Gen AI for eCommerce: Actual Prompts To Scale Beyond $10M With Jimmy Slagle

Jimmy Slagle is the Co-founder of EVA, an AI creative strategist for e-commerce brands. He is also the Co-founder and CEO of generAI, which helps businesses implement AI-powered strategies. As an expert in creating and scaling ads for Fortune 500 companies, Jimmy began his career scaling Instagram accounts before founding a TikTok agency and working with major clients like Amazon and Lyft.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:01] How Jimmy Slagle launched an e-commerce company using AI
[6:32] What e-commerce companies are doing wrong with AI
[10:33] Jimmy explains how to leverage Google AI Studio to create ads
[19:00] How to create AI-powered UGC
[26:04] Examples of founder-led content
[30:43] Recommended tools for AI search optimization
[36:25] ChatGPT versus Claude for creative strategists — and sample prompts for each tool
[43:36] Why Jimmy created EVA
[45:26] Identifying authentic AI content
[50:35] Ethical and unethical uses of AI
[54:13] Jimmy talks about scaling and flipping Instagram accounts in high school
[1:06:30] Quotes to live by

In this episode…

Creators in e-commerce companies often select a single AI tool for their ads or content and are met with limited or recycled outputs. As AI becomes a trend that can hinder or accelerate business growth, how can you harness this technology to gain a competitive edge?

According to AI developer Jimmy Slagle, AI tools must be trained to produce founder- and creator-led content that advances creativity. You can leverage various AI-driven tools to develop a cohesive output and strategy. For instance, Google AI Studio allows you to upload video files to create high-performing ads customized to your brand strategy by mimicking your creative process. This tool can also identify areas for improvement in each campaign. Additionally, Claude provides tips for creating viral social media content and measuring it against competitors.

In today’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Jimmy Slagle, the Co-founder of EVA, about strategic methods for leveraging AI in e-commerce. Jimmy shares ethical and unethical uses of AI, how to create AI-powered UGC, and how he scaled and flipped Instagram accounts in high school.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"Our goal was to show people how powerful AI was becoming in ways they could actually use it."
"AI is not here to replace the really talented people. It's here to exponentially make us more creative."
"Most people don't know that Google AI Studio, you can actually upload video files."
"You have to be really good at whatever you're using AI for to discern if what AI is giving you is garbage."
"AI is good at mimicking, but you need to train it to learn how to think like you."

Action Steps

Experiment with generative AI tools: Dive into platforms like Google AI Studio to explore their capabilities. This hands-on approach will demystify AI tools and equip you with practical and effective skills to leverage AI for creative and marketing strategies.
Create custom AI models: Use tools like Claude to develop custom AI models tailored to your specific needs, such as generating ad scripts or social media content. This customization helps produce more relevant and compelling content by aligning AI outputs with your brand’s voice and objectives.
Leverage AI for content analysis: Utilize AI to analyze video content, identify patterns, and provide feedback on creative strategies. This step is crucial for understanding what works and what doesn’t, allowing for data-driven improvements in your marketing efforts.
Integrate AI-generated content creatively: Start incorporating AI-generated UGC and avatars into your marketing mix in small doses. This allows you to test the waters and see how your audience responds to AI-enhanced content, optimizing your approach based on real-time feedback.
Stay informed on AI SEO developments: Keep an eye on emerging trends in AI-driven SEO, like AI search optimization platforms. Being proactive in adapting to these changes can give your brand a competitive edge in search visibility, especially as consumer behaviors shift toward AI-facilitated shopping experiences.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:16

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million to 100 million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Joining me today is Jimmy Slagle. Jimmy is the co-founder of EVA, the first AI creative strategist for Ecom brands. He started hustling in high school, growing Instagram accounts before landing major clients like Amazon and Lyft, first TikTok agency. After jumping into the AI world with his own startup. He saw first hand how AI was changing everything about creating and marketing online. Now he's built a following over 100,000 on TikTok and 20,000 on LinkedIn by showing people the real ways to use AI, no noise, just what actually works. Instead of just talking about AI strategies, he tests everything himself and shows exactly how to use these tools to grow real businesses. And that's why I'm excited to have him here today, because he's today, because he's going to show us exactly how to use some of these as well. Jimmy, nice to finally have you here. Yes,

Jimmy Slagle 1:07

I know William. We've been planning this for a while, and I feel like even the last couple months of AI, things have moved rapidly. So this is going to be a very tactical episode, yeah,

William Harris 1:17

and I'm excited we've done a couple of other episodes along these lines, where we're getting into some actual prompts, one that went live with Andy Crestodina, Pam Didner, Noah Kravitz, check those out as well. But today we're gonna be talking about some really good stuff, and we're getting in some very, very granular prompts. I do wanna give a shout out, though, to Jordan Erickson. Jordans. Wanna actually put you and I in touch, if I remember correctly, it was like, TikTok top creator in the TikTok creative challenge. A lot of the training was done by him. And so if you went in there to be in the TikTok creative challenge, you were learning from videos that Jordan put together. Now he's working with food and beverage brands on TikTok affiliates. Just literally one of the smartest guys that I know in the TikTok creative challenge space.

Jimmy Slagle 1:57

Yeah, Jordan is incredible. I mean, he was super early, like, literally helped launch, help TikTok launch that program, and got them to where they're at today. So it's, yeah, he's, he's, he's insane. And, I mean, he's always shaking things up in the content world, yeah,

William Harris 2:14

yep. So thanks Jordan for putting us in touch. Quick announcement from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that i po recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com that said on to the good stuff. We're talking generative AI for e-commerce, actual prompts to scale beyond 10 million. With Jimmy Slagle. And I want to start this off by asking you about a story you were telling me about where you were documenting this story of you launching an e-commerce company with AI with a goal of getting to 50,000 sales, dollars in sales. Like, take me through the process and what it was like to just be like, great. We're just going to show from start to finish, like what we're doing?

Jimmy Slagle 3:01

Yeah, you know, I think it's so important for any any founder, to really understand the audience. And so we figured, if we're gonna be working with e-commerce companies, we should try to just launch our own. And what better way to do that than to have a fun spin on it and have aI make every decision for us. It was a really interesting idea, because we could always paint AI as, like, the enemy of like, oh, it told us to do this or that, and and so it helps alleviate some of those things, like, if you come in at a high price point, but yeah, I mean, our goal was to just show people how powerful AI was becoming and ways that they could actually use it and ways that we wanted to use it. And so we figured, if we were going to be a thought leader in this space, we might as well, first of all, know all the tools that exist, figure out if AI is as powerful as we think. And so we came up with this idea of, let's use ChatGBT to think of the idea for us, the product that we were going to sell, use mid journey to come up with the prototype or the designs of what it was going to be. And we documented the whole journey, the prompts that we used, and, and we set a goal of 50,000 in revenue in 120 days. And, and we did not achieve that. That goal, we got, I think it was probably close to like across the, you know, 10 ish videos. I think we had just under 4 million views, maybe 5 million. I forget exactly what it was. We grew like 60,000 followers. Had tons of traffic to the website, but we did not have nearly the amount of sales that we that we were expecting. And the fun thing to like, I think what, what made it really pop off was chat. GB T came up with this idea to have swim trunks with a pouch for the male anatomy. And so all of the, all of the, all of the marketing was around that and and so I think people were really invested in just that, that storyline. That's

William Harris 4:54

really good. I love that you were talking about how, basically you, you gave all the decision making. Over to AI, which is funny, because for a while this was a trend where it's like, everybody was flipping coins to decide what they want to do. Like, this was, like, just a couple of years ago, or whatever reminds me of just like, hey, instead of flipping a coin, we're gonna ask chat GPT. And I don't know which was better, to be fair, like, I'd say that's still just a coin flip away. Totally,

Jimmy Slagle 5:18

yeah, totally. I mean, obviously, I think in total, we did, like 2000 in sales. So it was, it was far away from our goal. So there's always going to be the human element that comes into it. But at the same time, where we are getting now, I think the use case of AI is just becoming more and more powerful and actually valuable. And I've been in this space for you know, pre like, like my bio picture on Twitter. Most people don't know this, but like, ChatGBT, when it was released two years ago, wasn't a new feature. They they open AI in their playground had the ability for you to select Chat, and you could have a chat. And so, like, I took a screenshot of a chat that I used on Twitter, and that's my that's my banner image. And so, like, I've been in this thing well before even ChatGBT was was popular. And I feel like the last two, three months, I've really started to see things that make me go, okay, AI is valuable. AI is going to be able to help most. You know, e-commerce brands, e-commerce agencies, more than I think they even realize. So it's been, it's been fun to see the evolution.

