Businesses don’t really care if it’s AI or not. You’re the CEO and then you just see like better output, more money coming in. Probably they don’t care. How can we actually make income out of that, too? If you hate it, you pivot. If you don’t hate it, you just keep going and you’ll probably end up making money. AI generated UGC content nowadays looks insanely good. Okay, I can learn all those tools. But for what? That is where you need something that you own. How can I make full-time income out of doing this? tell me step by step of how I can actually do this. What would you suggest? All right, Ally, welcome to my podcast. I’m so glad that you’re here. I’m especially excited for this episode because this topic that we’re going to talk about today, it’s been on my mind forever, like for several months now. So Alli, for those of you who don’t know him, he’s our art director and he teach at UNSW, which is UNSW. Yeah, UNSW, University of New South Wales, correct? Yeah, I teach there part-time, but I also work like professionally as an artist. Um, and also in the AI side, too, but we can talk about it later. Okay, that’s awesome. So, what we’re going to talk about today is how can you actually build your personal brand, but not in a cringe way. So, when it comes to using AI, a lot of people think this is too fake. I can’t build my brand or I can’t build my personal brand using AI because how can people actually relate using AI in general? I feel like a lot of people right now, especially in 2026, there are AI lovers and AI haters, like doomers. So, what we’re going to talk about today is how can you actually use AI in the right way? Because if you don’t use it, in my personal opinion, you’re going to fall behind. And as an artist, Alli’s going to talk to us a little bit more about how he’s using it. Yeah, I’ve been doing it for like 7 years now professionally. And I haven’t actually done an AI job yet. I’ve used AI in it, but not for like the final product. However, and by the way, this is totally derailing your intro, but the increase in job posts where I’ve seen people looking for an AI artist is really increasing now. And it’s crazy to see for me because like just a few years ago, it was like, dude, you make AI, dude, that’s slop. And now it’s like, oh, you use AI? Like they’re more keen on like seeing the new workflow. So, the shift in the industry is pretty palpable at the moment. Wow. That’s actually a really really good point. So what about we talk about how can we actually build using AI or like from an artist perspective because you were coming from non AI before you were just creating everything from scratch and then now you’re actually utilizing AI a little bit too. So I want to take your in like hot take about what’s your thought about using AI in general but also let’s talk about how can we actually make income out of that too like you talked about right what are some of the paths that people can actually use this because what a lot of people say a lot of my audience one of their concern is okay I can learn all those tools but for what why do I learn this it’s it’s interesting because I used AI initially for like automation stuff and still do you know how like we’ve spoken about this in the past like nadn make.com and like the whole reason I was learning like claude code and all that was actually all for like business purposes cuz like I would also I kind of I don’t want to say run like a full creative agency but like I was a freelancer but I would hire people too and then I had some retainers so like there was some like business stuff I had to like really think of there like managing hours invoices client emails like AI and automation actually do help you there a lot. In terms of if you want to make money from it with your audience, are they more on the business side of things or like knowledge work or are they more artistic or do you know? Yeah. So, my audience including myself, we’re more of a business side of things. So, instead of artistic like artists, they’re great, right? But my thing is you got to do something to actually make business out of it to make money. Yeah. That’s that’s my approach. Yeah. So a lot of audience who’s watching this like my channel following me they have a similar mindset. If we were to create an AI avatar as an example, why do people even create from the first place? You know like that’s my thing. You have to have a personal brand. You have to have a reason why you’re using AI first of all and then really try to go with okay after knowing why then you can actually think about how you can generate money not like randomly but they got to also perceive. Yeah. I think look it’s like a there’s like a lots of like vagueness or like there’s a broad it’s a really broad topic the whole like online scene of like how do you make money with this stuff? I think one you got to look inwards probably you got to reflect okay like what do I want to do for a career and all this sort of stuff and then even in the artist world like you got to also separate like the business from the career and like being an artist where it’s like hey you can make art for art’s sake using whatever tools you want if you want to paint stuff use a specific use blender use Higsfield like no one’s judging you just making art if you want to do it as a business like you need to start thinking like Okay, businesses look for ROI on things. So this could apply to art, this could apply to automations, this could apply to marketing people, sales people. It’s like you are basically looking for efficiencies in saving time or generating revenue or looking for bottlenecks that can be sped up internally. Um, so yeah, save time, make money, save money. There’s like three big buckets. I think that’s where you got to come at it from. Now, personal brandwise, like my favorite recent take from this, which I heard like sixish months ago, is from Dan Co, which I’m sure if you have like lots of productivity people in here or whatever, they’ come across him. And I’m not even some like mega fan of his. I just like sometimes watch his videos. People worry about niche a lot. Like when people are starting a personal brand, they’re like, “What do I talk about? What do I do?” Blah blah blah. And then you got to worry, hey, can I if I choose this niche, can I do this for one year, two years, three? Like, how are you going to transition? Is it scalable? And I think nowadays, what Dan Co said is your mission is your niche. So people follow people. Like it actually doesn’t really matter what you talk about. Obviously, there’s rules to it. You want to stay within some specific category. You want to have some sort of value, whether you’re entertaining or you’re providing knowledge or doing both or maybe you have really good creative skills and your video outputs really high quality. But you kind of want to think of like your mission and then how you would record that mission in a personal way that’s somewhat entertaining or providing value. Yeah, that’s kind of my thought on it. And like it goes back to the whole looking inwards thing. Like I don’t think you can really just start a personal brand or just get into this and then think you’re going to do it for years cuz like it takes longer than you think. Like even I’m not some big personal brand guy but I enjoy I actually enjoy making videos. So you also got to enjoy the process too. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that whole thing? Cuz like you’re more niche specific, right? Your AI. Do you ever think about like, hey, do I want to make videos outside of this or do I always need to have this topic in mind? How do you think about it? That’s actually very interesting topic right there. That’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. And I actually follow Denko, a lot of different personal brand experts just to see what they’re doing. And something that I realized and found out, I don’t know if you heard of Jesse, I forgot her last name, but she’s the queen of yapping. Do you know who that is? Do you know who I’m talking about? Oh, you don’t know. Okay, you and I, we love yapping. So, like, we got to follow her. She basically became a content creator about 6 months ago. And I just barely got to know her a couple days ago, actually. But she raised her first launch for her like yapping course, $1.2 million from the yapping course. Wait, it’s called the yapping course. It’s called like whatever the yapping. Yeah, how to yap. Yeah, that’s what it is. Like the course is called How to Yap Like Pro. It’s pretty cool. But what I’m trying to say is all of that was possible because she built her personal brand and she’s like the definition of personal brand in my opinion because she can talk about whatever topic and people just watch her for her not necessarily for AI, not for Claude, not for that. Like she even does flipping furniture which is so random and that’s one of her income that she did but people just watch that because she’s she’s the one who’s doing it. kind of like actors or actresses. If you like, I don’t know, like singers Justin Bieber, you just follow Justin Bieber. You’re just listening to his song because not only because it sounds good, but also because it’s Justin Bieber. You know what I mean? Kind of similar to that personal brand. In my opinion, it people can resonate and relate to you. If you have a story, if people can relate, they can build a personal brand. Now, my question to you is, can AI build a personal brand for human? That’s what it is. So, let’s just say I’m very shy or I’m not c camera friendly or like English is not my native or I stutter a little bit. You know, that’s why a lot of people actually want to use AI for their personal brand but kind of want to hide behind the camera a little bit. So, do you think people can actually build their personal brand using AI? I’m talking about AI avatar. I think about this a lot. I think there’s a big different especially with personal brands and if you’re trying to get more reach and popularity I honestly think a form of anonymity is actually very valuable. Like you don’t you might not want your face out there anyways. You might be confident on camera or happy to talk but you just want to be more private which I think is very valid. So I totally think you can definitely create a personal brand with the whole using AI part and AI avatars. you can do that at the moment. I’m just going to give my personal take on it. Okay, so let’s go like first principles like what makes a good video and that’s generally good writing, right? You need like what are you making the video about? If it’s just like you trying to be relatable and talking to camera, you’re going to have to be on camera. If you want like an anonymous thing, you’ve probably got to have really good writing or a really good creative visual way to get people through a video. There’s this guy that basically tries to learn software and it’s just his voice. He’s talking to camera, but it’s him trying to like literally figure out how to use a software. And he’s like, it’s really fast-paced, like cutswise, but it’s like really interesting. And all you hear is his voice the whole time. And he’s like, “Ooh, look at this button. Oh, how do I do this? Oh, let me Google it.” And then you just literally watch this guy learn how to do something. And it’s pure completely faceless. Um, I’ll try to find the link and send it to you. But that’s like an example of like a faceless brand. It’s not an AI avatar. I think if you’re going the AI avatar route, you need to be careful in terms of the niche you’re picking and the audience you’re after because the audience might not respond well to it. Do you know what I mean? Like some people want to see a human talking and other people if it’s purely informational, I think an avatar could actually work. Like if you’re just like literally saying info and you’ve got a good voice model and a good avatar generation model that doesn’t feel too weird and you’ve written the script yourself, you can use AI to help you write the script, but you need to like actually write it and be like, is this engaging? Am I just like regurgitating slop? Am I providing value? You can go that route or I think a better route than the human photoreal avatar is to actually go like a stylistic character like a cartoon avatar or like um a 3D animated version or something like that. Like I follow a finance channel that’s literally just like some random person who’s like a yellow drawn blob or like kangaroo or something and he gives financial advice for people in Australia. And I literally just watch that cuz I’m like, “Dude, this is good info. His avatar’s this guy.” Whenever I see his thumbnail, I’m like, “Oh, it’s that it’s the yellow kangaroo guy.” And then like we just go from there. So, I think that’s a cool way of doing like a faceless channel where you can build a brand. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a personal brand, but I think it works if you’re providing knowledge. Mhm. I agree. Yeah. Cuz that’s another thing. We got to differentiate between brand and personal brand. But then if the personal story is behind the brand, that’s called personal brand. What is the definition of personal brand? Is that whatever character or you, yeah, you’re representing you? That’s literally what it is. I think people over complicate personal brand a lot. They’re like, it has to be very authentic. It has to be Yeah, you got to be authentic, but then what is authenticity? Let’s talk about that, right? It’s authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean you have to show your face all the time. It’s as long as you’re I agree. Yeah. You’re staying behind. You’re staying true to what you’re saying. You’re not lying. Honestly, I think that’s authenticity in my opinion. You might be passionate about a topic and you just want to talk about that topic, whatever it is, finance, philosophical stuff, relationships, you could still be very authentic