, think how many pieces of content people are seeing on a daily basis. Like, people get hung up. Data where I'm seeing and the data we're seeing from all the people, like, the clients we're working with, there is no, like, there is a ceiling on how much you can post, but that ceiling is, you know, 2 x or 3 x higher than what people think it actually is.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:02]:

So if you're ready to learn how to leverage AI and scale your content marketing to take your business to the next level, stay tuned because this interview is packed with actionable insights you won't wanna miss. Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McNulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone. We're here today with Cody Schneider. Cody, welcome to the show. My first question for you is what would you say is the biggest thing that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Cody Schneider [00:01:41]:

Great question, Brian. Thanks for having me. I think the the biggest thing was I kind of just followed a lot of the times I feel like people try to plan, like, what their next steps are and in reality, like, they're always the best things that happen to me, especially on the business career side was just, like, following whatever presented itself and then just pulling that string until, you know, you end up in a place you had no idea you're going to be. I started out in, like, e commerce as an example and then somehow now we're in b to b marketing content generation. I have no idea how I ended up here, but it was kind of just, you know, unraveling things as they came. So I think that's the the biggest, thing I always try to tell young people is just, like, you know, every opportunity, like, the door that opens, just walk through it or run through it as fast as you can and, use that as, the stepping stone to that next thing. So

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:29]:

Yeah. I like that. I completely agree with it too because there's people who say that, like, you gotta focus on, like, your niche. You gotta pick this thing and really focus on it. But when you're starting out as an entrepreneur, especially, like, you don't know what that thing is yet. And I think there's a lot of ways that people can either become, like, really deeply involved in or really good at these things that you would never find that out if you didn't start trying it in some capacity. And for myself, like, I started as a try to, like, do it all web design agency that we did, like, print design, web design. We said we would do video and, like, music production too.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:10]:

And that was a good experience for me because, like, I got to learn, like, what of those kind of things did I actually enjoy? And eventually, it shifted from, like, that into specifically web applications, and then that turned into, okay, let me get away from clients. I wanna build my own web applications. Totally. But I don't think I would have discovered those things if I didn't just, like, try all these things.

Cody Schneider [00:03:30]:

Totally. I feel like that's a classic trap too. I mean, it's funny you hearing you say that. Like, you know, I started so I started off in e comm then ended up working for a b to b marketing agency, and it was like a full service agency. We did a lot of the strategy consulting for, like, Fortune 500 companies that were in the manufacturing space. So think like windows, doors, wood paneling, very unsexy things. But the, the thing I found fascinating in that space is like we were doing so many different things. It was hard to turn into processes or like standard operations.

Cody Schneider [00:04:00]:

And in reality, like, when you look at agencies that are really successful, a lot of the times they just do one thing, like, super well. So rather than being, like, we're, you know, saying yes to all of these different options or selling all these different products or services, it's actually, like, oh, we actually just only do this. We have a deep understanding of this thing, and we're the best at this thing because we're obsessed with it. And we say no to more things than we say yes to. And that's, like, actually what I think excellence a lot of the times comes down to is, like, your your ability to say no is, your, you know, your tolerance has turned up almost all the way saying of what you say yes to. It's like that filter is very, very seldom that it happens. So

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:40]:

Yeah. Yeah. No. I I agree with that too. And and, yeah, to be clear to everybody, like, if I tried to keep doing exactly what I did when I started out, like, trying all those different things, like, there's no way I would be able to to grow the business to, like, what my business is today just because it's way too hard to scale that. Like, somebody's gonna be better at you at one of those things, and they're gonna get the customer. Right? But if you can eventually pick something and really dial down in it, then, yeah, that's that's where the potential is to grow. So I wanna hear more about your your background.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:14]:

Like, from the entrepreneurial side, like, where did that start for you? And, then how did that come to today of, like, getting involved in the AI space?

Cody Schneider [00:05:24]:

Yeah. Good question. I don't think I had a choice. It's probably a compulsion. I grew up, like, both my parents owned businesses. And my dad my dad was in the logistics space. My mom was in the healthcare world. But yeah, so just kind of from day 1, that was dinner table topics.

Cody Schneider [00:05:42]:

I was always just like looking for arbitrage, like whatever that was, like selling anything I could get my hands on for more than I bought it for. So it was definitely just one of those, you know, it's the classic. Is it are you entrepreneurs made or born? I think both, but for me it was just like there wasn't really a choice. This was just what was there. But yeah. So I started out, I I learned graphic design when I was, young younger. And then that parlayed into selling t shirts and then that parlayed into print on demands and then I did a, made a decent amount of money in the print on demand space early on and kind of in that e com world and then learned how to market e com companies. Somehow ended up in the B2B space again working for this B2B marketing agency, doing like digital strategy work a lot of the time is what it turned into.

Cody Schneider [00:06:29]:

So it was like a company would come on, they'd be like, Cool, we have these resources. We're trying to sell to this client. Like, what's our distribution strategy? And, I love that job honestly. It was like one of the I just got to see so many turns at these all these different companies in all these different spaces. And, I think a lot of the times, you know, it's why people always say, like, 2nd time founders, like, almost always hit home runs. Right? It's because they've they've seen so many pitches that they know what they're looking for, that second time around. And it was basically a crash course in that. Right? But my boss there, had gone to Y Combinator and, you know, did the whole thing of going out to Silicon Valley.