William Harris 6:25

Yeah, for sure. So what's the problem right now, though, with generative AI in e-commerce, what are we doing wrong? Yeah, you

Jimmy Slagle 6:32

know, I think, I think the the problem is, is that the people that are promoting these tools are incentivized to try to get more views and more likes and more clicks. So there's so much click bait that exists, like, half the AI tools that I think people try, they're always let down on, yeah. And so that, that, I think, is the core problem is, for a lot, people are just fatigued of like, oh, this AI tool feels illegal to know. And then they try it and it's like, well, this is actually pretty average. And so I think it's, it's much more of you can't just expect one tool to solve all of your problems, but it's, it's using a tool, or using, you know, an LLM so like chat, GPT or cloud or Google to just help solve like, one part of the process. And what we're getting to now is like we're getting enough of those parts solved to where things are becoming very powerful when you put them all together in a system, rather than, like, the one standalone tool is going to be everything that you need, if you will. So I think expectations are the creators made the expectations probably too high, and then, you know, people were just disappointed when they when they actually went in and tried it out. So what I've really been doing is like, okay, how can I actually figure out the most value that you can squeeze from all these different tools and put them together in ways that that are valuable? Yeah,

William Harris 7:55

I want to, I want to dig into the exact prompts, and we're going to do this, and I'm gonna have you screen share with me in a second. But before I do, I want to give a little bit of like, weight behind you specifically in the work that you've been doing and some of the brands you've been helping because, you know, somebody could hear, okay, great. You launched an E comm store that did $2,000 and they're like, Wait, that's not good. But you were working with Amazon, you were working with Lyft. You've done some really big stuff in that space as well, but even on the AI space specifically, you've been doing a lot of stuff with different brands. I don't know who I'm allowed to say. I know some of the brands, but I don't know if I'm allowed to say I'm someone to let you say Who are some of the brands, and what are the some, some of the things you've done in the AI space now for helping some of these brands? Yeah, totally.

Jimmy Slagle 8:33

I mean, I mean, yeah. I don't know who I can or cannot say, so I'll probably keep it on the DL but a lot of just large agencies in the D to C world, even large D to C brands like again, it's coming in and helping them figure out these systems that are possible. And in the past, I mean, we've worked when we started, actually, back in 2020 as a TikTok marketing agency, and we were able to work with companies like ollipop and Ridge wallets every minute, Jack and more. And so we deeply know, like the creative world. And then we figured out an idea to try to essentially have aI generate video ads and be able to predict how well video ads would perform. We raised some VC funding for that, and still, again, we're working hand in hand with some of those companies that I mentioned. But, you know, January, we winded that down. So since then, like, I really have been focusing on, like, every day, testing the new AI tools that exist, working with different agencies and D to C brands to actually implement these, these tools and systems within their, their whole operations. And so, yeah, man, it's been a lot of fun, and it's moving so fast,

William Harris 9:44

yeah. So, you know, it was a good way of side stepping the exact some of these brands are we allowed to say the wallet brand? I mean, these are D to C darlings. Just so people who know, like, when I could say, like, a D to C darling, it's like, these are the people that you see that are some of the top minds in D to C. Right now, wallet brands, Pan brands, things like that. You can start to draw your own conclusions if you need to. But these are, you know, eight, nine figure brands. And I'm sure you know who these people are, and they're they're using a lot of what you're doing. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally, that's right for me to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's get into the I want to get into this. I want to actually, like, show. I want to start showing this. So I'm going to have you share your screen. The first one that I probably wanted to dig into, but you could push back on it was just Google AI studio, like, Why do you love it, and how are you using it?

Jimmy Slagle 10:33

Yeah, for sure. So it's so funny. This had to have been early this summer. I came across Google AI studio, and the thing that is just so interesting is most people don't know that Google AI Studio, you can actually upload video files. The thing about Google AI studio that made me so excited when I discovered it like this summer, was you could upload video files. And this is a huge unlock for any creative strategist, because if you try to use chat, GBT or quad, or any of the others that exist in terms of helping think of scripts or anything along those lines, it's like William, you know, me showing you an ad on my phone and saying, close your eyes and give me feedback on This video and that just is impossible to do, your feedback is going to be flawed. So when I realized that Google AI Studio, you can actually upload video files, it takes a frame per second. This is a huge unlock for creative strategists, whether you need inspiration, whether you want to steal competitors ads and tailor them to be your own, whether you want to use it as a quality control so you could upload it and say, Hey, are there any brands or edits or, you know, typos that we need to make? And I think this should really just be ingrained in the whole process of creating ads. And so couple different examples that I just like came up with beforehand is become a professional editor and find any typos or grammatical issues. It's okay if there are none. Just, you know, this is just quality control. And it essentially said, essentially said, like, I didn't spot any glaring typos or grammatical issues. And then it started to ask more about the audience. And again, we trained it to just deeply understand what goes into a good creative strategist. This one too, from a legal perspective and from a Facebook guideline, is there anything in this ad that could draw red flags? And it says, like, I don't see any immediate red flags, obviously, like, you have an NFL logo there. So it does mention that, like, using NFL logos could potentially be an issue if you don't have the proper licensing or permission. So it even was able to see that and give feedback on that, on that sort of thing, which is, again, super cool if you're working with like any brand that's in a highly regulated industry, you can train it to just know what to look at. Then the other thing that I did is I upload four different ads that performed really well, and said, like, what psychological reasons could have led to these performing well? And like, the actual psychological theory, and it can dive into all the different psychological theories that exist that maybe would have caused these to perform well, and, and I even said, like, extreme detail. And I mean, this stuff is, like, super in depth of what's possible. So if you're a creative strategist and you want to find patterns on why certain ads didn't perform well or did perform well, Google, AI studio, in my opinion, is, is criminally underrated. And I mean, I get it because, like, this is Google's developer platform. So like, you have all this stuff over here. You have, like, the developer documentation, like this is very clearly not optimized for your everyday user, which that's why we're actually building a building EVA. So right now, what you're seeing is the back end of EVA and and again, what's cool is, like, very similar to a custom GPT or any of the other things, like, you can train it on what you like and what you don't like. So when we're working with like a brand or an agency, we can come in and essentially replicate the exact creative system or strategy that they like to follow. We can give it specifics about a brand. So we can tell it what content has worked well, what content hasn't worked well, and and all of that within this, this instruction piece, and so super powerful tool. I mean, this is, this is really like the ChatGBT for video files, and so you can use it in tons of different ways. And I think you know us as creative strategists, can can definitely get creative on how we how we use this. So those are just a few examples, another one that that I had created, and unfortunately, the the instructions, I have them saved somewhere else. But even an idea that you can use within Google AI studio is we all know. So you want to squeeze the most out of winning ads. And so you could upload an ad, say this ad was performing really well, train it on what you like to do when it comes to iterations. And you know, train it to just change like the actor in the video, or change the text on the screen, or just slight things, to try to continue to get spend behind those. And Google, AI studio, is able to do just a really, really good job of that.