and personal with your thoughts. That’s why I always go back to the writing because the writing and the voice is really what comes out of that. So, if you can write a good YouTube script, and I say script in quotation marks, like if you’ve just got an idea or story that you want to tell and you tell it well, that’s basically a personal brand. And you just got to keep doing that. But you got to make sure you enjoy it. Otherwise, it’s just different if you want to try to make it a business versus, you know, a personal brand. Yeah. Interesting. That’s And you can do both. You can do both cuz you you see like all the stuff out there. Like there’s people that you can tell only go on YouTube because it’s a funnel to their main business. And I’m not like at first I used to be a little more mad at that cuz I’m like, “Oh, dude, you’re just like maybe cuz I could also see everyone else like with the same script structure, the same thumbnail, the same this.” And I’m like, “Dude, you guys are all just like you’ve been hired by the same YouTube guy who’s doing your videos.” Like, I can tell. But then really, I’m like, “Oh, dude, they’re just using this as a business. It’s like they’re not trying to do anything else and there’s like different lanes you can take and there’s like lots of gray area between those lanes like you know you can start a paid community but because you’re really authentic people trust you more so they actually want to join you. You know what I mean? So there’s ways to go about it. Yeah. When I was a creator, I because I’ve been a creator since 2018. And when I was a creator back then, I was so scared to turn on YouTube AdSense because I didn’t want people to think she’s just trying to make money off of me. Even like starting a course, whatever. People have asked me so many times if I can do like a Zoom meeting with them, you know, they will pay me. But I didn’t do it because I wasn’t. There was huge imposter syndrome when it comes to like getting money from other people. But I realized that is the reason why I got burned out because I didn’t get paid for the work that I did. If you think about it, you’re working for a company as an example. Like they’re expecting to get paid as, you know, minimum to whatever they’re worth. As a creator, it’s very important for us to know our value. And that’s the difference where I am compared to me back in 2018. And that’s actually part of the reason why I started my school community, too, because I know what I can share with other people. And honestly, if people pay me, which is not too expensive. I don’t charge too expensive, but if people pay me, they’re more committed. That’s another reason why I want more serious people. And plus, I’m more committed, too. Like, we’re both more committed. So, we can both have the synergy effect and just create better result in my opinion. So, people shouldn’t be scared of that. Yeah, 100%. And I think that’s aligned incentives, especially because like I honest I think it’s totally fine to want to make money and everything from YouTube. Like and I’ve gone through the exact same thing you’ve said. The reason I didn’t post the last year and a half on my and I don’t have a big channel at all. It’s like 10 12k subs, right? But I I what do you call it? I shoe box myself too much. Like I was only focusing on this one 3D programming 3D modeling visualization software called Unreal Engine. And then I realized like I don’t actually want to just only do one software on this channel the whole time. And I probably could have just stuck to it and then like branched out, but like I don’t know. You get burnt out. You’re stuck in one place. People are like, “Hey dude, you should make a beginner course, blah blah blah.” I’m like, “I don’t know, dude. Like that’s not me.” Blah blah. I’m not I’m not a course guy. And I’m sure I totally could have done it. Like I built a good amount of trust with my community that like they don’t they’re not going to think I’m scamming them. It was also around the time when like course selling was like really looked down upon and there’s lots of bad actors out there. Like there’s some bad courses out there. So I get why people feel that way. But if you like make a good channel, you build a trustworthy relationship and you actually sell something that’s valuable, I totally agree with you. Like there’s no problem in asking for money from people who are willing to give it to you and you’re actually providing them the value. And like you said on school, like if you’re not going to provide the value, people are just going to leave your community. So like it’s a mutually aligned incentive where it’s like, hey, you pay me, I will try to help you and provide as much content and guidance or whatever it is that I can. That’s true. Cuz for me, having a mentor last year was the best investment I had because I typically Could I ask you about that? How’s the How does that whole I’ve always wanted a mentor. How does that work? I’ve been like searching for different mentorship program like what consulting program what to do and just it’s been a game changer because what he’s been giving like when it comes to advice it’s really good but not only that because I spent money my it was my mindset too like I spent this much money so I got to get something out of it so I got to actually take action so before I didn’t really take any execution because everything was free because all the courses if you look at it pretty sure all the advice that he’s giving it’s pretty pretty much online as well. But the main difference is your dedication and you also have a person right next to you who’s always the accountability. Yeah, accountability part. So I think that’s part of it too. It’s just very important to do that. Are you still with the mentor? Yeah, I am. Nice. And do you talk weekly or do you give like business updates, life updates? Like is it just an overall thing? Yeah, it’s a weekly thing. Um well, it’s not oneonone. into a group setting and uh he actually talked about me a lot on YouTube too. His name is Patrick and because we talked about like my personal brand and he suggested maybe you should go with AI route because it’s so popular and I’m like okay maybe let’s go with the AI route and I’ve been like just kind of looking upon and then I I joined the NYX community afterwards and I’m like okay pretty cool and everything just happened and like honestly execution is is the best in my opinion. And why do you think, sorry, I know you’ve got questions. I just wanted to ask you cuz there’s lots of people making AI content out there, you know? What do you think separated like why do you think you did better than others? Cuz I can tell you why I think, but like what do you think you would make in content differently? It was a packaging and thumbnail thing. It was a script writing thing. What What do you reckon it was? Yeah, actually, not to sound cocky at all, right? Like none of that. Go do it. Do it. We can edit it out like what I look like. Just kidding. Just edit it out. I’m actually the best looking person on the platform. I don’t know if you know. Can you tell? What kind of question is that? Um, are you blind? What? Oh gosh. No. Because I think it’s because I talk about my story a lot. I tend to talk about it. I try my best to talk about it. I talk about like I’m a mom of three and I’m coming from non-technical background and literally I’m showing them like step by step while working on it. So there’s one video that I literally built this one product and I shoot my video for 6 hours. I edited it obviously and then I talk about this is so frustrating like this is not working and then like they can see the whole process. So transparency is everything. And even my recent video, I talk about how much I made last month and I did a full breakdown, right? Typically, a lot of creators don’t really talk like to talk about it because they’re pretty I don’t know. They they just don’t like to talk about it. It’s taboo. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just personal. But for me, that kind of channel or that kind of videos really help me for me to just stay motivated. So I know people like me can get motivated from the real story. You know what I mean? The real thing that happened and those are like real money. You know what I mean? I’m not like lying about it. Why would I lie about that? That’s I think that’s the reason why people gravitate to me a little bit more because I’m real. Even though sometimes I get comments, are you AI? I’m like, do I look AI? Come on, people. Um, are you blind? Are you blind? Sometimes I’m like, okay, take that compliment. It’s like, all right, AI look good. It’s like, all right, whatever. But it’s just they’re like, “Are you AI?” Okay, I got to bring more personality now. You know what I mean? So that’s actually my next mission. I’m trying to grow Instagram right now just because I’ve been on Instagram with my older channel or older like Spanish thing. Grew my channel to like 100k on Instagram. But I’m starting this specific AI related. But then I want to talk about me, you know, not necessarily just AI, but like a just me and then see if people are interested in me. We’ll see. Yeah. I honestly cuz I was thinking cuz I have my creative channel on YouTube and I kind of want to only do creative stuff on that. I’m probably going to make a separate channel that’s like AI/productivity slash whatever it is. And I was thinking everything outside of YouTube could just be one thing. Like Twitter or Instagram or I’ve never I actually don’t have a Tik Tok account, but like Tik Tok would all just be like me making my YouTube stuff. Like just being like, “Oh yeah, thinking of like creative stuff. Probably going to post that.” Or like just thoughts about like all of it put together because it’s more just me and more authentic anyway. And I’ll only put stuff out that I really feel like putting out. And I’d rather not like make too many different like vent like avenues of people to like be split by. So I’d ra be like, “Yeah, Instagram, Twitter, like they they can see it’s just the same person with like similar takes or whatever it is.” Yeah. No, that’s a really good interesting take cuz I think that’s how you you will be able to stand out in the future. Future meaning in couple of months, I would say because AI is getting freaking good. I don’t know if you tried C dance 2.0 zero. Gemini, Omni, Omni, whatever. It’s okay. It’s not my favorite, honestly. It’s not like the best. You can tell it’s AI. Um, but just some of the things from Gemini is actually really good, too. Like Notebook LM I really adore, as well as Nano Banana. I love it. Yeah, I need to get on like I’ve seen Notebook LM since it was like introduced or whatever or like four, five, four years ago, I can’t remember. And I’ve still to this day not actually used it properly. Like I’ve used rag databases or like Obsidian or whatever it is. I’ve never actually put stuff into Notebook LM. How are you using it like dayto-day? Yeah. So I don’t use it on dayto-day, but I’m planning to because I’m planning to grow my LinkedIn as well. And they do have this some sort of kind of like a carousel style, right? They and they just make it for you. So if you put the link there then they will make different carousels. So that’s one feature that I really like and also like summarizing it and if you follow one of like as an example DO let’s talk about him but then he has so many different videos you don’t have time to watch all of that then just put it in notbook lm and it will summarize it for you and then as if you’re talking to Denko a little bit. So that’s the beauty of it. I don’t use it a ton just because I use a lot of everything with Claude and I don’t really like switching back and forth between different platforms because it’s just too complicated. I’m like, “Okay, I can’t handle it’s too high friction.” Yeah, I’m with you. I think you can just like go minimal and just be like, I’m just going to commit to this or like two models, you know? Yeah, that’s me with Claude and Banana Banana. I still use it um with with Google. But yeah, anyways, what I was trying to say is um the AI models are getting so good including video generation and it’s very interesting because back to what we talked about you said avatar is probably one of the best way to create personal brand a little bit you know where people can relate avatar meaning like character I meant not like humanlooking avatar because I don’t know I think humanl looking avatar could work potentially if you can differentiate yourself a little bit. As an example, if I were to do create a man and I’m woman, right? My identity that I call myself is woman, but then like I create a men and talk about how to shave their hair, whatever, you know, like shave their beard, but I can’t really talk about that. And that’s so clearly Yeah. I mean, shave their hair or whatever. Shave their sh beard. Yeah. I can’t really talk about it. It’s like, you know, but if you think about it, that’s not one of the authentic way to build a personal brand in my opinion. So, I’m not saying Asian has to be Asian or like, you know, white has to be white. No, I’m not saying that. But you have to feel somewhat related to that character. In my opinion, that’s the most important thing. You have to relate to your character. You have to show your story first. Have you ever seen K-pop Demon Hunters before, Ally? Yeah, I have. You have seen it? And I’m not even a K-pop guy. That the fact that I’ve seen it is crazy, right? I’m not a weeb. I don’t watch any anime. All my friends watch anime. It’s everywhere. Yeah, I’m an anime fan and K-pop demons. My kids love it. I love it. I like cry whenever I listen to that like hear the music. It’s so funny cuz and I’ve been thinking about why do I actually cry when I listen to this which is which sounds so dorky right now but because I relate to that character. Not necessarily because that they’re like me, but more of