Welcome to Crash Course Show and tell.
Woo.
I'm thrilled to share with you the exciting experiments that
we've been working on in our shop over these past two weeks.
These hands on test have revealed some fascinating insights into
tools that can revolutionize your workflow, and I can't wait to walk
you through each and every one.
Let's start with our very first experiment.
Ooh, yeah.
Our first experiment.
Combines ready, AI and super base.
So Ready AI is
a way to supercharge your web development process.
This combination of Ready AI and Supabase is a complete game changer.
I wanna focus on the fact that.
This is going to really allow you to go at speed for those of you who are creating
something you wanna deploy quickly.
Great for MVPs, and also an excellent tool for building out a fully
functionable long-term website.
So I've been creating websites for.
10 years now and what this tool combo has allowed me to
accomplish has exploded my mind.
Ready?
Ai, for those of you who have heard of Vibe coding is sort of in that direction.
It handles all the structural elements and then super base provides.
All of the backend infrastructure and together the setup is really perfect
for marketing teams needing quick web solutions, or for entrepreneurs wanting
to rapidly prototype their ideas.
Ready?
AI up on the screen here.
Now I'm gonna just give you a quick little sample of what it can do.
I've got a bunch of sites out here that I've built.
Let's just do a little sample project.
So the pricing on this tool is credit based and there are a lot
of other vibe coding type AI, website building tools out there.
I've experimented with a long list of them, spent a few thousands on
prescriptions or subscriptions, excuse me, at this point.
But at the end of the day, this one I have found to be the absolute best.
So here we go.
I want a one page website and ready.
AI works best if you have a brand guide or a brand already defined.
You could certainly create sites if you don't have the brand yet
defined, but you're gonna get much better results if you have a brand.
I'm just gonna say, I want a one page website for a company focused on selling
lawn mowing services in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area where I live here.
And so this feature here is that's where you would image of
your brand guide if you had one.
Again, this sample that I'm making here is really just meant to be kind of silly,
just to kinda give you a sense of it.
So here it is on the right hand side, it's creating the site, building
out all the back files and so forth.
And what I've learned with Ready AI is that it really likes to take its design.
So the more specific you can be, the more precise you can be, the better
off it's going to to go for you.
You'll definitely get better results the more concrete you are with your prompts.
I recommend with this tool workshopping your prompts in
chat, GPT or Claude first, the.
Yeah.
Way that I've been doing that is I've been uploading a lot of,
like the designs I wanna create.
So I'll create them first in let's say Canva or Photoshop or InDesign,
and then I'll upload all those static images to chat GBT and chat.
GBT does a really good job of helping me build out prompts.
It's familiar with Ready ai, so I'll ask it to make the
prompt with Ready AI in mind.
And what that does it is, is it allows me to with ready ai, things
like hex colors, CSS elements, font styles margins, all those sorts of
things that really will allow you to reproduce your design if you have a
design that you're already working with.
But here in this little demo, I'm showing you of course, what it looks
like to create something without a working design of any kind,
certainly another path you can take.
So it's building it all out based on just very liminal, minimal, I
should say, data, and you can really workshop with a back and forth.
So this is, you know, this is a very generic site.
Like any website that you're creating, unless you have photography and copy
and a brand, you're not going to be able to make something unique, however.
Great MVP if I was a, a startup that wanted to start this business,
this really does allow me to begin pretty quickly and jump right in.
So I would continue to be able to workshop what I wanted.
I could upload images, I could upload photos that I wanted it to use.
All of those capabilities and more are really easy to use in the interface here.
And I talked about superb base.
So this is all very front end orientated with the integrations here.
We've got super base, we've got Stripe, Shopify, Cannelly,
MailChimp, Google Analytics.
Superb base is the one that I find to be the most important.
So the super base, I can do something really simple like build out.
Text message alert functionality.
So I could say I want to add text message
chat live from the website using super base and SendGrid.
I use SendGrid for all my email marketing and text message marketing needs.
Just because its pricing is really inexpensive and it.
Seems to work quite well with Super Base Two.
So if I had already connected Superb base and I had my super base set up, I
would be able to just hit this button.
It will automatically connect to your superb base.
Super base has its own pricing, also credit base, but it's based on usage.
I have.
Not yet crossed the need from free to paid.
But if you had a, a lot of visitors or a really active site, you would
certainly need to take the super base pricing into consideration too.