William Harris 15:26

That's huge. I'm seeing a whole lot of ideas on how I could use this as well, at least from the strategy perspective. One of the things that I like to look at is, okay, well, what behavioral tactic is being used here? Nancy Harhut was on here, and she talks about, like, all these different behavioral tactics that you can look at, behavioral science tactics. Behavioral Science tactics, or what marketing mind state Will Leach was on here. It's like marketing mind state, what marketing mind state is being used here? Then I can start to understand, like, well, what's working and as a strategist, then I can look at and say, Are we only using the same marketing mind state for every single one of our ads? And if so, what are two or three other ones that I need to start incorporating? We need to get some ads around this or this or this, or I can look at all these different things and start to slice like, how am I reaching this? What am I doing with this? And start to figure out different ways, different angles that I can start to, you know, bring things into, yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 16:15

yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the cool thing about this is, you know, one of my, one of my other favorite hacks to do is, like, there's so much good content that exists on YouTube from specifically people in this space that I think very highly of. And you can take some of like their YouTube videos, take the transcripts of that, throw it into ChatGBT to be like, hey, you know, make this into more of like instruction that I could use for, like, a custom GPT or a custom Google AI studio, and then and then, like, you can just, you don't even have to do the hard work of that. So what you're talking about is, is exactly right, like, there's so many of these slight iterations that you could do that just as a creative strategist. I mean, it's the goal is not to replace your job, but it's for you to just have this truly deep understanding of why certain things are working, why things aren't working? And and then, you know, again, you can give it like we gave it, I think, like 50 or 75 different hook examples, even within these system instructions. So then it can, it can help brainstorm even more more ideas for you. So it's, yeah, Google, AI studio is super powerful. I highly recommend you playing around with it. The only thing that matters to upload video file, just if anyone wants to try, is make sure you're on the Gemini 1.5 pro version. Make sure it's not the Flash version. And then I like to set the temperature as low as possible, just because what temperature is is like the ability for this model to get creative, and I would rather have it follow everything that I say here, rather than start to like bring in other things that it thinks are relevant. So I want to keep it as much kind of as low temperature as possible. So from a I know that's probably overwhelming to some people, but those two things are really all you need to get started with with EVA.

William Harris 18:00

Well, I think I saw in your directions there that you had it said, like, you are not allowed to use emoji, no emoji, like, 18 times in all caps. And so it's like, I can see where you're like, No, stick to what I have put in here.

Jimmy Slagle 18:12

Yeah, don't even, I know there are some things that just it struggles to want to pick up on, but, but, yeah, overall, it's, it's super interesting, and a lot of fun, fun things that you can do with this.

William Harris 18:26

Okay, so let's take this into a completely different realm, which was aI UGC. And I saw you do this, and I had to try it out for myself, and I was pretty impressed with what you're able to do. But basically, you have unlocked a way to generate AI UGC, which, up until recently, everybody's trying to do it. And I'd say that even what we have so far is better, there's still, like light years from where we want to get it to, but you're actually got to the point where it's like you're able to manipulate the product that you have or whatever in the video, and what you're saying from an using AI, Yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 19:00

correct. So, so you can use, hey Jen, arc ads is another tool that I think is probably better for advertising. This is just kind of like, think of this as, like, generic chat, GBT. Arc ads is specific for, I'd say, like, the advertising world. But Hey, Jen, what's really interesting is that when you go to create an avatar, what people don't realize is that as long as you just hold the product in the training video, so every, every avatar that you make, it comes with like, a two to five minute training video and and as long as you hold the product in that training video, you're you're essentially able to be able to get, like, unlimited UGC style of that angle, and so you can shoot up to 100 different looks. So you could have one Creator shoot a training video in 100 different places, or 100 different ways of pointing at it, or backgrounds or outfits, or whatever you wanted, and then all you have to do is type in the script. Is that you're looking for, like, this product is great, and then you can just hit submit, and then it will come out as me saying, this product is great. And obviously, you know, like the world of AI UGC, right now, like you wouldn't have an ad run where it's, you know, 20 to 40 seconds of just an AI head talking. But I think where this becomes really powerful is when you when you start to just incorporate this. So like, you can, you can have, like, a two or three second clip of an AI avatar talking about a product and what they love, or a future that they love, or the social proof, or anything along those lines. And especially like, hey Jen, like, you're able to get unlimited videos for that one avatar. So you could literally be creating, you know, 50 different variations every single month of someone saying something slightly different. And that just is a huge unlock for for brands that you know don't have a huge budget to work with creators or you know, what they can do is, instead of having to pay a creator every single time, I think what one thing that we're going to see become really popular is brands essentially paying a creator for their name, image and likeness, where they'll pay the Creator a flat fee every month for them to go and, like, have this custom avatar that the brand can then just go and use and have them kind of say anything that obviously, Like the Creator would have to give the final approval, but, but that's a way where, you know, it just cuts that time down. Of, instead of having to wait a week to get content back from creators, you know, this is now going to be a thing where the brand can generate it in, in, you know, literally minutes.

William Harris 21:37

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that, and I'm glad you brought it up, because it's like, okay, so then, you know, how do creators feel about that? And to your point, they're fine with it if you're paying them for their name, likeness and image, right? So it's like, okay, great. You can, here's my fee. And then if you there's got to be some type of like, you said, like, a check for I approve of this message. Otherwise I can get pretty dangerous.

Jimmy Slagle 22:00

Yes, yes, yes. That's, that's 100% the most. I'd say dangerous thing about this space is, like, the FTC is really gonna crack down on if you didn't have the Creator approve, you know that what they're saying is accurate and true, and so that's, that's a big thing. And as a creator, I mean, I think it, it makes a ton of sense, because if I, if I get paid, you know, $400 a month for unlimited rights to that, like, I don't have to shoot any content. And so if I can get 10 brands that that I love and respect, and, you know, are passionate about, like, that's, that's $4,000 of where I have to do zero work and and, you know, you like the brand, so you're fine with your face being attached to it. So I think, I think it does make a lot of sense for for creators. Yeah,

William Harris 22:48

so what you're doing then is, it's like you're taking this, you're training the video. You're making a training video for a bunch of different locations, holding the product in different ways, different facial reactions, things like that. You're doing a bunch of stuff like this, and then you're able to take this and you're gonna splice, you know, three seconds from here, you've got some B roll, then you've got this other location, and then some more B roll and, like, other things. So that way, then when you bring the whole video together, now it's an actual UGC video,

Jimmy Slagle 23:13

yes, exactly. And so, like, for example, and this one wasn't incorporated with the with, like, the AI UGC. This one is from a little bit ago, but there's an example that I can show that is, like, really solid in terms of, like, most people have no idea what is AI or not. And we can play and let me know if you can't hear it, but sure,

AI ad 23:37

yeah, anywhere else I had no idea this was so freaking good. It's soft and delicious, and it has so much flavor. This is from licorice.com this is super fresh, packaged century to you, and is way higher quality, way more flavor than you'll ever have in the local candy store. At the stores, you get the same boring flavors that honestly feel like plastic, while licorice.com has the most soft, chewy and incredibly tasty licorice ever they've got 50 plus flavors and 42,005 star reviews. Go right now licorice Comm, click the link. I don't know why you're still here. I

Jimmy Slagle 24:12

So like, for example, if you couldn't tell in just the video, like this green screen, this green screen video, the girl is AI generated. This actor is completely AI generated. And then, yeah, just like other, like, this girl, the walking one, this is AI generated. No kidding, was

William Harris 24:31

she a person like, so she's not AI generated, but like, the her walking and saying that that's the AI generated part,

Jimmy Slagle 24:38

correct? Yes, yes. Wow, yeah. And so

William Harris 24:41

distinguishable. I couldn't tell

Jimmy Slagle 24:43

I know. I know so like stuff like this is where it's really because, you know, as, as most creative strategists know, since I was 14, media buying has just become more challenging, and really, the new way of targeting is through creative and the best way to. Target through creative is to have as many hyper niche content assets as possible to try to target that audience with a video. And so imagine if you know, instead of it, if this video was targeting women age 30 to 35 like, if you're trying to go for guys that are age 50, like, you could just replace this avatar with someone that's in that demographic, and and you know, you're able to have a video just like that, and multiple iterations of that video using AI, without having to go and find a creator to work with, and and everything there. And again, the most important part of this is like, you have to have existing B roll still, and you have to have editors that can make it all look good. Because again, if it was just this person, I'm guessing it just wouldn't be a good ad in general. But that's, that's the process that we've we've been seeing work. Work really well for a lot of clients.