Cody Schneider [00:07:07]:

You go see Mecca, you learn everything, and then you come back and apply it in a different place. And so I kind of got introduced to that whole world. And I've been building like small software projects on the side, throughout that. Like, just data extraction tools, like Chrome extensions and, you know, these dumb little, products. Yeah. So fast forward, ended up, just doing consulting for a while and then worked, a friend was working at this company called Roopa Health, and he called me this one weekend. He was like, yo. We're I need to hire somebody to come in and do growth and marketing operations.

Cody Schneider [00:07:39]:

They were he had got hired as the head of growth there, a couple months before. And all they had done was like turn on the ads and basically like they were growing by like 20% compounding month and month. It was just insane. Right? And, so his job evolved into, like, partnership management and negotiation on, like, our distribution partners. So I came in as employee 6. We ended up taking Roopa from, like, a, $20,000,000 valuation to a 110,000,000 in about 6 months. It was just insane. It was the fastest growing thing I think I've probably ever been a part of.

Cody Schneider [00:08:09]:

But our staff went from, like, getting 6 when I was hired, and 18 months later I was at 70 when I ended up leaving. And so, yeah, we basically there we saw, kind of the writing on the wall that marketing was going to evolve into content. Like, content was going to be the only way that I could create differentiation. Product was becoming easier and easier to make. Like, global talent was becoming easier and easier to hire. And so if everybody can kind of make the product and get the people, you know, that what does that hap you know, what does that evolve into? How do you how do you create difference? And so there, what we ended up doing was spinning up, like a podcast, that we did on a weekly basis and live classes we did on a weekly basis. And then we take that long form pillar content and we turn it into blog posts and into clips and into, you know, social posts and into newsletters and everything else that you can imagine. But we ended up taking that podcast from, nonexistent to a top 20 medical podcast in the US in about 6 months.

Cody Schneider [00:09:06]:

I think when I left the Zoom, about a 180,000 downloads a month. And then, the live class, we actually turned it into just, like, to a revenue center. We started being able to, like, charge for continuing education credits for the audience. And just to add for more context, what RUPA is is basically a, a marketplace for specialty lab test ordering. So, like we aggregated all these different lab companies, put them into a single platform, and then, had this, like, layer of, customer support that we provided on top of it. And then we took our our rate. It was, like, 7%, on top of the, the margin of of whatever we were selling. But, yeah.

Cody Schneider [00:09:41]:

With that, like basically, you know, I was running it with I think at the peak an ops team for marketing, you know, for content marketing of like 15 to 20 people. All the writers and videographers and that whole thing. And so, we as soon as AI came out and we started to see the early signals that it was going to be capable to do some of these jobs or augment some of these people. We were yeah. I mean, from day 1, we were kind of all experimenting with it. And then something happened in, like October of 2023. It just like got good enough, to where, like, the outputs that you it was generating were actually, like, usable or, like, you know, it was 80% of the way there, and our team could go over the top of it. And so, yeah.

Cody Schneider [00:10:27]:

I ended up leaving Roopa, and, cofounding this company called Swell AI, which is what we're currently building, that with my cofounder Max, we we'd met at Roopa, and he was doing a bunch of stuff in the AI space already. And so, yeah. So that really is the origin as well. We were like, how do we take all these processes that we were doing with all this human talent and make it more accessible for anybody where it's like, okay, cool, I can record conversations with industry experts and that turns into all of the media that I could want for that entire week basically from that single conversation and then, you know, make a marketing team of 1 function like a marketing team of 10. So yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:06]:

Yeah. Yes. I wanna talk more about, like, this direction because most of our audience, like, they're gonna be solopreneurs, like, coaches, consultants, and they're probably thinking, okay. Wow. That's really impressive. You did all this. Like, how do I apply that? I'm just one person. What's my, like, content strategy gonna be? And, like, I've seen from your Twitter, your bio says, FollowWatch is self funded startup beat VC backed companies.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:33]:

And, like, that's my approach too. Like, we're we're a bootstrap company, a Heights platform, and I've done to stay that way. And so I think it's really important. Like, the way to win is you have to figure out, well, how can I what can I do that they can't? And then how can that become, like, part of the strategy? So what would you say is, like, advice, like, from everything you've learned, if somebody listening to this or watching this as, like, an independent solopreneur, they're trying to build, like, this info product business, this consulting business, what should they do as their content strategy to to stand out and be different?

Cody Schneider [00:12:09]:

Thousand yes. I love this question. So in in I think a lot of the times, like, people put the burden of making content on themselves. Like, I My first thing I always tell everybody is like lean on other people that are like in your industry or in your space so that you don't have this burnout. The content is a grind. Right? And so as much of, you know, you can incorporate other thought leaders, like, into your, kind of content producing process, like, that's gonna especially for the source material. Right? Like that's going to be the kind of the biggest lift is handled. Right? That you basically have to tap into their knowledge.

Cody Schneider [00:12:45]:

And really, it's exactly what we're doing here. Right? Like you have a, you know, somebody that's in your industry or an expert in something come on the show. They tell you all of this, you know, information and like you just get to ask questions. But, like, from a, a mental energy that's expanded, expanded on a on a weekly basis, it's maybe 2 hours of your time. Right? It's like, okay. I gotta prep maybe an hour and then I sit down for an hour and talk to this person

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:07]:

and have it My team does everything. I just get to

Cody Schneider [00:13:09]:

take a call. Exactly. You show up. Right? And talk to people. Yeah. So I think that that's a component of it. And I always just try to emphasize for people, like do things for longevity. Like how can I do this for the next 2 years? Like it's not, you know, I'll make no impact for my business if I post a shorter day for 30 days.

