Join us for a dynamic episode of The AI Readiness Project with Christian Robins, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of 11 Dollar Bill, and co-founder of Agent11. Christian brings over 25 years of experience at the intersection of design, visual effects, and emerging tech—and he’s now guiding creative teams through real-world adoption of AI tools inside high-pressure production environments. This is not theory—this is happening now.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝗻?

• Go behind the scenes with a creative leader who’s integrating generative AI into live-action and post-production workflows.
• Hear what it actually feels like to run a business that’s embraced AI from the inside out.
• See how traditional storytelling craft can evolve—not be replaced—by machine intelligence.
• Discover how brands like Ocean Spray, Netflix, Red Bull, and Adidas are navigating this shift.

𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁:

Christian Robins is a multi–Emmy Award-winning creative director and co-founder of 11 Dollar Bill, a post-production studio known for bold, design-led storytelling. He’s also behind Agent11, an AI consultancy helping creatives deploy generative tools in real-world pipelines. Christian’s work spans clients like Manchester United and Domino’s, and his talks on creativity, leadership, and AI-human collaboration have earned him a respected voice in the field. Whether directing high-profile campaigns or composing music as Moses Rae, he’s always exploring the edge of what’s next.

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[Music] forget trying to keep up with AI It's

0:05

moving too fast It's time to think differently about it Welcome to the AI readiness project hosted by Kyle Shamim

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and Anne Murphy They're here to help you build the mindset to thrive in an AIdriven world and prepare for what's

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next [Music] Ann Murphy

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what's happening I'm Shannon Welcome welcome welcome everybody to the AI

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readiness project Now I don't know if you know this but we normally have a different opening and I'm normally not

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sitting in front of whatever I'm sitting in front of now Uh so so I I I've been

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scrambling So so hey Ann how's it going Well it's great I have been having the

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best time the last Well familywise we have had some delightful things going on

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We had a high schooler graduate So everybody's in town and we're having all this all this delicious family time But

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also I've been having a wonderful time with my dad who is a big fan of Chachi

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BT and who has done Yeah And it's I mean we've sat right next to each other and

1:18

I've watched you know every step to kind of see you know what kind of where his

1:23

brain sends him And we did some troubleshooting that reminded me of when

1:29

remember when they launched it with and it was just what remember when Sam Alman launched Chetchy Boutique and it was

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just like this little square in the middle and you're like no documentation and you look at it you're like this

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can't possibly be the portal to the last 40 years of the internet that just

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doesn't knowledge it doesn't compute So I have

1:53

la Oh okay Vicki Yeah we we're working on some things still Vicki And uh did it

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work Did it you tell us You let us know if it worked Um

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but it's been a real delight to watch my

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dad's progression from being like really really good thought partner with ChachiPT to like elite level He's 82

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Yeah he's 82 What kind of things is he doing with it Well um everything from

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you know taking a well he just got multimodal so now he's taking pictures of all the things right He he kind of

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maxed out what could be done with just the the free version Yeah So now he's

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like all of us you know taking pictures of every damn thing and asking more questions Um but particularly because

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he's into cars and other you know electronic items it's fun to be able to

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troubleshoot with that We have a broken dryer Nice What else We have something else that's broken in the house Broken

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dryer Broken something else that's getting worked on And then um what he's

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been working on the past couple of days is some really deep it's you know it's financial stuff but it's also your value

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stuff your legacy So he's been having conversations Wow That are like both the

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personal you know and the values and the personality but also like the analytical

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the kind of black and white kind of stuff And so and it how it has all come

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together has been extremely helpful to him Wow That's amazing That's that's just amazing So so where are you now

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Like where where are you h how ready for AI are you feeling Like where's your So

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stuff You might not be thinking about it at all but but where's Well I have been in particular because I

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I have thoughts and feelings right now about our relationships with AI I've

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been talking about it a little bit but the new advanced voice really brought

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some of these feelings to the four again as I noticed myself upset that Ember has

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a mild vocal fry now The em the voice Ember is my voice is my friend He was

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inspired by Sam Alman Yeah exactly No for real He's got this like it's just

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a little but like any hint of vocal fry can't handle it So Amber's got a vocal

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fry One of my friends was texting while she was camping because she was trying to talk to her AI you know voice

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advanced voice and she all the voices had changed and she was very very sad

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I've been looking into like how we identify with things and people based on sounds and like the impact of voice on

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our like emotional connection to things is profound

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It has to do with procreation and dominance I mean this is like it has to

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do with class and power and a feeling of like I'm like you or I'm not like you

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based on your voice your tone your accent all this stuff And so I'm really

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I do not feel like we as a society are ready for AI um in the context of AI

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human relationships We are not prepared for what's to come We don't have enough

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therapists We don't have enough coaches who are who have AI competency to deal

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with clients and patients who are in relationships deepseated loving or

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respectful or whatever trusting relationships with AI companions And

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that's going to be all of us And anyone who thinks it's not going to be them okay fine But all your friends are your

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family your con your community your clients So it doesn't matter if you are everybody else is Well it's funny I mean

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I'm going to talk in the in the next segment I'm going to talk about something that Oh now I'm getting an

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echo all of a sudden Um I'm going to talk about something that um that that

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actually encourages people to dig deeper into that relationship Um

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what you're talking about reminds me of there's I came up with this the five

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stages of AI adoption that are kind of like the five stages of grief Stage three is this stage of dual wonder and

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fear right Where the AI is is awe

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inspiring right And like the new voice is subtle and weird and really good And

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at the same time it also brings up like oh like are we ready for this And it's like I think that that that

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feeling of this is the most awesome thing ever and is this the worst thing ever Like I I think we're going to

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constantly have to hold those two things in in our head you know

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Yes So the um the the research that I was looking into there was there were