William Harris 25:54

It's wild. What about founder led content? I can see where this is good for founders who are busy. And so it's a great they can get their avatar up there. You can do this. But what else are you seeing work from a founder led content perspective? Yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 26:04

yeah. I'm like, one thing that I'm extremely bullish on for TikTok and slash, or like LinkedIn, or any of these. Let me find him quick. Yeah, for any founder that wants to start to scale like their own video content. This is Ruben his seed. And one thing that he does that is really interesting. If you don't follow him on LinkedIn, he's definitely worth a follow. But what he'll do is he actually cloned himself in, like a nice looking studio and into where, like you can't really like a nice looking studio, so it looks nice, so like right here. So this is his AI clone. So what he does is he'll have, like, a quick three second clip of his AI clone talking, and then just a bunch of B roll, and then maybe, you know, his AI clone will pop up again a little later on. But it's not like, it's the face of everything. So again, editing here is still incredibly important. But founder led content is so popular, whether you're telling the story of your startup, whether you're telling a lot of just interesting information about your space, trying to debunk certain myths, like I I think of like twice toothpaste and Cody. Like, Cody posts all the time about just like, different dental myths or hacks or anything like that. And what I've been telling him is like, dude, if you just, if you just create a couple different avatars of yourself, you will no longer have to go and shoot those videos. You just find an editor, get the script that you're looking for, and then again, use your AI clone to be the face of what you're doing. And like this person, I forget exactly. I don't know. Does he include the I don't, yeah, he didn't include the the numbers here. But like this again, is, is the original? That's the AI generated, and it's super tough to tell the difference. And one other person that that's worth showing that also does this is Rowan chum, who is the founder of, I think, the rundown AI, a daily newsletter. And he has posted about this recently, and he showed like the numbers behind his account. And it is wild how successful it's been. So he's grown 48,000 followers, seven plus million views, he discloses in every video that it's his AI clone, and no one really seems to care. Like, as long as it's good storytelling, people are super interested in still watching and so like this process, I've found to be super, super helpful for trying to scale founder led content, because we all know we need to make more content. It just sucks to have to sit down and shoot and then upload the footage and all that. So this, this literally can save you you hours of time, as long as, again, you find that editor that's able to kind of go in and make it all happen

William Harris 28:55

using, hey Jen for this, or, like, what do you what are they using? What are you using for

Jimmy Slagle 28:59

that? Yep, yep. So, Hey, Jen, so, like, as you can see, like, right here, like, I sat down in the studio, recorded a video of me, and like, I can, I can see, I don't know if this one will have the lips moving, we'll see, sure, but nonetheless, like, I recorded a couple different examples, and now I can use this as kind of like that stock footage. Oh, shoot. Let me so, yeah, this is within agent. I have a couple different avatars that I can choose from. One of the two of them are, I guess all them are horizontal and, and, yeah, it's, it's pretty wild, like you take this as like the stock and then you can just upload any script that you want here, submit the video and editor, chops it up, makes it look so looks perfect. And you go from there,

William Harris 29:50

it's so good. It's too good. It's it's a little bit scary, right? Like it is at the point where you're like, wait a minute, what if, Hey, Jen gets hacked, and now, all of a sudden, somebody else has my. Avatar,

Jimmy Slagle 30:00

right? Yeah. I mean, there's, there's, yeah, deep fakes in general, are pretty, pretty freaky overall. But fortunately, like, there is some good moderation here. Like, after you're done uploading your training video, you have to, like, prove that it's you. So I think they're doing some, some solid things that that hopefully we'll mitigate anything that's good.

William Harris 30:22

I didn't realize that. Yeah, what about AI search optimization, something you and I were talking about before, which is, you know, maybe it doesn't need to be done a whole lot, but perplexity and others are starting to get into the point where it's like you could even have shopping now within perplexity and stuff like that, what are your thoughts on search optimization from a from an AI perspective? Yes,

Jimmy Slagle 30:44

totally. So if people don't know right now, perplexity is coming out with and they recently just launched a way for people to just like, check out in app, and let me just see if I can show exactly what it looks like. I know I've gotten the I think you have to, like, like, the brand has to approve. But like, if I search best running shoes on perplexity, what you're going to be able to do it like right here. You can see here, I can just buy right from within. Perplexity. So what we're going to be getting to is a point where, where brands are going to or consumers are going to do all the research outside of even going to the website, and maybe they'll go to the website for proof, but if they know that they want something, they're just going to check out right here. And what's so interesting is, like, I think this is honestly the biggest Amazon competitor that we've seen in a minute, because you can even see like, like, what people say. You can see all these different things, like, where it's talked about. So it just is a much better shopping experience than, like, having to go on Google type in best running shoes, read a blog that you know, they're probably getting shared affiliate to talk about and all these different things where this will just pull references from Reddit and all, like seven different sources on why this is a good running shoe. You can, you can ask follow up questions, even right here and and so, like, the future of shopping for e-commerce, I think is going to look a lot different. And so there's a company out there called profound that allows your brand to get surfaced by these tools. And so this is one that I recommend, like, just at least checking out. There's another tool out there that is called, it's from HubSpot. It's like a AI SEO tool that, I think AI search grader is what it's called. And so you can just, like, throw in your company, name, your location, the product, and then, like, HubSpot will grade your brand. I know they've done this for other tools as well. But again, this is, this is something that I think is just super interesting for people to be

William Harris 33:06

it is, and I can think so. There was another guest on the show Brittain Ladd, and he talked about how, in the future, nobody will go to your website. And that's just like a year ago that he talked about this and and, you know, seeing where this is coming to the point where it makes sense, there's, there's no need now to go to the website. You go to your your AI that's ideally your AI agent that has been trained to know your preferences, and you just say, Yeah, I'm looking for the best running shoes right now, it already knows what price range you typically pay for shoes, and it knows all this other information about you, so it sends you like, you know, the three that it thinks you're most likely to buy. You have all the information right there. You just go ahead and hit Buy right there. One of the with the upsides is you need to make sure that you are optimized for that and and I think that's that's a huge, huge component. The other side of this, though, is you lose some of that ability to create that connection to your customer because they never visited your site. They didn't get to experience that. And so now the experience that you're going to have has to come down even more to that unboxing experience. I think that that's going to play a bigger role in really getting that customer ingratiated to you as a brand.