Cody Schneider [00:13:23]:

But if I can post a shorter day for 2 years, like, a 1000% it's going to make some type of impact. But, the thing I kinda go back to when I'm talking about this is that I always try to emphasize, especially for creators, there's, like, different levels of, like, media that are more impactful to revenue generation than others. So just to, like, put that into concrete, so like a podcast, an email newsletter, and like YouTube long form content, like you're gonna be able to sell and get trust with people a lot more effectively through those three things than you are through, for example, like TikTok or YouTube Shorts or Instagram Shorts, etcetera.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:03]:

Yeah. The reason for that is because you You can't make a TikTok and say, hey, hey, buy my thing and people

Cody Schneider [00:14:07]:

need to

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:08]:

buy it.

Cody Schneider [00:14:08]:

Exactly. Exactly. Whereas

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:10]:

in Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Cody Schneider [00:14:13]:

But it's it's a way to basically get them into, like, a pipeline, right, like, when you're thinking about selling. So, like, what I always suggest for any creator that's, like, whether they're selling a course or they're selling coaching or whatever is like you use this long form content or sorry, short form content as a way to, like, introduce them to you and then you're trying to get an email. You're trying to get them to watch long form, you know, YouTube videos or listen to long form podcast content. And then on a weekly basis, I'm trying to be in their ears like, you know, every week it's an hour. I'm I'm talking to them. Right? And that's how you build and cultivate deep trust. And when you think about what's actually happening there, when you have somebody that's listening to a show, what really is going on is like it's a one to many conversation. Right? Like when was the last time you sit up in front of an audience of 5,000 people and like just talk to somebody? Like, how to, you know, a fireside chat? Like, I mean, for me personally, it's probably been 4 years or whatever.

Cody Schneider [00:15:05]:

I I don't even know if I've done it a volume at that time. Maybe like 300 people. Right?

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:09]:

Yeah. And so And got to spend like a half hour or an hour

Cody Schneider [00:15:12]:

with them

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:13]:

doing that. It's insane.

Cody Schneider [00:15:14]:

Exactly. And so and then you have their attention. Right? Like that's wild. And so when you think about, like if you're a creator, that's selling, especially, you know, these these high ticket items that take a lot of trust, that is how, like, that's how you're going to sell them. It's not gonna be like you have a short go viral and then people buy your coaching, you know, and that's And we see this in the data. Right? I'm like, I'm in this world and I spend all my time in this. That's not how people make purchasing decisions. Like, they might get introduced to a thing, but they're not going to, like, buy, you know, 3 grand service off of that.

Cody Schneider [00:15:46]:

What they will buy a 3 grand service off of is, like, you know, over 6 weeks, if you email them a, you know, a podcast episode or a YouTube video that provides a, you a ton of value to them and, impacts, you know, whatever, you know, their life in some way, that is going to trickle down into, okay, cool, they come in and they're buyer ready. And I think that's the thing that always shocks people, is when you have this longer form content, the the person is already ready to buy when you get on that sales call. They're like, you don't have to convince them of anything. They're like, no, I'm ready. I'm like, I'm ready to buy. Just send me the link and, you know, I I just had a sales call this morning that was literally this. They're like, yeah. I've, you know, listened to all your stuff.

Cody Schneider [00:16:25]:

I've watched all the videos. I've talked you know, I've seen you on social, like, constantly. I'm ready to buy. Just send me the link. Just like we're ready to work with you. Right? And when you think about that as a creator or as a, you know, a solopreneur, like, that is that is the goal. I think it just it really depends on each industry and audience, but the the playbook that we're seeing work most effectively for especially, like, coaching and and and selling courses and all this is use short form content for top of funnel. That leads into some type of own media where it's like email long form content.

Cody Schneider [00:16:54]:

And then you're just trying to, like, you know, be in front of them on social constantly over and over again every day. How do you be that? And so when you look at and all this is kind of the symbiotic relationship. Right? Like I record a long form podcast. You know, say I have guests on on a weekly basis and I'm a coach. And they talk about whatever it is that they have domain knowledge in. I chop that up into clips. That turns into my short short form social. I then go and I find, like, every email address of every person in my target audience or whatever and I, like, email them out those episodes to them.

Cody Schneider [00:17:24]:

And, like, anybody that sees the short form clips, they'd, like, send them to an ebook page or whatever. So whatever lead magnet you use to get that that email address, that goes into a drip nurture. We're just sending them more content. And the the way I try to describe this or the analogy I use, I I call it digital gravity. We're trying to make digital gravity on the Internet. Right? And what is what is gravity? Right? Dig gravity is the byproduct of mass. So we're trying to make digital mass on the Internet. What is digital mass? Digital mass is content.

Cody Schneider [00:17:53]:

So the more content I make, the more digital mass I make, the more digital mass I make, the more digital gravity I make, and the more digital gravity I have, the more influence and inbound I get. And that's actually how funnels work. Right? It's like I'm, like, attracting people into this. It's people look at it and it's like the funnel. It's like this, like, thing people, like, start at the top and they kind of, you know, magically work their way down. It's like, no. That's not how act actually people make purchasing decisions. What actually happens is they, like, you know, they're flying by you and they get into your rotation and then they're there for 6 weeks and then they buy your service for $3.