And what I love so much about this integration is that I don't
even need to go into super base or learn how to use that tool.
I can do everything that I need here from Ready AI for the most part.
There are a few times when you'll have to jump directly into superb base and
do something, and what's great about the way the Ready AI works is that
it'll tell you exactly what to do.
You can just ask it.
So I would, for example, at the end of this prompt, I would ask it, is there
anything I need to do with Super Bay?
And just in case you got lost here, it's building out a backend that will
make these advanced features like text messaging or email marketing possible.
I could use this to do invoicing.
I could use this to do a myriad of other more complex tasks that
would be quite expensive if I were working with a traditional
developer or a traditional agency.
And most interestingly to me, I can build out this.
Technology without necessarily knowing a lot about how it all works.
Having said that, you'll certainly reach a point with Ready AI and Super base
where if you don't have familiarity with C-S-S-H-T-M-L JavaScript, you will reach
a point where you can only go so far.
Like any tool, this tool works best if you have the knowledge to use it right.
I think a lot of AI is kind of like handing chainsaws to a fourth grader.
That isn't to say that the chainsaw isn't a powerful tool, but if you don't know
how to use it, you can only get so far without causing some sort of damage.
I do wanna show you what the super base platform itself actually looks
like since I keep referencing it.
So here's where all my database functionality is running and.
I would have to learn through this process.
If it were my first rodeo, I'd have to learn how to work with something.
For example, like the A API Keys that Send Grid has.
And the great thing about Ready is that it will walk you through that step by step.
It'll give you specific instructions about exactly how.
So here you see it's got add your send grid, API Key.
I could ask it directly, walk me through exactly how to do that in
CPA base and it, it would tell me.
So really, really powerful tools here.
We could go much deeper, but I promised it was just show and tell.
Before I leave this first experiment, though, I cannot resist the desire to
show you just this one other piece.
For those of you who are more interested in like CMS functionality.
Or content management system functionality that's often associated
with platforms like WordPress or Webflow.
This feature really does set ready.ai apart from some of its competitors.
I can install a Figma plugin and I can export this directly to
Figma, and then from Figma, again, we're kind of getting into more
advanced territory here from Figma.
Could.
Export and publish into something like Webflow.
If I was a little bit more old school, I could do something
with something like WordPress.
If I was a little bit more advanced or really interested in the most
modern path, I suppose I could focus on like a headless CMS.
But my point is you can get all the way from concept to working
content management system because of the integration with Figma.
So this is a really exciting feature for me anyways, when it comes to Ready ai.
Anyways, let's move on now to our second experiment.
So we've explored the powerful combination of Ready, AI and super base.
Next I wanna explore the powerful combination of Opus Clip and Art list.io.
As we're in our first experiment, we were focused on website
creation and development.
We're now gonna focus on video content creation.
So let's pull up here.
Opus Clip.
I love creating videos, but I do not love editing them.
That is not my favorite thing.
And with Opus Clip.
There are a myriad of features available, but at the end of the day, what Opus Clip
does is it makes it possible to turn any long form video into short form video.
And so you do this by uploading your file and then Opus clip will automatically
trim that file up into short form content.
And I've got one that I did here where I uploaded it 'cause I wanted you to kind
of, to be able to see what it looks like.
It does have some advanced features.
You can edit the video, you can enhance the speech.
You can do B roll, you can do captions too.
And captions are actually the thing that first attracted me to Opus Clip.
I'd been spending a lot of time on creating my own caption files and
I was looking for a solution and I saw all these like influencers that
were using seemingly the same setup for their captions and realized
they were all using the same tool.
They were using Opus clip.
So if I open up my video here, one of the things that I also really
love about Opus Clip is it uses an algorithm to rank things like my hook,
my flow, the value, the trend, and.
So I can decide which of the clips to use.
I had originally, I had a whole bunch of clips in this first
version of this video, and I cut out everything except for this one.
You can edit the captions, you can play with the video.
The video editor, I don't think is quite as advanced as some of the other tools I
wanna talk about in future show and tells.
It's certainly not as advanced as descrip.com, but it does a
great job at just doing the thing that it says it's going to do.
And I think there's a lot of value in that because sometimes when we get
into these AI tools or these advanced marketing and communications tools,
they have so many different features that they can kind of be overwhelming.
So I think one of the things that.
Opus does well is that it really just sticks to its core offering and
here you'll see I can go in and I can change the way the captions look.
