0-100k in 10 months: Build and scale your personal brand with AI

[0:00] In this AI Creator Workshop session, you will learn how to build and scale your personal brand with AI. We'll take you behind the scenes of the proven AI workflows and systems to grow from zero to over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram in less than a year. And I'm very excited to be joined by Simone Ferretti for this session.

[0:20] He's an online entrepreneur and AI expert who has helped over 14,000 students scale their personal brands. And I'm actually very impressed with his content on his two Instagram accounts. And he's going to share all the different workflows he's using and how AI has really changed the game for him in terms of how much he can produce on a daily basis. So with that said, let's dive right into the session here.

[0:48] Thanks a lot for having me, Navid I'm very excited for this. Yeah, absolutely. So if people stick around until the very end of this session, what can they expect to get out of this? Well, I've built a second channel that is completely separate from my main one where I have already over 600,000 followers from zero to over 100K in less than 10 months in a completely automated way.

[1:14] And just to give you an idea, I don't even know what kind of videos go on in there because I have a team that manages completely, but there is my face and my voice in this. So I think it's an amazing ~ way to kind of scale your personal brand and solve the main problem that every single entrepreneurial business owner has, which is time. So I hope it's gonna be very, very valuable to people because this is the future and it's right in front of us.

[1:39] Yeah, in the pre-chat, we talked a little bit about it. And I think your content is really good, even on the second channel. So I think people, if they just stick around and implement what you're going to share here, you're going to do a deep dive. You have a presentation. You're going to dive into the tools.

[1:53] So I think we'll just get into it right away, because you'll share a little bit more about your journey in there and kind of why you did this and all of that. So let's dive right into the presentation. Yeah, perfect. Let's do it. So I'm just going to go ahead and share the screen.

[2:08] All right. So as I said, I built my secondary personal brand with AI and I now count over 130,000 followers in a year and I reached 100k in 10 months. So in this presentation, I kind of want to give you the full breakdown on what goes on behind the scene and I hope it's going to be very, very valuable. So I'm going to start with a little introduction by myself.

[2:31] We're going to talk about online authority. We're going to talk about the content wheel, which is the main thing that goes behind the scene of the whole content creation journey and then how we can scale with AI. So I'm going to show you a bunch of tools that I think are super exciting and I hope the audience will find valuable as well.

[2:46] A bit about me. So I've been a full-time content creator for over six years and prior to that, I have experience as a videographer for medium to low production commercials. I lived in almost every single continent and I have over 16,000 students and 1.6 million followers across social media.

[3:05] and posted over 2000 videos among all my channels. I've worked with the biggest brands in the world, including Adobe, DJI, Google, Mercedes-Benz, Intel, Xiaomi, and loads more. And the thing that brought me here today is actually me traveling around. So I used to be a kind of semi nomad and I used to go around to just look at different places and try living in different cultures.

[3:29] And I wanted to look good on camera in every single place I would go. So I kind of learned how to build home studios anywhere I would go, whether it's a hotel, whether it's a guest house, whether it's a kitchen, literally anywhere. And so I built a course called the home studio blueprint where I would teach people exactly that, how they can look epic on camera without spending crazy amounts of money. Right now we have over 4,000 entrepreneurs inside this course.

[3:54] And I learned one thing talking to all these people. They don't have time. This is the most valuable resource. that we all have and we're all lacking off because we have 24 hours in a day. so given that I know how much time it takes to do content creation, because I've been a full-time content creator and I post one video a day on the main channel, two videos a day on the AI channel, I was like, well, a year ago, I didn't have that AI channel.

[4:23] And I was wondering whether I could actually create an Instagram account from scratch. without ever posting or cross posting or do anything with my main channel so that the goal was to grow it organically from zero using my face but without recording any sort of content without having my face in it.

[4:42] So can I do it completely with AI to solve the problem of time so that would not be required any input on my side? And as of today, 12 months after we have over 130K followers and this screenshot is actually a little bit old because this is when I passed 100K followers after 10 months.

[5:00] Because at the end of the day, when you look like an expert, people treat you like one. And that's why it's so important as well to build a personal brand. If you look like an expert online, people will treat you like one. You will be able to command higher prices and just build this very, very important word, personal brand.

[5:19] But what is personal brand? I think if we boil it down, it's how the world perceives you. It's very simple. If you think about the personal brand of anybody in the world is like how you perceive this person, right? So there are two main ways on how you build your personal brand. First of all, you need to show up whether it's offline or online and we're gonna come, we're gonna talk about that in a minute.

[5:43] And if you wanna show up and build your personal brand, you need to do so with authority. So you want to try to look as good as possible and sound as professional as possible. And just as I said before, you want to look like an expert because people will treat you like one. So if you want to show up with authority, you can do it in two ways. Either you do it online or you do it offline.

[6:05] Well, let's talk about doing it offline. Of course, you can create events, but these events usually are limited to maybe 25, 50, 100 people, 200 people if you have massive rooms, right? So it's a very limited reach. If you do it offline and if you do it at an event, it's a one-off event. Yes, of course you can do it multiple times, but it's very time consuming and it's very hard to create offline events.

[6:27] And it's very time intensive as well. You need to have yourself present. You need to organize it. You need to have all the travels going on. like, it's just a nightmare building offline stuff to build your personal brand and obviously it's very private you cannot share it with the world yes of course you could go live but then you go more on the online part which has unlimited reach like the potential is huge you can make a video once and you can reach millions and millions of people and if you think about it is unbelievable one of the biggest stadiums in the world i think hosts like the average of like huge stadiums like 70 000 80 000 people so imagine instead of posting a video and then over 100,000 people see it or maybe a million people see it.

[7:14] That's 10 different stadiums full of different people just watching your content. The potential is enormous. Obviously it can be evergreen as well. If you post a YouTube video or like when you scroll on YouTube, you can see videos that have been posted five years ago because if your content is evergreen and your information is valuable, that video can live on any platform forever.

[7:33] Even Instagram right now starts pushing content that is older. So it takes a little bit more time to get traction. And this is really, really, really important. Quantity, because obviously, for example, myself, I post three videos a day. They are completely different among the two different channels.

[7:47] So there is a lot of quantity that can be pushed out in contrast with one event that you can do a week on offline, right? And obviously, it's public because anybody can find you with these social media platforms. So clearly you understand why going online to build your personal brand is key right now, especially in this digital age.