Cody Schneider [00:18:22]:

Right? And so we have to think about, okay, what are these tactical things that are happening? So as they're flying by, they see, you know, a short form piece things that are happening? So as they're flying by, they see a, you know, a short form piece of content, and then they

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:29]:

get on your newsletter, and

Cody Schneider [00:18:29]:

then they get trips, like, you know, 6 emails over the next 6 weeks, and they listen to 6 episodes of your show, and then you show up in front of them on TikTok and Instagram shorts and, you know, YouTube shorts over the every time they log into the app. And suddenly, you know, they're at this point where they're, like, buyer ready and an ad shows up with a call to action to, you know, buy your coaching service, your course, or whatever that is. And that's when that happens. So, long monologue, but that's that's how we see people really effectively building these types of businesses, that are using platforms like Heights. Right? Like, that are that are, that are building these types of digital, digital companies.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:06]:

Yeah. Yeah. Completely agree with that. Let's see. So now, yeah, you've got, Svelte AI, and I'm curious. I wanna talk about, like, a couple things around that and, like, how AI plays into all of this. So, you got, like, AI generated content in in ways like it can be there's a lot of ways to use AI helpfully, I guess, but then there's a a lot of maybe wrong ways to use it. So, like, it can allow you to create this, like, high volume of content, without having a a team to have to do that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:40]:

But you've got the flip side where it's like, a lot of times AI generated content is, like, this low quality content that maybe you're gonna get penalized in a search engine, or it's it's not gonna catch an algorithm or or whatever. So with Swell AI, do you have any, like, systems in place to help ensure that, like, that content's gonna be, like, on brand or, like, for those that are completely, like, I do not understand how to involve AI in my content, what would you say to them?

Cody Schneider [00:20:06]:

Yeah. I think the first thing is, like, audit your systems and workflows. I guarantee that 80% of them can probably be automated in some way at this point by AI. So a lot of the times people are like, oh, I'm gonna adopt AI and we're like, I mean, I see YouTube videos like this all the time. And this is literally like what McKinsey and Gartner are selling these corporations. Like, we're gonna come in and rebuild your whole, you know, like, like, from the ground floor up, AI ready. And it's like, no. Like, do not do that.

Cody Schneider [00:20:32]:

Like, just stop. Like, the right way to do this that we're seeing companies be the most effective is like, what are you doing currently? Like, which part of these tasks can AI automate? And then let's implement those solutions so that your team can focus on high impact things. So to make that concrete, say you're in the real estate space and like half of real estate is paper pushing. So like, well, it's the common thing that's happening within, you know, with within this org. So like my friend does this as a consulting service, Right? He, like, goes in, he just audits their workflows, and then he builds out these operations, like AI enabled operations for their teams. So automates away 60% of their daily tasks. Like and what AI is really good at and what people, you know, I think, I don't I'm always trying to just repeat over and over again, kind of mantra wise. It's like it's great at taking unstructured data and structuring it.

Cody Schneider [00:21:23]:

Right? So if I have like a whole transcript that's an hour and a half long or 45 minutes long like this one, and I say, hey AI, like, this 10 insights from this episode related to digital marketing. Right? It's gonna be incredible at going and finding those ideas that are related to digital marketing from that, like, just raw source file. So implementing it within your processes in that way is gonna be, like, first, like, the number the, you know, the number one thing. The other component is, like, thinking about it as, okay, can I get it 80% of the way there or 90% of the way there? And then the human is doing kind of that last 10%. That's how we're seeing it used most effectively. Like, when you're, like, if you're really obsessed with brand and you're really trying to, like, be at a high quality level. The other piece that I think most often I hear from people is they're like, oh, this is, like, terrible content. It's very average or it doesn't, you know, the the tone style of voice doesn't sound like me.

Cody Schneider [00:22:15]:

And I, like, I totally agree when you're writing from the general knowledge of the AI. Right? So when you think about, like, how LLMs are trained, like, they're scraping the Internet and then they're, like, learning based off the general knowledge of the Internet. Well, I spent a lot of time on the Internet, and it's a pretty terrible place. Like, when the average is pretty average. But what we're really looking for is like that top end content. Right? Like that top 10 percentile, if not top 1%. So how do you actually get that to happen? How do you get the AI function? You have to give it constraints or source material that it has, like a walled garden that it can work from, right? So this is why podcasts are great, source material. It's like we're having this conversation, this human conversation.

Cody Schneider [00:22:55]:

All of this knowledge is being captured in this. All of this expertise that the AI, like, probably knows exists. But if I just ask it to write, you know, for example, like Google Ads for apartments. Right? Like, it's gonna write some create something that's like not useful whatsoever. But if I go and I interview somebody that all they do is run Google Ads for apartments, and I'm like, okay, cool. Like now, let's extract all the knowledge out of this transcript, the source file, and then transform it into a blog post, transform it into LinkedIn posts, transform it into a Twitter thread, transform it into clips for all social channels. That output is gonna be at a quality level that's, like, you know, 10 x than just asking it to go write me an article. And I think that this is the the bigger level thing.

Cody Schneider [00:23:38]:

Like, even looking at SEO, like, what we're seeing work right now is you find the target keyword that you're trying to write for. So maybe it's like, you know, say if you're a coach and you're coaching, social media managers or whatever. It's like social media management for x y z category. So it's like social media management for Fintech startups, right, just to use this as an example. So you go and you find all of the YouTube videos and blog posts that are ranking on page 1 currently for that target keyword phrase. You take all that text, you take the transcripts from the, YouTube videos, you take the text from the blog post, you put it into a context window, and you're like, Okay AI, like, I want you to write a blog post outline for the keyword, social media management for Fintech startups, based off of the source material that I provided. And now, what's it's so that's the first prompt. And then I chain a prompt to that where I'm like, okay.