I relate to their story because there’s a story behind that. You know what I mean? I think it all goes back to writing. I actually think that like maybe I’m biased towards it, but as long as you’re good at writing and storytelling, it doesn’t really matter what medium that comes through. And even though I might maybe cuz I’m an old head, I’m like, “Ah, dude, the future and like everyone’s just following virtual avatars.” Like, for some reason that doesn’t sit right with me. Not that I’m mad at people using it, but I’m like, “Oh god, if like someone has a super strong parasocial relationship with like a fake virtual person, but then I’m like, that’s kind of what people are anyway with celebrities.” Like they have these parasocial relationships with real people that they’re never going to meet and like it affects their day-to-day. So, if you can do it in like a positive way and like you’re you have really good storytelling and you’re relatable and you’re providing some sort of net positive impact, I think like yeah, Avatars is to totally away whether it’s the real human stuff or like a character, the medium honestly doesn’t matter as much as long as it’s somewhat visually engaging or like you look at Aland Baton. Alan Baton, is that a person? Yeah, he’s got a Yeah, he’s a guy that what’s his channel called? The School of Life. Super great YouTube channel. 9 million subs, right? And it’s just him narrating like philosophical thoughts about stuff like you know like his latest video is called Understanding the Fear of Intimacy or like the other one the joy of pessimism and love. like it’s all like philosophical stuff, but it’s just like illustrations that basically communicate the ideas that he’s talking about. And he’s been doing this for ages and he’s like very smart, a super good writer. But I think the reason it resonates is because he’s got something that’s somewhat visually engaging. He’s never on camera. It’s just it’s just all about what he’s talking about. So I think people can totally do that. Oh yeah. No, 100%. So let’s talk about writing a little bit because you talked about a couple of times that storytelling is very important which comes from writing honestly right and I agree with you on not the you’re older old part um because you’re not old but the part of younger generations I’m talking about like Jenzie or even younger than Jenz my kids I’m thinking you know my seven-year-old when when she grows up she probably will see 98 8% AI influencer out there, you know, and they probably can’t tell which one’s what, whatever. So, how can we actually stand out is through writing, storytelling you talked about. How can we improve on writing? Like, what are some of your suggestions on that? Look, I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask. Like, I really want to be better at my writing. And I think one ways to read more. The only way to get good at something is to consume other things in that category that are also good. So, if you’re just watching or reading slop all the time, you’re probably only going to make stuff that sounds similar to what you’re consuming. It’s like content diet stuff. Like, if you only consume one side of some argument, you’re only going to think those thoughts. So, it’s the same with like writing or ideas about stuff or whatever it is. So, it’s probably consume good stuff, do it every day is like the two things you want to do, which I don’t do. I’m trying to do that more. So basically read and write. That’s what it is. It’s like you more read more and write more to become better. Do you Oh, and journaling probably. Journaling. Oh, yeah. That’s that’s huge. What do you think about AI writing script for you versus you writing it, human writing it? This is how I would go about using AI to write. First, you just do a full like raw brain dump. You just write it. like as bad as it looks, you’re using the same words over all over again. Your sentence structure sucks. You don’t have varying sentence length. Like everything’s bad about it. And that’s how I write. And then you get AI to be like, “Hey, like point out like issues that don’t even change my writing. Just like tell me like where am I going way too long? Where are my like redundant arguments? How do I have more nice like a nicer reading experience?” And like you could probably Google or go online and find some good like skills people have made that like audit scripts or like you kind of just developing your skill. It’ll tell you like this section you got to go do that again. This section do that again. And instead of it rewriting it for you, you’re rewriting it for you with like a tutor basically. I think that’s probably the best way to develop like authentic ideas because if you’re just saying what Claude is telling you, we’re kind of all just speaking bots for an AI model. If you think about it, if we’re just reading AI scripts, we’re basically just like AI voice people. If you So, interesting. I think like I know some people will just like get AI to generate the script and then they’ll change it from there. I think do it the other way around cuz it’s hard because AI makes good stuff. Like I’ll read it and I’ll be like, “Dude, this sounds good.” And then you might realize you’re just sounding the same as other people and then that’s how you don’t stand out in a way. Like if you really want to stand out, you actually need to put your original thoughts there. And I’m not saying we all have original thoughts, but something that really just like popped into your brain and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a cool concept. Let me make a video on that.” And then you write it out and then you get AI to just help make it more concise, sound better, maybe fill up some loopholes in your argument, whatever it is. Gotcha. So, you’re saying instead of having AI write it and you change it, it’s other way around. You have you write it and then have AI fix and change it. Yeah. Like use AI as your teacher. like they market almost. That’s how I would go about it. That’s very interesting. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. All right, Ally, let’s talk a little bit more about what people are actually interested in hearing as well, which is about business perspective because you mentioned it before towards earlier. You said a lot of businesses before they’re like, you’re using AI, you know, like no thank you. But then now they’re like, oh, you’re using AI. Come on, like, come on in. Right. So, do you think businesses don’t really care if it’s AI or not? What’s your thought on that? Okay, so that example was purely in like the creative space where and it’s funny, they only had that opinion when AI sucked and like now that they see AI is good, they’re like, “Oh, could you like supercharge our workflows?” So, do I think businesses care? The cynical side of me is like, dude, if they just if you’re the CEO and then you just see like better output, more money coming in, probably they don’t care as long as you’re not destroying their brand. So really, I think they just look at it as a tool. And I think as well, like especially in the business use cases, it’s all just tools. It’s just like which one are you going to use? Like are you going to write everything down on paper? No. Are you going to use a spreadsheet manually? No. Are you going to use AI? Yes. Like there’s levels to like tools you can use to complete tasks. That totally makes sense. So people who wants to create this for businesses, right? What is their best chance to do it? Because again, you just barely mentioned that as long as they don’t ruin their reputation, right? Then it’s good. Like the reason why I’m asking is because let’s just say it’s a skincare brand. One of the thing that a lot of people say it’s it’s AI like and then if the AI avatar said oh this change my skin or like it remove my agony whatever not talking about legal perspective but it’s AI like how can people actually relate to that or would people feel a little like how do I say that faked by it you know what I mean like yeah so this is purely in like creating AI generated videos for businesses Right. Yeah. So, here’s what I reckon. If it’s a big brand, you probably at the moment I would just stick to still images or if it is videos like not people in it in the video at the if it’s a huge brand. I think if it’s like small to medium like it’s fine. Do you know what I mean? And also like AI generated UGC content nowadays looks insanely good. It’s crazy. So that’s definitely viable. like local businesses, you could make like AI avatar UGC videos or whatever. I don’t know how that scales long term when everyone is doing it and then you it all comes down back to storytelling at the end of the day again where it’s like how do you just like make something more relatable or stand out more as an idea? I don’t know. It’s interesting. As long as you’re not ruining their brand, you got to be careful of their audience, too. Like if you know their audience is like very averse to AI stuff like maybe don’t or like let someone else do it. Okay. I don’t really know the regulation of this. I think there is a more regulation around AI compared to before even including YouTube. You now you got to check if this is AI or not. Right. Which is actually interesting. Some creators they totally replace themselves with AI and like a lot of news channels they do and they look exactly the same as that person. like before I even compare before and after I’m like oh holy cow he does sound like AI and AI does sound like him I can’t tell the difference but going back to skincare example do you think people will feel deceived whenever they see AI influence or they realize this is AI influencer promoting for a brand at the moment yes I think your kids maybe not maybe it’s actually funny because currently they’ll get a real person who has really good skin to promote a cream that they probably don’t use and no and no one says anything, right? They’ll get an AI to do that and they’ll be like, “What? An AI doesn’t even use this moisturizer.” And you’re like, “Dude, neither does like Kim K or whoever is like promoting that other one.” I know. That’s what I was thinking. I’m like, you know, those famous person like Kardashian, she doesn’t even use that for her hair. Like, she’s just doing some not even like her own brand. You know what I mean? It’s just that’s so funny people. So you can logically break it down and if I look at it logically I’m like it shouldn’t matter but the perception and because branding is all about perception anyways it probably would get people mad but then like some companies like well if people are mad like that’s engagement like with the Coca-Cola ad or whatever but yeah I think it would be controversial at least. Gotcha. I think also if you get some engagement in the right way, as long as it’s not super negative, like what I mean by that is um Itana Lopez, she’s a AI influencer. You do you know her? She she’s like this really hot chick who has pink hair and she’s like her body looks just perfect. That’s what it is. is AI perfect and she does a lot of fitness channel like fitness stuff and a lot of brands are actually sponsoring and then I think she’s making at least 20K a month from brand sponsorship deals but people even though they know this is AI but people still resonate with her they still relate to her because I don’t necessarily know if she’s telling story but then they do resonate to who she is because she’s been out there for so long you know what I mean I think going back to like skincare example I think is similar. As long as you’re telling the right narrative, then you should be okay. I think so. And it depends if you’re selling something or not. And that changes if people how people respond to it cuz like those brands are going to that person you mentioned because they know she has distribution and exposure, right? So they’re like, “Oh, we’ll just like if 2 million people watch this, there’s like a funnel that they’ve done the math on on how many will buy it. So they just care about numbers and exposure. But there’s definitely money in it for sure. There’s money in a lot of things right now, right? 100%. Especially around AI. So let’s just say I’m a student of UNSW and I come to you Ally and say, “Hey, Ally, I really like creating stuff, you know, related to AI, and I’m going to go with that route. How can I make full-time income out of doing this?” Like, what’s your suggestion? Tell me step by step of how I can actually do this. What would you suggest? Purely through personal brand or purely through a personal brand making like AI videos. Okay. Whatever that is. Yeah. Anything related to AI and making videos. So if you want to you either got to make cool stuff like you go the pro you got to pick a niche. So you could go the productivity route. You could be like this is how I organize my inbox or like this is how I get to inbox zero every day or this is how I organize my schedule like so it’s like knowledge based right then you could go like the creative route maybe creating cool artistic outputs with AI that’s like one way of going it needs to be some sort of knowledge thing where you’re teaching people and they want to learn from you another way is the more coaching ing or expert route where you should honestly just like get real clients and solve real problems and then that gives you some social proof to then film a video and be like this is how I solved this problem. I literally made $1,200 from it or whatever it is, right? And people go like people obviously lie on YouTube too. They’re like $10,000 website like every time. And honestly, some of it it people will pay 10K for that. So, they’re not actually fully lying, but like they’ve never sold this for $10,000. Like, it’s all packaging. So, there’s different routes about going it. It depends on where like your morals and ethics are, but I think you either go the knowledge route or you go the I just thought of this. If your