I've got all sorts of pre-created templates for captions.
I can change my, I can make like my own branded version of the captions.
I can decide where I want them to live.
But again, this was what first got my attention.
I saw all the influencers using these like same caption styles
and they're very eye catching.
I think we often underestimate how important captions are, not just
from an accessibility standpoint, but also from a user experience
standpoint because so much of video.
Is being consumed on mobile and therefore it's being consumed in places where
either audio is being listened to in headphones with background noise, or
it's just not being listened to at all.
So being able to read as I watch is really important to me as an
end user and likely quite important to many of your users as well.
Again, there are some advanced features.
I'm not gonna get into them just because I think they're less exciting,
but the captions and the ability to enhance speech and cut up videos into
short form content, that's really what makes Opus Clips so magical.
The other tool that I like to use in conjunction with Opus Clip.
Is called Artlist.io, and Artlist.io has an extensive library of
music transitions and AI voices.
So a simple look at what that means.
I can go into the AI voice makeover section here of art list.io, and I can.
Type up a script, or if I have a recording of me that I wanna change
to a different narration voice, I can upload the video file and I can
pick from a lot of different options.
So as where many of the AI tools, including like descrip.com, they
have more like limited options, I would say, as far as the voices.
When it comes to ar list.io for 20 bucks a month, I've got this huge library.
And if you're like me, it takes quite a while just to pick out which of
the voices you actually want to use.
But the voices here are very, very realistic very distinguished.
And you can just, again, really dive in and pick out a
voice that works best for you.
You can also clone your own voice.
So maybe you wanna clone someone in your office or in your on
your team so that you're able to combine AI voiceover usage with an
authentic voice all at the same time.
Again, this is really powerful because I can type, Hey, I want
to record this magical thing.
I am typing.
I can type that.
I can just generate.
And here you see I've done this for a bunch of other videos.
I've got, so I've got a bunch of files in there and I had chosen, it
seems, I had preset it to the prime time voice and with just a little
bit of wait time here, it's gonna generate an audio file of that voice.
And super powerful.
I can cut these together, I can have multiple voices, I
can do all sorts of things.
And for those of you who are making the connection, I can jump back into
Opus clip and I can upload those audio files that I can combine my video and
my AI voiceover all at the same time.
Woo.
The efficiency here, the gains that you can make are remarkable.
I've been able to turn what used to be hours of editing into
just like a matter of minutes.
And when you're typing it out, of course, and using ai, you don't
have to worry about filler words.
You don't have to worry about getting distracted and
navigating away from the script.
It stays really tight and clean.
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you can tell the difference
between the AI voices and the real voices.
That's a conversation for a different time.
The robots are definitely slowly but surely starting to take over.
I want next to look at
the third experiment, which is less focused on AI tools and more
focused on expanding capacity and capability for a fractional team.
On a serious note here, marketing teams, communication teams, creative teams,
technology teams have gotten stretched more thin than they've ever been before.
And so with limited budgets, fractional hiring, I really do believe to be
the path of the presence and future.
So how do you do that?
What about the things that the AI tools can't figure out?
Fiverr and f freelance.com are two tools that allow you to access fractional
talent, and they've both been around for about the same amount of time.
They ha have similar functionalities, but work for different use cases.
Fiverr works best for short term project based work.
And freelancer.com is really built with long-term projects, kind of someone you
would like hire almost as a W2 employee.
So they have different use case scenarios, but similar functionality.
They work conceptually in a similar fashion.
I'm gonna focus on Fiverr just because that's where I've spent more of my time
and because I personally, I like the user experience a little bit better.
A few disclaimers here.
If you're going to experiment with something like Fiverr or freelance.com,
I highly encourage you to go into it with the mindset of it's gonna
take a little bit of time to find someone that works well for you.
You're going to have to spend a little bit of money to figure
out how to use it and so forth.
You're also gonna really need to balance the difference between.
American based, US based talent and offshore based talent.
When I'm using fiverr.com, it's usually because I don't want to be working with
someone local, and that tends to mean that I'm doing more like administrative tasks.
I'm working with maybe something that's more granular that just requires
quote unquote, some like people power.
I'm not using fiverr.com or freelance.com personally to do anything design related.
That's not to say you can't do design work here, but I would much prefer
to work with someone local when it comes to design or photography.
Okay.
So with that in mind then, what do I use.com for?
What could you use it for?