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two studies One was by OpenAI and they clocked 40 million chat conversations

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for the for the study and then the other was with MIT and they had a thousand

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people but it was more nuanced qualitative you know what what was the

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conversation like and what they learned this is so weird what they learned is that um the

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if if the converse if the person if user tended toward shorter conversations

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with advanced voice They reported healthier emotional

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well-being If they talked too much that's when things started sliding

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downhill So it was really interesting And I think there's a five hour a day limit because I left my advanced voice

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on the other day by accident and I hit a limit Limited out Yeah the rate limited

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it out So I don't know I mean obviously the juryy's still out and those are just a couple of studies but um I guess if

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you wanted to if you were worried about it you could be like "Hey kids you can talk to

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Jasper today but only for half an hour right?" Or or in in short little spurts

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Well it's funny when you were saying there's not there's not enough therapists and and you know support people in the world to help people cope

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with this Where my mind immediately went is you know

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could there there will likely be specialized AIs that are those

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therapists right Like so so again right now we're working with very primitive

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versions of these tools that are very generalized So they can do everything from be our best friend to be our coach

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to be our counselor things like that I could see there being more sophisticated layers of this in the future where hey

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if I feel like I'm getting too wrapped up in this thing let me pull up you know the therapy bot which is designed to you

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know pull someone out of one of those relationships if it's getting unhealthy But I don't know like I think you're

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right I think I I don't think we're prepared for what's coming And and at

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the same time does it mean we shouldn't do it I mean I like I look at what your father's doing right now and that's

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that's remarkable stuff right And it I mean he's out here I've been trying to

9:54

I've been trying to get some work done today Kyle And my dad's out here talking to Ember at full blast Like just I mean

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they're best friends And I don't think that I would want my dad

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to not have this relationship You know what I mean I think I think that I've

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already seen how beneficial it is Now I'm we're lucky because I can also say

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to my dad "Hey part of the reason why you feel connected to Ember is because

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you know he talks like you right You know he sounds like he's about the same

10:30

level of wealthy or not wealthy as you are He sounds like he grew up right Like he has a trustworthy voice The timber of

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his voice is associated with trustworthiness That's why you like talking to him But there's all this

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research out like I love the line of of reason of the line of questioning around

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does it matter if if AI is sentient If

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we feel like it's sentient it I am hardressed to understand why it matters

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if it is or it isn't If we feel it I fully think it's an academic conversation The academics will say "Oh

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it's it's more fundamental than that It's not academic." But I agree If if humans are interacting with these things

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as sentient beings then then they're sentient beings for those people interacting So I'm right there with you

11:20

Um it also you know one of the things that's tied into what you're talking about is

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the fact that chat GPT now has long-term memory The fact that I think I think that the memory at this point is a year

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It and I assume that will expand to like all time Um

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these things are going to get better and better and better at giving you what you

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want because it knows your history It's going to be like your friend that remembers everything right Sometimes you

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may want that sometimes you may not but that's gonna it's not just that it is

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technically kind of like a human and that it sounds like them It's that now they've got the context of everything

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you've ever talked about And so I think this goes quite quite deep right Yes And

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by the way for people who are listening if you don't happen to know this you can

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remove some of the memories from Chat GPT memories If you go into your

12:20

personal settings and then it says like personalized Chat GPT and you go in there if it has a whole bunch of

12:26

memories that are like you know the one day you were randomly talking about flying tacos and you don't want it to

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keep kind of pulling toward that you can remove those memories And I've gone

12:38

through a couple of times and just removed them all because all of them were weird because maybe like if I've

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been doing a lot of client work or whatever it's just not relevant Um on

12:49

the other hand so that's a nice thing for us to be in control of did hear I think today that in the law due to the

12:57

lawsuit between OpenAI and the New York Times our deleted chats will now be kept

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not for 30 days but for like indefinitely Indefinitely Indefinitely

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Not only are including our deleted chats and our temporary chats Oh the temporary

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too Yeah Oh I wasn't worried about it with the deleted because but temporary

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isoe I thought temporary was like on the DL Huh Yeah

13:31

Oops I need to get a more interesting life before I worry about any of this Yeah

13:38

exactly Whenever I think about that stuff I'm like yeah Well are you gonna

13:45

um we are you going to tell us how AI ready you are when you talk about the one thing to pay attention to I think so

13:53

I I've I've had a breakthrough in the past two weeks

13:59

around AI And it's funny that what you brought up was how uncomfortable you are about how deep your relationship with is

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is with AI But here's here's where I want I wanna part of this Ann is me just

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articulating it because this is kind of a new idea so I don't have it super formed So part of this is I'd love just

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your reaction to it but I think it's also super interesting in the context of of what you just brought up Um

14:26

so I've got a new keynote presentation that I put together I literally just gave it the hour before before this Um

14:34

and and it's going to be a book and it's called feed your prompt Feed your prompt And the basic idea is

14:41

this The prompt is hungry It wants anything you can you can feed it right And and

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I'm not just talking about chat GPT This could be your image tool a music tool like any prompt But AI prompts are

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hungry They they want what you give them One of the things that we do is we treat

14:59

AI like it's a genius Well if I put anything in that prompt it's going to give me back brilliance

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But AI is not a genius But what AI is is it's an amplifier

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So whatever you put in it amplifies So if you put in what I call an it

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prompt you put in just kind you treat it like a tool Like chat GPT is like just this tool and and you just like write me

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a blog post about uh raising money for nonprofits It will write you a blog post about raising money for nonprofits

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But if it's an amplifier what do you have at amplify Well the ultimate thing you have at amplify is

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you And so what you put in the prompt is you And what does that mean You put in

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your ideas your dreams your point of view your brothers right Your questions

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your challenges And then it will take your ideas and whatever you're doing and it will amplify you And one of the