[8:08] I'm not saying that you should completely avoid the offline part, that's also important, but in terms of potential, the online is a no-brainer. And the coolest part about this specific year, 2026, is that AI is now entering our houses on a daily basis, and with AI, you can literally multiply yourself by 10-folds.

[8:30] Videos, well, you can have an avatar. Photos, well, you can build photos that look exactly like you, that not even your mom will be able to recognize it is not you, but it's AI. Voice, is super easy to clone, and I'm gonna show you how. Text, you can train different tools to speak and to write like it was yourself.

[8:48] This is so, so, so exciting. And now let's play a little game for those of you who are actually watching this session. So I'm gonna show you two photos. And you should tell me which one is AI, which one is real, or maybe whether both are AI or both are real. Three, two, one. Both of these photos are AI.

[9:08] Let's move on. Real, AI, both real, both AI. All right. Right one is real. Left is AI. Just ~ as a little introduction for those who don't know and maybe actually I think nobody knows, but I used to be a model after just after high school before starting my videography career. I didn't like that world so we can keep that on the side, but that's why that photo looks like that.

[9:36] And then these two photos, which one is AI? Which one is real? Both AI, both real. Right one is AI. Left one is real. And then one more time. So I posted this carousel on my social media, which did quite well. And which of these three photos is AI and which of these photos is real? We got real, the two photos from the helicopter and the middle one is AI.

[10:04] Just to give you a bit of context here, I did a helicopter ride in London, which was absolutely amazing. So highly, highly suggest it. And then I wanted to have a photo of myself, like a portrait of myself to add it in the carousel to make it more appealing. Because when I post stuff with my face on social media, usually it performs well rather than generic helicopter content, let's say. So I decided to try to do it with AI because I didn't take a portrait of myself in the heli.

[10:29] And obviously it did an amazing job and nobody, nobody commented, this is AI. Absolutely not. Now, one more thing is like at the beginning, I think it was 2023 when the first images that you could do with Laura's and like kind of like more complicated than what it is right now, ~ we're out to create yourself, like to create images of yourself.

[10:52] It's like, want to try and see whether I can fool people. And one of my dreams is to do a tech talk. And then I created an image of me on a stage or a TEDx talk. And then I posted it online saying, Hey guys, I have something to reveal. I never told anybody, but this was a dream of mine, and actually I made it happen.

[11:10] And then a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of friends just commented, say, congratulations. This is amazing. Incredible. And like these, I'm talking about my best friends, people that see me almost every day and nobody could tell that this was AI. So I literally fooled anybody. And now I want to show you this two videos.

[11:28] Can you tell me which one is AI and which one is real? I'm going to play it again. Right? Left is real, right is AI. And they look exactly like each other. It's almost impossible. I would say impossible to tell which one is AI unless you watch it like 15 different times and then you're very, very careful about details. But overall, for the normal human eye, we cannot recognize it because they are just identical.

[11:58] So with AI, the coolest thing is that you can just multiply yourself as many times as you want to. So with the tool that I use that I'm going to show you in a second, which is called HeyGen, you can actually create multiple looks they're called for the same avatar. So for myself, I cloned myself, I think maybe 20 or 25 different times in 25 different studios so that I can choose and pick one, whichever I like the most.

[12:21] And so this is actually very, very exciting because you can create a unlimited looks for yourself, right? And this really goes to solve this problem of time. You can clone yourself as many times as you want. You can have your assistant do it for you. You can have an external team do it for you because AI can do 90 % of the work and then you can just do the 10 % whenever is needed or maybe another human again, if it's an external team of your assistant.

[12:45] And now if you think about it, right? The moment you can clone yourself with a video, you can clone yourself with a voice, you can clone yourself with text, you can solve the whole creative pipeline that you can do on the internet. So you can create ads for yourself, you can create YouTube videos, you can create short form, whether it's IG, TikTok, shorts, whatever, you can create VSLs, you can create courses, you can create stills, lifestyle photos...

[13:07] anything that comes in your mind. Right now, everything is possible and we're just getting better and better and better. So now if you haven't started yet, it's the right time to get involved because the industry is still very new, but it's super, super hot right now. So if you want to grow your personal brand, as we said, you want to do it online.

[13:25] Doing it online means that you need to create content online and you need to let the people know about yourself. How do you create content? Well, the steps are actually much simpler than you think. You need to come up with an idea and then you need to script that idea. You need to record it or you have an avatar that actually delivers it.

[13:44] You need to edit it and then you need to post it. This is called the content wheel. So we don't need to make it too complicated. This is actually much simpler than you think. You find an idea, you script it, you record it, you edit it, post it. That's it. And then just you keep going, keep going. So now I want to show you all my stack and what I do in the backend to actually make this happen.

[14:04] Obviously, I cannot go too much in depth, but I will show you everything on a higher level, all the platforms, and then you can take it and just try to apply it for yourself. So the first thing that goes even before the idea and the scripting is that you need to manage these projects, right? At the beginning, when you're a one man band, you might not need this and you can follow up the process by yourself and it's like simpler, but...

[14:30] The more you move forward with the number of videos you're going to create, maybe you have a few team members that will help you out. It is better to have a management system that can help you keep track of all the projects and all the posts and content that you are creating. So I use right now, I use two systems for the main channel.

[14:46] use notion for the AI channel. use Trello. Both of them are incredibly super similar. The reason why I'm using both of them is because I'm just trying and testing which one works best in the long term. So Notion main channel Trello AI channel. I'm going to show you the Trello one.

[15:03] So now we are looking at Trello. Trello is just a project management tool, right? And as you can see, every column is a state, is a status of that given post. And every card, like this one, is a card that ~ means that this is a post basically. And then inside the card, there are all the information needed to create that specific video.

[15:26] So I want to go in one of the approved videos. So this we have the published. column so we can go inside and we see that there is a script sometimes there is also a brief is let's say if it's a sponsor content or if it's something that I want my people to do then there is the description there is the cta so call to action that is the keyword for the Manychat automation and then there is the link for the Manychat automation as well Then also we add the Google Drive folder where all the files are contained.

[15:57] So whether it is the output or also raw files in case it's needed. And then potentially some inspiration and also a cover for the Instagram Reel. So inside this card, there are all the information needed to proceed with this post. And this is kind of like an organized way to just keep track of everything that is going on right there. So this is the column published.