Jimmy Slagle 34:14

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, it's one of those things where I don't think people are ever going to buy from something that they've never heard of depending on the price point. I mean, if they point. I mean, if it's, you know, 1015, 20 bucks, like, maybe someone would fork it out. But sure, for example, if they're, if I search, like, best running shoes for men, and the top result was a brand I've never heard of before, like, I'm probably not going to buy that, that product right then and there. So there's still that element of like, you have to build trust. But nonetheless, like, at the very least, it's great awareness. That's the potential. And the cool thing is, is that, you know, I'm huge for just advocating for the startups that don't have massive budgets and all these different things. And there's a good chance for you to try to optimize for these AI. I mean, everyone calls it a different thing, but we'll just say AI. SEO and and try to be ahead of some of like, the bigger players in your space, to rank it above them. And you know, from from what I've heard, like, I'm not an SEO expert, so I'm not going to come in and tell you exactly how you can start to do this, but from what I've gathered, it really just comes down to your FAQ page on your website, that that these tools are going to crawl, needs to just answer every question possible that someone would would ask to get to your website. So then, if there's something specific, like best running shoes for men who want to, you know, run a marathon in less than three hours, or something along those lines, like you need to have that as a part of the content on your website, so you can start to show up on those specific tools. First and foremost,

William Harris 35:48

that's brilliant in let's just say that some of this is gonna be off site SEO too, so making sure that other websites are talking about you in that so if there's a roundup post about the top 10 shoes for running a marathon that you're one of those 10 that are included in that. So this is even, say, potentially a resurgence in PR and things like that. And you know, affiliates can be playing a role in that too. Depends on where perplexity is getting its information, but it is going to look likely to websites that are have a higher domain authority, etc. Yep, totally, totally, 100% okay, what about chat? GPT versus Claude from the perspective of a creative strategist, which one do you like better?

Jimmy Slagle 36:26

I personally have really enjoyed using Claude from a creative strategist. And like, I can even show some of the different, like use cases that I have built out and why I think it's it's just very, very talented. So let me go to this one which so, so essentially, like, I built this, this custom clod project, which is very similar to, like, a custom GPT that, like, helps you to start to figure out how to go viral. And you just, like, throw in like, like, it's kind of learned what to look for in this space. So how to go viral on TikTok, is this example. So it first wants to know, like, what's working. We'll find the unique content gaps. And this is, this is like a custom one. And essentially you say, Hello. It says, hey, I'll help you figure out how to go viral. And even just like, like this analysis of what has been working on TikTok right away, like viral travel hacks, it's 10 million plus views, quick tips about hidden features in hotels airports or travel booking. Like all of that is all very, very good that I haven't seen ChatGBT even come up, even come close. Like creator income reveals, like that is a very popular thing that I've been able to see travel Content Tips. I mean, that's pretty basic creator platform, side by side and and so it will then, like it looks at all of those different things, then figure out, like, the content gap analysis for this company and all of this is just so much better than I have, than I've been able to see or experience on chat. GPT, the other thing that I've been able to do is, like, for my LinkedIn content, I created like a LinkedIn copy generator. So again, I trained it on like, examples of content that really works. And from there, I mean, it's able to, it's able to start to understand, like, how I write, and it doesn't, it sounds very good, and it doesn't sound like aI generated copy. So whenever I have a post that I want to make, like, all I do is explain, like, what the video or media is going to be about it, ask some follow up questions and and then it just writes in a very, very human sounding way. So I think that's the biggest thing that I've been able to experience with like a clod, more than ChatGBT, is when you give it good examples, it actually follows what it's supposed to sound like and do, and it just mimics way better than ChatGBT. So as long as you're giving Claude like good examples of what you want it to sound like, I found, I found Claude to be better than than ChatGBT, how many examples

William Harris 39:19

you have to give it for it to be able to pick it apart and really do a good job, yeah?

Jimmy Slagle 39:22

So, like, for this one, I think I gave it like 10 examples of LinkedIn posts from, from, you know, my content, or other people that I thought

William Harris 39:29

that's reasonable. It's not like 80. I mean, 10 is a good number, yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 39:34

yeah. So even like scripts, even like scripts like, obviously Google, AI studio, I think is better at being able to give like the visual. But even if you just wanted to start on Cloud, start on Cloud, like, throw in some some transcripts of ads that you've run and you're gonna watch it just be better than probably what you've experienced in the past. And if

William Harris 39:53

you're not a good writer, then you're training it on, let's just say, other people's posts that have done well. You're like, great. Here's a post that did well. Here's one that did well. Like, help me find the common theme and put together a style that's like this, but in my own voice and stuff.

Jimmy Slagle 40:06

Yeah, exactly. I mean, great. Ai marketing is being able to steal in a ethical way and get it to almost mimic that. Like, I love the Steal Like an Artist approach, where it's like, if you don't know something. So there's another tool that I'll show this is called Poppy AI and like this is a brilliant example of how you can start to connect multiple different things. So let's just say you wanted to have this concept of, like, a really good ad script writer, I can go and find YouTube videos from like, Dara Denny, Alex Cooper and and like, this is exactly what they talk about all the time. I also had a database of, like, 200 some hooks that I attached to this, and then, and then, like, for the brand like, let's see, because is a company that I know very well. Like, I exported their reviews. I took their Amazon website, I took their brand guidelines, I took different blogs and like YouTube reviews about the product, and then I can essentially just connect all of those different things to a chat bot, and then I can have it to start to write, like different one liners, or problem solution one liners, like all of these different Things that is taking everything that is learned from these videos, from the website, from the reviews and and it's just like a very clean and easy interface. And so like, you can ask about like the brand positioning, you can ask about the flavors, you can ask about like the key product, and it learns all of these different things, and you can see, like, the common objections. So it's like this massive, you know, database of really smart people that, like, I, you know, none of that is my stuff outside of the hook. So I just found what people have already created, connected it to this chat bot, and right there, you have a super powerful model that is pulling in from, you know, 15 different data sources,

William Harris 42:03

brilliant. And then using that and turning it into the ads that you want, and using you a, you know, your your AI UGC, and everything, right?

Jimmy Slagle 42:11

Yeah, totally. And even, like, like, diving into the AI UGC, like, even showing so, this is arc ads. Hey, you, if you're unfamiliar with Arc ads. How it works is like, you can select different actors to be in the video. The other thing you can, like, choose the situation. So if you wanted a coffee shop, if you wanted a green screen, if you wanted Christmas, like all of those different things, you can, you can choose. And then the other thing that they have recently come out with, I'm trying to see if I can find it. They came out with an interview style, if

AI ad 42:49

you want, like, a interview. One of the natural AI actors you can use for your they came out with that ability. So even, like, saw that well, choose some actors, yeah. So even like, in and you can, you can essentially have it look like you're doing a screen script you think will work well, choose some actors and let the magic happen together. Let's skyrocket you. Adds performance.

William Harris 43:09

It's so crazy. It really looks like an interview which was which is wild. Okay, so you've shared literally so much more depth than I've seen on almost any of these tools for AI in the ecommerce space. You've created EVA, which is an AI creative strategist that you're, you're, you're pulling all of this in to do this, then for brands. Why? What made you say, this is the thing that I want to do? Yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 43:36

you know, I there's a couple of different things. One, I love the art of trying to figure out how to either make ads perform really well or just like content to work well. And so it's like when I when I was thinking of a tool that I wanted to use, like, I use ChatGBT or quad every day. And what sucked is like there was nothing that existed really for the video inspiration. So even on, like, my own TikTok channel, like I can find TikTok videos that I really like, throw it into Google AI studio and and be able to, like, have it give me recommendations on how I can make my content better. So it's like, this is a tool that I just wanted to exist and, like, funny enough. So like, Alex Cooper is a good friend of mine and and I showed him Google AI studio, I don't know, like, three, four months ago, and it's now like, they use it every day within their workflows. And so it's like, well, I really don't think people should be using the back end of Google AI studio. I think there should be a much better front end and something that's much more user intuitive. And so that was also part of the inspiration. Is like, like, that back end feels very overwhelming if you've never used it before and you don't really know where to go, and you don't even know that you can upload video files unless someone tells you. And so that was also part of the inspiration. It's like, this is a terrible experience. We think we could make it significantly better. And we think this is something that, you know, people are actually going to want to use. Yeah,

William Harris 44:58

I love it. Um. If people wanted to use EVA, where do they go? Yes,

Jimmy Slagle 45:05

meeteva.ai. Is the website

William Harris 45:08

awesome? Really excited to give this a shot and test this out. A little bit more. Let's talk about the philosophy of some of this AI stuff a little bit more. One of the things that you had mentioned when we were chatting before, is that AI is good at replicating but not necessarily coming up in completely net new stuff. What do you mean?