So just a few use case scenarios.
I've been.
Following Fiverr as you may also have been for quite a while now, and what
they've really done in the last few years that's unique is they've started
to allow freelancers to specialize.
So one use case scenario, email list cleanup.
Maybe you're like many of the marketers or teams that I meet and you've got a giant
email list, but it's just a total mess.
Maybe our CR CRM is kind of a chaotic nightmare.
Now you could use some AI tools to augment some of this, but.
I do a lot of data cleanup with Fiverr.
I'll find someone such as this search is surfacing that
specializes in data cleanup.
I'll give them my Excel file and they will get rid of duplicates.
They'll add fields, they'll add additional data using third party tools.
They'll help me organize it and they'll give it back to me in a really nice clean
CSV file and I can in very short order.
I can run what is essentially like a 30 or 40 or 50 hour project,
and I can clean up an entire data set, which is a really big deal.
Another use case scenario that has worked really well for me is just managing
like LinkedIn direct messages campaigns that are based on, on that approach.
Whether you classify that as warm or cold outreach, there are
people who specialize in that.
So you can hand over, for example, your LinkedIn profile, URL, and you can ask to
run a campaign to at a targeted search.
Now, you can do this with automation tools, but automation tools are
strictly against LinkedIn's, TOS, and also I just don't like there to be.
A lack of humanity.
If you're like me, my inbox is full of people who are using this, like in
these automation tools where they're just sending out boiler plate stuff.
And what I like about working with someone on five who specializes in this is I
can customize the campaigns and I can focus on managing all of the responses.
So there's still like a very real human-centric element.
A third use case scenario.
You can get into actual social media management.
Now I would strongly advise you to only do this if you have a, a clearly laid out
brand guide, if you have a clear strategy, if you've done that heavy lifting.
Not brought, but I can for what is a pretty inexpensive cost,
hand over my social media content.
Schedule someone on Fiverr, and for a few hundred dollars a month, I can
have that schedule completely managed for me, where I'm only needing to
provide let's say, the incoming content.
Maybe it's the profiles that I'm featuring or the blog post or
what have you, and I can argument that with this rational talent,
there are a lot of other use case scenarios you could use this.
To augment, augment your accounting needs.
You can get really creative with how you use this if you're willing to test it.
I'm certainly not suggesting that this should be the only way
that you build out your team.
But fractional talent, especially offshore talent, is allowing teams
I'm working with to accomplish a lot more with small budgets.
So there's just no denying that this is something worth considering.
freelancer.com and fiverr.com, perhaps a valuable path for you
as you consider all these other things that we've looked at today.
I hope that this show and tell has been informational and educational,
and most importantly, valuable to you,
these three.
Experiments combined, really demonstrate I think the incredible potential of
these modern tools and platforms.
We can streamline development, content creation, development
of MVPs, development of content.
We can do this with smaller budgets.
Than we've ever had before.
Remember, crash course, show and tell is about learning and growing together
through practical experimentation.
I encourage you to take these different tools and insights and
apply them to your own projects.
The goal here is to minimize the gaps between ideation and implementation,
helping you bring your vision to life more quickly and efficiently than ever before.
Thanks again for joining me today.
I really look forward to hearing from you about how these
tools transform your workflow.
You are interested in upskilling your team with custom created education, which
we're currently piloting for Salesforce.
I would love to have a conversation.
All of the work that we do is as cutting edge as possible, and my
goal is to really empower teams to upskill during the AI revolution.
Thanks again for tuning in.
Hope to see you month to month on craft course, show and tell, which means
I will see you later in September.
Bye.
After spending considerable time manually creating captions, I noticed
many influencers using identical caption styling in their content.
Upon investigation, I discovered they were all utilizing Opus Clip.
Now, as I open my video project, you'll see another powerful feature
- Opus Clip's algorithmic analysis that evaluates factors such as hook
effectiveness, content flow, value delivery, and trend alignment.
This analysis helps determine which clips are most effective.
In this example, I started with multiple clips but refined it down to this
single one based on the analytics.
While you can edit both captions and video content, it's worth noting that
the video editor, while functional, isn't as sophisticated as some other
tools we'll discuss in future sessions.
While not as comprehensive as platforms like Descript, Opus Clip
excels at its core functionality.
This focused approach is actually beneficial, as many AI and marketing
tools can become overwhelming with their extensive feature sets.
Opus Clip's strength lies in its specialized focus.