[16:17] So. Generally, we have and we keep track of everything that we post so that we know exactly when this post went live when. But if we start at the beginning of this management tool, we can see that we have a column that says content ideas. So whenever I find an idea or maybe my team finds an idea that they want to create, they put it right here. Then we go into scripting.

[16:37] So we start scripting the actual video. Then we have a review for the script. We have a pre-production in case we need a storyboard. We have ready for production when the storyboard has been done and then we just need to take action to then create the B-rolls, create the audio and video clone, then do the video production, which means basically editing the video.

[16:57] Then if we have revision, it goes in this column. Then when the video is ready and it has been edited fully, we have the video review, the approval, so when everything is ready, then we're gonna have an automation needed when... we are ready to post it and we just need to set the automation on the Manychat.

[17:14] And then we have ready to publish and then published. Obviously this is quite complicated because I have quite a bigger team right now. But if you have to boil it down and do it as a one mesh show, you can have one single script, one single column as an idea. Then you have one for scripting.

[17:31] Then you have one for the audio video clone to be generated. One for edit, one for ready and then published. That's what you have. That's what you need at the very beginning. Right here, obviously, it's a little bit more complicated, but I want to show you exactly what goes on behind the scenes.

[17:46] So normally we like to proceed in batching systems, which means that every week, if we want to post, let's say 15 videos, then we have 15 videos that are ~ stage scripting, then stage review, then stage editing. And then we try to move ~ with again, this batching system that helps a lot whenever you're working on a team.

[18:06] And then we have several team members doing different things. On Notion is a very, very similar concept. So it's basically exactly the same. I'm just testing different workflow to see which one works best for different teams. Then once you have the management put into place, you need to start with the first process, which is actually finding the idea.

[18:27] Now I have two ways that I want to show you. The first one is using an AI tool that is kind of new, has still a few bugs, but I think by the time you watch this recording or maybe in just a few months, it will be amazing. So I want to show you that. But then the other way on how I find most of my ideas is to actually use Instagram itself to scroll intentionally, which means that normally Instagram really shows what's good for them, what keeps audience on the platform.

[18:54] And so if you want to find the best ideas possible, you just need to scroll and understand what you've been shown at that moment in time. So try to look at the videos that Instagram is feeding you, try to look at your explorer feed, try to do research, try to use keywords to understand what is trending in that specific niche at that given time.

[19:15] So many, many times I scroll and I try to understand why this video is working, what are the metrics of the video that has been shown to me, and maybe if I can reuse that video for my own channel in a maybe slightly different way, changing the hook, changing the structure, changing small things, but keeping the main kind of idea of the successful video.

[19:36] So it's really, really important to scroll intentionally whenever you use Instagram. Then you can save the content and then you can create collections on Instagram. But then the second way on how you can actually find these successful videos, because this is very important. You don't want to reinvent the wheel all the time.

[19:53] What you wanna do is that you wanna take whatever is working already out there and just put your own spin and create it for your own niche, for your own channel, for what works out there for you. So this other tool that you can use to find these outliers is called Sandcastles. Sandcastles, as I said, has a few bucks still, but I think you can start working on it already and it's amazing.

[20:16] So the main concept is that you will be able to select a bunch of channels that are your competitors. So for example, I created a list that is called AI Top Educators that contains ~ three of my friends and myself that I can use to spy on my competitors. All right, so this is just an example, but you can really do this with your competitors.

[20:36] So you add a list, you add all your competitors, and then once you go in videos, you will be able to have access to a bunch of different filters. These filters are super important to filter out outliers. So you can look for the channels. In this case, I have the list of these four channels.

[20:52] You can look for posting dates. For example, in the AI content space, you don't want to have anything that is like over three months old because that means it's already too old. So here, let's say I want to have last two months. I'm going to apply this filter. Then I can filter by platform, whether it's Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.

[21:09] And then I want to have this outlier number. So the outlier is, let's say, we have an average views for that channel. An outlier is anything that goes above that. Let's say it's a 2x outlier or 3x outlier. So I want to have, I want to see all the 2x outliers for these channels for the last two months.

[21:28] And then if I want to filter by views, I can set a minimum amount of views and I want to, I can set also by engagement rate. So let's say it's show is showing me now all the outliers for all the four channels that I just selected. For example, this was a video that Seb, a friend of mine posted, and it was a 4.7 X outlier based on the median channel views.

[21:50] has 229,000 views and has an engagement rate of 4%. So this is a great video. Maybe I can save this or maybe I can analyze it to understand why it went so well and there's anything I can do to take this idea or to take inspo to then create content for myself. And this, for example, was a new idea that Seb tried and it worked very well, which is just a reaction video, which is something that he never really posted on his channel before.

[22:15] So this can be an inspiration for me because he proved that reaction videos actually worked well for him and we have very similar channels, very similar style of creation. So maybe I can take inspo and try to create another reaction video on something else that has been posted recently on the AI space.

[22:32] So again, you can just look through all of this to understand if there's any video that works best for you that you want to try to replicate. And then once you are inside, you can see a lot of different metrics. You can see the description and then you can click on this button which says analyze the video.

[22:48] And now I want to show you whether I have already an analyze video, which is this one that I run before. And I want to show you that once you analyze the video, you will be able to see the transcript. You will be able to see the hook analysis and you will be able to see the structure analysis and also style analysis.

[23:03] And these are the metrics and all the details that you need to understand that if you want to try to kind of take inspiration from this video and then recreate one for yourself. So just to give you an idea, the hook analysis of this video right here pulled out the frameworks that he used, that this creator used to create the hook.

[23:23] And it's like X just did Y to unlock Z. So you can take this framework and just substitute X, Y, and Z with your own words that are for your niche that are related to your channel. And this is amazing because before we used to do this manually to try to understand it kind of like reverse engineer what was working and how we could actually apply to ourselves.

[23:48] So this is amazing. And you can do this with all the videos that you want. And I think is extremely powerful. You can see the transcript in case you want to take inspiration. It's all about studying the competition, see what's working on different channels, on different niches, and then just pull together all the best things to make your own content. This is really, really important. So as I said, we have two video, two.

[24:11] ways on how to find ideas. First, you scroll on social media intentionally and second, you use Sandcastles. The next step once you found your idea is that you need to script and to script, I use a tool that is called Poppy AI. Poppy AI is basically a whiteboard... it's a giant whiteboard that allows you to train an LLM.