Cody Schneider [00:24:31]:

Now write me a blog post article based off of the outline that I just provided, based off of the source material that I provided. And the quality of the output that you're going to get from that is, like, I mean, that's top 5% of, like, content writers that you could hire anywhere. Right? And at that point, I mean, we're seeing I personally, I'm just running tests because this is what I do for a living. Like, we're seeing this this type of content, like, go to page 1 in, like, 24 hours. Like, if you go search Google Ads for apartments, it'll come up like position 3, like a a blog, like my personal blog. Right? The domain authority is like 12. It's not that good. Right? Like it's like the site isn't some powerhouse, because, you know, we haven't invested in it at all.

Cody Schneider [00:25:13]:

And, but what I'm trying to get at is that, like, the the content is good. Like, the dwell time on it is like 30 minutes. Right? People are actually reading this, but they're reading this because it's actually useful in information. It's not information from the general knowledge. It's information that is already been shown to provide value. So it's like, it's already the stuff that's ranking on page 1. It's an industry expert's knowledge about x y z topic. That's what we're using and that's the most effective way to get So like, if you're a coach, right, or a creator, I would be recording every call that I'm having, everything that I'm talking about.

Cody Schneider [00:25:45]:

And I would take all of that and I would repurpose it into all these different formats. Right? I would turn that into clips. I would turn that into blog posts, etcetera. And the reason for that is because that knowledge, like, you're sharing all this. Like, all you're doing is you're just making it into these bite sized pieces that and it's something you're already, you know, doing. And like that's how we see coaches use us as an example. It's basically they're taking their calls and they they extract like, oh, what, you know, what are the insights from this call for my client? Oh, I can go and have it write a, you know, follow-up next steps. You know, maybe it's a one pager for them that's like, Here's what you need to do next.

Cody Schneider [00:26:21]:

And again, this is how we see coaches use us. Where it's like, Here's what you need to do next to, send that off to the client. But that also turns into I can go and make clips through all my social channels. I can make blog posts based off of the keywords that I extract from this transcript, etcetera. And then all of that, it's just, you know, taking pillar content, chopping it up into all these different forms, and then meeting our clients where they are. Where do they spend time online? Wherever they are, we need to make media and show up in their lives on a daily basis type of deal.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:51]:

So Yeah. Yeah. Excellent advice. And I agree with that being the way to use it, that it's really strong at transforming the content. And and, again, the same analogy analogies of, like, you're not using it for the training data it has. You're using it for, like, its reasoning capabilities. You're getting it the information that is showing it, like, where it should be operating in. And then it's working within your constraints that you're defining of, like, the processes and what it should do.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:19]:

It's not like picking out random stuff from its training data because that's what it's gonna do for everybody, and it's gonna be really, really average. So, like, the analogy I like to use is, like, AI is, like, walking up to, like, a random person on the sidewalk and saying, hey. Do this thing. It's like, what? It's like, they don't even know that they work for your company. They don't know you have a company. It's completely and whatever they're gonna give you is gonna be, like, so so average. But then, like, what you said, you bring in, like, the expert. Like, all they do is that thing all day long.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:48]:

That's what they know about. So you give your expertise to the AI, you know, and you show, like, this is all the stuff, and then it's able to use its own, like, reasoning capabilities to transform that in some really powerful ways. And, like, the the big advantage I think for solopreneurs right now is taking all of your processes and everything. And if you're not making, like, SOPs or, like, documenting that, even for yourself or with, like, a VA or something like that, you really should because you can take a lot of those things and just transform them into ways that AI can do it for you. 1000%. And and it like,

Cody Schneider [00:28:26]:

think about it as like I have tasks and like job roles. Right? Like I I'm, I'm just trying to automate tasks. Right. Which is what a job role is. Like, if you look at like a social media manager and like this is something that's gonna happen like a 1000%. Like, we're already seeing them. It might be us. I don't even know.

Cody Schneider [00:28:42]:

We're we're talking about it. But it's like hypothetically, you just automate the role of a social media manager. Right? So like imagine we you record these podcast episodes and we're going to take those episodes and we're going to upload them into a tool that basically can do clip identification. It can make the clips. It adds captions, it does auto cropping for active speaker identification. It then could schedule those out to your social channel. It publishes it. It analyzes the data to see what works.

Cody Schneider [00:29:09]:

It goes back to your back catalog and then it makes more like, when you look at a social media manager's role that if they're good, right, that's what they're doing. It's basically like, I publish content. I see what works. I go back and I make more like the best performers and I create a, like, a growth flywheel. Well, AI is entirely capable of doing that whole thing now, but it's chaining all of those events together that's like is is and we're just starting to see this. Like, we think we can we think you could do that in, like, social media management. We're we're calling her her Jenna internally. We have, like, a, like, this, like, you know, a test that's running right now.

Cody Schneider [00:29:41]:

But it's like and hypothetically as a solo, like, preneur, like, you could come in and be like, alright. I'm gonna hire this agent. Right? Which is basically just an employee. And they're gonna do this job function, which is social media management. And then I could go in and I could hire, like, again for instead of whatever you would pay, even for offshore talent that's good, like 1800 a month, I you could hire them for a $150. Right? And maybe they're not as good as the human. Like, they're 50% of what a human is, like, to begin with. But at that price, I'll do it all day.

Cody Schneider [00:30:10]:

And also the scale that they could like, they could go manage a 100 different accounts for you

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:14]:

and and the capacity 247 and and you can have as many as you want.

Cody Schneider [00:30:18]:

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then we think we could do this for like a social media or sorry, as a SEO specialist as well. Where it's like it does keyword research. It verifies that there's actual volume for it. It writes the article, it publishes it, it indexes it. It then goes back to your data.