niche is your mission, you go like you’re learning it live. Like you build in public where people just relate to you, you’re getting confused with stuff. People like, “Dude, I got confused with that. Let me help you.” or like they watch you figure it out. There’s a few ways you could go about it. Yeah, 100%. So, I really like what you just said just because I feel like that’s the route that you’re going right now because you have a also how many clients do you have again right now? Oh, last time I checked it was a lot. I don’t even know. You don’t even know. There’s like five to six at the moment I’m trying to juggle. Yeah. To AI clients, right? All AI clients as well. They’re all from Upwork. Is that right? Uh mix Upwork one referral and like a couple cold email I think. Okay. From me out doing outreach. But um when I say AI clients, they’re all businesses looking to speed up processes and then I just happen to use AI tools for that. Okay. Gotcha. That makes sense. So you’re focusing on solving problems. So that’s more of a agency route, the AI solutions agency route versus what we’ve been talking about is a little bit related to more of a personal brand route. So what’s your thought between agency route and personal brand route? And the reason why I’m asking is because I’ve been an agency route, you know, before, right? So I sold like this AI SEO for my first client and like dude this is actually working and then I did like email marketing and going to Upwork and it was not the route for me. I’m like I got to go back to personal brand. So do you think that route is overly saturated versus like personal brand route or like what do you think is more sustainable with AI? Okay, so this is going to sound like I’m a broken record, but you got to whatever you enjoy doing more, it’ll make you more money or whatever. Like career, it’ll be more successful. It’s kind of like a gym program that’s not fully optimized, but you show up three to four times a week every week because you just like you you you enjoy the workouts will be more beneficial than a super optimized program that makes you too tired or you have no motivation to do. I am someone and maybe you’re probably very similar. You’re one comfortable being on camera. You probably enjoy the community aspect and you like having a brand. I’m someone that also likes that. Like I also like the agency stuff, but I also need to like make money. Do you know what I mean? So I enjoy solving problems actually being in the industry too and seeing like how things are shifting and like being valuable because if you go personal brand route you have keyman risk which if for those of you that don’t know like you like everything is on you like if you stop making videos you stop making money unless you have like a business attached to it. Even the community route like if you’re not there there is no community. So, like I’m someone that likes to diversify a bit. Like I want like real job work stuff and then I want personal brand work stuff. And ideally I have income coming from both and that way not all your eggs in one basket. I truly enjoy making the videos. I probably got to just do them more and like care a bit less about the topics and stuff. I feel like you’ve done super well in consistency and just being like, “Look, this is a topic. I’m making a video on it. It’ll go out.” Whereas I’ll be like, “Hey, this is a topic.” And then 3 days in I’m like, “Ah, different topic.” So I think honestly doing both, but seeing which one you deep down think you’ll enjoy more. And the only way to do it is like actually try like make 20 videos and then tell me if you hate it. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense. I I like that too. What if your personal brand through your personal brand you built your services whether that’s an app whatever and that’s generating more money compared to your client work would you leave your clients if you are personal brand is 100 are you kid that’s the dream I think it’s a super if you like doing both that’s the superpower because you’ve made a personal brand that generates money and then you have a product that you actually believe in or like whether that’s a software or a community or coaching or whatever it is and then that also makes money. That’s a win-win in my opinion because I tell everybody even though you don’t really like camera or you can use AI because I feel like AI is just helping us to lower the bar of becoming a content creator because you can use AI influencer or you can use avatar to do that because in my opinion all this agency they’re going to get overly complicated and overly saturated overly competitive because with AI the work has gotten a lot easier. So, what I’m trying to say is outbound is going to be way harder. It’s already super hard and you got to rely on inbound a little bit through personal brand in my opinion. This is a great the Okay, cuz I forgot something. I’m just When I think personal brand, I’m thinking YouTube, but you actually could build a personal brand all on Instagram or on LinkedIn. You pick a channel because you’re right. We’ve talked about this offline before. in two years or one year when Claude Fable 8 comes out and it’ll just destroy everything, right? In like in a good way, like maybe in a good way or a bad way, but basically you just say, “Hey, optimize this process.” It’ll literally just go and do that. Like the CEO can just type that in. I know they might not need us anymore. They won’t need us anymore, right? So that is where you need something that you own and that is unique to you. And that is where personal brand, whether it’s you writing a blog, going on Substack, making YouTube videos, making short form content, making LinkedIn posts, there’s lots of really successful Substack writers out there. Like, if you don’t want to be on camera, just write, but do it every day. Like, you need some way of distribution, and you need to have original thoughts and ideas in there for people to actually care about why you’re saying what you’re saying. Gotcha. Gotcha. I think for you, Ally, you got to drop some of some of your clients and then really focus on your personal brand more because you’re naturally really good at camera like speaking uh your channel. Like I really enjoy that 50 minute of you talking that just background great. I’m like this he’s so artistic and then the way that you articulate and just explain things very philosophical and very easy to listen to. So I feel like people resonate with you a little bit more if you show up more. That’s what it is. Like even your No, you’re right. He He remembered his password. Did you see that comment? I did. I did. I I like I harded that comment. You’re You’re so right though. I don’t know why it’s like such a classic like, “Well, I need I need a business going.” And then you’re like, “But longterm your brand will help you make a business quicker and like scale more.” So like, I just need to Yeah. drop some I just need to free up more time. It’s