[24:31] So let's say allows you to train ChatGPT allows you to train Claude any sort of ~ LLM that you can think of with in a creative way and in a very, very intuitive way with content that can be videos, can be voice notes, can be text, can be YouTube links, can be websites, can be docs, can be anything you can think of.

[24:53] So here again, I created another board just to show you an example. You can paste in, for example, if we go on YouTube, I can take any random video. So let's say this podcast right here that I was just listening to right now. And then we go into Poppy and then if I click on command V, so it's pasting it right now, it's pasting this video, right? That podcast into this group right here.

[25:22] And now it's called this group, let's say it's called Artlist, which was a random name. And then I can reference to the LLM with the group called Artlist and it's gonna understand every single element that is inside the group so that the LLM can understand and knows exactly how I'm training and what I'm referring to.

[25:42] So now that I created this group with these two videos, I can say, for example, write me a script and take inspiration from the artless group that I have linked to now. And the LLM knows exactly what I'm talking to and what I'm referring to. So in this case, I have the podcast, I have this Artlist video, then I created another board to train the LLM with my voice and I pasted here my most successful shorts during the last few months.

[26:13] So I posted here four videos. I pasted here four videos that are super successful on my channel. So I'm training the LLM in a creative and figurative way to tell it, look, these are my most successful videos, so please take inspiration from these videos and rework and create something that is similar to this, let's say, and I can reference this as Sferro's videos.

[26:37] Then I take, let's say, a competitor, which is Rourke. Again, another friend, he's killing it in the AI gen space and I really, really love his stuff. It's absolutely amazing. So I took seven of his most successful videos in the last two months and then I pasted them here. So I can reference this.

[26:54] I can reference back Rourke's video and the LLN knows exactly what I'm talking about. And so I can reference back to these videos like me training the LLM on Rookies video. And then I added a bunch of videos that explain how to script and create amazing hooks for short form content.

[27:12] So here again, these are just YouTube videos and I'm telling the LLM, listen, I'm training you right now on this material. So listen to what they're saying and just recreate me, for example, a script that follows the guidance that these guys say. And then. With all these groups and you can create as many groups as you want.

[27:31] This is just a very simplified version, but you can go in depth as much as you want. And I can show you even a more complicated board afterwards. You can link all these groups to this LLM to this board right here. Right. So you see all the links and then once I open this LLM now it knows exactly all the materials that I linked to it.

[27:53] So for example, I can tell it, I can text give me a breakdown on Artlist BTS video, which is the one, the very first one that I linked. How did they create the ad? And the LLM knows exactly what the Artlist BTS video is. And now it's going to be able to break down for me what has been the creative process behind this.

[28:16] And I can use it to script my videos. So for example, if I take this, I can write something like I need to create a new video about Higgsfield shots, which is a new feature using the videos made for Higgsfield about the shots feature. Please write me a concise script using Rourke's style and voice, which you can find in the group Rourke's video.

[28:38] And then the LLM is just going to pull out a script that will resemble Rourke's style and voice. And this is super, super important because obviously this is just a test, but now I want to show you that I created a much bigger board. much bigger board. That's it. Two script, for example, my YouTube videos that is trained on a lot of materials.

[29:02] So let's say here I have all my most successful ads. I have my most successful reels on the Home Studio Bluleprint. I have my website, I have my offering, I have a transcript of the Home Studio Blueprint 2.0, which is my course. This is a 157 pages transcript with all the six hours course that I have on the home studio blueprint.

[29:20] So... basically, I'm just training the LLM with creatives to know exactly what my style of voice is, what my tone is and what my product is. Then I added a bunch of guides to explain exactly how I want him to work. And then a lot of different groups, a masterclass that I did, a bunch of videos for competitors, a bunch of maybe another webinar, a bunch of automations that I wanted to follow and stuff like that.

[29:46] And then I can link it based on what I want to use and what I don't want to use. So again, this is a very simple way to train an LLM with your own voice and your own scripting style. How does this sound? This is awesome. I mean, so far it's amazing. I just wanted to ask you how many people currently you have on your team to go through this and maybe how many you started with when you started this channel from scratch.

[30:12] So this is an external team that is completely separated from my main channel. At the beginning on this external team, there were, I believe, two people. And now I think they are a team of 24 people because they're doing it for a lot of different channels. it's like they're just expanding, expanding, expanding. And at the beginning, I needed to give them guidelines.

[30:36] And I needed to review the content. I need to show them, OK, let's do this, let's do that, let's do this. But then right now they are completely independent. And I think, as I mentioned at the beginning of the call, I don't even check videos anymore. I don't even know what goes on in there because at the beginning, after you train them, they're like, are completely independent. And that's the most beautiful thing about, about this process because...

[30:57] Where did you find them by the way? Onlinejobs.ph or any other platforms? Actually it was a cold outreach. I was looking to do this and then I had, I was trying to find different people and then this guy reached out and I'm like, okay, let's test this out. Then again, train them a little bit and now they're completely independent.

[31:15] So it was an actual cold outreach and then yeah, now we're still going strong. So you have different roles basically, video editors, script writer and things like that. And roughly what, if someone wants to implement this, what would it cost to kind of automate this? Obviously you can start with fewer people to start like one or two people and then you can scale up from there.

[31:37] But you know, any estimates on what it would cost? I mean the tools themselves are fairly cheap. They're not crazy expensive. And now we're going to go into voice and video cloning. So I will show you that. But overall, I think ElevenLabs to clone your voice is $20. HeyGen to clone your video is the first one.

[31:57] The first tier is $40. So that's 60. Sandcastles I have no idea how much it costs. I think it's about 50. And Poppy AI right now is a little bit more expensive. And it has, I think, only a yearly subscription, but I'm having a call actually with them in two days because I want to tell them.

[32:11] I think they had a lifetime at least. Yeah. I mean, I think it's about a thousand bucks if they still have that. I mean, you can check, but what about the team costs? That's what I meant as well. okay. So, sorry, the team costs obviously varies because you can do all of this by yourself and it will still be very, very workable. But if you want to scale things up and you want to remove yourself, then you will probably need at the beginning, one person I think can do it all.