Cody Schneider [00:30:33]:

It's like okay, what's actually producing sign ups? And then it goes and it writes more content based off of the best performers and it just creates this, you know, growth flywheel. Right? And then also like Google Ads or all these from channels. So I think that's how I see this evolving long term is like you're gonna be able to hire these, like, AI agents as employees. But why is that happening? It's because they're doing, like, tasks and doing, like, jobs that are what humans used to do. And that's all we're doing with this whole process is we're basically, like, again analyzing what we're doing, what can we automate as much as we can, what can we turn into this thing that is just kind of running in the background as much as possible? And then our time is spent on the human elements of it. It's spent on sales. It's spent on client facing time. It's spent on these things that the AI is never going to be good at.

Cody Schneider [00:31:19]:

And I I always laugh when people are, like, trying to, like, you know, make these AI avatars and, like, you know, do all this stuff. Like, nobody actually wants to interact with that, like, on a human level. Right? The only one that I've seen that I think is actually gonna be the standard, and we're we're working in a company in this space, but they, they're basically like an AI, answering service for restaurants. So you call in for takeout and they, like, take your order and then they, like, plug it into, you know, their Toast POS or their Square POS or whatever automatically. I think that that actually will be like a way that, these things get adopted where people will be excited. They'll actually use it because like I mean, how many times have you called the Thai restaurant that's your favorite in your neighborhood and like, you know, he doesn't pick up and like you're you you just have to go in and get it, you know, what whatever. So Yeah. It actually is reminding him of value.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:09]:

To interact with him or her

Cody Schneider [00:32:11]:

in that instance Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:12]:

Like, that could be the same thing where, like, it gets automated on the consumer end too that eventually you've got your own AI that calls that one and says, hey. Get get me the usual or whatever, and then your AI just calls. So

Cody Schneider [00:32:25]:

Totally. Totally. I mean, and then it's just I mean, it turns in the Internet just goes so fake so quick as soon as soon as all this happens, which I think is the thing that people are freaking out about. But I think, you know, for anybody that's listening that isn't building their own company, like the other piece of this is just like just get started with this. Like even if you only automate 10 of what you're doing, like even at your day job, like it's gonna make like you're gonna be so much farther ahead than everybody else 5 years from now. Like with your understanding and your ability to deploy these things that like it's gonna especially if you know how to build these workflows out. Out. Like that is the most desired skill set.

Cody Schneider [00:33:00]:

Like if you just look at the search volume for AI automation, like it's just like it is the fastest growing keyword I've ever seen. Right? People are trying to figure out how do they implement in this bit this in their businesses and in their companies. And I think that that is just gonna be this insanely valuable skill set. If your coach is listening, you're like, I don't know what to sell or I don't, you know, or course, I don't know what to build. Like, literally just build an AI automation course, like, it will a 1000% sell. Everybody is trying to figure out how to do this. So.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:26]:

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And if you figure out one thing and, like, save yourself an hour a day, like, imagine how powerful that is already and what you can do from that. And, like, there there's so many things that I've been, like, I've been doing this for so long and I'm still amazed by, like, what we're able to accomplish with it. And, like, these processes that it's like, a human had to do it, but it's like, does do we really need a person to be doing that thing? And then allowing my actual team to focus on, like, the higher level has just been so powerful where, like, we have a thing. We reach out to new trial accounts, and we wanted to personalize it and say to everybody, like, oh, looks like you're making, like, a course about music or whatever, and be able to to be more personal with it. But to go into every single trial as they were signing up and, like, check that, it was a lot of work.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:16]:

Now we have not only is AI doing that, but it also, like, internally sets, like, their category of, like, what type of business they are. It gives them, like, a ranking of how engaged they are, and then it goes and emails them that. And it does it for everything for us, and the the cost is like pennies per month. Where before it it take it took, like, significant hours of a person every single day to do that and, and now, like, that's something that's automated so we can work on the bigger things and improve our product or our customer experience, all of that. But, yeah, so so much with AI.

Cody Schneider [00:34:50]:

That's a perfect example, right, of, like, here's this high touch thing or, like, high value but traditionally high touch thing that we were doing manually. Like, a human would had to be involved in it. Takes unstructured information, structures it into the output you're looking for, and suddenly, like, you've just created this unbelievable customer experience. And that's all Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:08]:

Because, like, we we wanna help our customers. We want to Exactly. Interact with them in person. But, like, either there's 2 problems, either 1, we spend all day sending the Outreach and then we can't help the customers in detail who need it, or we help the customers in detail who need it and we can't send the outreach. And then the customers that don't get the outreach don't know that we can actually help them.

Cody Schneider [00:35:28]:

Totally.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:28]:

And so yeah. So now we get to do the best of both. But, yeah, I wanna talk a little bit more about content in helping creators here have something that, like, they feel they can move forward for. And those are really active on in, x slash, Twitter. And I saw in regards to your call on

Cody Schneider [00:35:46]:

Twitter, I'll I'll die on that hill. But

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:49]:

Yeah. On Twitter. So one of your your tweets, recently is saying how you post on Twitter around 70 times per week, and 85% of your account growth has happened in the last 12 months. And I think that many people believe that social media and content marketing, they think it's, like, too saturated to become successful. And if you start from 0 today, like, if you don't have that audience from years ago, it's gonna be much harder. So what do you think about this, and what are some of the strategies that you feel led to your Twitter growth in the past year?

Cody Schneider [00:36:19]:

I could talk about this probably in the next hour and a half, so sorry for this what's about to happen. But, I think the the idea that things are saturated is such a old way of thinking about social media. So TikTok invented for you page content. What is for you page content? It's basically showing you content that is most likely for you to stay on platform for as long as possible. So how social media companies actually make money is they sell ad space, right? And so they sell your attention to other companies. So their goal as a platform is to consume as much time that you have in a daily basis, like as much of your attention as possible. So what they're what they found is that initially they're like, oh, well it's your friends. That's how we get you.