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things that I think we've seen just organically happen within our communities within the the salon and she

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leads AI is people are getting like unreasonably excited and empowered

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because all of a sudden they realize that their ideas can now be brought into the world and often in ways that were

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never possible before So my whole thing is about putting more of yourself into

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the prompt because what it will do is amplify you So it's shifting from thinking of AI as this tool that you use

16:31

like Google I put something in I get something out and more like a creative collaborator and what you do is use it

16:38

to amplify your desires your ideas your dreams all that sort of stuff And it

16:43

opens up and blossoms So that's kind of the that's the the the base of it Yeah

16:48

So what are your thoughts Well I mean you know how I feel about prompting in general which is that it's important and

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it's a good idea and I like that this and it should be done and that we

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shouldn't expect Czech GPT or any other you know AI model to it's not a magic

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it's not an easy button right It's not a magic bullet like we have to pour into it And I I I like that um the notion of

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feeding your prompt and that it is hungry and we know that it does want to please us So pouring that into it is

17:24

authentically Joe Yeah that book is going to be good Uh put me on the wait list Um

17:32

uh I think that

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the way that I think that this is where some of our

17:44

the way we've been conditioned in life will come will become really important

17:50

For example I think I said this the other lots of people have never been asked to share their point of view Yes

17:58

You know what I mean They don't know how to Why would anyone care Why even this nonscenti being why would anyone give a

18:06

[ __ ] what I have to say Right And so and they've never been in a position to give

18:12

someone instructions Like I was thinking about with my dad for example you know

18:18

and we like we had administrative assistance we had EAS we you know we

18:23

know how to like share what's needed in order for the context to you know be thorough enough for the person to make

18:29

good autonomous decisions My dad knows how to do that He spent his whole life doing that He's also a mechanic so he

18:36

knows how to like And so when he talks to Chad GPT he tells the whole story

18:42

right He says "I'm working in the I'm working in the garage and it's really

18:48

and I'm freezing and I just simply cannot try this one more time I'm

18:53

embarrassed to ask you but this fuse that fuse you know my end goal here is

18:59

that blah blah blah blah." He doesn't say "Ask it one little thing at a time." He pours it all in because that's how

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he's used to communicating It is in part because he's a white male in the United

19:12

States of America He's used to people listening to what he has to say He's he's mansplaining to the ultimate

19:18

mansplaining machine He's mansplaining to the mansplainer So yeah we got to all feel comfortable mansplaining now So So

19:25

the question Jennifer what what platform do you use Chat GPT The the way I'm thinking about this feed your prompt

19:32

concept is that it's for any prompt for any tool So it could be chat GPT could be claude you know is there a negative

19:40

thing about sharing too much of you It depends what you want out of the system

19:45

right Like I I don't think there's necessarily a risk about it but to Ann's point earlier about um about memory and

19:52

and managing memory there are times if if I want to generate an image in chat

19:58

GPT it actually now generates that image knowing all of the conversations that

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we've had So sometimes I'll put turtles in my images for the AI learning lab And

20:09

so sometimes it just randomly throws turtles in my images right So if I don't want that I have to turn that memory off

20:15

So So there's I think that I don't know that there's necessarily a negative about sharing too much of yourself I

20:22

think it's you know what you want to get out of the system and it's your job to

20:27

say are you getting that or not Right So you have this back and forth conversation Um as these things remember more of what

20:34

we talk about I think that we're going to have to become increasingly aware of that it knows all that stuff And there's

20:41

times when you want that and there's times that you don't And Ann to your point about people not being

20:48

not used to putting their point of view out there one of the things as I've been talking

20:53

about this with different people one of the things that I'm hearing consistently now is I'll say "Well you know like when

21:00

Chat GPT gives you back something that you don't like like do you yell at it Do you do you tell it you don't like what

21:06

it gave you?" And very often people are like "Oh no you can do that." Like so I

21:11

don't even think there's necessarily an awareness that this is a a back and forth conversation I think Google has us

21:19

so trained up to put in the minimal amount in that chat box as possible and what you get back is what you get back

21:25

and you don't question it That's the Google Chat GPT is the complete opposite of

21:30

that So I think that for those people that are not used to putting their point

21:35

of view out there having a point of view it's something they're going to have to learn how to do Um and you know I

21:42

personally find it very empowering Um but but yeah you can absolutely when chatbt gives you pack back a pile of

21:49

garbage tell it it gave you a pile of garbage And then what it'll often do is it'll give you another pile of garbage

21:56

And then what it forces you to do is go "Wait a minute Why do I think that's a pile of garbage?" Oh because it uses too

22:03

many fancy words And I don't like fancy words Hey chat GPT I don't like fancy words and then it'll get better right So

22:10

it it kind of forces you to refine your point of view if you're willing to put it in there But if you're not then it's

22:16

just going to keep giving you generic crap Yes Absolutely And then you're going to

22:21

run around saying that Chad GBT sucks and isn't worth it and that AI is a fad

22:27

and blah blah blah blah blah I like it's with prompting I I really really think

22:34

it's pay me now pay me later You can you can feed the prompt feed your prompt

22:39

upfront right And just give it all the things it needs Or it's going to come

22:45

like nipping and biting at you wanting more and you're going to be trying to

22:51

cajul a good output from it nudging it and like nurturing it It's the same

22:58

amount of time It's the same amount of brain calories Highly recommend pouring it all in first

23:04

and going from there And for the people who are worried about the like

23:11

you know some folks get worried about the number of conversations that you're

23:17

having or the number of prompts that you're putting in or using the word thank you and the impact that that has

23:22

on energy use Okay here's what I want to say If you're worried about that I hope

23:29

that you have like the squeakiest of cleanest and tiniest of carbon footprints in your in other areas