Jimmy Slagle 45:27

Yeah, yeah. So this is one of my favorite, I guess, analogies, or just like takes, if you will, on AI you have to be really good at whatever you're using AI for to be able to discern if what AI is giving you is garbage or not. For example, like, I have seen hundreds, if not 1000s, of ads, and I understand what a good ad looks like. So if, if I saw something that was aI generated and it was an ad like, I'm going to know pretty quick if this is actually good or if it's just trash. But most people, if you don't have that level of expertise, you're just going to trust what AI is telling you. And I think that's a really dangerous approach. So the reason why I think it's so good at mimicking and not generating is you as the expert need to get it to learn how you think as again, that that thought leader. So what actually is a good ad? What can it look for? You know, you're essentially trying to teach a very, very intelligent, you know, PhD student that's never seen an ad or never experienced advertising before, like, what exactly it should look for, and it can pick up on things really well. But stand alone, it's not good because AI like ChatGBT, Claude, all these different things were trained off of blogs or random content around like, what makes a Facebook ad perform? Well, it's not the nitty gritty. The cutting edge of what we know to be high performing ads. It's, you know, based on a bunch of just mediocre content. So you need to train it to learn how to think like you when it comes to creating different ads, and so that's the big thing is like AI is not here to replace AI is here to replace the bad people, but it's not here to replace the really, really talented people. It's our job to figure out how we can use AI to help just exponentially, make us more creative. And instead of us taking, you know, 30 minutes to write a script. You know, it only takes us five, and we can use AI to help just think of different ways and then put put the pieces together and turn it into an ad that we think is going to be really, really good. Because even, you know, like, like, the downside of Google AI studio, if you uploaded an ad and said, This ad performed well, but it actually didn't. It's just gonna take everything that you say. It doesn't actually truly know. It can find patterns in high performing ads. But if you tell it that this ad performed well, and in reality it didn't like it's never gonna catch on. And so that's where, like, the human element is always gonna be needed.

William Harris 48:01

Giggle, right? Garbage in, garbage out. That's still going to be true in AI, you can train it incorrectly, or you could train it correctly. And essentially, what you're doing is you're taking something that has maybe it's like molding clay. It has the raw material to be anything you want, but you have to mold it to become what you want in order to get the most effective use out of it. And it's like you said, it's capable of it all, but because it's capable of everything, it's not specific enough to be good at what you want it to be unless you train it to almost refine those specific skills Exactly.

Jimmy Slagle 48:32

And that's why we have a lot of different tools that exist. There's there's kind of like how you can think of the ad landscape. There's the core products like ChatGBT or Claude or hey Gen, that come out with the the ability to have APIs. And so then there's tons of companies that can be launched on top of those. And so if you can learn how to use the foundational one, really, really well, you're going to be in a good spot. But that's why there's so many different tools stacked on top of those. Like archives. I don't think they use Hey Gen, but they definitely use an API of another one of those, like Avatar platforms, they just have figured out how to create it and the interface in a way that is helpful for advertisers in particular. Yeah,

William Harris 49:12

and that's the key, right, getting it helpful. I had Matt Van Swol over at wise on, and one of the things he was if you ask, he's in North Carolina, but it's like, if you ask any, any of his friends or family or people in his neighborhood or whatever, if they're using AI, and they're like, no, like, maybe they've tested something on ChatGBT, maybe, right, none of them are paying for subscriptions for it. Like, if you talk to the average person, that's a little bit different. When you talk to marketers, they at least have maybe a paid one or two paid subscriptions to a tool that they use a little bit, but they're still not experts at it. But if you can get this to the point where it is a form factor, where it is more like a normal SaaS, where they come in and it is set up for doing this job instead of doing any job, then it is more effective at just being able to accomplish the thing. That they're trying to accomplish a little bit less, I don't know, frustrating to work with that way. Yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 50:06

yeah, totally, totally. I mean, that's that's benefit, of, like, if you know how to use the foundational models really well, you really shouldn't be paying for that many subscriptions. Maybe more on, like, the agent side, that's able to connect a lot of the dots together. But if you're new to AI, then I think those tools are great because they take away the learning curve, like you can use it for a specific use case, and it's going to give you something that's actually helpful right away. I

William Harris 50:32

love it when should and shouldn't we use AI?

Jimmy Slagle 50:37

Yeah? You know, obviously that's going to be a very debated topic. I think the most important thing is one, whenever you use it like, you can't use it to manipulate or even lie, like even the street interview stuff like you're you're probably working on, on the the gray area of whether or not that's ethical. And I'm not going to sit here and say like you should do it or you shouldn't do it like I think, I think it's a tool, and I just want people to be aware of this, of what exists, but I think that's going to be really important. And even, like, the FTC, like, there are, there are some regulations that are coming out already around AI generated content. And so even more, from like, an ethical perspective, like, I think it's, it's something along the lines of, like, you can't have the AI avatar say, like, I and like, make claims, really I and let me double check on that, make sure. But I think it's, it's something along those lines that, like, they can't do otherwise you could get a fine, like $40,000 per instance that that happens. So there are, there are regulatory things that are coming out every day that the FTC is very aware of. So make sure you're getting consent from like the creators on what they're saying is actually true. But then I think on top of it, like, there, there, I don't think AI should be used in in ways where we want something to be very human. So like, for example, the Coca Cola ad that has been running all weekend. Like, I was watching the NFL this weekend, and like, I think I saw it at least six or seven times. Like, I think I know the people that made that ad. It is, it is absolutely brilliant in terms of what AI was capable of doing. But for example, it's like a nostalgic sort of feeling ad that wants you to think back of, like the old days of Coca Cola and, like, the holiday feel. And I think that's just really tough for AI to be able to replicate, like, I think that is much better off being something where it is human and you're showing like, the human qualities, even though, like, I'm sure Coca Cola, like, it made a lot of financial sense to do that, it just feels a little cold when it's something that's like, supposed to be so incredibly human for now. Yeah, yeah, right, right. I mean, who knows what it looks like like? I don't think that's the that's the case forever. But, and I know I saw on social media, like a lot of people were saying that too, of just like this just feels soulless. You know, I hate where this is going so I think it's like us as marketers. We just have to be aware that I would say people are going to be it's going to be a polarizing thing if you have something that is AI generated or not. So you have to be aware of that as a brand and make sure you're doing it in in a way, and being open and honest about about when you use it. And so, yeah, I think, I think there's tons of opportunity to use it, obviously, but I think you just have to be smart about those situations and make sure you know you're not going to do something that's going to be a bad PR stunt. So

William Harris 53:37

a polar bear ad is polarizing. Got it. I appreciate that. I want to get into learning a little bit more about who is Jimmy Slagle then too, because I think it's fun to find information about like the person, speaking of the person, right, like we're talking about AI, and there's something to be said for the human side of who you are. Tell me a little bit more about like you mentioned in high school that you and some best friends were, like, building growing, flipping Instagram accounts. Like, tell me more about what you guys were doing. Yeah.