[32:34] So you can have a social media manager that does the scripts with AI does the generations for you and does the editing. And that person, you know, if you, if you find it in Southeast Asian countries, you can easily find somebody for between a thousand and two thousand dollars a month.

[32:49] That's like very, very doable. Sometimes even less, but I don't like to underpay people. So there's nobody under one point five K in my team, USD, even if they are on Southeast ~ Asian countries. And then the most important resource that you should hire as a first member is an editor. And editors can charge anywhere between thirty dollars per short up to unlimited right now, some contractors get paid 130 USD per video per short that they edit for me, but I have full time, full time editors as well.

[33:26] But just when we need more capacity, I have contractors. So that is kind of the range, but you can find for $30 very, very good editors as well. So this is, this is, this is what I would say. right now at the stage of AI to automate some of the screen share and stuff like that. Have you seen it?

[33:41] Because you, you put, you have obviously yourself with the clone and that anyone can do with HeyGen, ElevenLabs and stuff like that. But then kind of the thing you do, you put the screen share and you have B roll and stuff like that. I think the AI is not quite there yet to kind of automate that process, right?

[33:57] That is correct. there is one, there is a few tips that I can show you here. So there are these three apps that I would recommend in case you want to try some AI edits. As of right now though, I didn't see anything that automates your screen recordings in case you want to do overlays. But for B-rolls and for AI edits that can help you with captions, that can help you with movement, that can help you with basic B-rolls.

[34:21] You can try one of those two apps, either Captions or CapCut. And now there is a new one also that is called Submagic that just added a feature called AI edit, I believe. So these are the three ways on how I would edit videos at the beginning in case you don't have an editor yet.

[34:37] And I have a friend that started a finance channel all by herself and grew to 7,000 followers as of right now. I can literally check now. Just using Captions as an editor and it's absolutely crazy that she managed to do this in like two months super super good... 7 000 followers right now just really really good stuff and then i think they're good enough for like basic whenever you reach for example my level right now there are no AI tools that can edit it at the quality that I require for my channels Yeah, totally. And there's actually Opus Agent as well.

[35:15] I saw some cool things from them. It's not available in all regions as of this recording, but they kind of block, even with VPN they block. So I couldn't access it, but I saw some cool stuff from Opus Agent too. Basically another company from Opus Clip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I was in touch with them.

[35:33] I haven't tried it yet, but for the results that I saw is like the idea is amazing. Execution still needs a bit of work. So potentially by the end of this year, we're going to have something really good. So we can go back to the ElevenLabs window so that it can show you how I actually clone my voice.

[35:52] This should be the one. And then here is the main platform that is called Level Labs, which is the leader for voices creation and cloning. So you want to go into voices and then you want to create a voice. And if you want to have the best professional result, you want to try to have at least five minutes, if not more for your professional voice clone.

[36:19] When I did it over a year ago, was needed four hours of voice recording and this was due to also me having an accent. If you are a native English speaker for you will be so much easier, but if you have an accent, you need to have as much content as possible in order to be cloned properly.

[36:36] For what is my, I thought actually it was a 30 minutes, but probably they reduced it a lot to five minutes because when I... When I checked back, I think a couple of months ago, it was 30 minutes and now it seems to be down to five minutes in order to create a professional voice clone, which is absolutely amazing. And then what you do is that you just need to go in text to speech. You write whatever you want to write.

[36:59] For example, this is how you use this AI tool. And then you just select your voice. In this case, I've selected Simone Pro, which is my clone voice. You have a bunch of sliders that you can play around with to make sure that you like how you sound. in of pacing, terms of stability, in terms of speed. And then you can just click on generate speech and this will create a voice. And this is a voice clone of yourself.

[37:25] After you generate this speech, you just play. That's it. This is how you use this tool and this could be a very nice, I don't know, hook or whatever, but it's very, very similar to how I would actually ~ execute a piece of content with my voice. And then when you have it a bunch of editing and we have a bunch of things that are going on the screen, it'll be impossible to recognize whether it's actually me or whether it's a clone voice. So this is really cool and that's it.

[37:51] Very simple. You just need to paste in your script here, click generate and once you have the cloned voice, it takes literally 10 seconds. Then for the avatar is very, very similar concept. I use HeyGen and then you just need to go in avatar and then you need to start with the creation of a new avatar.

[38:08] As of right now, I have two avatars already cloned, which is me and my girlfriend. So I cannot create a new one, but if we go here, maybe it will give me the guidelines. Yeah, that's it. You can clone a real person and then you will need to either upload a Google Drive folder or you can upload your own video.

[38:28] And the thing about this is like, HeyGen replicates exactly your movements, exactly your background and exactly how you look on camera. So if you wanna have an epic clone, you need to have an epic looking video in general. And that's where it all started for me with the home studio stuff.

[38:46] My clones, they look amazing because the quality of the input is amazing. So with AI, if you have a bad quality input, you're going to have a bad quality output. This is very, very important to understand because a lot of people say, but I've tried agent and it looks, it looks horrible. Yes, because your input was horrible as well.

[39:03] So it's very, important. You have a great input source, a great talking head for at least, I think the minimum is two minutes to then get cloned... and then you will be able to create different looks as you can see right here. I've tried to clone myself with different angles in case I want to use, for example, multi-camera shot in different scenarios, different backgrounds, and then you can just have a look and test yourself.

[39:24] Whenever you create one avatar, you can create, I think, a hundred different looks. So you have... plenty of options that you can try on whether you want to have a background with the FL tower, whether you want to have dark background, you want to have a bright background, whatever you want and this allows us to test so many different alternatives.

[39:41] Then what you want to do is that you want to select let's say one of the avatars, you're going to use it in video and then here we have to upload the voice upload audio here, the voice that we generated with ElevenLabs. HeyGen is not amazing at cloning voices. That's why I use ElevenLabs separately.

[40:00] And then I upload my voice into HeyGen to make sure that it's much better than what HeyGen would have created. And then once I upload my audio here, you just need to upload the audio that you downloaded with HeyGen. And then it's going to come up with an epic avatar. It takes a while to load so I can show you something that we already created.

[40:19] Let's say, yeah. You can integrate ElevenLabs inside HeyGen too. Have you tried different, like to take any directly from, Correct. you know, without the API and stuff, just going to ElevenLabs as you said, to write the script there and then bring in the audio? Have you seen any differences or if you have tried that?