23:37

This is not this is not where I would choose to focus on my on the my my

23:42

footprint But if you do want to do that it's all the more reason to prompt well

23:48

upfront So you're not cycling and cycling and cycling and cycling to get a good output just do it right the first

23:54

time and then you're gonna have this lovely workflow in your conversation and

24:00

you'll be you'll be happier at the end So yeah feed your prompt Yeah exactly Let me let me give you I added a slide

24:06

in that I almost took out and then I put it back in because I heard this I think I heard this in one of my lives It might have even been you that said it but

24:12

someone told me this They were like well so let me give the context You know

24:18

we're we're neurospicy ADHDers right The speed of AI is intoxicating right So you

24:25

sit down you put in something you get the answer You put in something you get another answer Right It's intoxicating

24:30

If you want to get more mindful and intentional about putting your point of view in putting you in this is the slide

24:38

I put in When you sit down at Chat GPT take a moment pause

24:45

close your eyes breathe and ask yourself questions about what am I trying to

24:52

accomplish Who am I talking to How do I want to impact them What does success

24:57

look like Right Do an introspective little moment before you dive into the the chat hole and just check in with

25:04

yourself about what do you want in this moment with chat GPT And I think if you get yourself a little bit centered about

25:11

what you know what would success look like in this little session you'll approach it in a very different way So

25:16

don't just sit down and just throw anything in Sit down and say "What's my intention here?" And I that little act I

25:23

think will start to focus people to have more intentionality a more singular point of view the ability to go "Oh

25:29

that's not what I wanted I thought about this I know what I want That's not it Hey could you try it again until we get

25:34

it right?" So right I'll throw that out there examine the art of AI Exactly It is It

25:42

is And that reminds me of that phrase of good what is it Clear writing is clear

25:48

thinking or good writing is clear thinking and how you can you know when

25:53

you're just like when you just running down a rabbit hole like you're just like

25:58

what is this assignment I'm working on I don't know but I'm doing it real well and I'm doing it with gusto but it's not

26:05

even it's no longer the topic that I meant it to be Um so yeah I think t

26:11

taking that moment of pause and some of this comes from Suzanne Welker Jurgens

26:16

Some of it actually comes from CJ Walker CJ uh Fletcher when he was talking about

26:22

visualizing in your head what art you might want to make I think it was CJ I

26:27

think it was CJ that was the one Take take a moment Breathe before you take a moment I think it was CJ You're right

26:33

That's that's what it was because I knew it was associated with you I couldn't couldn't remember what it was Yeah

26:38

exactly And I I just I like that because it's like being in being in your person

26:44

when you interact with this thing and thinking of it as an amplifier of you I think there's something there So anyway

26:50

with that um we're about to bring up uh Christian I'm really excited about Christian but why don't you tell the

26:55

good people about She Leads AI So the mission of Sheile Leads AI is to

27:02

unite accomplished women to advance AI for global prosperity which is for sure

27:08

a very serious agenda and not an insignificant one and also underneath

27:14

that we have a lot of fun going about it So we have a she leads AI society which

27:20

is a delightful group of people We gather on mighty networks We have member jams Yesterday we had one on um

27:29

make make.com which you know love it or hate it Um it exists Uh so we have

27:35

member jams we have we have secret sauce It's it's a thing That's how I feel

27:42

about it I'm like here's how I do automations I get somebody's Stripe account and I

27:48

pay them money to do it Um

27:54

um we have fun social things every Saturday Every Saturday all women in AI

27:59

28:05

we talk about it kind of like this part like with me and Kyle like what's going on What are you working on How how you

28:12

know how ready are you um and just enjoy ourselves together feeling like we're in

28:19

our tribe of people who understand where we're coming from So she leads AI It's it's awesome and I'm delighted to be a

28:25

part of it It's a good thing Yeah it's it's really good And and similarly the AI salon um AI salon we created the week

28:33

after Chat GPT came out Um Leah Fon and I uh she's a professional photographer out of Boston started it really just as

28:40

a way to have a conversation with people that are curious about AI um and curious about the future and how it impacts us

28:46

and things like that And we similarly you've got uh she leads uh AI society

28:52

and we just started the AI salon mastermind which is a tier where if people want to step up the conversation

28:57

have a more focused conversation um that's there and it's launched and it's out there and we're figuring it out and

29:03

what we want it to be and what we want it to be when it grows up and and it's really really exciting So uh if you

29:09

haven't checked out the salon it's always free Um the mastermind's there if you kind of want to step up the conversation and uh yeah um do that So

29:17

like one of the things that I'm really excited about is that we've got a lot of

29:23

crossover members and it would be very easy for us to go in our corners and say

29:28

well this is my community this is my community And one of the things that I've learned over and over again is that the cross-pollonization of members of

29:36

all these different communities is actually really really important Um in fact you know one of the one of

29:42

Christian's best friends um Brent Peterson is always on the uh my my AI

29:47

office hours And so there there's all these different connections And when

29:52

you're this early in in something as transformative as AI the more people you

29:58

know that are figuring this out and looking at things through different lenses it's the only way that that I

30:03

know that you can survive how fast this stuff is moving So so with that absolutely So check this out real quick

30:10

I know we're bringing Christian up in a second Last night I went to the Open AI forum which is now I think anyone can

30:18

join the forum And they had a networking uh meeting for women And this what was

30:25

so interesting because think about this This is open AI It's very large company They have how many users Granted women

30:33

in AI subset women in AI who are going to show up online blah blah blah But I

30:39

knew probably I'm going to guess there were fewer than a hundred people there and I knew

30:45

probably 15 or 20 of the women who were there That's awesome Yeah This is this

30:51

is still a really small world of people that are really paying attention to this stuff right now Yeah Yeah Make friends

30:58

Make friends everybody All right Well listen we're bring um I just want to say a few words before