Jimmy Slagle 54:13

So honestly, it started. So this is like, 2015 2016 we had a good friend that was, like, super big into mad and mobile this, like phone game, and they had this marketplace where you could, like, buy and sell mad and mobile coins. So he started to, like, grow an Instagram account around that, and he started to like, get brand deals. And so we were all super fascinated by this. So then we ended up spinning up this like account. I think we actually ended up buying one too, with like 40,000 followers, and we grew it to like 90,000 and actually got acquired by wave TV, which wave TV is actually the company. They're a sports media company out in LA and and they were the ones that started the Jason and Travis Kelsey podcast. So now Amazon writes to it, but wave TV was the one that. That started that and, and so that was pretty wild. We then got paid to, like, start running their main NFL account with like, 290,000 followers. So this is like, 2015 2016 2017 2018 and, yeah, man, it was, it was wild times in high school. We were like, on top of the world. I was a like, I, I remember like we would DM Derek Henry, and like he would reply when he was still at Alabama, like, Baker Mayfield, we made, like, a highlight clip for Yeah. It was tons of fun. That

William Harris 55:33

is a high school dream. Like, you're, you're literally, yeah, you're living the high school dream. What? What caused you guys to change from that?

Jimmy Slagle 55:41

Yeah, you know, we ended up like, they started to go in a different direction wave. So what they had done is started to buy a ton of these different sports accounts across, like the platform, and they wanted, like, this massive distribution channel. And then I think they started to raise some venture capital funding, and it became much more serious and so, so so their, their model that they had originally started with, I think, was just going away. So, but, but really that like 2019 ish, 2020. Is when that started to fade down. And around that time, I got my hands on TikTok, for the first time, that same friend, like showed me TikTok, and he had made this, like sports account, posted five videos. One of them had like, 3 million views, and he gained 15,000 followers overnight. So he's like, Dude, you gotta check this out. And you know us coming from the social media world, I'm like, holy cow, TikTok is insane. Like, I think this is going to be the next big platform. So that's when we launched our TikTok marketing agency. Few months later, in 2020 and we were young enough and and smart enough on social media to where we got to work with a lot of a lot of cool companies.

William Harris 56:46

Oh, that's so cool, man, you've obviously found a knack for hacking a lot of these systems. And from what I understand, it goes back to even before hacking social media systems. You were hacking egg drop contests as well.

Jimmy Slagle 57:00

Yeah, you know, like, like, I so I've been in, I mean, I had a three month internship at US bank after my freshman year of college. And outside of that, I've always been an entrepreneur. And when I look back like, I really start to see things make sense. So in physics class, there was this project that you have to do where you have to drop an egg from 10 feet, and you have to build an apparatus that essentially makes sure it doesn't crack, and it's literally pass fail, like you, either you either if the egg cracks, your your team fails. If you pass, then you're good, and you're you get, I think, X amount of chopsticks, X amount of length of tape, and X amount of length of string, and you have to build something that can withstand it. And I remember I was reading the instructions, and all I was thinking of is like, Okay, what's, what's a loophole that isn't, isn't mentioned here, that we can do? And I remember I saw something around like it technically didn't specify how high you have to drop it from all that, like, you're just on a 10 foot platform and you have to drop it, but it didn't say you had to drop it from 10 feet. So I went to my group, and I'm like, guys, like, I think we could just build a ladder with a tiny little basket at the bottom, and we just lower it down till it's a millimeter away from the ground, and we drop it. And so we did. Everyone was so mad that, like, it worked, but the teacher was like, Yeah, I mean, technically, it's in the instructions and and so we all were able to pass.

William Harris 58:28

I love those fun college stories where it's like, you find those little loopholes or things like that. I once got extra credit for poking my college professor in the eyeball. And so a quick version of that one. He was talking about conditioning for Pavlov, right? So Pavlov's dogs and everything, he's talking about conditioning and ringing the bell. And he was like, for instance, if I said rumbled, still skin and I poked you in the eyeball, eventually, all I'd have to do is say rumbled, still skin, and you would blink. So I saw him in the hallway the one day. I was like, Rumble, still skin, I poked him in the eyeball. And he was like, you get extra credit. I like that.

Jimmy Slagle 58:59

No way. That's brilliant. That's brilliant.

William Harris 59:03

Dr Wayne Johnson, my like, psychology professor,

Jimmy Slagle 59:07

wow. What college you go to again? So

William Harris 59:09

I went to a couple of different colleges. So the first college was technically Altman Hospital School of Nursing. So I was nursing school, and then through that, we were at, what was it? Oh, man, I'm drawing a blanket. But we did all of our classes at another college for, like, a lot of our science stuff, and that's the one that he's at. I literally cannot remember the name of it, but it's, it's like, purple. That's all I remember. But then I ended up at Malone University for my bachelor's degree in marketing. When I went back for that

Jimmy Slagle 59:37

cool, cool, I guess I don't did, when did you start Elumynt? Like, what was that? Yeah,

William Harris 59:45

there's a long story I will I will get into that sometime. The short version of that, though, is I was working as a nurse in the Open Heart unit. That's where I got trained at first at the of m and got trained in all the rest of the units. Part. Because of ADHD and needing a challenge. And so started off doing, doing all of that. What I realized, though, is that there was always a need somewhere in the hospital. And so I would call in every day and just basically be like, hey, where do you meet me? Need me tonight. And because I was trained in all the different units, they always had a need. And so I was in there. And so sometimes you're making, you know, double time or whatever, which was great from an hourly perspective, but I realized that there's a cap still too, because it's like, I'm still just trading time for money, like, there's never a way where it's like, I can only work so many hours. And so I thought, Okay, well, they have a scheduling issue. How do I solve this scheduling issue that they have? And they're still doing a lot of scheduling on, like, paper and pencil. I'm going to help them develop some software that that's going to solve this, and that's gonna be really good. And I started talking to this guy named Chad. However, named Chad Halverson, who ran a company called when I work, they just come into some VC funding. And I said, Listen, I wanna use your API to build out the rest of what I wanna do for scheduling for hospitals. He said, Actually, we just closed our Series A Why don't you come over and run marketing for our group? And so that's when that happened. And and then we grew them 270% in the first seven months. And I say we, because it's like, obviously a team of people. But I was leading marketing that at that time. And then did that for an e-commerce company as well. We scaled them from, I think they had like, 3000 products when I started, 70,000 products within a year. Like, we just completely ballooned there as well. And so I was writing about this on entrepreneur and Fast Company, and writing about like, the different tactics and techniques that we're doing, similar to you, I like finding, like, these little nuances in these ways. I think I was ranked number one on growth hacker for a little while, growth hackers and inbound.org and stuff like that. And people basically said, like, Hey, I like what you're doing. Can you come help me grow my business? I was like, Sure, I like helping people. I know these people I could bring in to help different components, different things. And so we started doing it. Had no never worked at an agency. Had no idea that agencies needed to be, you know, disrupted, or anything like that. But once we got into this, I very quickly realized that a lot of people were approaching this, I don't know, from the wrong perspective. My business partner, Jeff and I, one of the big things we started talking about is like, how do we make sure that what we're doing is optimizing towards bottom line, not just top line? How do we make sure that everybody on our team is trained on P and l's and so we can actually understand if what we're doing is good for the business, not just top line or row as or these other things, that I think you can end up having good numbers there that end up tanking businesses. So that's kind of how that started. Dude, that's sweet. That's a cool story. Yeah, that's the shortest version of that that I could tell. There's a whole lot more nuance and detail there. But I wanted to ask you, you did a 6464 day challenge with yourself, because you said that you are discipline equals freedom. Tell me a little bit more about why discipline equals freedom. Yeah.