Cody Schneider [00:37:04]:

But in reality, how you actually get people is you just show them interesting content that they don't even know half the time that they would be interested in. Right? So TikTok embedded For You page content. It's now gone to every platform, even LinkedIn. Right? So what does For You page content look like on each of these platforms? So on TikTok, you don't even have to have followers to do a 1,000,000 views. Right? Like, I've seen this before. If the video is unbelievable and it, like, is a novel idea, it will go viral on the platform. And the reason for that, again, is rewarding content that's consuming people's attention. So Instagram Reels is this.

Cody Schneider [00:37:39]:

YouTube Shorts is this. YouTube just itself is this. Like, think how many videos are from creators that you have no idea who they are. And really probably YouTube invented this, but TikTok perfected it on the algorithm side. But now, same thing on Twitter. It's like for you page content. So it's just gonna show you content that it's most likely for it knows is most likely to keep you on the platform. LinkedIn is moving towards this as well, where you see like creator content that you didn't even know, you know, you you have no connection with.

Cody Schneider [00:38:05]:

So with that, you know, kind of constraint in mind, I mean, we're seeing this on, like, Instagram accounts right now. Like, you can post 4 to 6 different reels a day and, like, only one of them will get all the views for that. And, you know, they'll get 80% of the views for that for that account. The reason for it is because, again, it's deciding what content is going viral based off of the consumption data. So if it's con you know, if it's based off consumption, it's only gonna show good content to people. So you're not saturate it's not like you're blowing up a feed like you used to previously. It's only gonna show that video if it's if it's good and relevant to the audience or if it will keep people on platform. And so, like, to go back to the Twitter, piece, like for me, I realized this.

Cody Schneider [00:38:44]:

I was like, yo, tweet volume is gonna be a a game. Everybody was doing threads at that point too. And I was like, okay. This is gonna be a way. Like, we're just gonna get back to the basics and, like, water hooks with interesting ideas and just, like, all I'm gonna do is just document. But again, I do growth marketing for a living, so half of my job is just experimenting with whatever is going on in the market and then applying that to these businesses or helping people with their businesses or just, you know, the companies I own. But, so you write 70 tweets. You schedule them out.

Cody Schneider [00:39:15]:

They publish. And then every week I go back and I look at the data over the last 3 months and I'm like, okay, what are the top performing pieces of content? Here's the top 10%. Let's just go remix those over and over again. So at this point like my Twitter account has like enough content published over the last like year that I don't even write new things. I just sit down and I'm, like, cool. Like, here's these ideas that we already have talked about. Let's just, like, what's new angles that I can apply these to? And I I mean, I have these tweets that I know, like, every time I post them, which is, like, every 6 weeks, they'll resurface. I know it's gonna do a 100000 impressions.

Cody Schneider [00:39:49]:

I know it's going to happen because it's the same like, that idea, like, people love that idea. And now all I'm doing is just applying a new lens to that same idea. So if we then think about that and then apply that to all of these channels that we're working on, like, whether it's shorts, whether it's blog posts. It's the same concepts over and over again. Like we have an action we're trying to get people to do. So for like Twitter, I'm trying to get people to read it and click on a link and go to something I own. Right? On shorts, a lot of the times it's the same thing. View it, click on something and go to something I own or or or even just, like, go Google the brand name.

Cody Schneider [00:40:22]:

Right? Like, that is what influencer UGC content has evolved into. It's like, okay, cool. We did this video and then it's like they go and they Google us. Right? On blog posts, it's like a lot of the times I'm trying to get them to sign up or download something or give me their email address. So what's the what's the blog post that we've written that have a lot of the times, like, 20% of them are gonna produce 80% of the sign ups. Ups. Well, let's just only go write more content like the ones that are producing sign ups. And so as you apply that same strategy to all these different channels, like, it's the same it's like, you know, we're we're cooking with chicken and rice, but we're just flavoring it with, you know, this one tastes like it's, like Asian cuisine, and this one tastes like Mexican cuisine, and this one tastes it's just, you know, different seasoning that's happening on the same core ingredients and it's the same idea when we think about content production.

Cody Schneider [00:41:11]:

So I think the actual application of this, again, going back to like the fundamentals, the goal is not to burn out because content is a grind. Like, it is a treadmill. So it's like, what can I do over and over again for the next, you know, 12 months that's not going to kill me as a solo founder again? It's gonna be long form content chopped up into clips, repurposing the blog posts, repurposing to newsletters over and over again. And then building as much of those automation workflows out as possible. Like to your point of, oh, cool. Like, we're we go and we scrape, you know, to see what they're they're building within us, like, from a core standpoint. And then that is, you know, automatically being sent out. This is it's this high touch thing that we've now automated or augmented, with these AI tools.

Cody Schneider [00:41:53]:

And again, it's not perfect. Right? Like it's but if I can get it 80% of the way there, that just saved me 10 hours of time and, you know, now it only takes, you know, what used to take me 10 hours takes me 2 hours a month. Right? That type of deal. And that's all we're trying to focus on with this. I think that's the other thing that, like, with all this AI stuff that people get lost in the weeds with. It's like, this is just a tool. Like, it's like it's like Excel. Right? Like

Bryan McAnulty [00:42:17]:

Yeah.