31:05

we bring him up So Christian has spoken I think twice now at the AI salon Um he

31:10

he works out of Boulder He'll tell you about what he does but he is one of those guys that is like remarkably adept

31:18

at AI and hyper aware of how to do what he

31:24

does without AI And he works he works in video and video post-production So some

31:29

of his customers hate AI and don't want him to touch it Some of them want him to use it all the time and and he is really

31:36

adept at at living in that transition space between these two worlds And so I

31:42

I think in terms of AI readiness I think those people that can be translators for

31:49

people who don't know AI don't understand it maybe hate it and come in I think he's one of those guys So I'm

31:54

super excited to bring him up So with that Christian hey what's happening How's everybody doing See you man Good

32:02

to see you too Thank you being here Yeah this is exciting Yeah Yeah So what Oh

32:09

yeah Go ahead I have I have a little uh TV timeout The people who are doing

32:15

whatever is happening in our house something related to my washing machine I need to go ask them to lower their

32:22

volume So I'll be back in a couple minutes Well that's good I'll get We'll get

32:27

Christian talking about himself So there we go Yeah I could do that I could do that all day So yeah Exactly So So yeah

32:33

Why don't you tell us you know introduce yourself tell us you know what you do your background and and uh you know if

32:39

you could give us just some context of like that that spectrum You and I had lunch It was such an interesting

32:45

conversation where you were like I've got some clients that hate this stuff and some that love it and you know where

32:51

am I in this world So um talk to us about who you are and what you do Absolutely Well great to see everybody

32:58

Um and uh yeah my name is Christian Robbins I'm co-founder and chief creative officer of $11 bill which is

33:05

where I'm at right now And uh we're a post-production house Um which means we do editing motion graphics VFX color

33:14

audio everything that happens basically after the production Um so we've had

33:19

this big opportunity Is that correct Is that correct That is correct All right There you go I'll leave that up there

33:25

Yeah Um so you know over the course of years we've obviously had to you know integrate new technologies into what we

33:33

do and um you know from as standard deaf to high def from you know uh when Final

33:40

Cut came in um you know RED cameras generative AI HD you know I mean there's

33:47

there's people who fear this and then there's the others that try to figure out okay how will this help what I want

33:54

to do and what we really want to do is storytell Um so anything and that's as

34:00

basic as it gets right And you know I'm lucky enough to have had my entire career be in the creative industry right

34:08

Like I you know I grew up as an artist I loved being creative I used to draw comic books with my buddy Josh down the

34:14

street Um you know met Brent in college you know and you know he was more on the

34:20

coding aspect and I was more on the After Effects and editing thing and our paths always just merged you know here

34:27

and there And now it's so fun to see what people are actually doing with this

34:32

And you know I've been a pretty pragmatic guy over the years You know we've been doing this for about you know

34:38

I've been doing this for over 25 years now So I've seen a lot of things you know become flash in the pans or become

34:44

part of our workflow Um and you know to call it post-prouction now with what

34:51

I've kind of tasked myself with is really kind of doing a disservice right Like it's more of a it's it's more of

34:58

what we used to call it If anything it's more of a you know like a creative operating system these days which is

35:06

kind of an interesting approach right Because you know Kyle like you said I mean we've got clients all the clients

35:12

want to know about how to integrate this stuff into their workflows and then you know so I've spent my time you know put

35:20

sticking my neck out there right Like I you know I beta test anything right I I

35:26

love it Like I'll break my laptop I don't care what I do Like I'm the you know I'm I'm chief creative officer

35:33

right So I set the standard and the tone for for what we do around the office So um once I figure out what works you know

35:41

I give the team a shortcut So I break things so my team doesn't have to So it

35:46

keeps that floor high for everybody else and we can try these new tools and not worry about it So then if I can do that

35:52

first step internally it's a lot easier to do it externally right Yeah And what

35:57

to your point earlier about you know some people love it some people hate it they all want it right Oh interesting So

36:04

you know I recently wrapped up a project where um it was this great use of you

36:09

know combination of stock and generative video assets and the legal teams did not

36:16

know what to do But luckily a lot of these big brands have phenomenal legal teams that kind of decipher and say

36:22

"Okay well if we do this you know we're we're behind it." And what I'm finding is that a lot of my clients now you know

36:30

now that I've got this roster of work that I've done with a lot of these tools that are actually out there on broadcast

36:37

on the internet it gets a lot easier for the buyin to happen And that's been my big challenge lately It's not

36:43

necessarily learning and implementing and using the tools It's about how do you get client buy in you know from the

36:51

ground up which is you know kind of the psychology of it right you know it's a

36:56

new dance I have to do But that's huge Yeah And it's you know Go ahead Is there

37:02

Yeah Is there you you've been doing this for 25 years and you've had all all these different

37:07

technologies that come in that you know it sounds like you're you're willing to jump in figure it out I assume some of

37:14

those technologies historically people have looked at them and said "Oh that's going to ruin the industry." And and

37:19

they're certainly saying that about AI right now Yeah And I'm curious you know we we always seem to navigate through

37:26

it's going to ruin the industry and it doesn't ruin the industry I'm curious if if generative AI feels different to you

37:31

in any way than than other tech that's come before it Well you know it's always been easy to say no to new tech right

37:38

Like if I didn't want to use Final Cut to edit with I could use Premiere right They both did the same thing They might

37:44

have done them in a little bit different or more efficient way This is kind of completely different right This isn't

37:51

something I can just ignore right And it goes away right Yeah It's

37:56

not just an improvement on the existing process as you said It's no post-prouction is isn't even the right

38:02

term anymore right Yeah Yeah It's more of a framework right Like this whole workflow like and that's where I like to

38:09

bring everything back to like this traditional workflow you know not just for me but for any company usually has a