an opportunity cost, right? You’re investing in your future a little bit. It’s all about opportunity. Right now, I’m really busy, like super busy with going back and forth and doing this and you’re still working full time. Yeah, I’m still working full time and mothering. And mothering. Yeah. And also like client work, right, which I’m about to drop because I’m like, oh, I can’t really do all of this school and YouTube, which I work at night after work, after full-time job. That’s what I do. So there’s opportunity cost over there. How do I do this? Is because I spend less time unfortunately with my kiddos because whenever I’m working that means I can’t really spend time with them. But my thought is you know what right now it’s a golden time for me to like really really build my business so I can gain more time so I can spend more time with them because right now I’m I’m handcuffed with my full-time job, right? Or at least I was before. But now the amount of income that I generated last month, which was close to like 50K last month, I’m like, “Oh, holy cow. This is actually possible. Like, you can literally do this.” Yeah. It’s only going to get better, I think, if you are dedicated. Yeah. Yeah. Whoever wins, they’ll have the most reps. Unless they’re like some anomaly super genius creative who make like a video every 3 months and get like 4 million views. Like un and that’s most likely not you, whoever’s listening, but like try it out. I’m not saying don’t do it, but like it’s all about consistency because even those people that post once every 3 months, it’s a banger video and they’re always there every 3 months. So like there’s still consistency there. Yeah, I love that. Thank you. All right, Ally, for those of them who’s just lost with this AI world, AI news, what is one suggestion you would give to them? Don’t read or watch the news at all if it does not affect your life. Probably less social media time because the FOMO. If you’re someone that’s susceptible to FOMO, just don’t even go on cuz like it’s fine. If you’re trying to make money, you need to be doing some sort of outreach or active job like applying to jobs, going on Upwork, doing something. I think using these AI tools, whichever one it is, business related stuff, marketing related stuff, like niche things, audio stuff, whichever one, if you pick up those tools and you’re actually valuable, people will pay you for it. So, just pick something, go all in on it. Ideally, you have some enjoyment in it. So, like, pick an experiment. Just be like, “Hey, I’m just going to go all in on this one thing for a month and see where I’m at after a month.” If you hate it, you pivot. If you don’t hate it, you just keep going and you’ll probably end up making money out of it somehow. That’s interesting. Oh, and with the personal brand, just post it every day. Do something every day or every week or whatever. Yeah. What about like if they want to learn just if you can suggest one tool for them instead of 10 billion different tools, what would that be? Just one. just pick one of the big players like Claude, Open AAI or one of them and just learn to do valuable work in one of those things or honestly hidden little secret maybe I think especially in the future learning about how to do all these AI tools like the local models and stuff and teaching businesses especially if they’re medical businesses or law businesses like hey how do you do all this AI stuff locally that’s not connected to the internet super valuable cuz I Data privacy is going to be a huge thing as we start going in the future. Everyone’s connected. People are going to be looking for the offline way to use AI tools. They already are and it’s honestly really easy to set up. You could learn it in like a few days, maybe a week. So those three things. Tell me a little bit more about that. Actually, y know, I’m very fascinated by that. And then for those of them who’s listening, that’s actually a really good way to make money. Like because I talked to one of those medical field when I was doing outreach, that was their concern. It’s like I don’t want AI to know all of my customers information, HIPPA, whatever. How do you set that up locally? Are you talking about just the HTML file or like what does that mean? So, like, cuz I’m looking into this more, too, because I have this lawyer client in the pipeline that’s coming up and me and this one guy who’s doing the job together. We’re trying to look for like offline ways to process their documents essentially. There’s like lots of sensitive info and law documents, right? So, all you got to do really, there’s like a few good local open- source models out there like Gemma 4 by Google. Some of the Chinese ones, I think Quen is a really good one. There’s also I can’t remember you can just Google it, go on claw or whatever, you’ll find the latest ones. But the only bottleneck is you need like somewhat of a decent computer which is why you see people buying Mac minis everywhere or something else. But basically what you could do is either help a business literally install this computer in their physical office or you can also buy like a they call it like a container or a Docker container online and host everything there. But yeah, just invest in a PC or a decent computer that you can just run at home and then literally ask Claude, “How do I install a local model here?” And then turn off your Wi-Fi and you’ll be able to use it. And it’s actually pretty amazing. It’s like really cool to use. So you can use as an example, if I want to use Claude, can I use Claude offline? Is that what you’re talking about? Claude does not really have like a local offline opensource model, but OpenAI has one where you can just download it. It’s like a big file, like a big GitHub repo, but you can download it and actually use it and they it’s like trained on lots of stuff. Basically, this is how I look at it. The current offline open-source models are basically where AI was one year ago. So whatever AI was at about a year ago, you could do that completely for free offline and like it’s really good. It’s still really good. Interesting. That’s awesome. So it’s a little bit outdated, but then it’s more safe way to protect people’s information because it’s local. It’s local. And if you’re just doing like processing documents and receipts and tax invoices, like dude, AI can definitely still do that a year ago. Like you could But yeah, I think that’ll be a big thing in the future. Yeah, that’s awesome. I did my taxes with AI last year. Yeah. Nice. Dang. Super smart. But thank you, Ally, so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. If there is only one thing that you want to tell to this audience, what would that be? Stuff will only happen if you do stuff. Honestly, like the YouTube rabbit hole. I’m the guy that’s addicted to YouTube. Just like pick something and just execute. Like only do things every day. Even if it’s like half an hour a day, an hour a day, that stuff compounds.