[40:40] I haven't tried it yet, but I heard you can just link the API of ElevenLabs inside of HeyGen. And so you will be able to generate the voice by ElevenLabs inside HeyGen rather than generating from HeyGen. I think that is. Basically, you attach it to your clone. that's how, but I haven't tried if it's better or worse.

[40:57] I'm not sure. Maybe, yeah, it should be the same. it takes an API, think it should be the same, it should work perfectly, but it's literally a five second job. So we haven't done it. So, but I should probably do that anyway. We can have a look at one of my just generated videos. This was generated, I think an hour ago by my team.

[41:23] And it is very, very accurate. lot of the audience looking and like some people will say like, yeah, but like it did this and then did this and did this like maybe with AI. And yes, this is true, but this where the magic of editing comes in. The best part about this is that you have the base video, but then whenever there is the AI that does a little bit of like a stupid moves or something that doesn't match what you say, you can just cut out that part with maybe a B-roll, maybe some caption, just masquerade, whatever doesn't work.

[41:52] That's why the final product looks so, good because you have a great base that is not 100 % perfect, but you can make it 100 % perfect by eliminating the mistakes that you have with simple editing. And that's also why whenever I show my AI channel to entrepreneurs or to even my mom, they cannot even tell that it's not actually me because it very much looks like me.

[42:12] So this is the process behind whatever I'm doing now. Just one question on this, when you're doing the clone and you have kind Yeah. of the input, as you mentioned, do you move the hands a little bit to get your natural movements or what Absolutely. do you recommend there? Because I'm sure you've tested a lot.

[42:30] Yeah, so the best thing is to avoid having your hands covering the mouth whatsoever. Do not have anything in front of your head and do not make a lot of movement with your shoulders and with your head. Otherwise, HeyGen will struggle a lot understanding what those movements are associated with that part of the script.

[42:48] However, with the hands gesture, I'm Italian, so I move my hands quite a little bit and you want to kind of tone down that kind of hand movements a little bit whenever you want to do the H & clone because otherwise it can go a little bit crazy. So I've tested a few things and it's better to tone down a little bit the movement. So yeah.

[43:07] Okay, cool. Yeah, let's keep going. This is awesome. ~ So this is the major part for creating the base layer. Obviously, the next part of like creating the B-rolls or having ~ things on top, it really, really depends on the niche. And as of right now, as we mentioned before, we don't really have anything that works incredibly well.

[43:26] And that's why also having an editor is a game changer still as of today. So I would highly recommend having an editor and outsource as a first thing. You can find it on Upwork. You can find it, you can try it on Fiverr, you can try to find communities on Discord or looking on different groups as well, Facebook groups or editors. Finding an editor is actually not easy at all, just FYI. So you are aware of this, it's very, very difficult. The way I do it is that you take four, five or six different candidates and you do the same exact project.

[43:59] with four or six different candidates so that you can judge based on the same project. Because if you have an editor that works on one video, then a second editor that works on another video and a third editor that works on another video, it will be very, very difficult for you to judge their capabilities.

[44:14] So you take four or five different leads and then you give them the same exact project and you pay them for that exact project. If you find editors and you want a super high quality edit and you find editors that work for free, it's usually like a bit of a... Usually the results will not be great.

[44:31] However, it depends also on the quality that you're looking for. So if you're looking for a top level quality editor, then you might have to pay a little bit more and it's better to do a paid test project because they will give their best. And again, do the same project with five different editors and then you pick the best one. In terms of posting, we use Metricool with my AI account.

[44:52] And there is this question is like, does it make any difference whether you schedule posts or not? So far we haven't noticed any major difference in the AI channel. We schedule posts on my main channel I post manually just again testing on the long term whether we see any difference so far no difference So this is it.

[45:13] This is the content wheel. We covered how to ideate content we have covered how to script content We have covered how to record or just do the generations of your voice and your face and your video Then we've covered how you can edit quickly with a bunch of apps or find editors and we've covered posting in case you want to do it with an automatic way with Metricool and then the last thing that I want to talk about is videos and imagery.

[45:36] As I said you can now generate amazing images that look exactly like you and to do this right now there is Nano Banana Pro which is the leader model as of today but I think that will be also probably updated very soon. I think right now, literally today, Seedream 5.0 came out, which is meant to be a competitor of Nano Banana Pro.

[45:59] So we can test to see how that works. And then I used platforms like Higgsfield and Freepik or Artlist to generate and access all the models. So Higgsfield and Freepik are simply models aggregator. And inside these model aggregators, you can pick any model you want. So you can do all the tests that you like.

[46:17] And then they have a lot of different tools to have some automation. For example, Higgsfield has ~ Higgsfield Shots, it's called, where you can upload an image and it will give you nine different angles of that image. So it's a pretty cool feature that you can use in case you want to build AI cinematic content or generally create videos having multiple angles without having to manually prompt every single angle.

[46:39] So we got Higgsfield and Freepik for imagery. And then for videos, we also have Runway. So Runway is another model that works incredibly well or Kling cling now recently launched Kling 3.0, which is honestly really, really, really good. And you can create epic scenes with a multi shot feature.

[46:56] You can prompt it quite easily without having to go too much in depth, or you can use Gemini or ChatGPT to help you with prompts and a Kling allows for up to 15 seconds generations and again it goes up to 1080p or 720 if you want faster generations being a recent model is quite slower generating 1080p So if you want to do things fast and test things before actually having the perfect output I would suggest to use it at 720p, which is a little bit of lower quality and then we have also Google Veo as of right now Google Veo 3.1 is a little bit underperforming comparing to Kling 3.0 but I'm pretty sure they're going to come out with Veo 4 or something very soon as well and that would be a major leap. Veo is great but it does wash out a little

[47:46] bit the texture and I think is a little bit more difficult to work with than Kling 3.0 because it's just a more recent model. So these are the main tools that I use for creating videos and imagery with AI. Explore with Nano Banana Pro because that's all you need for images. And then you can animate those images with Kling 3.0.

[48:04] And you can do this inside aggregators like Higgsfield or Freepik, or you can do this in a slightly cheaper way in their own websites. For example, in the Kling website, you can use Kling 3.0. It's a bit cheaper, but the problem is that you don't have all the other models in case you want to use one single platform for all.