38:15

pretty linear set of in-n-out points right And what this has done is turned it into this sphere where things now

38:24

bounce back and forth without any friction So this traditional mindset

38:30

that people are trying to you know shove the square peg into the round hole now with is really confusing a lot of people

38:37

So this is where I think a lot of the fear comes in for people in my industry And like like I said it's creative right

38:44

You know to your point earlier and about AI's amplifying taste right Like all we

38:50

do is put our taste on screen Like artists all they do is just bear their soul right And put it out there So you

38:57

know people see this as a really personal attachment If there's something that's coming in that can do that for

39:04

them they think a lot of that personal touch that they add on to it won't be

39:10

there anymore It's not as simple as sitting down in front of an edit suite for you know a week and coming up with

39:15

art Now it's more of a you know kind of reverse engineered process where if you

39:20

don't understand how this tool works you're not going to give it what you are

39:26

and it's not going to make the things that you're capable of or pass that right It's not going to amplify your

39:32

creative vision So you know that's not it's so a lot of people think of this as

39:38

you know a bolt-on tool right like this little thing will help me make this x amount of days you know get off my

39:43

schedule this many hours a days It goes beyond that now And that's kind of the psychological trip of a lot of what's

39:49

happening It's it's new infrastructure right And people have to be they can't

39:56

be afraid of saying you know what this whole thing you know got this big suite

40:01

and all these studios around me right now that could all go away and we might need to dissolve and reinvent the whole

40:07

thing And like that's kind of what we've done as a company because we're small over the years you know adapting Oh

40:13

that's interesting Yeah Yeah Yeah Like you have to be okay with reinventing yourself But there's it's not to say

40:19

that you have lost any of like what made you great or useful right It's more

40:26

along the lines of now here's a new way for me to express myself And once you

40:31

wrap your brain around it the ability for you to express whatever it is you

40:37

want becomes completely crazy It's it's so expansive right Like it just wherever

40:43

you had limitations before those just keep getting erased Yeah And I think a lot of it too is um you know you're

40:51

teaching it what you value right Um and a lot of these tools you know that we use sure we use chat GPT but we use a

40:57

lot of generative AI tools like you know you know things for voiceovers things for music uh generative imagery and

41:05

video um and VFX now right Like we have this buffet of stuff that we're just

41:11

trying to get the most efficient point from A to B right So there's that part of it that clients love you know got to

41:18

turn stuff around quicker for cheaper Story of my life right But you still

41:23

need somebody who's got that you know creative vision And the ones that know these tools and how they work are the

41:30

most dangerous people in the room because there's no barriers to what that

41:36

what can be created anymore right And when you know those boundaries fall away

41:42

um things that you imagine stop being theoretical and you can start making

41:47

really crazy weird stuff now um which is what we're trying to do Um and you got

41:55

to bring that back to you know your internal workflow right and you know you know your creative ops like how you know

42:02

what what does your team need to do right like it's not you know you can't hire your way into this mindset right

42:10

like you you know that you need to structure teams more like modular systems right and they kind of morph

42:16

around the projects and um you know your our editors are editors again you know

42:22

I'm not even sure if that's the right word any longer because they're just building entire audio visual worlds

42:28

themselves right Like they're making their own imagery They're making their own video Boy I wish I had this edit you

42:34

know this thing to edit with Okay I'll just make it real quick And then you've turned you know this into like not a

42:41

client vendor relationship You've turned this into a room full of people that have no hindrances that are all creative

42:49

Does that how has that you've been doing this long enough now that I assume that there are people

42:58

who were good at that transition or who made that transition swiftly or completely and there were probably those

43:04

that resisted it I'm curious who are the people that succeeded and who are the

43:09

people that maybe flamed out because of this shift or like I I don't know enough about your organization to know but like

43:15

yeah what like what advice would you give to like you know who to keep versus

43:20

who to let go like what are the attributes of the ones that are turning into your rock stars Yeah I mean like

43:27

we've got like one rule here and it's just we don't we don't hire [ __ ] Um

43:33

and that's really all you need to need to make it successful in business So that's great you know So u you know that

43:41

e the absence of the ego you know lets people you know try and learn adapt yeah

43:48

adapt fail you know and you have to let go of to adapt you have to let go of the

43:54

thing that you held so precious before right that's yeah that's totally an ego thing Yeah Yeah And it's just that

44:00

safety that psychological safety of like oh my craft is so precious that with if

44:07

a new tool comes in and takes me out the legs does that mean that I'm not creative anymore So like I just don't we

44:14

just don't surround ourselves with that type of you know mentality here at the office Um if anything it's far more open

44:22

Um and yeah there you go The rise of the generalist Yeah Yeah my buddy Brent had

44:28

came up with that So um yeah So I mean that that's

44:33

essentially what has always made you know creatives really good at least or anybody in any industry is somebody who

44:40

understands the worlds outside of what they're good at and you know maybe they're interested in a particular

44:46

portion of it Now we've got the ability to take something that could be of interest and turn it into blow just blow

44:53

it up as a big hobby for them and then turn that into something that they can bring back in and feel this empowerment

44:59

where learning is now part of the creative process instead of you know this traditional go be an intern you

45:07

know maybe get a crappy job you know make some social media content Maybe one day you'll be great you know Um yeah be

45:15

be great now be be great over the weekend Come in Monday with a film Exactly

45:20

Okay So So let's shift gears So we'll do our three questions So I'll go first this this week Um so we ask all of our

45:28

speakers the same three questions So let me tee up the first one And that's this And this this could be really interesting with you

45:35

What was what was the moment or you know what was the the insight or the moment

45:40

that you realized you had to go all in on AI and then what's it been like since then

45:46

Um when I saw that we

45:52

could start making our own video right like it's it started with images you know we got really into um comfy UI and