Jimmy Slagle 1:02:46

I mean, I think it's just one of those things of where, if you like, combining, you know, some jock, a willing principles, combining James clear, so if you can just set the intentions and the actions for what you need to do that day, and do that every single day like I think it's the whole 1% better, and as long as you don't go backwards like that, can compound so incredibly fast. And so I'm currently doing a challenge where I'm posting every day on TikTok and LinkedIn. And again, the goal is to just do it for 64 days straight. And I've always struggled with goals because it just feels so intangible, and it's much more. I like to think of them as like hypotheses. So it's like, okay, if I post for 64 days straight, what do I think is gonna happen? And then you just get to judge, like, how close you were. So my goal was, and I started this probably about a month ago, my goal was to be able to get to like, 250,000 impressions every single every month on social media. Like that was, that was what I wanted to do. And like, I'm already and I'm a month in my first month was like 8.5 million. So it's so, yeah, it's crazy. So it's like, I just committed to doing something that I thought was going to bring value and and I think, you know, based on the the response, like, people are just very interested in in the world of AI and what's happening, and the actual use cases of it. But I love to do challenges like that. I've done 75 hard before, to where you know, you like, if you're not familiar. It's like working out twice a day, reading 10 pages, following a diet, drinking a gallon of water, and all that good stuff. So it's just like, I love those micro challenges where it's like, if I commit to this every single day, I think good things are going to happen on the back end. I don't necessarily know what those good things are going to be, but I'm, you know, I think it's worth it. So that's where I think discipline, it really equals freedom, because that's that's just how you're gonna be able to grow. And

William Harris 1:04:41

that's true for anything. I've talked about this with my daughters often, which is just the idea that while you don't know what's going to happen from working out 75 days in a row, right? Like, you don't know like, you can't say like, I will be this or this or this, or from posting this, you do know that it's likely going to lead you to. It's what you want, right? And so, like, what I would always say, and I'm like, Okay, let's imagine that you're, you know, trying to drive your car, is like, are you getting Are you going the direction, and which one's more likely to lead you in the direction you want? Is going to bed on time or going to bed at 2am which one likely leads you towards the things that you want? Does working out or not working out? Which one likely leads you towards those things. So if we know this, we know this, and we're very good at this, right? Does drinking water or pop? Which one likely leads you towards the things that you actually want in life? These are easy, very simple questions, usually for a lot of these things, if you know that, then just commit to doing it, and don't worry about whether or not you hit like this. This goal as much as you're just simply saying the goal is, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for 64 days, and I'm just going to measure where I'm at. And the reality is, after six four days, I'm going to continue doing it, because I still know that it's the right thing to do. I still know that I need to work out, yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 1:05:49

exactly, exactly, and yeah. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing. It's just like an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest. And so it's like, that was a big part of why I wanted to do it is I know if I'm making content, I'm going to continue to make content. But when you miss a day, or you miss two days, or you miss three days, it's that much harder to get back into it, to start making content again. And so I try to just find different opportunities for me to just like challenge myself, to be disciplined in doing something every day, because I know it's really hard to pick up again if you stop and becoming consistent with it? Yeah, it

William Harris 1:06:23

really is. What about a quote that you live by? Are there any quotes or verses or anything that you're like? This is one of my favorites. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Slagle 1:06:30

So, I mean, you know, obviously this is all about AI and Ecom and business, but faith is, like, a huge part of who I am and my life, and that really stemmed from the situation is, like, I'd say in high school, I would call myself a Christian, but I wasn't living differently. I wasn't living different from what the world or how the world was living and and I remember there was one time I was reading the Bible in a year plan on my phone. Like, I don't think I took anything out of it, outside of like this, this experience. And my girlfriend at the time, now, actually wife, invited me to come to church with her family. And like, I didn't go to church that often. I went to a Lutheran school, so I thought I had all the answers, but didn't go to church that often. And we go to church, and the whole sermon is on Psalm 139, verse 23 and 24 which is searching God and know my heart, test me, and know my age's thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And like, I remember just feeling super convicted of like, oh wow, there's, there's a lot of offensive way in me. And so I was just like, sitting with that message like the whole rest of the afternoon. And then I remember, I'm laying in bed, and I'm like, open up the Bible in a year plan, you know, half asleep, and I'm reading, and I'm like, probably halfway into this plan at this point, and I realized that I was at the exact part of the Bible that was Psalm 139, verse 23 and 24 and it was just like, this big wake up call, where it was, like the first time, where I felt like the Lord really just putting something on my heart and and like, I've run the odds of that happening, and it's like you would go to church 108,000 times for that verse to happen and read it that night. So that was a big just wake up call for me to actually start to live differently. And, you know, read the Word and follow, try to follow what it says the best in my ability. So I think that's really been, been everything is like nothing. Nothing really matters in this world, outside of just having that eternal perspective and trying to have as many, many people come up to heaven with you and all that good stuff. So that's absolutely beautiful.

William Harris 1:08:43

Yeah, I love that. I've had Dayne Hepner on here as well. I don't know if you know Dayne, but another really great Christian TikTok guy, yeah, and I really appreciate what he's doing, too. And, yeah, I love talking about this, because it's obviously something that's very important to me as well. And in the verse that you just shared, reminds me of one that I repeat often, which is, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me, right? And it's like, it's so easy for just like little things, and we don't even realize just that little thing that can be, I don't know, digging its way into your heart. And it's, I don't know, you know, people call it imposter syndrome or whatever. But it could be little jealousies, micro jealousies, right? Almost, if you would, where it's like, Ah, why did they get that opportunity? Why did they get that speaking opportunity? Why did they get this or whatever? And it's very easy for things like that to creep in, or, let's just say, doubts or anxieties about, like, I don't know, man, if I'm gonna be able to do this or if I'm gonna do that, there's all these little things that just get there and they could eat away at you if you're not careful. And so it's just, you know, reminding myself every day created me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me. Yeah,

Jimmy Slagle 1:09:44

that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I mean, yeah, it's like, like, I tried to go into every every meeting and like, pray for the person I'm going to be on. I have no idea what their their faith journey's like, but just like, like, again, living life as if, seeing, seeing this life through, like, there's. No coincidences. Like every person that we meet, every every conversation we have, like there's, there's an eternal view on, on all of that. And, you know, I just just don't want to miss those opportunities.

William Harris 1:10:14

Yeah, brilliant. It's been absolutely amazing. Talking to you, getting to know you hearing from your heart, hearing from your mind, a lot of wisdom shared today. We talked about this a little bit before, but if people wanted to work with you or EVA, aside from the website, which you shared, but let's share the website again, and then where else could they follow you?

Jimmy Slagle 1:10:35

Yeah, so the website again is meeteva.ai, and then on on LinkedIn, like I'm super or super active there, so Jimmy Slagle, and then TikTok is @Jimmyslags. And so that's, that's probably where I'm most active throughout the day. And I mean, I also just mainly based out of demand, I am doing some coaching and consulting for marketing teams and agencies. And agencies and so if you're interested in just like figuring out how to use all those different tools and actually have them within the system, I'm only doing a handful of clients in 2025 because it's, it's, it's, you know, scaling, that the work that goes into it is not necessarily easy. I get to help you scale, but my time is, is is more limited on that front. So that's the other thing. And just hit me up on on LinkedIn or wherever, and we can chat more.

William Harris 1:11:27

Jimmy again, I really appreciate you jumping in here and sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us. It's been a lot of fun, and I've learned an absolutely insane amount today.

Jimmy Slagle 1:11:35

Yes, yes, no, thank you. Seriously, I appreciate the invite, and hopefully it was valuable for someone listening,

William Harris 1:11:42

Thank you everyone for listening. Have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:11:44

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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