[48:22] Awesome, Let's go into some Q &A, like to some questions about the channel. Yeah, absolutely. But this was awesome. Great session and walkthroughs of everything. Yeah, so actually what I wanted to dive into is like what type of content that you see working well. I'm sure you've tested a lot and also like getting leads from your Instagram posts on both channels, obviously. So maybe you can walk us through a little bit what you've seen, kind of what content you kind of circle between.

[48:51] So I think this question needs to be answered by a different standpoint, which is you need to start with your monetization process in mind. Whenever you have something to sell, then you can reverse engineer how you can get there with the right content. If you want to make content and you just talk about general things, you're going to attract a general audience and you're not going to be able to monetize. So whenever we talk about social media, there are two main ways to monetize.

[49:17] One is brand deals. One is the second one is just selling your own product or service. So when we talk about brand deals, the key is just try to have mass market appeal. So try to have the highest engagement possible, the highest views, highest followers. That's how brand deals and that's why we'll pay you.

[49:33] Or you build an authority in a specific niche and like ~ niche brands will come to you and will pay you. But the second thing, which I think is way faster and way easier is that you have your own product and service and then you try to sell it to a specific audience. And to do so, you need to start with the final product and then you work backwards and you do tutorials and you do information and educational content on that product that you're selling.

[49:58] you have, you've instilled curiosity in people's mind. They want to know more. They want to learn how you do that because you are an expert in that thing that you're selling and therefore they will come to you and they will pay you. So.. There is not really an answer on this, but what I can tell you is that there is a friend of mine that you can look on Instagram, ~ on nicola.ai, which I think he did the genius thing.

[50:22] So the avatar thing that I just showed you right now, I started in February 1st and then I started posting and then I grew like quite quickly. And I wanted to do an agency model where I would do this for people because it's very valuable, but I don't want to get involved into an agency model because it's just very much time consuming and it's very, very heavy.

[50:41] But then Nicola saw this opportunity of like helping people creating their own avatar in a better way. And then there are actually two methods, not only HeyGen, but there are other methods and he uses other methods to do that. And he literally is now selling a lot, a lot, like a high ticket service for helping people how to clone themselves.

[51:01] And what he does, he creates content only about cloning. So it's educational content about cloning is like wow content about cloning, example, clone themselves with ~ talking with Hormozi or cloning himself talking to Mark Zuckerberg and they look super realistic. They look amazing. And so when I look at this type of content of him talking to Hormozi and he says, it's not real. I'm like, wow, how the hell did you do that?

[51:29] And then I want to message him and I want to find out how he does it. And then, bam, he sells you that program on the AI cloning stuff. So the content needs to be related to your end product and what you're selling. Yeah, absolutely. And you use, of course, Manychat to automate a lot of this because I see in your, I mean, you have pretty much a CTA in every one of your posts to DM or something like that with a keyword.

[51:51] Is that what you do on all posts, right? And then you get the lead. I don't know if you have the opt-in for that or maybe you just send them directly to, I think you have a Google Doc or something with a guide usually. Yeah, that is correct. So in order to convert people, you need to you need to have them trust in you, right? You need to have to trust you and they need to believe in you.

[52:11] They need to understand that you are an expert and how you do that, you just try to build as much value as possible and give them as much value as possible. So what I do is that I do educational content and for every piece of content that I do, I have a guide that I give out for free on how to make that specific piece of content.

[52:27] And that's how I build authority. I showcase people. And I demonstrate that I know how to do epic stuff and I want to teach them how to do this Epic stuff with a lot of value. And then I'm pretty sure that when I'm going to ~ launch new program or whenever I want to monetize that AI side of things, I will be able to do so quite quickly because people know that I'm an expert and I'm an authority in this space.

[52:49] So it all comes down to provide as much value as possible. There is a book from Gary Vee that is called the Jab Jab Jab Right Hook or something like that. you just value, value, value, value, value. And then when you want to sell, boom, there is there is the hook and then you'll be able to sell afterwards, right. So you build up, build up, build up, trust, trust, trust, trust. And when people trust you, it's much easier to actually make money out of whatever you're doing.

[53:15] How do you create all these guides you're putting together? Is that something you do personally or do you have your team do that for you now? I used to do them personally. Right now I have a team that does it on both the AI channel and the main channels. Just again, two separate teams and the main channel one I have, ~ we're currently five full time just working on my content.

[53:35] So it's quite heavy because I want to try to have the best quality possible. So there is one person basically for every task. And whenever somebody creates a video or we create a workflow, then we have a guide that goes out as well together with that video. Do you use any AI tools before when you did it yourself to kind of streamline some of this process?

[53:56] Depends, depends, depends, because some of the videos, for example, if I need to showcase a new feature inside one of the tools, let's say Higgsfield, the Freepik, then we might need to do it manually because we want to take screenshot of whatever is happening, and other times it's just like, we need to describe what we're doing.

[54:13] And then we ask ChatGPT to just make it better and more digestible, let's say. So maybe you can break down a little bit quickly here what is working well to get and get the output you want. I think you use a lot of Nano Banana and these video tools inside of aggregators like Higgsfield and Freepik.

[54:39] So what works well in terms of like the prompting when it comes to the image models and the video models? So there's one thing that people struggle to understand about AI is that AI, it's not magical, but what it does is that it tries to predict what you want. And therefore, when you ask a question or when you give them a prompt, they will analyze a full spectrum of potential options and they will try to predict what will be the best option.

[55:11] And so for us, in order to give a better description of and a better result of what we actually want, we can integrate and tell the AI what we don't want. So if we tell them, do not do this, I don't want this, remove this out or like things that are like on the negative side, we will help this research on the AI and this prediction on the AI. So that can help a lot.

[55:35] And using keywords will allow them to understand a little bit better what we want. So if I want to... have a cinematic shot, can use keywords like use grain, cinema camera, Arri Alexa, 35 millimeter f 1.4 with this type of angle over the shoulder, looking towards the left, the camera pans right like all these, for example, keywords can help remove a lot of the prediction work from the LLM so we can have a much better prompt at the end, let's say. And then I can even have Gemini, Gemini and I just say I'm You are the best prompter in the world.

[56:13] You know how to make cinematic videos and now I need your help on creating a video prompt, a prompt for a video generator that does this and this and this. Don't do this and this and this. Use a cinema camera, lens, blah, blah, blah. So I think this is something that can help a lot.