46:01

understanding how all of those uh checkpoints work and you know getting big horsepower machines to run stuff

46:08

locally and and then I'm like you know what this is going to totally just turn into something web based that I can just

46:14

log into and you know I got to know how this stuff works like before I start saying you know I'm going to put the

46:20

brakes on it I'll wait till something better comes out because how am I going to even know how to interface with it if

46:25

I don't understand the basics of what it does right And then a video component to

46:31

Comfy UI came out and I made something for one of our clients from it I'm like listen this is going to be the worst

46:39

it's ever going to look And I think like you know that's a Kyle Shannon line right there right And I use that all the

46:45

time Thanks Kyle Um but today is the worst it's ever going to look So I give them this like you know compared to

46:52

today's standards very rudimentary but what they could what they saw with what I built with their images it became kind

46:59

of a game changer right and I was pushing hard right like I would and and

47:04

they didn't see the imperfections or did they they did but they forgave them they

47:09

did they did yeah and they were like this is cool we we're not I'm not sure how to use this yet oh interesting but

47:17

what it did was put that you bug in their brain like okay these guys are doing something a little bit differently

47:23

than everybody else right Um and that turned into you know just experimental

47:30

stuff you know uh to more um a different

47:35

kind of relationship with our client where now they come up come to us with

47:40

experimental random stuff big problems you know that have no apparent solution and we're all

47:48

just of the mindset like "All right cool We'll figure it out along the way." Right Yeah And that's a fun place to be

47:54

Like that's getting to that moment And then once you hit that moment now it's like "All right we're all in and I'm

48:00

gonna advocate for the usage of all this stuff for every client I'm gonna go out

48:05

and do talks and d it became a thing for myself as well at that point when Oh

48:12

sorry Sorry Okay For real?" Yeah It's on me Okay Good So um

48:21

you've alluded to it a couple of times but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into and I do have one of the three

48:26

questions and I will ask that next Kyle so calm down

48:32

I'm just winging it here I'm trying to figure out I'm winging it too

48:39

All right So what you just described is this

48:45

juicy combination of a client who's down for an adventure with a company that's

48:53

like super down for adventure And so then you can have this really great um

48:59

kind of like we're working together on like common ground here Like we're all

49:05

learning We're on this crazy you know ride where today is the worst it's ever going to be and we need to accept that

49:12

Someone had asked earlier though what is it like during that process when you're

49:18

in conversation with a prospective client And this kind of I'm also layering some of my own stuff in there

49:24

is I know that I might to the untrained ear to somebody who's outside of the AI

49:31

bubble I almost sound like a crazy person right I'm saying here's what you

49:36

can expect right First you'll save an hour then you'll save two hours Soon you

49:42

know soon you're going to be saving money Soon you're going to be making more money And I say numbers and it's

49:48

like if I heard me talk I would think this lady is like a snake oil salesperson in those in those But I also

49:56

know like organically genuinely this is the way it works Like this is one thing

50:01

I know is that if you learn how to use this you're going to be hella better off right So when you're in these

50:09

conversations with prospective clients and you're trying to get them to like see what it might be like to work with

50:16

you are you doing a lot of buyer education in those conversations more so than just

50:22

like pushing buttons to make buyers make decisions 100% education And like that's

50:28

the first step of the process So you know part of what I've learned to be

50:34

good at over the years is explaining really complex [ __ ] to people in a way that I think that they can understand

50:40

Yeah So not every cl I don't speak to every client the same way I know some of my clients I'm not even going to bother

50:46

with yet Right Yes Same Same Like Yeah But I've got some that have a little

50:52

foot in the door with who have seen what we've done for other clients and they get a little you know a little jealous

50:58

and they're like "Well how'd you do that?" And it's like "Well you know so I'm just you don't ask a question you

51:05

don't want to know the answer to." Yeah Yeah And what and what I'm kind of realizing is that like you know a lot of

51:12

these conversations you know I'm just kind of you know with clients I'm kind of getting tired of hearing the same

51:17

shallow stuff right Like it's it's about like I want to have a place where we can

51:22

actually show people how we integrate this stuff usable to us right into our

51:30

workflow and show them So I open the door a little bit for some clients and I like swing it wide open for others right

51:36

And being able to do that dance in between each of those steps is part of my job Um but I really enjoy bringing

51:45

somebody in and doing a job like this for the first time or not even talking about it not even trying to pitch it and

51:51

say you know I'll be in the middle of an edit and say I can do that I'll just do that right now And we'll just make the

51:57

asset and it'll be video and I'll just drop it right in And they're like well you're a warlock What is that And I'm

52:03

like that's around here man Like so so it's kind of like you know it's it's a

52:09

it's a little bit of a curve right to get people that buy in but like once you start it does not stop right like

52:17

exactly this is Kyle reminding me that we have another question that I have to slide into which is based on what you

52:24

know based on like your unique perspective on

52:30

the world what are the AI trends that you're paying the most attention too For

52:36

me I mean specifically it's a lot of um video music and voiceover generation Um

52:42

those models are getting really really really good Oh my god I mean yeah talk

52:47

talk to some of the ones that you think are are shifting shifting into it's beyond usable Like it's getting very

52:54

good You know the thing is for me there's a lot that is just absolutely incredible um wonderful to work with but

53:03

legally I can't work with it So so for instance if you know if I you know um

53:11

you know like Hilu right out in China I don't know where that stuff's scraping from you know that's one of my favorites

53:16

right Um you know VO3 scraping the library of YouTube you know like can I

53:22

legally use that yet like I don't know and if I have a bit of doubt about it I

53:29

can't I can't I can't with with full buy in as a company say I'm going to use

53:35

this tool and it's going to be awesome and it's latest greatest hottest stuff Like for for me I hate pumping the

53:41

brakes like that you know because I want to use this stuff I want to beta test it I want to do that I want to throw in a commercial but I really got to dial

53:48

things back So you know so I what I'm doing is trying to build models based

53:53

off of client IP So then oh yeah things are created from what they've already

53:59

made right Not like let's just generate something and get it from the ether and

54:05

here it is It's more of like hey here's some past visual cues to help you do

54:11

what I'm about to prompt right now And the level of comfortability with that is much much higher than us just like going

54:18

on a web browser with a client in the room you know and saying "Does that one look good Does that one look good?"