Cody Schneider [00:42:17]:

It's not a it's not like some game changing thing. I mean, everybody's like, we're gonna see sentience and AGI. I'm like, personally, I don't think that's gonna happen, like, quickly. The reason is because we don't even have enough compute to mimic a human brain. Like, the amount of compute that and energy that we just need to, like, mimic the amount of neurons that are in a human brain currently. Like, it doesn't physically exist on the face of planet Earth. So how are we gonna create like, you know, artificial intelligence to that scale without that can be I so I I mean, based off of what we're doing. So with that then it's like, okay.

Cody Schneider [00:42:48]:

This is just a tool that we have within our tool chest for specific activities and actions. Just like we use Excel for certain things, AI is great for certain things. Also terrible for other things. So figuring out where does that fit into your your your flows.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:02]:

Yeah. Exactly. Like, as a musician, I like to think of it like an instrument that, like but same idea. Like, you're using it like a tool. And, like, I'm not trying to, like, not work or not do anything. I wanna do things, but I wanna do the things that I care about and that, like, only I can do. And the, the boring things and the things that are so repetitive that, like, it's, like, mind numbing because I'm gonna do the exact same thing over and over. That I wanna be able to delegate to AI.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:28]:

But I wanna call attention to the point that you just mentioned because I think it's excellent advice about the, like, the different angle or different lens on the content. And, like, we've heard before on here, people have said, well, you've gotta make sure that, like, everyone can see your good content and they'll say, like, mistake somebody makes is they make this really great piece of content, then they've got their newsletter list who may have never seen that content, and then they never talk about it. But I think you're getting at a separate point, which is also really important, is that you make this really good piece of content. It doesn't have to be like, oh, how do I do that again? Like, you you wanna try to, but at the same time, you can take the good thing that you made and then find a way to, like, approach it from a different angle or a different lens and then reuse it again and again because either like, even people who have seen the first one will still wanna see the second one. 1000%. There's gonna be so many people out there who haven't seen the first time that you've posted something like that.

Cody Schneider [00:44:24]:

1000%. I mean, think about the short like, how short memories are too. Right? Like, I can post the same tweet from 3 months ago, and it's gonna go viral, like, every time. And it's because, like, think how many pieces of content people are seeing on a daily basis. Like, people get hung up, and they're like, yo. This is you know, I'm gonna create fatigue or, you know, all of this, like, just like how we used to have ad fatigue. I I don't the data we're I'm seeing and the data we're seeing from all the people, like the clients we're working with, there is no, like, there is a ceiling on how much you can post, but that ceiling is, you know, 2 x or 3 x higher than what people think it actually is. Like, if you're posting once a day now, like, that's, like, minimum.

Cody Schneider [00:45:02]:

Like, you could easily ratchet that up to 4 to 6 times a day, for example, on, like, Instagram reels and see results. And, again, it's because For You page has taken over all of these spaces, all of these fields. Like, it's it's it's changed the entire dynamic of how these social media platforms function. You're not, you're not it also just creates a wider net that you're throwing out there. Like, you don't really I don't really know it's gonna work, but if I have enough data, I probably know it's going to work. Right? And that's what when the more posting I get, the more at bats I see, the more data I have, the better decisions I can make on what to make next. So

Bryan McAnulty [00:45:37]:

Awesome. Alright. Well, I've got one more question for you. And on the show, I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether it's something you're curious about, something you kinda wanna get everybody thinking about, what would that be?

Cody Schneider [00:45:51]:

Yeah. My question for everybody that I remember talking to is, like, where are your you know, if you're a soloprene entrepreneur, where are the people that you're trying to sell to spending on time in, you know, the digital world and in the physical world? And then how are you there in their lives every day, every week, every month on a consistent basis. They challenge you to just sit down and be like, cool. Where are all these places? Because so often I see this in marketing where they're they're like, yeah, we're marketing to photographers, right, as an example. And they're like, but we're we're only posting on LinkedIn. And it's like, well, photographers, And they're like, but we're we're only posting on LinkedIn. And it's like, well, photographers aren't spending time there. Like, they're spending time on maybe Pinterest and, you know, Instagram and TikTok.

Cody Schneider [00:46:30]:

Like, are you even, you know, are you on those channels? And you'd see it so often where people are like, no, we don't even have a Pinterest strategy. But you're right. Like, there is a ton of photographers or YouTube as an example, like, that are spending time there. So it's meeting wherever your target audience is. How do I meet them there? And it's like, how do I create some type of media? So my question for your audience is like, do you know where those places are? If the answer is no, like, that is drop everything else. All of your mental energy is spent on that for them until you figure it out. Because without that, you can't distribute effectively. And then, you know, if you do know, you're miles ahead of other people.

Cody Schneider [00:47:10]:

You're in the, you know, you're the top 10% if you understand where people are spending time on online that are you're trying to sell your product to. So, anyways, I don't know if that's really a question, but that's the question, but that's the thing that I think is important. And so so impactful for companies, for business owners is, like, understanding my target customer is here. And, like, okay. How am I meeting them there? Like, what is the media I'm making to meet them there? So

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:33]:

Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. Alright. Well, Cody, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Cody Schneider [00:47:37]:

Brian, thank you for having me. It's been great, man. I appreciate it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:41]:

Alright. And then, yeah, before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Cody Schneider [00:47:44]:

Yeah. So, swoleai.com, you can sign up for free. That's content repurposing powered by AI, and then I'm, very active on LinkedIn and Twitter. Those are gonna be the 2 places. So Alright. Cool. Thanks, Cody. Awesome.

Cody Schneider [00:47:56]:

Thank you, Brian.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:57]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna hear more, check out the Heights platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9 AM US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.