As you can see here, the platform offers extensive caption customization options,
including pre-designed templates and the ability to create branded caption styles.
You have full control over caption placement and styling.
The professional-looking captions are what initially caught my
attention, as they create a polished, consistent look across content.
Captions serve a dual purpose - they're essential for accessibility and
significantly enhance the viewing experience, particularly given
current video consumption trends.
With the majority of video content being viewed on mobile devices, often
in environments where audio isn't ideal or available, captions have become
crucial for content accessibility.
This feature ensures your message reaches viewers effectively, regardless
of their viewing environment.
While Opus Clip offers additional advanced features, its core
strengths - caption generation, speech enhancement, and short-form content
creation - are what truly set it apart.
Let me introduce you to another tool that pairs excellently with Opus Clip.
Art List.io complements Opus Clip perfectly with its comprehensive library
of music, transitions, and AI voices.
Let me demonstrate the AI voice makeover feature.
You can either input a script directly or upload an existing recording to convert
it to a different voice, with numerous high-quality voice options available.
Unlike many AI tools including Descript which offer limited voice options,
Art List.io provides an extensive voice library for just $20 per month.
The selection is so comprehensive that choosing the perfect voice for your
project can take considerable time.
Another crucial consideration is the choice between
US-based and offshore talent.
I primarily utilize Fiverr for administrative and operational tasks that
require dedicated human resources but don't necessarily demand local expertise.
These tasks are often detail-oriented and time-intensive but don't
require extensive creative input.
While these platforms offer design services, I personally reserve
creative work like design and photography for local talent.
Let's explore the specific use cases where these platforms excel.
Fiverr has evolved significantly in recent years, introducing
specialized service categories that cater to specific business needs.
One particularly valuable use case is email list management.
Many marketing teams struggle with maintaining clean,
organized email databases.
These specialists utilize third-party tools to enhance your data, adding
valuable fields and organizing information into a clean, usable CSV format.
What might typically be a 40-50 hour internal project can be completed
efficiently and professionally, delivering significant time savings.
Another effective application is LinkedIn outreach campaign management.
Whether you're focusing on warm or cold outreach, specialized
freelancers can execute targeted campaigns using your LinkedIn profile.
They handle the entire process, from identifying prospects
to initiating conversations.
While automation tools exist for this purpose, they often violate
LinkedIn's terms of service and lack the personal touch that's
crucial for effective networking.
Many of us have experienced the frustration of receiving
generic, automated messages that feel impersonal and ineffective.
Working with Fiverr specialists allows for customized campaigns while
maintaining authentic human interaction.
You retain control over campaign customization and response management,
ensuring genuine engagement.
The third major use case is social media management.
However, this approach is most effective when you have established brand guidelines
and a clear content strategy in place.
For a relatively modest investment, you can outsource your entire
social media content management to a Fiverr professional.
For just a few hundred dollars monthly, they'll handle your
complete posting schedule.
You only need to provide the raw content - whether that's customer
profiles, blog posts, or other materials.
This fractional talent approach can be applied to numerous
other business needs as well.
From accounting support to specialized administrative tasks,
the possibilities are extensive if you're willing to experiment.
While this shouldn't be your only staffing strategy, leveraging
fractional talent, particularly offshore resources, enables teams to
dramatically expand their capabilities while maintaining cost efficiency.
Both Freelancer.com and Fiverr.com represent compelling options worth
exploring, especially in conjunction with the other tools we've discussed today.
These three experiments we've explored have been carefully selected to provide
you with practical, actionable insights.
Together, these tools and platforms demonstrate the remarkable
potential of modern technology to transform how we work.
They enable us to streamline development, content creation, and MVP
launches - all while operating with leaner budgets than previously possible.
This is what Crash Course Show and Tell is all about: learning and growing
together through hands-on experimentation.
I encourage you to take these tools and insights and apply
them to your own projects.
Our goal is to bridge the gap between ideation and implementation, enabling
you to bring your vision to life with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
I'm excited to hear how these tools transform your workflow, and
I thank you for joining me today.
If you're interested in upskilling your team through custom-designed education
programs - like our current Salesforce pilot - I'd welcome a conversation.
We're committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions that empower
teams to thrive in this AI revolution.
Thank you for your attention today.
I look forward to seeing you next month for another edition
of Crash Course Show and Tell.
Join us again in September.
Thank you, and goodbye.