54:23

Right Like there's a lot more to it But we've used them in ways that um the

54:30

client is aware of that you know and it's a full transparency anytime we're doing anything right Yeah Um we're you

54:37

know we'll build you know custom voiceover models based off of prompts you know that they give us from like

54:43

scripts you know like you know uh raspy old smoking you know 50-year-old lady

54:50

with a little rye in her voice right Or vocal fry in her voice You know those are prompts from a script that I could

54:57

just like knock out like here's six different variants from 11 Labs You know pick one that you like and let's have it

55:04

give us an audition And that time like savings is like a pretty cool thing for

55:09

them It's more of like an efficiency thing So we don't have to wait another day to get things back from the VO

55:16

talent or wait around for scratch VOS to come in and then go through and pick one like you know the efficiency stuff is

55:22

really great for people to see like on an instantaneous basis like while we're in the room and then there's that other

55:28

end of things where we're like making custom models for people right and developing content based off of that and

55:34

that takes a little bit longer but every day that gets a little shorter and shorter and shorter so it's going to be easy to do the dance with somebody in

55:40

the room and come up with anything that we possibly want so yeah it's amazing I one of the things I noticed is is um

55:49

calling on my my acting training that that when when we're doing video personas it's like "Oh I I know what I

55:56

want that voice to sound like." Like you know it's like you design the person you design the voice and you know you get

56:01

them to act like you want them to act You can just design it It's it's staggering All right final question Uh

56:07

and and this is the biggie This is the name of the podcast AI Readiness Project What does AI readiness mean to you And

56:14

especially for someone just getting into the game you know what's your advice for someone just getting started with all

56:19

all this AI stuff I mean it's just don't be afraid to experiment Like like people

56:25

people are so worried about failure you know that it just stops everything that

56:31

they think after that point Um it's this fear paralysis It's like a like an

56:36

imposttor syndrome that they don't think they're good enough to learn new tools

56:41

or um try things and fail and then then what right so you can either say you

56:49

know I tried chat GBT and it just didn't really you know it was kind of weird but then once you realize what you can do

56:55

with it and how you can begin to train it to get what you want out of it it's one of it's the basis of all of our you

57:02

know AI tools that are out there right now Yeah Um and I think also you know

57:07

just remembering like you know direction over speed right Like I know we're talking a lot about efficiencies here

57:13

and that's cool and in a business setting people like seeing and hearing that Um what it what it doesn't detract

57:20

from is the quality of the content that you're putting out Like you do have you do got to steer the ship right And if

57:27

you're just like letting a loose fire hose go and then hoping that it's going to make cool [ __ ] that's the wrong POV

57:33

Um yes You know and if you if your goal is to cut cost it'll totally do that You

57:39

know if your goal is to get like richer faster weirder more collaborative you

57:45

know creative it's going to do that too It's just basically up to you So you got to kind of be honest about like what

57:51

kind of use you want out of it what you know what's you know what kind of creative like for me what kind of creative company would I want to be you

57:58

know and it just kind of accelerates that direction that you've already chosen so yep yep beautiful um well this

58:06

has been awesome um been fun thank you I know these hours go by a little a little

58:12

by way too fast I'll come back anytime you guys want yeah this is great

58:19

I had a good time getting to know you just by your background it was super fun to get to know you here and I really

58:25

just want to um kind of shout you out for what you're doing in your company by

58:32

being the person who first of all can break their laptop because you're going to go buy the new one and you're gonna

58:39

you're paying the person who's going to get it all set up for you you have the autonomy to break the

58:45

laptop And by you making those mistakes and es especially people look to you and probably expect you to have a certain

58:51

level of like standard and perfection and yeah everything that Christian does is the [ __ ] and everything But if you're

58:57

coming into a meeting with you know earlier career people who may be feeling intimidated or people who have never had

59:04

the opportunity to take such risks and you're saying I did this and look at this mess I made or you know my my

59:11

computer started on fire or I accidentally uploaded a whole bunch of whatever Um the impact of that on the

59:19

lives of the people who you work with is significant It's not just the output

59:24

that you're you know the outcome for your that current client It's like their whole career trajectory by you being

59:30

that kind of leader So kudos tip tip my cap to you for that Thanks so much I really appreciate the compliment So they

59:37

all make me look good too I got to keep up with them That's what this is all about

59:44

Oh can I plug one little thing real quick Do you would you mind at all Um yeah I'm heading to Vegas in August Um I

59:52

got invited to speak at the uh AI4 conference at uh uh August 12th So I'm

59:57

gonna be there you know spouting off and it's going to be great because you know we got people to learn from like Jeffrey

Hinton's going to be there Nice Lee you know um I'm a Jane like everybody Yeah

it's it's pretty awesome So I'm I'm thrilled to be a part of it Um and I

think I've got like a like a 30 minute slot to try to fit all this stuff I was talking about with you all Yeah exactly

Good luck with that And what's the again What's the conference called It's called AI4 Like AI4.io

And Okay great Yeah Yeah Okay And if you dig real deep you can find Christian Robins in there

You're not quite headlining yet huh I'm not Not yet Not in that group Not yet

All right Great seeing you man Thanks guys See you later Thank you so much Bye

[Music]