[56:30] Yeah, and I'm sure, you as a, I mean, you were a videographer before it comes in handy. mean, I also know cameras quite well. So it's like, it's just a benefit when it comes to these AI tools. It does, If you don't know this, I you can still learn it, but I think it just helps if you have a little bit of a creative touch to what you're doing and then you can prompt better.

[56:47] 100%. At least you know what good content looks like or taste basically in this, in this case. I think you're literally hit the spot right now. You're hitting the spot because I've hired a bunch of people that they put a lot of effort, but they have no idea. They don't have any filmmaking background.

[57:04] And I can see that lack of storytelling, like camera movements, camera angles that for the gen AI content side of things, it's very, very helpful. But again, this is only it applies if you want to create cinematic content with AI for a lot of other stuff you can just use AI. You don't need that expertise.

[57:21] For what I do in terms of like epic shots cinematic shots then it's quite important yes. Yeah, totally. So you automate a lot with AI, as you heard here in this session, but do you have any thoughts on what to use AI for and what to keep human? I mean, for example, for your courses, would you automate some stuff with AI there to have like an avatar eventually of you as well teaching, or is that something you want to keep human?

[57:47] I mean, you can share any thoughts you have on this. I think the human side of things will remain, as I said, 10 % will remain human. Everything else will probably be automated. Right now, the course that I'm recording is still going to be me recording it because I want that human touch a little bit more, especially because first of all, using, for example, HeyGen or creating avatars with Veo 3 on a long form basis is a little bit harder. So if I need to create a course of six hours, it's going to cost me thousands and thousands of dollars like hours and hours of generation.

[58:18] And so as like for these things, until we get faster models, it's still better, for example, for courses, I think it's still better to do it on a human basis. ~ And then also, for example, Q&A or podcasts will still be, I think, human for a while, but especially Q&A because it's very, very difficult to substitute your human thinking ~ at this stage.

[58:40] And I think the creativity behind storytelling and the creative vision of, for example, the videos that I create, we're still struggling a little bit to have AI execute on those creativity, on those vision basically, because as I said, it's it's trying to predict what you want. And sometimes with creative stuff is just, you have it in your mind and it's just very difficult to see what's gonna happen next or different scenarios is like, AI is not super at storytelling yet.

[59:13] Awesome man, so this has been super valuable. Do you have any final words of wisdom for people and then you can share also where they can connect more with you. I would say when I talk to a few friends, first of all, they all feel overwhelmed when there is this AI buzzword. And I can tell you that despite I'm now considered an AI expert, I'm also overwhelmed on a daily basis with all these AI tools, all these news. It's like feeling overwhelmed is part of the game as of right now.

[59:42] But also what I can tell you that we are still at the very beginning. You don't have to know everything about AI. I do not know everything about AI. I do not know how to code with AI. I do not know how to integrate and do automation like deep stuff. I don't know that sort of thing.

[59:59] So it's totally okay to not know everything. Absolutely. Second thing, which is very, important for me is if you think it's already oversaturated, you have no idea what's going on. So most people, when I say about AI is that, but everybody's talking about AI is oversaturated. No, no, no, no, no. It's, I think it's still very, very, very, very early right now.

[1:00:23] So if you're thinking to whether you should start or not start because a lot of people already are doing it, just stop and start. Like you got to do this ~ six months from now, 12 months from now, 16 months from now, it's just gonna be more and more more more saturated. I saw this morning a girl that with four posts.

[1:00:46] grew to 130,000 followers on Instagram with four posts because all the four ones went absolutely crazy viral. And I'm like, okay, this nuts... this is definitely not over saturated. And this was actually amazing. Do you remember there was a trend, I think maybe a month ago or like a month and a half ago or something, maybe two months ago, I don't even remember where, you would take selfies with celebrities and then with a smooth transition, you will go to another celebrity.

[1:01:14] Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, totally. was blew up like crazy and two of my videos also went viral because I jumped on it very, very quickly. So now this girl, what she did is that she took that concept but integrated explanatory videos on history about that. So for example, she created a video like that where she is on the Titanic and then she's just literally interviewing guys from that age, from the movie and just tell them, hey guys, this is about to happen.

[1:01:45] Like, why are you still here? Like, what's your background? Like, basically she was trying to make explanatory videos on historic stuff. She's still trying to make it. I think she posted another video this morning. And so it's really fascinating. If you want, I can even find it out if you still have a couple of minutes.

[1:02:00] Because I found it fascinating Yeah, yeah, sure. to see ~ such a... ~ great structure that is very, simple and is very similar to what it used to be a trend, but she applied it to a slightly different concept and it just blew up like crazy. And I find it absolutely amazing because you can apply this to ~ explanatory videos for F1, explanatory videos for politics, explanatory videos to so many different things and it's just amazing.

[1:02:29] So let me show it to you. I found it now. Oh my God. This morning she was as 130K followers or last night like crazy, crazy. Look, five videos. This is 2.5 million, 1 million, 5.4 million, 6.8 million, 1 million soon. This one probably is like the most recent video. Absolutely crazy. Absolutely crazy.

[1:02:51] So let's watch this one for example. Isn't it crazy? Yeah, this is incredible, man. Thanks for sharing that. No, no, it's super cool. And again, just as a word of wisdom, if you think it was already over saturated, overcooked, these girls in five posts, 150k followers. And I believe that in three, four days, she's going to be a half a million and pass me despite me doing this for six years. You know what I mean?

[1:04:14] So you just need one simple idea that can take potentially around like a trend that was already expired. Because this trend, if you post a video like that, we're just like without talking, it will not do well right now because the trend is gone. But she took that just have it little bit spice it up and then absolutely nuts.

[1:04:33] Yeah, totally. And I mean, you've shared so much value in this session. Where do you want to send people? To your Instagram to check you out more? And what's the best place? Yes, yes, absolutely. My Instagram is my main platform. So at Sferro21. So at S-F-E-R-R-O-2-1. Yeah, and I'll link up your AI one as well.

[1:04:52] This is Sferro.ai right? Yeah. Dot AI. Yeah, so the AI one, if you want to check it out, is sferro.ai. So S-F-E-R-R-O dot AI. Yeah, I'll... Perfect. I'll link up all the resources we talked about in this session. I really appreciate you for coming on and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.

[1:05:10] Ciao for now. Bye. Bye bye, thanks.